The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Biden administration regulation on the nearly impossible-to-trace weapons called ghost guns, clearing the way for continued serial numbers, background checks and age verification requirements to buy them in kits online.

The 7-2 opinion found that existing gun law allows regulation of the kits increasingly linked to crime.

Sales of the homemade firearms known as ghost guns grew exponentially after kits came onto the market that let people easily build them at home, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “Some home hobbyists enjoy assembling them. But criminals also find them attractive,” he said.

The number of ghost guns found at crime scenes around the country has also soared, according to federal data. Fewer than 1,700 were recovered by law enforcement in 2017, but that number grew to 27,000 in 2023, according to Justice Department data.

Since the federal rule was finalized, though, ghost gun numbers have flattened out or declined in several major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Baltimore, according to court documents. Manufacturing of miscellaneous gun parts also dropped 36% overall, the Justice Department has said.

Ghost guns are any privately made firearms without the serial numbers that allow police to trace weapons used in crime. The 2022 regulation was focused on kits sold online with everything needed to build a functioning firearm — sometimes in less than 30 minutes, according to court documents.

Ghost guns have been used in high-profile crimes, including a mass shooting carried out with an AR-15-style ghost gun in Philadelphia that left five people dead. Police believe a ghost gun used in the slaying of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO in Manhattan was made on a 3D printer rather than assembled from a kit of the kind at the center of the Supreme Court case.

Finalized at the direction of then-President Joe Biden, the “frame and receiver” rule requires companies to treat the kits like other firearms by adding serial numbers, running background checks and verifying that buyers are age 21 or older.

Gun groups challenged the rule in court in the case known as Garland v. VanDerStok. Most crimes are committed with traditional firearms, not ghost guns, they argued. It’s legal for people to build their own firearms at home, the challengers said, arguing that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped its authority by trying to regulate the kits.

The Supreme Court majority disagreed, pointing out that the law gives the ATF the power to regulate items that can be quickly made into working firearms.

“The ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit can be ‘readily converted’ into a firearm too, for it requires no more time, effort, expertise, or specialized tools to complete,” Gorsuch wrote, referring to a specific product.

Some kits may take more time to build into guns and therefore fall outside of the ATF’s power, he wrote, but many of the most popular kits are subject to regulation.

The justices had previously allowed the rule to stay in place while the lawsuit played out.

The court previously struck down a firearm regulation from President Donald Trump’s first administration, a ban on gun accessories known as bump stocks that enable rapid fire. The court has also expanded Second Amendment rights with a finding that modern gun regulations must fit within historical traditions.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the kits are only firearm parts and shouldn’t be subject to a regulation that could open the door to rules on other popular weapons. “Congress could have authorized ATF to regulate any part of a firearm or any object readily convertible into one,” he wrote. “But, it did not.”

As March Madness takes over this week, how many people are filling out NCAA brackets — and why?

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows what share of Americans typically take a shot at bracket predictions and their motivation for joining in the madness.

The University of Illinois men’s basketball team will play Friday in Milwaukee against Xavier or Texas. You can hear the games right here on 890 WLS

The survey found that about one-quarter of Americans fill out a men’s March Madness bracket “every year” or “some years.” But what about the women’s tournament? High-profile NCAA women’s basketball games have closed the gap with men’s tournaments in terms of viewership and there is more money flowing in and around women’s sports in general; women’s teams will now be paid to play in the tournament, just like men have for years. It all points to higher interest in how women’s teams fare even if the bracket frenzy has not quite caught up.

The survey found that 16% of U.S. adults fill out a women’s tournament bracket “every year” or “some years.” And it’s much more common for bracket participants to only fill out a bracket for the men’s tournament than the women’s — about 1 in 10 U.S. adults only fill out a men’s tournament bracket, while only 2% fill out only a women’s bracket. Another 14% fill out a bracket for both tournaments at least “some years.”

So, a sizeable chunk of Americans are into NCAA bracketology, but what’s behind the hype?

Among those who fill out brackets at least “some years,” about 7 in 10 say a reason for their participation was for the glory of winning, the chance to win money or the fact that other people were doing it.

They’re less likely to be motivated by support for a specific school or team — and in particular, to say this was a “major” reason for their participation.

There’s certainly a financial motivation for correctly predicting the Final Four, and it’s hard to deny NCAA college basketball is in a betting-heavy era. More Americans can legally bet money on the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments than in previous years, and many will place a wager on their bracket’s success.

