Category: Associated Press

DUXBURY, Mass. — Jurors walked through the Massachusetts home where Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, a rare visit Friday that let them see firsthand the place where an outwardly ordinary family life unraveled into tragedy.

After being driven past two businesses relevant to the narrative of the January 2023 killings, jurors were escorted in groups of six to view the inside of the house, including the basement where the children died. During the roughly 40-minute visit, the jury also saw the yard where Clancy was found after jumping from a second-story window.

Journalists were kept away by a police barricade, but court officers could be seen through the trees escorting jurors to and from the bus along the site of the Clancy family’s former driveway. The home now has a new owner.

Clancy herself did not attend the visit to the home, which she hasn’t seen since the day of the killings. Her lawyers argue she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation, and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

Jurors in U.S. criminal cases often are expressly told not to visit the scene of the events in question. There are a number of rationales for not doing so — among other things, the site may have changed in the interim between an alleged crime and a trial.

But courts sometimes allow juries to make a supervised excursion as a group, for reasons that can include assessing distances or features that aren’t thought to come across fully in photos.

Such excursions have happened in a number of high-profile cases, including the 2023 murder trial of South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, the 2022 sentencing trial of Parkland, Fla., school shooter Nikolas Cruz, the 2015 Massachusetts murder trial of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, and the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson.

Jurors in Clancy’s trial retraced the route her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, took when she asked him to pick up takeout food and medicine for daughter Cora on the night of the killings. He returned to find the children dead and his then-wife badly injured and bleeding in the yard.

The panel was driven past the restaurant — about 5.5 miles from the family’s former home in Duxbury, a town south of Boston — and the pharmacy, about a mile from the house.

Prosecutors say the errands were a ruse to get her husband out of the house. They say Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, acted intentionally and is criminally responsible for the deaths of children Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months.

Her lawyers don’t dispute that she killed the children, but they say she had bipolar disorder and her condition worsened while she was on antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child. She believed a voice was telling her to “kill the children so you can kill yourself,” according to her lawyers.

Lindsay Clancy remains paralyzed from the waist down after using multiple methods to try to end her life that night.

If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.

CAMP DAVID, Md. — President Donald Trump took Friday’s cabinet meeting on the road to Camp David, using the historic rustic backdrop of the presidential retreat to boast of his administration’s achievements while seizing on a migrant crisis in Spain to make his case for why voters should keep the Republican Party in power.

The cabinet meeting, the 13th such gathering of Trump’s second term, came just three months before the November midterm elections that could serve as a check on his power if Democrats take control of one or both chambers of Congress. His warnings about Spain echoed language he used ahead of the 2018 midterms, when he warned of caravans of migrants headed to the southern U.S. border.

“You know, I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people,” Trump said. “And that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected. Except worse, much bigger.”

Some 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Spain’s tiny Ceuta territory over the past 24 hours. Roughly half of them have already made their way back voluntarily, according to the Spanish government, but at least 57 have died on the journey.

Separately, he deflected blame for a series of cyberattacks that targeted 30 water systems in Minnesota on the state’s “grossly incompetent” Democratic leadership. Officials have not publicly identified who was behind the attacks, though the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and other agencies warned in an advisory last week that Iranian hackers have been targeting water and wastewater systems and the operational controls of other critical infrastructure sectors.

“They blame it on Iran,” Trump said, without offering evidence. “I don’t think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent.”

The president regularly convenes his cabinet throughout his terms as a setting to promote his administration’s policies while fielding questions on the news of the day, but what made Friday’s meeting unusual was that it was at Camp David, the government-owned retreat nestled in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, where Trump held one cabinet meeting during his first term.

Trump began the meeting by noting it was “something very unique.” The White House called it the first-ever televised cabinet meeting from the presidential retreat.

“It’s Camp David, and this room is a very, very special room,” Trump said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were among the cabinet officials who spoke before Trump took questions from journalists. The public portion of the meeting ended after about an hour.

Trump fields questions on Iran, Hamas deal, and Blanche confirmation

In the lengthy question-and-answer session, Trump commented on the latest developments regarding the war in Iran and a deal he announced Thursday that he said would lead to the disarmament of the Palestinian group Hamas.

He also lamented that a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund to compensate his allies was “dead” and appeared to back off a pledge he made earlier this month to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems.

