AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

US Coast Guard rescues 16 people and searches for more after May Day call off Mexico’s Baja coast

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Sixteen people were rescued from the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja California coast on Friday after the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a May Day call reporting their boat was sinking. Another 11 people were believed missing.

The people rescued were Mexican nationals, according to the Mexican consulate. But the boat’s origin, destination and what it was doing were not clear.

It went down in an area frequented by smugglers transporting migrants to the U.S. It’s also popular with fishing and leisure boats.

One survivor was being treated for a suspected shark bite and two were in critical condition, authorities said.

A rescue helicopter reached the site about two hours after someone on the boat transmitted a May Day call at about 1 a.m. to say it was sinking, said Coast Guard Lt. Santiago Tamburini. It took about 90 minutes for the crew, which included a rescue swimmer, to pull the 16 people from the water, Tamburini said.

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Fight over evidence in Alex Murdaugh retrial turns to DNA and missing murder weapons

LEXINGTON, S.C. (AP) — Alex Murdaugh’s defense can do their own tests of unidentified DNA found under his wife’s fingernails after she and her son were shot to death in 2021, a judge said Friday, part of an increasingly bitter battle over what evidence can be used in his murder retrial next year.

The DNA belonged to a male who was not a member of the Murdaugh family, and investigators haven’t found a match. Although this piece of DNA evidence didn’t feature prominently in the first trial in 2023, the defense wants to test it themselves at a private lab. The judge called Friday’s hearing after Murdaugh’s lawyers filed a flurry of motions saying prosecutors were dragging their feet sharing evidence.

Murdaugh, a once-rich and imposing heir to a Southern legal dynasty, is scheduled to face another jury in April over the killings of his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, on their sprawling property in the rural Lowcountry region of South Carolina. While admitting he is a thief, insurance cheat, bad lawyer and longtime opioid addict, the 58-year-old Murdaugh has adamantly denied the killings.

The state Supreme Court overturned his convictions earlier this year, ruling that a court clerk influenced jurors during his trial. The case has captivated the true crime world with its mix of treachery, corruption, power and Southern accents.

Judge Debra McCaslin refused to let the defense examine every casing and bullet found in shootings for the past five years in eight surrounding counties involving the same type of gun as one of the weapons used in the killings. The judge called it a fishing expedition.

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US markets are weighed down by an extended sell-off in the tech sector

A broad sell-off in technology companies pulled stocks lower on Wall Street Friday, capping off the market’s worst week since late June.

The S&P 500 fell 1.1%. Its roughly 2% drop for the week wiped out its gains from last week, when it set an all-time high.

The Nasdaq composite, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, sank 2.1% and posted its first weekly loss in five weeks and its worst since June.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average held up better, closing 0.3% lower.

Slightly more than half of the stocks in the S&P 500 fell, but all but seven of the 75 stocks in the index’s tech sector closed lower. Among the biggest decliners were chip companies, reflecting mounting worries about how long the frenzy over the AI buildout will last.

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Tesla’s new Roadster car can thrust itself in the air. But don’t expect to drive it anytime soon

CHICAGO (AP) — Tesla has unveiled its new Roadster sports car, which can thrust itself in the air, among other engineering bells and whistles. But drivers shouldn’t expect to take it for a spin anytime soon.

Elon Musk’s electric car company rolled out its second-generation Roadster at a Thursday event, showing off a set of cold gas thrusters and a “multi-mode” suction system that can fling the car in the air for short spurts and spin the vehicle mid-flight.

“Turns out the future does have flying cars,” Musk, Tesla’s CEO, wrote on his social media platform X shortly after.

That future could be a ways off, however, given the regulatory hurdles for flying vehicles and the tangle of state rules that still need to be met.

“I’m not sure every state is going to allow a driver in the middle of traffic to suddenly elevate himself and fly,” said David Vladeck, a Georgetown Law professor and former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “There is going to be a long process to let anything like that on a road.”

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NCAA sues Ohio governor over his executive order allowing schools to ignore new eligibility rule

The NCAA sued the governor of Ohio on Friday, three days after he signed an executive order giving state universities the option of allowing athletes who graduated from high school in 2022 to play a fifth year in college in defiance of the NCAA’s new eligibility rule.

NCAA President Charlie Baker called the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Ohio, an “extraordinary step” designed to prevent Gov. Mike DeWine from making it “impossible for all schools to compete on a level playing field.”

The lawsuit itself claimed DeWine, a two-term Republican former state attorney general who cannot seek re-election this fall because of term limits, was trying to give players in his state “a hall pass” from following the rules.

DeWine’s executive order and the NCAA’s lawsuit in reaction to it marks the latest tit-for-tat in a torrent of legal maneuverings that are creating new rules on a state-by-state basis.

“This whole thing has become comical,” Danny White, the athletic director at Tennessee, said on social media in reaction to the NCAA announcement.

