The Met Office warning is in force until 4am on Thursday

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The Met Office has issued a weather warning for thunderstorms across areas of England and Wales on Thursday morning (May 28).

The yellow weather warning is in place from midnight until 4am and covers Greater Manchester.

It states: “Thunderstorms will continue to affect parts of England and Wales and are likely to become increasingly confined to northern and eastern parts of the warning area during the course of the early hours. While many places will miss the worst conditions, where thunderstorms do occur frequent lightning and heavy downpours are likely. Hail and strong, gusty winds may also affect a few places.”

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The following 42 areas are covered by the weather warning on Thursday morning:

1. Derby
2. Derbyshire
3. Leicester
4. Leicestershire
5. Northamptonshire
6. Nottingham
7. Nottinghamshire
8. Buckinghamshire
9. Hampshire
10. Oxfordshire
11. Southampton
12. West Berkshire
13. Blackburn with Darwen
14. Cheshire East
15. Cheshire West and Chester
16. Greater Manchester
17. Halton
18. Lancashire
19. Merseyside
20. Warrington
21. Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole
22. Dorset
23. Gloucestershire
24. Swindon
25. Wiltshire
26. Carmarthenshire
27. Ceredigion
28. Conwy
29. Denbighshire
30. Flintshire
31. Gwynedd
32. Isle of Anglesey
33. Powys
34. Wrexham
35. Herefordshire
36. Shropshire
37. Staffordshire
38. Stoke-on-Trent
39. Telford and Wrekin
40. Warwickshire
41. West Midlands Conurbation
42. Worcestershire

The Royal Life Saving Society has issued a plea for people to ‘stop and think’ before getting into water as the warm weather looks set to continue

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Nine Brits died after getting into trouble in open water after days of record-breaking heat. It comes as officials have now urged families to stay safe around water as the warm weather continues.

The Royal Life Saving Society issued a plea for everyone to “stop and think” before getting into water in response to the deaths, most of whom were children. It said that “warmer weather unfortunately correlates to an increase in accidental drownings”.

The society says that “water temperatures remain very cold” despite the warmer conditions. Tuesday saw the hottest weather conditions recorded for both England and Wales, the Met Office said.

Provisional readings showed temperatures of 35.1C at Kew Gardens and 32.9C in Cardiff’s Bute Park. Across the UK there have been deaths in South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Cornwall, Hampshire, Warwickshire, Cheshire, Pembrokeshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire in recent days as people got into trouble in open water.

Declan Sawyer, 15, died after getting into trouble at Swanholme Lakes, Lincoln, on Sunday. Also on Sunday, a 72-year-old woman died after being pulled from the water at West Angle Bay beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, at around 3.15pm.

A 13-year-old boy, understood to be Reco Puttock, died after getting into difficulty at Leadbeater Dam, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, on Monday, while the body of a teenage girl was recovered from the water at Kingsbury Water Park, Warwickshire.

The same day, a man in his 60s died of cardiac arrest after entering the sea at Tregirls Beach, Padstow, to help two family members who were in difficulty, Devon and Cornwall Police said. The body of a teenager was recovered from the water at Rother Valley Country Park, in Rotherham, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, South Yorkshire Police said.

Another body has been found in the search for a teenage boy who went missing after he was last seen swimming at Hawley Lake on the Hampshire/Surrey border on Tuesday afternoon.

On Tuesday evening, Lancashire Police said a body had been recovered from the River Ribble after a 12-year-old boy got into difficulty while swimming with friends at Ribchester. On Wednesday, Cheshire Constabulary said the body of a 17-year-old boy was found after he went missing in Pickmere Lake at Marston, Northwich.

Along with nine deaths in the UK, the Gardai in Ireland also said a teenage girl died in the sea at Burrow Beach, a popular swimming spot near Howth, on Sunday. The RNLI have warned of the “very real risk” of swimming in open water during the heatwave.

Visits to NHS web pages have also surged during the heatwaves as people sought advice on how to stay safe in the hot weather. NHS England said there were 20,092 visits to its heatstroke advice page on bank holiday Monday, compared to just 488 the previous Monday.