Does that mean Americans think the tournaments are all about wagering, or that it’s technically gambling to enter a friends-and-family pool with only a modest payout at stake?

Most U.S. adults — 56% — say that if someone enters a March Madness bracket pool for money, they consider that to be gambling. About 2 in 10 say it depends on the amount of money, and another 2 in 10, roughly, say this is not gambling.

Who are the March Madness bracket diehards?
Men tend to make up the bulk of the regulars who fill out a bracket at least “some years.” Among the March Madness bracket regulars, about 6 in 10 are men, including about one-third who are men under the age of 45. These bracket regulars are less likely to be women; only about 4 in 10 are women, and they’re about evenly split between being older or younger.

Those who only fill out a bracket for the men’s tournament are also overwhelmingly men. About 7 in 10 people who fill out a men’s bracket — and not a women’s bracket — “every year” or “some years” are men. About 4 in 10 are men over 45, and about 3 in 10 are younger men.

If you can’t beat them, avoid them?
Not everyone wants to risk a bracket buster and people avoiding the Madness this month are hardly alone.

About 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they “never” fill out a men’s or women’s bracket. This group leans more female: About 6 in 10 bracket avoiders are women. And roughly one-third in this group are women over 45.

— Egg prices again reached a record high in February, as the bird flu continues to run rampant and Easter and Passover approach.

The latest monthly Consumer Price Index showed a dozen Grade A eggs cost an average of $5.90 in U.S. cities in February, up 10.4% from a year ago. That eclipsed January’s record-high price of $4.95.

Avian flu has forced farmers to slaughter more than 166 million birds, mostly egg-laying chickens. Just since the start of the year, more than 30 million egg layers have been killed.

If prices remain high, it will be third year in a row consumers have faced sticker shock ahead of Easter on April 20 and Passover, which starts on the evening of April 12, both occasions in which eggs play prominent roles.

The price had consistently been below $2 a dozen for decades before the disease struck. The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects egg prices to rise 41% this year over last year’s average of $3.17 per dozen.

But there may be light at the end of the tunnel. The USDA reported last week that egg shortages are easing and wholesale prices are dropping, which might provide relief on the retail side before this year’s late Easter, which is three weeks later than last year. It said there had been no major bird flu outbreak for two weeks.

“Shoppers have begun to see shell egg offerings in the dairycase becoming more reliable although retail price levels have yet to adjust and remain off-putting to many,” the USDA wrote in the March 7 report.

David Anderson, a professor and extension economist for livestock and food marketing at Texas A&M University, said wholesale figures dropping is a good sign that prices could go down as shoppers react to the high prices by buying fewer eggs.

“What that should tell us is things are easing a little bit in terms of prices,” he said. “So going forward, the next CPI report may very well indicate falling egg prices.”

However, he doesn’t expect lasting changes until bird stock can be replenished and production can be replaced.

“Record high prices is a market signal to producers to produce more, but it takes time to be able to produce more, and we just haven’t had enough time for that to happen yet,” he said. “But I do think it’s going to happen. But it’s going to take some more months to get there.”

Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, said wholesale prices dropping is good news, but noted that increased demand for Easter could drive a temporary increase in prices.

“In addition, egg farmers are closely watching spring migration of wild birds, recognizing that wild birds are a leading cause of the spread of this virus and pose a great and ongoing threat to egg-laying flocks,” she said.

Advocacy groups and others have also called for a probe into whether egg producers have used the avian flu to price gouge. But egg producers say the avian flu is solely behind the elevated prices.

Meanwhile, restaurants have added surcharges and made other changes to offset the cost of eggs.

The Trump administration has unveiled a plan to combat bird flu, including a $500 million investment to help farmers bolster biosecurity measures, $400 million in additional aid for farmers whose flocks have been impacted by avian flu, and $100 million to research and potentially develop vaccines and therapeutics for U.S. chicken flocks, among other measures. But it will likely take a while for that plan to make an impact.

Wall Street’s sell-off kicked back into gear on Thursday, and a U.S. stock market rattled by the whiplash created by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and uncertainty about the economy fell sharply.

The S&P 500 tumbled 1.8% to resume its slide after a mini-recovery from the prior day clawed back some of its sharp drop over recent weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 427 points, or 1%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.6% to finish more than 10% below its record set in December.

Stocks fell even though President Trump on Thursday offered a one-month reprieve from his 25% tariffs on many goods imported from Mexico and Canada. That’s unlike the bounce stocks got the prior day from his giving a one-month exemption specifically for automakers.

