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TUCSON, Ariz. — Human remains discovered in a desert wash near Tucson this week are not those of Nancy Guthrie, a federal source confirmed to Fox News, resolving fresh public speculation over whether the discovery was connected to the ongoing search for the missing 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie.

The remains were found early Thursday, August 13, in a wash off South Santa Cruz Lane near Interstate 10 and Silverlake Road, according to the Tucson Police Department. KOLD News 13 anchor Mary Coleman first reported the discovery on X, writing that police had confirmed decomposed human remains were found in the wash near Silverlake and Santa Cruz Lane. According to police, the remains were mostly bones and appeared to have been at the location for an extended period, indicating they were not connected to any recent event.

Fox News correspondent Matt Finn quoted Coleman’s post and added confirmation from his own reporting shortly afterward, writing simply that a federal source had told him the remains were not those of Nancy Guthrie.

The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner took custody of the remains and will work to determine the person’s identity and cause of death. Tucson police have classified the case as an unknown death, and no identity had been publicly released as of this week. The discovery is being handled as a separate matter from the active Guthrie investigation.

The Thursday discovery marks at least the third time human remains or bones have been found in the Tucson area since Guthrie’s disappearance in February, each instance prompting renewed public attention before authorities determined the finding was unrelated to her case. In February, just over a week into the search, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that remains found at a home near Irvington and San Joaquin were unconnected to Guthrie, with the department stating at the time that there was nothing criminal about the discovery. In May, an amateur searcher using the online name AJ Wysopal came across an exposed bone in the desert less than five miles from Guthrie’s home, a discovery that led investigators, along with the University of Arizona’s Anthropology Department, to determine the remains were prehistoric, belonging to a Native American individual who lived centuries earlier based on ceramic artifacts recovered at the site. Those remains were subsequently transferred to the Tohono O’odham Nation, a Native American tribe with a reservation west of Tucson.

Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her home in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills neighborhood on the night of January 31, and was reported missing the following day. Investigators believe she was taken from her home, and the FBI has said an armed individual appeared to tamper with her doorbell camera around the time of her disappearance. Blood found at the scene was confirmed to belong to Guthrie.

The case continues to be investigated as a kidnapping for ransom. Two ransom notes tied to the case were released publicly in late July, including one demanding a large sum of money in bitcoin and another claiming Guthrie had died. The FBI has said some of the communications received during the investigation appear to have been extortion attempts unrelated to Guthrie’s actual whereabouts, while other demands remain under examination as investigators work to determine their authenticity.

A reward of up to $100,000 remains available through the FBI for information leading to Guthrie’s location or to an arrest and conviction in the case. Separately, the Guthrie family has offered its own reward, which has been reported to exceed $1 million in total.

Savannah Guthrie has continued to make public appeals throughout the investigation, including an emotional message shared on social media marking six months since her mother’s disappearance, in which she said the family would never stop searching for answers. No suspect has been publicly named in the case, and no arrests have been made.

With this week’s remains now confirmed unrelated to Guthrie, the underlying investigation into her disappearance remains open and active, with authorities continuing to pursue leads more than six months after she was reported missing from her Tucson home.

The 2026 college football season begins Saturday, Aug. 29, with a limited Week 0 slate of games that will give fans an early look at several programs before the full slate arrives the following weekend.

Most Football Bowl Subdivision teams will open their campaigns on or around Labor Day weekend, but eight matchups are scheduled for Aug. 29 to mark the official start of the FBS season. The early games provide a mix of high-profile nonconference contests, international play and opportunities for Group of Five and independent programs to gain experience against Power conference opponents.

The day’s centerpiece is the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland, where North Carolina faces TCU at noon Eastern time on ESPN. The game at Aviva Stadium serves as a rematch of last season’s meeting in Chapel Hill, where the Horned Frogs defeated the Tar Heels 48-14 in Bill Belichick’s coaching debut at North Carolina. Belichick’s first season with the Tar Heels ended at 4-8, and the Dublin opener offers an early chance to reset expectations under the longtime NFL coach.