Over the whole weekend, there were 36,724 hits. Elsewhere, people looking for tips on how to deal with sunburn led to 5,342 visits to NHS webpages, with a total of 10,314 over the whole weekend.

Parents also sought advice on how to keep their babies safe, with visits to NHS web pages for baby first aid and sun safety tips surging by almost 3,500% on Monday, with 4,728 hits. While many people enjoyed the sunny bank holiday weekend, older people and babies can be particularly vulnerable.

There is also a risk of dehydration and heat exhaustion, which is caused by the body losing too much water and salt, and can lead to heatstroke, a life-threatening illness. Temperatures are expected to cool slightly in parts of the UK in the coming days but health officials have confirmed that heat health alerts would be extended for 24 hours.

The UK Health Security Agency said amber alerts for the South West, South East, London, East and West Midlands and the East of England will remain in place until 5pm on Thursday, with yellow heat-health alerts for the North West and North East.

The Met office have also issued a yellow thunderstorm warning for much of Wales, the South West of England and parts of the Midlands for 3pm to 11.59pm on Wednesday.

The warning stretches from Plymouth up to Holyhead and could bring torrential downpours of rain, frequent lightning, large hail and strong, gusty winds.

A former senior CIA official with top-secret clearance is accused of stealing hundreds of gold bars worth over $40 million from the federal government.

David Rush was arrested last week in Virginia, charged with criminal theft of public money, court filings confirm.

An FBI agent’s affidavit alleges that from November to March, Rush requested and received “tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.” The gold was reportedly stashed in his home.

His intended use for the funds remains unclear, though a portion was found near his office in a storage space.

Federal officials searched his home on May 18 and seized more than 300 gold bars with an estimated value of more than $40 million, according to the affidavit. They also seized roughly $2 million in U.S. currency and some 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. Rush was arrested the next day, the FBI said.

The FBI affidavit concludes that there’s probable cause to believe that Rush “knowingly embezzled, stole, purloined, or knowingly converted a thing of value of the United States” for his personal use.

The FBI said it was working with the CIA and Department of Justice in its investigation.

Rush’s lawyer declined to comment Wednesday.

It’s not clear what role Rush had at the CIA or when he left the agency. He’s described in court filings simply as a “former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency.” Spokespersons for the FBI declined to comment further, and the CIA didn’t respond to an email.

The FBI affidavit also notes that Rush appears to have lied for years about his education and military background. The bureau’s investigation found he had falsely claimed to be a Navy pilot and that he’d graduated from Clemson University in South Carolina and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Instead, they found he had enlisted in the Navy in 1997 and then served in the U.S. Navy Reserves from 2004 until 2015, when he was honorably discharged as a lieutenant. The affidavit states he does not appear to have underwent any evaluations as a pilot during that time, and he did not attend either college.

Rush is being held in custody pending a hearing Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

The U.S. has launched new strikes on Iran, days after targeting the country’s missile sites and mine-laying boats, according to officials.

These fresh strikes were aimed at a military site believed to have posed a threat to American forces and commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil passageway in the Middle East, a US official told Reuters Wednesday.

Despite the latest attack, the fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran that has held for nearly two months is still considered to be in effect, a U.S. official told CBS News.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Central Command announced what it called “self-defense” strikes, targeting Iran’s missile launch sites and mine-laying boats in the Strait of Hormuz.

“U.S. forces conducted self-defense strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” CENTCOM spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins said Monday evening.

“U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,” Hawkins added.

The Independent has reached out to CENTCOM for comment on the new strikes.

The fresh strikes came after President Donald Trump threatened to “finish the job” if Tehran and Washington couldn’t reach an agreement that he was satistified with.

“Iran is very ⁠much intent, they want ​very ⁠much to make a deal,” he said at a White House cabinet meeting Wednesday.

“So far, they haven’t gotten there. We’re not satisfied with it, ⁠but we will be. We will be — either ⁠that or we’ll have ‌to just finish the job,” he added.

This is a developing story…

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda on Wednesday ordered the closure of its border with Congo, where suspected cases of a rare type of Ebola are surging, and as cases have been confirmed at home after Ugandan health workers were exposed to the disease from Congolese patients.