All the moves keep hope alive that Trump may be using tariffs as just a tool for negotiations rather than as a permanent policy and that he may ultimately avoid a worst-case trade war that grinds down economies and sends inflation higher.

But Trump is still pressing ahead with other tariffs scheduled to take effect April 2. And the growing pile of dizzying back-and-forth moves on tariffs is only amping up the uncertainty. It was just on Monday that Trump said there was “no room” left for negotiations that could lower the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which took effect Tuesday.

“These exemptions don’t do much to resolve the general air of uncertainty,” said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management. “Businesses will still be cautious in the current environment until a lot more of the tariff picture is clear.”

U.S. businesses are already saying they’re confronting “chaos” because of all the uncertainty coming out of Washington. while U.S. households are bracing for higher inflation because of the tariffs, which is sapping their confidence.

Such reports have raised the possibility of a worst-case scenario known as “stagflation,” where the economy is stagnating and inflation is high. It’s something that policy makers at the Federal Reserve don’t have a good tool to fix.

“Much will depend on whether these new tariffs prove temporary or are toned down,” according to strategists at BNP Paribas. “But even if they are ultimately removed, we anticipate lasting damage to global economic activity.”

Next up for Wall Street is a report coming Friday from the U.S. Labor Department on how many workers U.S. employers hired last month. A solid job market so far, along with the solid spending by U.S. households that it’s allowed, have been linchpins in preventing a recession.

Some big retailers have been offering warning signals recently about how much U.S. consumers can keep spending.

Macy’s on Thursday reported slightly weaker revenue for the end of 2024 than analysts expected, though its profit topped expectations. It also gave a forecast for profit in 2025 that fell short of analysts’. Its shares fell 0.7%.

It was a similar story for Victoria’s Secret, which beat Wall Street’s fourth-quarter sales and profit forecasts but gave a revenue forecast for the upcoming year that fell short of analysts’ expectations. Its stock fell 8.2%.

Making things worse for the U.S. stock market, some of its biggest stars are seeing their glow dim.

Semiconductor companies and their suppliers were particularly heavy weights, after soaring to staggering heights because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.

Marvell Technology lost nearly a fifth of its value and dropped 19.8% even though it reported results for the latest quarter that edged past analysts’ forecasts. It also said it expects revenue growth in the current quarter of more than 60% from the prior year, give or take a bit.

But that wasn’t enough for investors, who have grown used to AI-related companies trouncing expectations.

The poster child of the AI boom, Nvidia, fell 5.7%, while Broadcom lost 6.3% ahead of the release of its earnings report. They were two of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.

AI superstars had been dominating Wall Street for years and helped it run to record after record. But those soaring performances, including a nearly 820% surge for Nvidia from 2023 into 2024, had critics saying prices had grown too expensive. They’re also facing threats as Chinese companies develop their own AI offerings, with DeepSeek famously saying it didn’t need to use the industry’s most expensive chips.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 104.11 points to 5,738.52. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 427.51 to 42,579.08. The Nasdaq composite tumbled 483.48 to 18,069.26.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after the European Central Bank cut interest rates, as was widely expected.

German stocks rallied 1.5% as the market continues to feel reverberations from an agreement by the two parties that will form the country’s next government to loosen constitutional limits on borrowing. It’s a major turnaround in German budget policy and opens the way for new borrowing and spending over the next decade.

Stocks also rose in Asia, including jumps of 3.3% in Hong Kong and 1.2% in Shanghai.

China’s commerce minister said Thursday that his country will not yield to bullying and that its economy can weather higher tariffs imposed by Trump, though he added that there are “no winners in a trade war.”

In the bond market, the 10-year Treasury yield edged up to 4.29% from 4.28% late Wednesday.

The man accused of opening fire on a suburban Chicago Independence Day parade, killing seven people, is about to stand trial, nearly three years after the attack.

Jury selection started Monday after several delays. Part of the reason is the erratic behavior of the defendant, Robert Crimo III, which has raised questions about what to expect at trial.

Jurors were in another part of the courthouse in Waukegan, filling out questionnaires ahead of jury selection Monday, as court came to order. Crimo walked into the Lake County courtroom dressed in a suit and tie, clean shaven and his hair cut short.

Crimo’s parents sat behind the defense table where he was seated.

The attack
Authorities allege a gunman perched on a roof shot at crowds assembled for a Fourth of July parade in downtown Highland Park, an upscale suburb 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Chicago.