“I don’t think this would ever happen, but, you know, there’s people that, you give that technology, they can someday turn on you,” Trump added. “You look at war, that’s happened a couple of times over the years, right? So we have to be very careful.”

On the Hamas agreement, Trump acknowledged that the agreement that would also lead to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza will have “ups and downs.” Still, he called it a “great breakthrough” that has been helped along by the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, which has served as Hamas’ prime backer.

Trump also remarked on the anti-weaponization fund that is holding up the confirmation of Todd Blanche as his attorney general, saying the pot of money is “dead” and that “I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you.”

The president continued to defend the people who could potentially benefit from the fund, mainly those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over him.

“Their families have been ruined,” Trump said. Those people “wanted to go to a rally or an event and ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror.”

Trump said Blanche has been a “pawn in this whole thing.” Blanche, who was present, did not speak in the public portion of the cabinet meeting.

Camp David has been a retreat for presidents since FDR

The camp’s primary purpose is to provide presidents a place to rest, relax, and recharge. It was established in 1942 during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency and has been used by every president since.

Roosevelt had enjoyed relaxing aboard a presidential yacht, but the military and the U.S. Secret Service began to worry about his safety on open water during World War II. As a result, Roosevelt asked the National Park Service to find sites within 100 miles of the White House that he could use for rest.

He chose what is now known as Camp David. He gave it the original name of Shangri-La, from James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon. President Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David, after his grandson and father.

Trump spent more weekends at the retreat in his first term but has visited sparingly in his second, most recently in June for Father’s Day.

In 2019, during his first term, Trump announced on social media that he had canceled a secret weekend meeting at Camp David with Taliban and Afghanistan leaders — scheduled for just days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — after a bombing in the capital of Kabul killed a dozen people, including a U.S. soldier.

Presidents throughout history have turned to Camp David when they needed security and privacy for sensitive diplomatic talks with foreign leaders. Jimmy Carter took the leaders of Egypt and Israel there in 1978 for talks that produced the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between the two countries.

The 180-acre retreat, which is run by the Navy and guarded by Marines, has a cabin named Aspen that’s reserved for the president, plus about a dozen other cabins for guests. A main lodge has conference rooms, a dining room, and an office for the president.

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s only nuclear power plant will shut down for the first time in its history due to record-low water levels on the Danube River, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said Friday, adding that the plant may not come back online for several weeks as the river is expected to continue receding.

The Paks nuclear plant, located around 50 miles south of the capital Budapest, is operating at less than half its normal capacity, producing 965 megawatts of power rather than the usual 2,000.

The plant uses water from the Danube to cool its reactors, but the exceptionally low water level has tested the ability of pumps to bring sufficient quantities into the plant.

Speaking at a news conference at the plant on Friday, Magyar said further reductions in output were imminent later Friday and that the entire plant will likely be powered down by Tuesday or Wednesday. He stressed that the shutdown can be performed safely and poses no risk to the public or environment.

The Soviet-built, four-reactor plant at Paks accounts for nearly half of Hungary’s electricity production. If it is powered down, it will be the first time in its 44 years of service.

Hungary and much of Central Europe has been in a prolonged period of drought in recent months, disrupting tourism, agriculture, and industry and confronting residents with the realities of climate change. Water levels are not expected to rise on the Danube in the coming days or even weeks as no significant rainfall is forecast.

Magyar said Friday that the Danube’s water level has only risen on three occasions in the month of August in the last 20 years, and added that the level at Paks could recede to as low as negative 57 inches — far below the previous record of negative 39 inches set in 2018.

A level of negative 52.7 inches requires the full powering down of the plant, he said. A negative reading means the river has fallen below the gauge’s zero reference level, not that the river is empty.

Hungary’s government has requested that companies that consume large quantities of energy voluntarily reduce their consumption to help stabilize the energy supply, particularly in peak demand hours between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Magyar said Hungarian energy conglomerate MOL had committed to reducing its electricity needs by 65 megawatt-hours, a decrease of 40% from its normal consumption.

Magyar announced Friday that his party had recommended suspending parliamentary sessions planned for Monday and Tuesday in the interest of conserving energy. He also ordered that all state institutions turn off decorative lighting by Monday.

PUERTO MORELOS, Mexico — Swaths of seaweed are blanketing the beaches and coastlines of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, suffocating shorelines and snuffing out marine life while spooking visitors in areas that depend heavily on tourism.

Some 27 million metric tons of self-sustaining sargassum have been recorded in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico in July, according to a report released Friday by the University of South Florida’s Optical Oceanography Lab.