The measure, which goes against the guidance by the World Health Organization, underscores growing fears of contagion in East Africa from Bundibugyo, a rare type of the Ebola virus that is behind this outbreak and that has no approved medicines or vaccines.

Like Congo, Uganda has faced Ebola outbreaks in the past. A local Ugandan task force made the decision on the border closure. The Ugandan health workers were exposed to the virus by Congolese patients who had crossed the border before the outbreak was declared in eastern Congo on May 15.

The border closure was temporary, with “immediate effect,” Dr. Diana Atwine of the Ugandan Ministry of Health, told journalists. Border crossings will be authorized only in emergency cases, including for the outbreak response, humanitarian, cargo or security reasons, she added.

Anyone entering from Congo under emergency circumstances will be taken into mandatory isolation for 21 days.

Congo says over 100 cases have been confirmed

Tracing and isolating Ebola contacts is seen as key to stopping the spread of the disease, which usually manifests as hemorrhagic fever. The virus is spread through close contact with sick or deceased patients’ bodily fluids. Experts say healthcare workers and family members caring for patients face the highest risk.

The number of suspected cases in eastern Congo is nearing 1,000, with at least 220 suspected deaths. Congo’s health ministry on Tuesday said 101 cases have been confirmed, and they are looking into over 3,000 possible contacts.

On Wednesday, Congolese authorities said that the first person who recovered from the Bundibugyo virus has been released home from a treatment center in Rwampara, one of the towns in eastern Congo at the heart of the outbreak.

WHO has discouraged border closures with Congo while acknowledging that neighboring countries are at high risk of contagion. The U.N. health agency has declared this outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

Closures “push the movement of people and goods to informal border crossings that are not monitored, thus increasing the chances of the spread of disease,” the agency said.

The Uganda-Congo border is several hundred miles long and crossed by numerous footpaths beyond formal border posts. Many people come and go in the course of a day to visit families or to trade.

Congolese health authorities are struggling to contain the outbreak, which WHO says is outpacing them. The rare type of Ebola was confirmed weeks late as tests were carried out for a more common type. Challenges also include the threat from armed groups in eastern Congo, a large number of displaced people and poor infrastructure.

WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on Wednesday for a ceasefire in eastern Congo to allow safe access for responders and others, saying on social media that “attacks on health facilities make tracking cases and their contacts nearly impossible.”

Responders in Congo have said they are underprepared and under-protected for this outbreak, while conflict-traumatized residents, long wary of outsiders, have attacked a number of clinics and hurled stones and abuse at volunteers trying to make people aware of the virus and its risks.

Infected people or those have been in contact should not undertake international travel unless it’s a medical evacuation, WHO has said. On Wednesday, the Trump administration said it is planning to send Americans who are exposed to Ebola to a new facility in Kenya instead of flying them to the United States.

Uganda is concerned about exposed health workers

Uganda has reported seven cases of Ebola, including the first case of a 59-year-old man who died in Kampala, the country’s capital, on May 14. While the Ebola case load is not spiking, the number of locals exposed to infection via health workers has been rising.

“They have families, and so the number has been increasing,” Atwine, the Ugandan health official, said of the health workers.

She also said she was dismayed to see some Ugandans forming crowds to celebrate Arsenal as British Premier League champions. The team has a large following in Uganda. Atwine urged people to be vigilant, avoid shaking hands and use sanitizer.

Congo has had 17 Ebola outbreaks. Health experts say aid cuts last year by the U.S. and other rich nations are devastating for eastern Congo, in part because of the region’s unique problems.

Aid groups fighting this outbreak say they don’t have the equipment they need, including face shields and suits to protect health workers from infection, testing kits and body bags needed to safely bury victims.

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Associated Press writer Jean-Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo, contributed to this report.

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

“Lotus Homes is delighted to confirm that planning approval has now been granted for Phase 2 of the Watson’s Fort development in Newry.”

A major housing development has been given the go-ahead for its next huge phase.