Seven people were killed in the 2022 shooting, including both parents of a toddler. Dozens more were wounded. They ranged in age from their 80s down to a then- 8-year-old boy who was left partially paralyzed.

Witnesses described confusion as shots rang out, followed by terror as families abandoned the parade route, leaving behind lawn chairs and strollers to find safety inside homes and businesses.

City leaders canceled the parade the following year but reinstated it in 2024 with a memorial for the victims.

Mayor Nancy Rotering has said the city doesn’t want to be defined by the mass shooting. This month, she announced the parade will return in July, but without fireworks, partly because of “community trauma.”

“This year’s parade theme reminds us that teams bring people together in support of a common goal, and that we are most resilient when we support each other,” Rotering said.

Killed in the shooting were: Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; Stephen Straus, 88; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69; and married couple Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35.

The case
Crimo faces 21 counts of first-degree murder — three counts for each person killed — as well as 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery.

Prosecutors have turned over about 10,000 pages of evidence, as well as hours of a video-taped interrogation during which police say Crimo confessed to the shooting. But the 24-year-old Crimo has since pleaded not guilty and rejected a plea deal.

Court proceedings have made parts of the interrogation public, and defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully to have the videos thrown out, alleging Crimo’s rights were being violated.

Videos show officers repeatedly asking Crimo if he understood his Miranda rights, which include the right to remain silent and have an attorney present.

“I’ve heard them a million times,” Crimo said at one point.

Prosecutors also have shown footage of a person dressed in women’s clothing and identified by police as Crimo headed toward the parade route on the morning of July 4, 2022.

Something that could also hurt the defense is Crimo’s unpredictable behavior in court.

He didn’t show up to two previous court hearings, refusing to leave his Lake County jail cell. And in June 2024, when he was expected to accept a plea deal and give victims and relatives a chance to address him publicly, he showed up to court in a wheelchair and rejected the deal, surprising even his lawyers. He also fired his public defenders and said he would represent himself, then abruptly reversed himself.

“Anything could happen at this point,” said Eric Johnson, a law professor at the University of Illinois.

Crimo’s defense attorneys and Lake County prosecutors have repeatedly declined comment ahead of the trial.

The family
Crimo’s father, Robert Crimo Jr., pleaded guilty in 2023 to seven misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct. The charges focused on how his son obtained a gun license.

In 2019, at age 19, Crimo III was only allowed to apply for a gun license with the sponsorship of a parent or guardian. His father agreed, even though a relative had reported to police that his son had a collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.”

Crimo Jr., a onetime mayoral candidate and former owner of a now-closed deli, has attended his son’s court hearings, making eye contact with him during hearings. He declined to discuss the case in detail.

“As a parent, I love my son very much and Bobby loves this country more than anyone would ever know,” he said during a phone interview. “I have no further comment.”

The jury
Potential jurors are due at the courthouse in Waukegan on Monday for what attorneys expect to be a monthlong trial. But the high-profile case could complicate efforts to find a jury.

Survivors and their families have filed multiple lawsuits, including against the maker of the semiautomatic rifle used in the shooting and against authorities they accuse of negligence.

Those who have spoken out declined interviews ahead of the trial. Some are expected to testify, along with police and a former school resource officer who encountered Crimo during middle and high school.

Experts say attorneys will have to approach juror selection with extra care.

“There is information that’s out there,” said Alan Tuerkheimer, who consults lawyers on jury strategy but isn’t involved in the trial. “This is the kind of thing that has affected people in the community.”

New York on Thursday sued some of the country’s biggest distributors of electronic cigarettes, accusing the companies of violating state laws that prohibit the sale of vaping flavors and designs that appeal to children.

Attorney General Letitia James announced the lawsuit targeting middlemen that distribute fruit- and candy-flavored e-cigarettes like Puff Bar and Elf Bar to hundreds of convenience stories and gas stations across the state. The approach differs from past litigation by New York and other states, which targeted vaping manufacturers, such as Juul Labs.

Widely blamed for sparking the teen vaping trend, Juul has paid more than $1 billion to settle dozens of state and local lawsuits and investigations into its early marketing practices, which included launch parties and product giveaways. The company stopped selling flavors like mango and mint in 2019 and is no longer popular with teens.

Instead, Chinese-made disposable e-cigarettes like Elf Bar have become the top choice among high school and middle school students. None of the products are approved by federal health regulators but they continue shipping into the U.S., often mislabeled as batteries, cell phones or other products.