Later on Saturday, San Jose State visits No. 14 USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at 3 p.m. on NBC. NC State travels to Virginia for a 3:30 p.m. contest on ESPN at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville. That game was originally planned for Rio de Janeiro but was relocated.

Additional Week 0 games include Jacksonville State at North Dakota State at 5:30 p.m. on CBS Sports Network, Sacramento State at Eastern Michigan at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+, Hawai’i at Stanford at 7 p.m. on the ACC Network, New Mexico State at Florida State at 7 p.m. on the CW, and Memphis at UNLV at 10 p.m. on Fox.

The schedule creates more than 12 hours of continuous action for viewers. Several of the matchups feature teams seeking momentum after mixed or disappointing previous campaigns, while others allow ranked or highly regarded programs such as USC and Florida State to begin building chemistry under their respective coaching staffs.

While the FBS slate is concentrated on Saturday, Aug. 29, the Football Championship Subdivision begins even earlier. FCS teams are permitted to open on Thursday, Aug. 27, with a substantial number of games that day and on Friday, Aug. 28. Those contests expand the early-season footprint for fans of lower-division football and include traditional early-season events such as the FCS Kickoff and MEAC/SWAC Challenge.

The first full weekend of major-college play arrives in early September. Thursday, Sept. 3, marks the start of broader Week 1 activity, with the traditional opening Saturday falling on Sept. 5. That period will feature a much denser schedule of conference and nonconference games across the country, including several high-profile matchups that could influence early College Football Playoff conversations.

Week 0 has grown in recent years as conferences and athletic departments seek additional scheduling flexibility and international exposure. The Dublin game continues a pattern of early-season overseas contests that have become a regular feature of the college football calendar. Other Week 0 games often pair Power programs with lower-profile opponents or feature cross-division matchups that test preparation levels before the grind of a full conference schedule begins.

Television coverage is spread across major networks and streaming platforms. ESPN and its family of channels will carry the Dublin opener and the NC State-Virginia game. NBC and Peacock will feature the USC home game. Fox takes the late-night slot with Memphis at UNLV, while the ACC Network, CW, CBS Sports Network and ESPN+ fill out the remaining windows.

Coaches and players typically treat these early games as important building blocks rather than definitive measures of a team’s ceiling. Rosters are still settling after the transfer portal and recruiting cycles, and many programs use the extra week of preparation to install schemes or evaluate depth. Injuries and midweek adjustments can still alter plans before the more concentrated Week 1 schedule arrives.

For North Carolina, the trip to Ireland carries extra weight given the previous year’s result against TCU and the scrutiny surrounding Belichick’s transition to the college game. TCU, coming off a stronger campaign, enters as a ranked or highly regarded opponent looking to make an early statement. Other programs such as Florida State, USC and Stanford will use their home openers to gauge progress under their coaching staffs.

As the calendar moves toward late August, attention will shift from speculation about rankings and preseason hype to actual on-field results. The Week 0 games provide the first concrete data points of the 2026 season and set the stage for what is expected to be another highly competitive year across the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Fans can expect continuous coverage from midday through late evening on Aug. 29, with the international kickoff in Dublin serving as the ceremonial start. From there, the sport will expand rapidly into its traditional September rhythm, when nearly every major program is in action and the long path toward conference championships and the College Football Playoff begins in earnest.

An empty liquefied petroleum gas tanker is set to bypass a lengthy queue at the Panama Canal next week after its operators paid a record $4.6 million through an auction system, highlighting how the ongoing conflict involving Iran has disrupted global energy shipping and intensified pressure on one of the world’s most important trade arteries.

The vessel, identified as the G. Arete and owned by South Korea’s SK Shipping Co., will transit from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean side of the canal. The payment, confirmed through traders, brokers and a shipping report reviewed by multiple outlets, exceeds a near-record $4 million fee paid earlier in the same week by the owner of a container ship seeking priority passage.

