It’s been a major championship devoid of much star power. Scottie Scheffler can change that. Scheffler carded a 3-under 68 Friday at Quail Hollow Club to move into a tie for fifth at 5 under, just three shots back of leader Jhonattan Vegas at the midway point of the 107th PGA Championship. Unsettled with his golf swing for much of the day, Scheffler missed four of his first five greens in regulation, yet he still played that stretch without a bogey. Scheffler reckoned that he didn’t make many good swings until the drivable par-4 14th hole, where he drove it into the right greenside bunker and converted an easy up-and-down birdie. He birdied the next, a par-5, for his fourth of the round and nearly had a fifth after throwing a dart to 3 feet at the par-3 17th hole. He missed the shortie, otherwise Scheffler would be joint-second entering the weekend. “I think most of me is just glad to be close to the lead,” Scheffler said. “If you’re going to play a 72-hole golf tournament, there’s going to be days and stretches of golf where you’re not swinging it your best. Over the course of a tournament this long and on a major championship setup, there’s going to be, like I said, some bumps in the road. It’s all about how you respond to those. “I did a good job of responding to those mistakes today and keeping myself in the tournament.” Vegas, Las not Johnny, would argue that Scheffler isn’t just in this championship; Scheffler is the current favorite, at +220, ahead of Bryson DeChambeau (+875 and five shots back) and the player Vegas (+1200). Perhaps that’s a testament to Scheffler’s ability. That the first page of the leaderboard looks more like the 3M Open doesn’t hurt Scheffler’s chances either. Out of the 26 players at 3 under or better, just three rank inside the top 25 of the Official World Golf Ranking – No. 1 Scheffler, No. 15 DeChambeau and No. 22 Robert MacIntyre. Even worse for the championship is that six top-10 players missed the weekend, and Nos. 2 and 3, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele, made the cut on the number at 1 over while playing alongside Scheffler. McIlroy bogeyed each of his final two holes, lipping out a short par save at the par-3 17th and then hooking his drive into the chalets on the par-4 18th, his ball ricocheting back into a thick lie on the bank of the creek that runs along the left side of the treacherous hole, which played over a half-shot over par. Through two rounds, McIlroy has hit just 10 fairways. McIlroy didn’t speak to reporters on Friday evening, but SiriusXM PGA Tour reported earlier in the day that McIlroy’s driver was deemed non-conforming by the USGA, which conducts the testing, on Tuesday, so he’s been using a replacement. Si Woo Kim cut some lumber into the fourth green, playing 252 yards from the tee, and watched his ball track all the way into the hole for the improbable ace. That spurred him to a 7-under 64, tied for the round of the day, as Kim is tied for second at 6 under with Matthieu Pavon (65) and Matt Fitzpatrick (68). Max Homa (64) is level with Scheffler at 5 under. Fitzpatrick, a recent U.S. Open champion, and Homa, a recent Ryder Cupper, Homa has plummeted to 78th in the world, missing five straight cuts earlier this year and having still not posted a top-10 finish anywhere since his T-8 finish at last year’s Wells Fargo, played at Quail Hollow. But he’s been showing glimpses of a rally, including a few weeks ago at the Masters, where he tied for 12th. Homa’s 64 Friday was his best major round by three shots. “I’ve hit a lot of golf balls in the last seven months, like an absurd amount of golf ball,” Homa said. “So, you get these stretches that you might just groove it well. … It felt more like my old golf swing.” Fitzpatrick’s struggled have arguably been worse, as he’s dropped to 85th in the world. “It’s not just putting, it was my whole game,” said Fitzpatrick, who doesn’t own a top-20 showing since last year’s FedExCup playoff opener in Memphis. Fitzpatrick has done a bit of everything this week, a big reason why he’s carded only four bogeys, two each day. “If I can just keep doing that and not get myself in trouble, I can give myself a chance,” Fitzpatrick said. They’re all chasing Vegas, the world No. 70, who admitted he got what felt like only three hours of sleep on Thursday night, following an adrenaline-pumping, five-birdies-in-six-holes finish to his first round. Vegas’ sleepy start included just one birdie on his opening nine but also just one bogey. He strung together three birdies in five holes to kick off his back nine to find double digits at 10 under and stretch his lead to four shots. He left his tee shot at No. 17 well off to the right, only for his ball to take a fortuitous bounce off a bunker rake and kick to 30 feet, setting up an easy par. Vegas closed in double bogey, his third shot from the right greenside bunker coming out heavy and riding the false front down off the green, followed two strokes later by a shocking short miss for bogey. But afterward, Vegas’ glass was half full; he was still leading a major championship. Majors, after all, haven’t been kind to the 40-year-old, four-time PGA Tour winner from Venezuela. In 