The state’s nearly 200-page legal complaint points to “widespread evidence of illegal conduct, including documents showing illegal shipments of flavored vapes to New York.” The filing also includes photos of brightly colored e-cigarettes that resemble soft drinks and candy and come in flavors like “fruity bears freeze,” “cotton candy,” and “strawberry cereal donut milk.”

New York banned all vaping flavors other than tobacco in 2020.

“For too long, these companies have disregarded our laws in order to profit off of our young people, but we will not risk the health and safety of our kids,” James said in a statement.

The lawsuit seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from the companies, as well as a permanent ban on their sales of flavored vapes in New York.

Companies named in the lawsuit include Demand Vape of New York, Evo Brands of California, Safa Goods of Florida and Midwest Goods of Illinois.

Calls and messages to the companies were not immediately returned Thursday morning.

According to the lawsuit “Demand Vape maintains close ties with international manufacturers, such that its co-founder routinely travels to China where Demand Vape’s products originate to direct flavor development and marketing.”

In 2022 litigation, the co-founder of Buffalo-based Demand Vape told a federal judge that his company had sold more than $132 million worth of Elf Bar e-cigarettes in the past year. The company that makes Elf Bar is based in Shenzhen, China, and sells flavors including “strawberry mango” and “lemon mint.”

Despite the continued availability of disposable e-cigarettes, the vaping rate among U.S. teens has fallen to a 10-year low of under 6%, according to federal figures released last year. Government health officials attribute the drop to more aggressive U.S. enforcement, including hundreds of warning letters sent to retail stores selling unauthorized vaping products.

All but two of the passengers injured on a Delta Air Lines jet that crashed upon landing in Toronto have been released, the airport CEO said Tuesday.

Miraculously, all 80 people on board the flight from Minneapolis to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport survived the crash Monday afternoon. Most of them walked away with minor injuries, the airport’s chief executive said.

The aircraft came down fast, landing so hard that it lost its right wing, then burst into flames on the runway. The aircraft slid to a stop, upside down, leaving a trail of black smoke in its wake.

Deborah Flint, CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority, said 19 of the 21 people who were hurt have been released but did not provided any details on the two who remain hospitalized.

Authorities said the cause of the crash remains under investigation. Communications between the tower and pilot were normal on approach and it’s not clear what went wrong when the plane touched down.

At the time of the flight’s arrival, Pearson was experiencing blowing snow and winds of 32 mph (51 kph) gusting to 40 mph (65 kph), according to the Meteorological Service of Canada. The temperature was about 16.5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 8.6 degrees Celsius).

Peter Carlson, a passenger traveling to Toronto for a paramedics conference, said the landing was “very forceful.”

“All the sudden everything just kind of went sideways and the next thing I know, it’s kind of a blink and I’m upside down still strapped in,” he told CBC News.

Canadian authorities held two brief news conferences Monday but provided few details. The aircraft was a Mitsubishi CRJ-900 made by the Canadian company Bombardier.

“We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” Deborah Flint, CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority, told reporters.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a statement that “the hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected.”

The crash was the fourth major aviation accident in North America in recent weeks. A commercial jetliner and an Army helicopter collided near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, killing 67 people. A medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on Jan. 31, killing the six people on board and another person on the ground. And on Feb. 6, 10 people were killed in a plane crash in Alaska.

The last major crash at Pearson was on Aug. 2, 2005, when an Airbus A340 from Paris skidded off the runway and burst into flames in stormy weather. All 309 passengers and crew aboard Air France Flight 358 survived.

The Delta flight was cleared to land at about 2:10 p.m. Audio recordings show the control tower warned the pilots of a possible air flow “bump” on approach.

“It was windy, but the airplanes are designed and certified to handle that,” said John Cox, CEO of aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida. “The pilots are trained and experienced to handle that.”

The plane came to a rest at the intersection of Runways 23 and 15L.

Carlson said when he took off his seat belt he crashed onto the ceiling, which had become the floor. He smelled gas, saw aviation fuel cascading down the cabin windows and knew he needed to get out, but his paramedic skills kicked in and he looked for those he could help.

Carlson and another man assisted a mother and her young son out of the plane and then Carlson dropped onto the tarmac. He said snow was blowing but “I didn’t care how cold it was, didn’t care how far I had to walk, how long I had to stand — all of us just wanted to be out of the aircraft.”

Cox, who flew for U.S. Air for 25 years and has worked on U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigations, said the CRJ-900 has been in service for decades and does a good job of handling inclement weather, but that it’s unusual for any plane to end up on its roof.