An amended Loftus proposal for 176 homes will see Watson’s Fort massively increase from 22 houses in Phase 1 to just under the originally approved 200 units.

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council’s planning committee signed off on the application this week without further scrutiny in open chambers.

READ MORE: ‘Neglected’ Newry city centre set for major revamp.

READ MORE: Pilot scheme proposed for winter cold water swimming at Co Down Blue Flag beach.

A spokesperson for Lotus said: “ Lotus Homes is delighted to confirm that planning approval has now been granted for Phase 2 of the Watson’s Fort development in Newry.

“Following strong demand and a positive response to Phase 1, this next phase will deliver a further collection of high-quality family homes in one of Newry’s most sought-after residential locations.”

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military contractors need at least three years to replenish stockpiles of three key weapons systems used heavily in the Iran war, according to an analysis released Wednesday, adding to concerns that American forces would have limited firepower in any future conflict with China.

The weapons systems are Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are used to strike targets deep inside enemy territory, and Patriot and THAAD interceptors that defend against incoming missiles and drones.

“The United States has enough munitions for any plausible scenario in the Iran war, but the depleted inventories have created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in its new report, provided to The Associated Press. “The time needed to rebuild those inventories has thus become a major concern.”

China has a stated goal of ensuring its military is capable of taking Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, which experts see as more aspirational than a hard deadline. But Chinese President Xi Jinping warned this month that if Washington mishandles its relations with the self-governing island, the U.S. and China could end up clashing or even in open conflict.

Trump administration is boosting funding, but production takes time

The analysis by the Washington think tank factors in the Republican Trump administration’s historic $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal for 2027, which significantly accelerates spending on high-end munitions that began under the Democratic Biden administration. While there’s bipartisan agreement in Congress to boost inventories, “the problem today isn’t money; it’s time,” the report said.

“It takes time to expand production capacity and to build these complex systems,” the report said, adding that the window of vulnerability will last “for several years until inventories return to their previous levels and another several years before they get to the levels that war planners desire.”

Although munitions inventories are classified, CSIS said sufficient public information exists in Pentagon budget materials to estimate production timelines.

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have insisted the U.S. is capable of fighting any war. They have pushed defense contractors to speed up munitions production, with Hegseth telling lawmakers last month that military spending under Trump will help manufacturers double or even triple their capacities.

During Trump’s Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Hegseth lauded the president’s efforts to expand the nation’s defense manufacturing sector, with private contractors investing in new plants and production lines “so that we’re getting weapons faster than ever.”

Concerns about diminished stockpiles were a theme at recent congressional hearings. For Democrats, the munitions supply is a damning metric against the Iran war, which Trump launched without lawmakers’ approval. Some Republicans argue that the problem stems from the U.S. sending Patriot missile defense systems to Ukraine after Russia invaded in 2022, although several American allies use those systems.

The roots of the predicament can be traced to the end of the Cold War, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior adviser at CSIS who co-authored the study with research associate Chris H. Park.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the U.S. assumed future wars would be short and regional with little need for large numbers of such high-end weapons, Cancian said in an interview. The Pentagon ordered relatively low numbers, assuming the military would not need many of them. Military contractors responded in kind, relying on a relatively small manufacturing footprint to build them.

Russia’s war with Ukraine showed that wars could be protracted and require deep inventories of advanced weapons, Cancian said. At the same time, U.S. military strategists were war-gaming possible conflicts in the western Pacific.

“The thinking started to change, but it just takes time to build inventories,” Cancian said, adding that part of the challenge is bringing up to speed a complicated web of supply chains and subcontractors that produce very novel components.

President Joe Biden’s administration should get some credit for starting conversations with the defense industry, putting money into the industrial base and ramping up production, said Cancian, who oversaw acquisitions of military hardware at the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat.

“A lot of people in the Trump administration are inclined to say that everything was terrible until they arrived, and that’s not true,” Cancian said. “Now, it is true that the Trump administration really increased funding.”

How long it will take to rebuild key stockpiles

The U.S. fired 1,000-plus Tomahawk missiles at Iran, and it could take until late 2030 to fully replenish the prewar inventory, CSIS estimates show.