16 previous major starts, Vegas registered no top-20s and 10 missed cuts. He completed the season trunk slam in 2017, posting MCs at each of the four majors. “You put all those hours to give yourself chances like this,” Vegas said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do it throughout my career, but you never know. You got to keep the pedal down, keep your head down, and keep working hard. You never know when things are going to turn your way. I’m enjoying the process.” With Vegas listed at a generous 6 feet, 3 inches, and 230 pounds, Scheffler, a former basketball player in high school, is probably glad that he doesn’t have to play defense on Vegas this weekend. All Scheffler need worry about is locking down this mammoth of a golf course. There aren’t many guys left at the top of the leaderboard who can keep Quail, at a wet and muddy 7,600 yards and change, in check for four quarters. Scheffler is unquestionably the best among them.

Republican leaders in Louisiana are pushing to end the last remnants of federally ordered school desegregation in their state, arguing that the era of racial exclusion is in the past and that the U.S. government has forced burdensome requirements on school districts long enough. They may have found allies in the Trump administration, as it seeks to slash federal bureaucracy and roll back diversity efforts across the country. It has been 71 years since the Supreme Court made racially segregated schools illegal in its landmark 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Louisiana officials say that federal orders forcing school districts to comply with the decision are outdated and no longer needed, and that the country needs to move on. Civil rights advocates see the effort as part of a broader attack on Black students and civil rights under the Trump administration, at a time when U.S. schools are only growing more segregated. Nationally, more than 300 desegregation orders are estimated to still be on the books from the 1960s and 1970s, when school districts resistant to integration were put under the supervision of federal courts. In the decades since, many orders have gone dormant, with little federal enforcement. In Louisiana, one of several Southern states with the bulk of remaining orders, the attorney general, with the support of the governor, is reviewing orders statewide and has vowed to work with school districts to “officially put the past in the past.” The Justice Department has already dismissed one order, in a district south of New Orleans, that it said was left open by mistake. Federal officials are open to lifting others. “I don’t think it serves the interest of justice to have ancient consent decrees out there,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general over civil rights under President Trump, who said her office would consider requests for dismissal on a case-by-case basis.“It is 2025,” Ms. Dhillon said. “I haven’t heard a recent claim that there is government mandated segregation happening in 2025 in a school district.” She added: “If it’s happening, it’s wrong.”Civil rights advocates fear any rollback of desegregation orders would harm Black students, at a moment when the Trump administration has been campaigning against programs meant to help them, including diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The administration is invoking Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin and which has historically been used to protect minority groups, to threaten and investigate school districts with certain D.E.I. policies. President Trump also issued new guidance on school discipline, instructing schools to look at behavior alone, without taking into account racial disparities in punishment. He has ordered the federal government more broadly to stop considering “disparate impact,” which is when a seemingly race-neutral policy has different outcomes for different demographic groups. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “You have an administration that denies the past and wants to tell a singular story about America and this country that erases this racial inequality,” said Janel George, an associate law professor at Georgetown, who focuses on racial equity in education. In many cases, school districts are still under federal oversight because they never proved that they desegregated, said GeDá Jones Herbert, chief legal counsel for Brown’s Promise, a group that supports school integration. An open desegregation order is a legal tool for students to take a district back to court “and say, ‘hey they are still not doing what they need to do,’” she added.Decades of research have shown that racially integrated schools improve academic and life outcomes for Black students, with no measurable harm to white students. That is largely because integration allows students of color to share in resources that white students already have. Liz Murrill, the Louisiana attorney general, argued the answer is not to keep school desegregation orders open for decades. She said many orders in her state had been dormant for 30 or 40 years, and others had racked up expensive legal bills for school districts. If a district is engaging