“We’ve seen a couple of cases of takeoffs where airplanes have ended up inverted, but it’s pretty rare,” Cox said.

Among the questions that need to be answered, Cox said, is why the crashed plane was missing its right wing. He said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder will be imperative to understanding what actually occurred.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada would head up the investigation and provide any updates. The NTSB in the U.S. said it was sending a team to assist.

Endeavor Air, based in Minneapolis, is a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines and the world’s largest operator of CRJ-900 aircraft. The airline operates 130 regional jets on 700 daily flights to over 126 cities in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, according to the company’s website.

If any husbands or boyfriends mess up Valentine’s Day this week, it’s not because of a shortage of flowers.

In the run up to Feb. 14, agricultural specialists at Miami International Airport have processed about 940 million stems of cut flowers, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Around 90% of the fresh cut flowers being sold for Valentine’s Day in the United States come through Miami, while the other 10% pass through Los Angeles.

Roses, carnations, pompons, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums and gypsophila arrive on hundreds of flights, mostly from Colombia and Ecuador, to Miami on their journey to florists and supermarkets across the U.S. and Canada.

Miami’s largest flower importer is Avianca Cargo, based in Medell쬬 Colombia. In the past three weeks, the company has transported about 18,000 tons of flowers on 300 full cargo flights, senior vice president Diogo Elias said during a news conference last week in Miami.

“We transport flowers all year round, but specifically during the Valentine’s season, we more than double our capacity because there’s more than double the demand,” Elias said.

Flowers continue to make up one of the airport’s largest imports, Miami-Dade chief operation officer Jimmy Morales said. The airport received more than 3 million tons of cargo last year, with flowers accounting for nearly 400,000 tons, worth more than $1.6 billion.

“With 1,500 tons of flowers arriving daily, that equals 90,000 tons of flower imports worth $450 million just in January and February,” Morales said.

It’s a big job for CBP agriculture specialists, who check the bundles of flowers for potentially harmful plant, pest and foreign animal diseases from entering the country, MIA port director Daniel Alonso said.

“Invasive species have caused $120 billion in annual economic and environmental losses to the United States, including the yield and quality losses for the American agriculture industry,” Alonso said.

Colombia’s flower industry was recently looking at a possible 25% tariff, as President Donald Trump quarreled with the South American country’s leadership over accepting flights carrying deported immigrants. But the trade dispute came to a halt in late January, after Colombia agreed to allow the flights to land.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro had previously rejected two Colombia-bound U.S. military aircrafts carrying migrants. Petro accused Trump of not treating immigrants with dignity during deportation and threatened to retaliate against the U.S. by slapping a 25% increase in Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods.

Improving international sales helped McDonald’s overcome some weakness at home in the fourth quarter, but the company said it expects U.S. sales to pick up later this year.

McDonald’s said its sales are continuing to recover from an E. coli outbreak last fall tied to its Quarter Pounder hamburgers. The Chicago burger giant said it’s also struggling to get low-income consumers back into its stores despite expanding discounts.

McDonald’s U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 1.4% in the fourth quarter.

On a conference call with investors Monday, McDonald’s Chairman, President and CEO Chris Kempczinski said industry-wide fast food sales to low-income consumers were down double-digits in the U.S. in the October-December period.

“That’s the landscape that we’re looking to navigate through. It’s why it’s so important that we make sure that we have a strong value program,” Kempczinski said.

McDonald’s U.S. sales slowed in the first half of 2024 as customers grew tired of price increases. The company responded in June with a $5 value meal that reignited traffic. The deal was so successful that the company extended it through next summer.

But then an E. coli outbreak, which was first reported Oct. 22, sickened at least 104 people in 14 states, including 34 who were hospitalized, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One person in Colorado died.

The FDA closed its investigation into the outbreak in December, saying McDonald’s contained it once it stopped serving the raw onions the virus was linked to. But Kempczinski said the outbreak hurt sales of the Quarter Pounder, which is usually a big profit-generator.

Sales also remain weaker in the Rocky Mountain states where the outbreak was centered, Kempczinski said. McDonald’s doesn’t expect them to recover until the beginning of the second quarter.

McDonald’s said it is working to get customer traffic back up in the U.S. and will then layer in new products that will generate excitement and increased spending. The snack wrap, a menu item that has generated a lot of excitement, will return sometime this year, and McDonald’s is also planning a new chicken strip offering, Kempczinski said.