Fewer than 200 Tomahawks are made a year because of small orders in the past, the report says. However, manufacturer Raytheon has a goal of ramping up capacity to more than 1,000 per year.

RTX, Raytheon’s parent company, declined to comment on the CSIS findings because it had not yet seen the report. But RTX pointed to investments of several billion dollars to boost production, including expanding facilities in Alabama and Arizona.

For in-demand air defense systems, replacing as many as 290 THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, interceptors that shot down incoming Iranian drones and missiles could take until the end of 2029, CSIS estimates. Replenishing more than 1,000 Patriot interceptors should wrap up in mid-2029.

Lockheed Martin is significantly boosting production of rounds for both systems, while deliveries of THAADs “were apparently re-sequenced to prioritize U.S. needs over those of allies and partners,” CSIS noted.

“Patriot deliveries pose a dilemma for the United States because of the need to replenish its own inventories, help Ukraine defend against Russian missile attacks, and meet the needs of 17 other countries that use the interceptor,” the report said.

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it’s investing $9 billion through 2030 and “is already delivering tangible results to meet heightened munitions demand, including a new facility in Alabama announced last week along with more than 20 others across the United States.”

In the meantime, CSIS said a potential conflict with China is “not all bleak,” with the U.S. military recently displaying its capabilities against Iran, Venezuela and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“China is deeply aware that it has no recent combat experience and that it performed poorly in its last war — against Vietnam in 1979,” the report said. “That difference in experience may preserve deterrence until munitions inventories are restored.”

Kenneth Iwamasa was jailed in LA following the role he played in Perry’s death at age 54 on October 28, 2023.

Matthew Perry’s live-in personal assistant, who had a central role in the Friends star’s descent into ketamine addiction and injected him with the fatal dose of the drug, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison.

Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence to 60-year-old Kenneth Iwamasa in federal court in Los Angeles. He was also sentenced to two years of probation and a 10,000 dollar fine (£7,446).

It was the fifth and final sentencing in the two-and-a-half-year investigation and prosecution that followed Perry’s death at age 54 on October 28 2023.

Before handing down the sentence, Judge Garnett said “You were privy to his struggle with addiction. Your conduct was reckless, not just on the day of his death but in the days leading up to his death.”

The sentence was exactly what prosecutors had sought, though Ms Garnett disagreed on some of the details.

She found that Iwamasa did not abuse a position of trust, which could’ve brought more prison time, and said “there is no hard evidence that you acted with malicious intent, though some would disagree”.

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Iwamasa was at Perry’s side through the final days of his life, acting as the actor’s enabler, drug messenger and de facto doctor.

He was the last person to see Perry alive and he was the one who found him dead in his hot tub.

He was the first person to reach a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty in August of 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, and became their most important witness.

Iwamasa’s lawyer, Alan Eisner, argued for a six-month prison term with six months of home confinement, emphasising Iwamasa was always acting at the direction of a boss with much more power than he had.

“His loyalty to Mr Perry was paramount,” Mr Eisner told the judge. “He worshipped Mr Perry, he looked up to Mr Perry. All he did was please and accommodate Mr Perry.”

When Mr Eisner said Iwamasa was unable to act differently than he did, the judge cut him off and said: “Unwilling. Not unable. He could have said no.”

Perry’s family members, some of whom may speak in court, made it clear in letters to the judge that there is no one they blame for his death more than Iwamasa — a long time friend they thought would help the actor maintain sobriety but instead indulged the worst impulses of a lifelong addict.

Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, wrote: “Mathew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny. Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction.

“We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”

Perry had hired Iwamasa in 2022 and was paying him 150,000 dollars (£110,000) a year to live at his Los Angeles home and act as his assistant.

The actor had been taking the surgical anaesthetic ketamine legally for depression, an increasingly common off-label use, but he wanted more than his doctor would give him.

According to Iwamasa’s plea agreement, he bought off-the-books ketamine from another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, who taught him how to inject it.

Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in July.

Iwamasa also began buying ketamine from Perry’s acquaintance Erik Fleming, who was getting it from a street dealer.

Fleming was sentenced to two years in prison two weeks ago.