in discriminatory practices today, she said, “you file a new lawsuit for a new problem.” In what Louisiana officials hope will be the first of many dismissals, the Trump administration lifted a desegregation order in Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, last month, addressing what it called a “historical wrong.” In that case, court records show, a judge ruled that the district had sufficiently desegregated in 1975, but the case remained open. Shaheena Simons, who oversaw desegregation cases at the Department of Justice for nine years before resigning in April, disputed that the case had been left open by mistake. She said the Justice Department “monitors these cases and works with districts until they can show they have fully desegregated.” The dismissal came as a relief to school officials, who had recently been dealing with reams of federal paperwork on everything from the number of Advanced Placement classes at each school to the racial makeup of athletic clubs, said Shelley Ritz, the superintendent. “It was binders on top of binders,” she said. That doesn’t mean there still isn’t important work to do, Dr. Ritz said.Plaquemines Parish in many ways exemplifies the lingering debates around school desegregation, whether the country has done enough to remedy the harms of the past and how much schools should be held responsible for factors outside of their direct control. The Justice Department took the Plaquemines Parish school district to court in 1966, a time when Leander Perez, a prominent segregationist, ruled the region. He was a towering political figure who opposed the integration of Ruby Bridges and other Black students in New Orleans and helped open all-white private academies in Plaquemines Parish. His legacy lives on in infamy in a communal history that has been passed down over generations, said Dione Griffin-Cossé, 56, who attended an all-Black school in Plaquemines Parish in the 1970s and ’80s and still lives in the area. Still, the news of the order’s end surprised her and some others, who said they thought the time of desegregation had already passed. “To me, that’s long gone,” she said. Today, the Plaquemines Parish school district is racially mixed, with a student body that is about 50 percent white, 25 percent Black, 12 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian. Many of the individual schools are themselves relatively diverse. But the bulk of white students attend schools on the north side, in a more populated area close to New Orleans. That is largely the result of housing patterns, Dr. Ritz said. Plaquemines Parish lies at the tip of Louisiana’s boot, in an area prone to flooding. The southern part of the district is at especially high risk. There, families are poorer, and students are largely Black or Hispanic. Across the country, Black and Hispanic students are most likely to attend high poverty schools, which research shows is a driving factor in the country’s wide gaps in academic achievement. That’s also the case in Plaquemines Parish, which ranks among the best in the state for student growth and achievement, but where students in the southern end of the district still post lower test scores. Dr. Ritz pointed to a number of investments the district had made to help attract qualified teachers to lower-income schools on the southern end. That includes opening day care centers for the children of employees and subsidizing apartments for teachers. “We are truly committed to every student in Plaquemines,” Dr. Ritz said. The Supreme Court endorsed the idea that schools should not be on the hook for housing segregation in a series of rulings dating to the 1970s that set off a gradual unwinding of desegregation efforts across the country. In 1974, during a period of fierce public pushback to the busing of students, the Supreme Court made its first major turn away from mandated integration. The case involved a plan to integrate students from Detroit, which was majority Black, with its surrounding suburbs, which were predominantly white. The court ruled that schools did not have to desegregate across district lines, even if the result was segregation. The case would limit efforts to integrate outside of the South, where desegregation occurred at schools within individual districts. Then in 1991, the court ruled that districts already under federal court order could be released if they had addressed segregation “as far as practicable,” though segregation may still remain as a result of private residential choices. The new efforts to roll back remaining desegregation orders may simply signal the official end of a movement that peaked long ago. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT U.S. schools have only grown more segregated in recent decades, in part because of the lifting of desegregation orders, but also because of the rise of charter schools, according to research by professors Sean Reardon of Stanford University and Ann Owens of the University of Southern California. Today, schools are more segregated than they were in the late 1980s. “The country has just sort of decided that segregation is not a problem that it wants to focus on,” Dr. Reardon said.