Kempczinski said the company is also learning a lot about demand for beverages like energy drinks from the beverage-focused CosMc’s chain it has been testing since early last year. Kempczinski said the company is trying to figure out how it can capture that demand within its existing restaurants.

International sales in McDonald’s company-operated markets edged upward slightly in the fourth quarter, with particularly strong sales in Germany and Italy. But Kempczinski said McDonald’s is also struggling to draw lower-income consumers in the U.K.

The bright spot for the fourth quarter was McDonald’s licensed markets overseas, where same-store sales climbed 4.1%. McDonald’s said it saw strong sales growth in the Middle East, where sales have struggled in recent years, and Japan.

Overall, McDonald’s global same-store sales rose less than 1% for the fourth quarter. That was better than the 1.1% decline Wall Street had forecast, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

Fourth-quarter revenue fell slightly to $6.38 billion, just short of the $6.45 billion analysts were expecting.

The company’s fourth-quarter net income also fell, 1% to $2.01 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, McDonald’s earned $2.83 per share, which was lower than the $2.85 per share than Wall Street anticipated.

McDonald’s shares rose more than 4% in early trading Monday.

The National Women’s Soccer League will establish a $5 million fund for players as part of a settlement that stemmed from allegations of emotional and sexual misconduct that rocked the league in 2021.

Attorneys general from Washington, D.C., Illinois and New York announced the settlement with the league on Wednesday.

The funds will go to players who experienced abuse. The settlement also requires the league to maintain safeguards put into place following a pair of investigations released in late 2022 that found widespread misconduct that impacted multiple teams, coaches and players.

It also gives the attorneys general, Brian L. Schwalb of Washington, D.C., Letitia James of New York and Kwame Raoul of Illinois, the ability to oversee changes that the NWSL made after the scandal broke, and the ability to fine the league if it fails to uphold those changes.

“Two separate investigations confirmed what the players had been experiencing and reporting for years. Systemic leaguewide failures that permitted a culture of inappropriate and abusive behavior, including verbal abuse, sexual assault, harassment, coercion, retaliation and discrimination with no clear mechanisms in place for player safety,” Schwalb said on a conference call with reporters. “Following the 2022 report, the league has made critical improvements, largely due to the players’ fierce advocacy. But importantly, the victims have never been compensated for the abuse they endured on the league’s watch until today.”

A pair of former players — Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim — came forward in 2021 and accused longtime NWSL coach Paul Riley of sexual harassment and coercion dating back a decade.

Riley, who has denied the allegations, was fired by the North Carolina Courage in the aftermath. He was among five head coaches in the league who were either fired or resigned in 2021 amid claims of misconduct. The NWSL commissioner at the time also resigned.

The NWSL and its players association, as well as U.S. Soccer, launched investigations into the allegations. The U.S. Soccer report was led by former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, who found emotional abuse and sexual misconduct were “systemic” in the sport.

Following the investigation, the NWSL implemented changes to protect players. The NWSL Players Association also negotiated safeguards in the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

“This agreement is a massive achievement, and I’m especially grateful that it includes increased mental health support for the players,” Erin Simon, a retired player who was sexually abused during her time at Racing Louisville in 2021 and 2022, detailed in the Yates report. “While it doesn’t change what happened or the pain caused to all the women named, unnamed and still suffering from what happened to them, it is a massive step. This is a continued fight that we cannot abandon, because of vigilance to protect the players should never stop.”

Tori Huster, the NWSLPA president and a former player for the Washington Spirit, credited the players who risked their careers to create change.

“This $5 million restitution fund is not a gift. Nor is it justice. This fund exists because players refuse to be silenced. And we found the courage to stand together as a collective,” Huster said. “This fund is an acknowledgment of unique failures and the harm suffered by players. It’s a testament to the players’ courage and a necessary step toward accountability. If the NWSL is safer today, it is because players fought to make it that way.”

Among the safeguards that are mandated to continue under the settlement include comprehensive vetting of certain team personnel, mechanisms for players to report abuse, player access to free and unlimited counseling, access to a league safety officer and policies that prevent teams from investigating themselves.

“We have worked collaboratively with the NWSLPA and the attorneys general to add greater strength to the programmatic changes we adopted in 2023 in light of the joint investigative reports, and we look forward to supporting the administrator in distributing the Players’ Restitution Fund,” current NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said in a statement. “We will continue to do the work necessary to maintain the trust of our players and build an ecosystem where the best in the world want to come.”

The league said the restitution fund would be administered by retired Judge Barbara S. Jones, who was an independent member of the committee overseeing the 2022 NWSL’s investigation with its players’ union.