The dealer, Jasveen Sangha, dubbed “The Ketamine Queen”, was sentenced to 15 years on April 8.

In the final days of Perry’s life, Iwamasa was injecting him six to eight times per day.

On October 23 2023, he gave the 54-year-old actor a large dose and left to run errands. He returned to find Perry dead in the hot tub.

The LA county medical examiner found that ketamine was the primary cause of death and drowning was a secondary cause.

At first, Iwamasa lied to police, omitting ketamine from the list of medications Perry was using and saying nothing about his injections, but when investigators served a search warrant in January of 2024, he began coming clean.

Perry became one of the biggest stars of his generation along with Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow on Friends, NBC’s megahit sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.

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A federal judge on Wednesday allowed a teenager accused of sexually assaulting and killing his 18-year-old stepsister aboard a Carnival Cruise ship to remain free for now while arguments continue in a Miami court hearing.

Timothy Hudson, 16, was initially charged as a juvenile, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres previously ruled he could stay with an uncle under electronic monitoring. However, prosecutors later sought his detention after the case was moved to adult court.

Federal prosecutions involving minors are uncommon, but the case falls under federal jurisdiction because the alleged killing took place in international waters, outside any individual state’s authority.

Wednesday’s hearing ended without a final ruling, with the judge saying he wanted to consult the U.S. Marshals Service about the possibility of holding Hudson in central Florida, closer to his family, instead of South Florida, where the trial is set to take place.

It’s unknown when Torres will announce his decision. In the meantime, Hudson walked out of the courthouse after the hearing, rather than being immediately taken into custody.

Hudson has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse. His federal public defenders have declined to comment on the charges.

Hudson’s stepsister, Anna Kepner, had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November with her family, including Hudson. Before the ship was scheduled to return to Florida, her body was found concealed under a bed in a room she was sharing with Hudson and another teen, a criminal complaint said.

The cause of Kepner’s Nov. 6 death was determined to be mechanical asphyxia, which is when an object or physical force stops someone from breathing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandra Lopez argued Wednesday that the crimes Hudson is accused of are so serious that the court shouldn’t risk another violent attack. An autopsy determined that Kepner had been pinned down and forcibly raped, the prosecutors said. She also noted that it likely took 3-5 minutes for Hudson to strangle Kepner until she was dead.

“I believe there is clear and convincing evidence that this defendant is a danger to the community,” Lopez said.

The prosecutor also argued that Hudson was a much greater flight risk because he now faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the adult charges. As a juvenile, he would have been released at age 21, regardless of what counts he was found delinquent on.

Evan Kuhl, with the Federal Public Defender’s office, told the judge that Hudson has abided by the conditions of his release for months without issue.

The judge acknowledged that an adult facing these charges would almost certainly be detained until trial, but he still needed to consider the reality of Hudson’s age, despite the adult charges. While the judge said he agreed with the defense that Hudson was a low flight risk, he still hadn’t decided whether the teen posed a threat to the community if certain pre-trial restrictions remained in place.

Kepner’s father, Christopher Kepner, previously released a statement, saying the family was placing “trust in the justice system to pursue the truth with care and integrity.”

“The situation is deeply painful and complex for the entire family,” Kepner said.

Anna Kepner was a high school cheerleader at Temple Christian School in Titusville, Florida, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Orlando. At her memorial service in November, family members encouraged people to wear bright colors instead of the traditional black “in honor of Anna’s bright and beautiful soul.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Shrey Parikh finished third in the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee before making a stunning exit from his school bee last year. Now in his final year before he ages out of the competition, he’s fully committed.

The 14-year-old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, works with three coaches. He pays for word lists and study guides. He tries to learn every Greek and Latin root, every language pattern, every spelling bee-worthy word he can find. And he competes throughout the year in online bees that pit him against the country’s other top spellers.

Shrey’s approach has proven effective for spellers seeking to hold the trophy, and on Wednesday he became one of nine spellers who got through the semifinals and will compete in the finals Thursday night.

But at least one other finalist has gone old-school, shunning outside help and using the dictionary as his guide.