The prickly seaweed covers miles of coastline, releasing a foul smell as it rots onshore.

This year marks the first time that scientists have observed sargassum growing in large quantities in areas including the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, instead of being swept into those areas by ocean currents.

The algae usually reproduces asexually as it travels from Western Africa, said Brian Barnes, a marine scientist and research assistant professor at the University of South Florida. “None of this is normal,” he said. “Every year is a little bit of a new story.”

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has been growing since 2011, dumping an increasing amount of seaweed along coastlines in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Experts have said that agricultural runoff, warming waters, and changes in wind, current, and rain could be factors.

The sargassum that began reproducing in the region earlier than usual this year stems from a record 40 million metric tons reported last year.

“The 2025 bloom was so big it never really left,” Barnes said. “It was enough to start a new bloom locally.”

Seaweed threatens tourism

Sargassum levels in the Caribbean reached record levels in June, while the amount present in the Gulf hit 5 million metric tons in June, nearly double last year’s record, according to the University of South Florida.

Scientists expect 2026 to be the second largest amount of sargassum recorded in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, noting that June alone saw 34 million metric tons, which was only 10% lower than the year-earlier period.

Mexico said Thursday it plans to invest $115 million to tackle the blooming algae, which poses an environmental and economic threat. The government estimates that up to 9,000 tons reach its Caribbean coastline on the worst days. Given current resources, Mexico says it can only gather 1,200 tons of sargassum a day.

On a recent evening, Alan Vázquez closed the restaurant where he works as a waiter in the popular tourist town of Playa del Carmen because there were no customers. He had resisted closing for several hours, hoping he would receive a tip and salvage the day, but vast quantities of decomposing sargassum are turning the famed turquoise waters black, driving away tourists.

“It’s sad that such a beautiful and lively place … has ended up like this,” Vázquez said.

He fears suffering the same fate as four of his colleagues who were laid off two months ago due to a drop in tourism that has devastated hotels and businesses in the state of Quintana Roo, one of Mexico’s tourism gems, where sales fell 30% in the first half of the year, according to estimates from local businesses.

In Puerto Rico, sargassum blankets the waters around popular tourist areas, including La Parguera.

“I don’t recall ever having that much concentration in so many places at once,” said Waldemar Quiles, the U.S. territory’s natural resources secretary.

Much of the record sargassum reported last year ended up along Puerto Rico’s coastline, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency.

It surpassed the previous record set in 2022 with a peak of some 22 million metric tons.

“It’s not a one-off event anymore,” said Emmanuel Maldonado González, an environmental sociologist at East Carolina University. “It’s becoming a growing hazard.”

Experts warn proliferation will worsen

Patches of sargassum in open waters provide a healthy breeding ground for wildlife, including turtles, fish, and seabirds, and can be “a bit of an oasis of life in the middle of the ocean,” Barnes said.

But once it’s closer to shore, it reduces oxygen in the water, smothers mangrove roots, and blocks sunlight from reaching coral and sea grass.

Once it washes ashore it can prevent newly hatched sea turtles from reaching the ocean, while the heavy machinery used to remove it from beaches risks destroying fragile turtle nests, scientists say.

“The coastlines are not built for this,” Barnes said.

In the U.S. Virgin Islands, people are walking up to 25 feet on mats of seaweed before even reaching the water, according to Amy Dempsey, an environmental consultant.

“This is by far the worst I’ve seen it in the last five years,” she said. “We are getting slammed in the Virgin Islands.”

The smell of rotten eggs permeates communities where large piles of decaying sargassum emit ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

“The effects of these gases on people can be severe,” warns the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, noting it can cause nausea, headaches, and lung irritation.

Used in composting and bioenergy production

Officials on the French Caribbean island of Martinique recently opened a shelter to temporarily house those affected by the toxic gases after residents protested.

So far this year, crews in Martinique have collected more than 11,500 tons of sargassum — including 638 tons in four days alone this month — according to government data. Sea barriers catch some of the seaweed, while crews on shore collect the remainder by hand, storing and processing it for composting and bioenergy production.

Researchers at the University of South Florida and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used artificial intelligence and found that from 2003 to 2022, macroalgae blooms increased by more than 13% per year in the tropical Atlantic and Western Pacific.

Overall, the blooms reached 16.9 million square miles, according to a study published earlier this year.