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Hurricane Trudy strengthens slightly as it moves towards Mexico’s Pacific coast

MIAMI (AP) — Hurricane Trudy strengthened slightly Friday evening as it moved towards southwestern and west-central areas of Mexico’s Pacific coast and could keep growing through Saturday, forecasters said.

The center of Trudy will approach the coast of southwestern and west-central Mexico on Saturday and pass near the coast Saturday night into Sunday. A hurricane warning was in effect from Manzanillo in Colima state to Cabo Corrientes in Jalisco.

The storm was a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kmh) on Friday night.

It was reported as Category 3 early Friday, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami later said satellite wind data showed it was weaker than indicated.

Trudy was about 210 miles (335 kilometers) southwest of Acapulco, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, and about 290 miles (465 kilometers) south-southeast of Manzanillo, Colima state, while moving north slightly faster, at 7 mph (11 kph), the center said.

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The Latest: Teacher threw cellphone and tackled gunman who killed 4 at Oregon school, police say

A teacher threw her phone at the teenage gunman who killed four people at an Oregon elementary school Thursday, then tackled and fought with him — likely saving lives before he was shot by a man who followed him into the building, police said Friday. Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz called her actions “heroic” during a news conference and said she was not injured.

In a statement read to reporters on Friday, Kenda Freeman said her son, Kaylub Giamanco, shot the gunman in Thursday’s attack at Silver Rail Elementary School. She said he is the father of two girls at the school.

The three children killed were aged 5, 8 and 11. Another child, 7, and a teacher, 54, were injured and taken to the hospital in critical condition, authorities say.

Krantz identified the attacker as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, a former student at the school.

The Latest:

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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs moved to a new prison after reports of a luxury lifestyle behind bars

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs has been moved to a federal prison in Pennsylvania after reports that the hip-hop mogul was living the high life and was injured in a fight at his New Jersey lockup, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday.

The federal Bureau of Prisons is transferring Combs, 56, from FCI Fort Dix to FCI Allenwood Low, a low-security facility south of Williamsport and about 155 miles (250 kilometers) west of New York City, the person said. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.

The Bureau of Prisons confirmed the move but provided no further details. The agency said it does not discuss conditions of confinement for anyone in its custody, including reasons for transfer, for privacy, safety, and security reasons.

“Decisions about inmate placement are made by the BOP, and we are not in a position to speak to the circumstances surrounding this transfer,” said Combs’ spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer. “Sean remains focused on moving forward, and we hope that his time at the new facility will be productive and without unnecessary disruption.”

Combs is serving a four-year, two-month sentence for his conviction last year on prostitution-related charges for transporting people across state lines for sexual encounters. The case featured harrowing testimony about violence and sex parties he called “freak-offs.” It was a forceful reckoning for one of music and entertainment’s most influential figures.

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Georgia amusement park reopens as scheduled after roller coaster death

MABLETON, Ga. (AP) — Six Flags Over Georgia opened its gates Friday evening for the first time since a man fell to his death from one of the amusement park’s towering roller coasters.

A steady trickle of vehicles drove into the park, some of which had lined up outside about an hour before opening. Most of the visitors said they hadn’t thought about canceling their plans after Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, a 42-year-old school employee from Atlanta, was thrown from the Goliath coaster on Monday.

“We didn’t plan on riding that specific ride,” said Alayna Bruce, who was visiting the park with family. “Hopefully, we can enjoy all the other stuff they have.”

Eleanor Adcock, of Griffin, Georgia, said she had second thoughts after hearing about what happened and said she probably wouldn’t be riding any roller coasters. But she said she still looked forward to the park’s Halloween-themed Fright Fest attractions of haunted houses and mazes.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t let an incident like this like scare everybody out of just going out and enjoying yourself,” she said. “But it’s still very alarming.”

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Pakistan orders school inspections as relatives say they warned of risks before deadly collapse

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani authorities ordered inspections of all private schools in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after a school roof collapsed and killed 34 children and a teacher, as some victims’ relatives said the structure previously was reported to be weak.

The provincial government announced an investigation into the cause of Thursday’s collapse at Al-Khair school as victims’ families demanded justice. At least one family member said he had warned the school owner about leaks.

Police on Thursday arrested the school’s owner, Mohammad Khan. Peshawar Police Chief Saeed Ahmed said the building was structurally weak and Khan told officers that recent rains had weakened one of the roofs.

Authorities have locked the school building, where investigators were expected to arrive later Friday as part of the probe. Men and children gathered in the narrow street outside, where Muhammad Murtaza, a young boy dressed in brown and wearing a white bandage around his head, stood near a closed gate.

Other children from the neighborhood gathered around him, asking how he had survived. Murtaza said he was lucky to have survived after the roof of his classroom collapsed. “I will not go back to this school, as this is not a good one,” he said.