Their opposing strategies have revived a long-running if good-natured debate in spelling circles: Which is more important, mastery of languages or rote memorization?

“At the end of finals, most of the words aren’t going to have a really clean-cut language pattern or rule that you can pull from. So I think memorization is really important,” said Sam Evans, who coached each of the past two champions. “Sometimes it gets a bad reputation, but you have to do it.”

Every word is in the dictionary, if you can find it

It’s all but impossible to reach the finals without knowing the components that make up words absorbed into English: roots and languages of origin. But some champions have stood out for their incredible recall, the ability to instantly visualize any word they’ve run across or even recite dictionary definitions verbatim: Nihar Janga in 2016, Zaila Avant-garde in 2021 and Bruhat Soma in 2024.

Sarv Dharavane might be the next of that group.

Sarv finished third in 2025 as a relative unknown in the spelling community. There’s a reason for that. The 12-year-old sixth-grader from Dunwoody, Georgia, has no coach. He doesn’t participate in online bees. And his only study guide is the source for every word in the competition: Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged dictionary.

“The book is my coach,” Sarv said.

Given his past success, he saw no reason to change it up. And he’s back in the finals.

“I didn’t really change anything because my strategy got me far last year, but I did more of what I did before,” Sarv said.

“I used to read the dictionary and set aside difficult words to study later,” he explained. “I did it a lot, so I got a lot of words and it was really easy just to go through them. I’ve always been able to remember pretty well, and I can read through long lists without getting tired, so this strategy works pretty well for me.”

Simple, right?

Many spellers think there’s a better way.

Master the roots, and you don’t need to memorize as much

Dev Shah, the 2023 champion, advocates an artistic approach to spelling — the one also championed by his coach, Scott Remer. Master roots, master language patterns, and learn how to spot the exceptions, and you can spell a word that you’ve never seen or don’t remember.

Shah accepted that he could never memorize the dictionary — “No one can,” he said — and he believed if he got a word he didn’t know, he could figure it out.

“The skill of guessing is everything,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed after his victory.

In an interview Wednesday, Shah said memorization was important, especially for quirky words with obscure origins. He said the best spellers, including Avant-garde, found a balance between memorization and mastery.

Having a conceptual understanding of how words are spelled can also help spellers perform under pressure when their memory fails them, said Shah, who admitted he finds it daunting to memorize a huge volume of words.

Former champion Sohum Sukhatankar, who coaches Shrey, said spellers need to fill their brains with the most useful information.

“When you’re at the highest level, you have to be prepared for hundreds of thousands of words,” he said. “You want to do as little memorization as possible to avoid the chance that you just forget it, so it’s all about efficiency.”

After a catastrophic school bee, one speller seeks every edge

Shrey knows he might have to guess when he’s at the microphone, but he wants to eliminate variables. That makes sense, given that a year ago, he wasn’t even the top speller at his school.

“I had a fever at my school bee last year, and I just blanked on the word ‘calipers’ … and I missed it,” he said. “I was really devastated.”

It took a few months before Shrey was motivated to start studying again. Once he did, he added Sukhatankar to his coaching team. He’s learned how to slow down when he’s at the microphone because of a bad experience in 2023, when he rushed through a word, didn’t enunciate it clearly and judges determined he got it wrong.

He’s also a believer in study guides. Shrey said an interactive, AI-assisted platform called Onyma that offers personalized learning and competition with other spellers — launched this month by Sukhatankar and Evans — has helped with his preparation.

He also uses SpellPundit, an online resource created by two former spellers and their parents that made a splash at the 2019 bee when the majority of that year’s eight co-champions used it. The company claims every champion since as a customer.

Shrey won the annual SpellPundit bee, the South Asian Spelling Bee and several other online bees, which he doesn’t necessarily see as an advantage.

“I feel like it (creates) more pressure to perform,” he said.

Evans believes spellers who want to win should use their study time efficiently, but there’s no barrier to learning every possible word.

“There’s a common joke among spellers that says everything’s in the dictionary, so it’s all ‘on-list,’” he said. “The dictionary is the most basic thing that spellers need to know.”

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Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.