Ships normally secure transit through a reservation process that involves a standard toll. When demand exceeds available slots, the Panama Canal Authority operates an auction system that allows vessels to bid for earlier crossings. In recent weeks, those bids have soared as wait times lengthened. Some Neopanamax-size vessels without reserved slots have faced delays of up to 11 days for Pacific-to-Atlantic transit, the longest such waits since May, according to data from energy and shipping analytics firm Argus Media.

The surge in demand stems largely from the Iran conflict, which has severely restricted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for oil and gas exports from the Persian Gulf. Attacks and related disruptions in the region, along with heightened risks in the Red Sea, have forced shippers to seek alternative routes. The Panama Canal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across Central America, has absorbed a significant share of the redirected traffic, particularly for energy products moving between the U.S. Gulf Coast and markets in East Asia.

The United States ranks among the world’s major exporters of liquefied petroleum gas, and the canal offers the shortest path for many of those cargoes bound for Asian buyers. With traditional Middle Eastern routes constrained, more vessels carrying LPG, containers and other goods have converged on Panama. At the same time, lower water levels linked to developing El Niño conditions have reduced the canal’s daily capacity. Authorities have already imposed draft restrictions—limits on how deeply ships can sit in the water—to conserve the freshwater supplies that feed the locks, further tightening the number of daily transits.

Neither SK Shipping nor the Panama Canal Authority responded to requests for comment on the G. Arete transaction. It remains unclear whether the shipping company itself or a charterer ultimately covered the $4.6 million premium. The vessel was last reported sailing near Panama’s southern coast and signaling the Balboa anchorage area, a common waiting zone for ships preparing to enter the canal from the Pacific.

Earlier in the week, a similar high-stakes auction saw the container vessel Seaspan Benefactor secure priority passage for about $4 million. That figure more than doubled the recent average for comparable bids. Auction prices for slots on the canal’s main locks have averaged around $1.1 million in August, more than 16 times the level recorded during the same period a year earlier, according to industry data. Bids for larger Neopanamax locks have climbed even higher in some cases.

The Panama Canal handles roughly 5 to 6 percent of global maritime trade under normal conditions and a substantial portion of U.S. container and energy shipments. Its dual role as both a commercial waterway and a strategic asset has made the current congestion particularly consequential. Shipping companies face a difficult calculation: absorb multi-million-dollar auction fees and potential delays, or divert vessels on longer routes around South America or Africa, adding weeks to voyage times and increasing fuel costs.

Canal officials have noted that overall traffic volumes have risen since the Middle East conflict intensified, with daily transits occasionally exceeding pre-war averages. The authority has pointed to shifts in global supply and demand as the primary driver of higher auction costs while acknowledging that some individual payments have surpassed $1 million. Revenue from the canal remains a cornerstone of Panama’s economy, and the elevated fees have provided a temporary boost even as water-management challenges persist.

Industry analysts caution that the combination of geopolitical disruption and weather-related constraints could keep pressure elevated for weeks or months. Draft restrictions scheduled for late August and early September are expected to further limit the size and number of vessels that can pass. Shippers of time-sensitive or high-value cargoes, including certain energy products, appear most willing to pay the premium for guaranteed transit.

The G. Arete’s upcoming crossing underscores a broader realignment of energy trade flows. As traditional Persian Gulf routes remain constrained, the relative importance of Atlantic-to-Pacific corridors through Panama has grown. For an empty tanker positioning itself for future cargoes, the decision to pay nearly $5 million simply to move from one ocean to the other illustrates the premium now attached to speed and certainty in a disrupted market.

Global shipping has adapted to previous disruptions, including earlier drought-related restrictions at the canal and Red Sea attacks. The current episode, however, combines those pressures with a major geopolitical shock, producing some of the highest auction prices on record. Whether the elevated fees and longer waits become a temporary feature or a more lasting reality will depend on the duration of Middle East tensions and the severity of the developing dry season in Central America.

For now, the record payment by the G. Arete stands as a clear signal that, for some operators, the cost of waiting has become greater than the cost of cutting the line.