Jones has 45 days to develop a plan to distribute the funds, which she will submit to the three attorneys general for approval. On approval, the players, both past and present, will be notified and they will have six months to apply.

The NWSL played its inaugural season in 2013. The professional women’s league now has 14 teams, with two more joining in 2026.

“Today is a new chapter for women’s soccer, a league, where athletes can drive without fear of abuse or retaliation. Together, we can and will build a future where every athlete is safe, respected and empowered to succeed — and most importantly, focus on the love of the game,” James said. “None of this would have been possible if not for the exceptional courage of the players who came forward to share their experiences.”

All 64 people aboard an American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter were feared dead in what was likely to be the worst U.S. aviation disaster in almost a quarter century, officials said Thursday.

At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of the jet late Wednesday as it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.

“We don’t believe there are any survivors,” said John Donnelly, the fire chief in the nation’s capital. “We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.”

The plane was found upside-down in three sections in waist-deep water, and first responders were searching an area of the Potomac River as far south as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, roughly 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) south of the airport, Donnelly said. The helicopter wreckage was also found.

If no one survived, the collision would be the deadliest U.S. air crash since 2001.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the collision, but officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, with U.S. and Russian figure skaters and others aboard.

“On final approach into Reagan National, it collided with a military aircraft on an otherwise normal approach,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said. “At this time, we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the … aircraft.”

President Donald Trump opened a White House news conference after the crash with a moment of silence honoring the victims, calling it an “hour of anguish” for the country.

But he most of his time casting political blame, lashing out at the Biden administration and diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration, saying they had led to slipping standards — even as he acknowledged that the cause of the crash was unknown.

Without evidence, Trump blamed air traffic controllers, the helicopter pilots and Democratic policies at federal agencies. He claimed the FAA was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative.”

Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.

Inside Reagan National Airport, the mood was somber Thursday morning as stranded passengers waited for flights to resume, sidestepping camera crews and staring out the terminal’s windows at the Potomac, where recovery efforts were barely visible in the distance.

Aster Andemicael had been at the airport since Wednesday evening with her elderly father, who was flying to Indiana to visit family. She spent much of the long night thinking about the victims and their families.

“I’ve been crying since yesterday,” she said, her voice cracking. She recalled seeing a young woman frantically running through the airport around the time of the crash, possibly in search of a loved one who would never return.

“I pray for them,” she said. “This is devastating.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, who was sworn in earlier this week, was asked if he could reassure Americans that the United States still has the safest airspace in the world.

“Can I guarantee the American flying public that the United States has the most safe and secure airspace in the world? And the answer to that is, absolutely yes, we do,” he said.

Authorities have ‘early indicators’ of what went wrong
The night was clear, the plane and helicopter were both in standard flight patterns and there was standard communication between the aircraft and the tower, Duffy said.

“We have early indicators of what happened here,” Duffy said, though he declined to elaborate pending an investigation.

It is not unusual to have a military aircraft flying the river and an aircraft landing at the airport, he said. Asked if the plane was aware that there was a helicopter in the area, Duffy said the helicopter was aware that there was a plane in the area.

Asked about Trump suggesting in an overnight social media post that the collision could have been prevented, Duffy said: “From what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely.”

Likely the deadliest plane crash since November 2001
If everyone aboard the plane was killed, it would be the deadliest U.S. airline crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York, just after takeoff from Kennedy Airport, killing all 260 people aboard.

The last major fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo.

Passengers on Wednesday’s flight included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp that followed the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.

“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement.

Two of those coaches were identified by the Kremlin as Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the pairs title at the 1994 world championships and competed twice in the Olympics. The Skating Club of Boston lists them as coaches and their son, Maxim Naumov, is a competitive figure skater for the U.S.

Club CEO Doug Zeghibe described the group as highly talented, saying their loss would resonate through the skating community for years.

“Folks are just stunned by this,” Zeghibe said. “They are like family to us.”

What happened
The FAA said the midair crash occurred before 9 p.m. EST in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over 3 miles south of the White House and the Capitol.

American Airlines Flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet (122 meters) and a speed of about 140 mph (225 kph) when it rapidly lost altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet, manufactured in 2004, can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.

A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National, and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight-tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.

Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25, pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.

The plane’s transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet (732 meters) short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.

Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.

The U.S. Army said the helicopter was a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Military aircraft frequently conduct such training flights in and around the nation’s capital.