The majestic Bayesian superyacht, which foundered last year off Sicily, killing seven people, was likely knocked over by an intense gust of wind and sank within minutes, according to a preliminary investigation by British maritime authorities. As the storm approached, a young deckhand on watch delayed waking up the captain and instead posted a video of the squall on his social media feed, the investigation found. The result was a fast-moving catastrophe — just minutes, from when the skipper was roused to the ship going down — in which the storm ripped apart a protective awning on the bridge, pushed the enormous yacht all the way over onto its side and sent passengers and crew members scrambling in the dark for their lives as water began to cascade through the cabins. “The findings indicate that the extreme wind experienced by Bayesian was sufficient to knock the yacht over,” said Capt. Andrew Moll, the chief inspector of marine accidents for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, a British agency. “Once the yacht had heeled beyond an angle of 70 degrees, the situation was irrecoverable.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The report noted that the Bayesian’s signature feature, its gigantic single mast, one of the tallest in the world, increased the vulnerability of the boat capsizing in high winds. The New York Times published similar findings last year in its own investigation of the accident and found that the Bayesian was an outlier. All the other boats in the same series, from the same Italian manufacturer, had two masts instead of one. The company claimed that when operated properly, the Bayesian was “unsinkable.” Outside experts who read the government agency’s report also pointed to the mast and said that the overall stability of the boat — from its ballast to its superstructure — was questionable at best. “You have this obscenely tall mast, so the center of gravity of the boat is very high,” said Tad Roberts, a Canadian naval architect with decades of experience designing yachts. “The reality is that you’ve set up this system to fail.”Several passengers who survived the capsizing were badly injured before being dumped into the sea, the report said. One couple escaped their cabin by climbing on top of a set of drawers to reach the cabin’s door. With the boat turned completely on its side, that door was now a hatch in the ceiling. As the boat went down, crew members thrashed through the sea and helped save any passengers they could reach. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Seven people trapped below deck died: Michael Lynch, a British tech tycoon; his teenage daughter, Hannah; four of Mr. Lynch’s friends, including a prominent lawyer and his wife; and the sailboat’s cook. The report, released at midnight London time on Thursday, comes amid several simultaneous investigations. Sicilian prosecutors have launched their own inquiry and named the yacht’s captain and two crew members as suspects. British authorities cautioned that a fuller picture will emerge only after the Bayesian is lifted from its resting place in a cove 160 feet deep, just off the harbor of Porticello, a small fishing community in Sicily. Investigators want to inspect the hull, but the salvaging process that had started this month came to a halt last week after one of the divers died while working underwater. The basic finding of the report is that storm gusts striking the super-tall mast, which rose 237 feet, and its rigging, were sufficient to capsize and sink the vessel in minutes. The wind forces were powerful enough to knock over the yacht even though the sails were furled at the time, investigators found. Those calculations, with slightly different technical assumptions, closely follow a study by Guillermo Gefaell, a Spanish naval engineer, and one of his colleagues, Juan Manuel López, which was first reported by The Times. “The most important thing is that that vessel was not prepared to handle a wind of 60 knots or more,” Mr. Gefaell said in an interview on Wednesday, referring specifically to when the wind strikes the boat from the side, the sails are furled and the keel is up. “The crew could have done nothing. They did a lot, with the people that they saved.” According to analysis of the weather at the time of the accident, the winds likely reached speeds of at least 64 knots, or 74 miles an hour, enough to capsize the boat. The report also said that “tornadic waterspouts and downdrafts were possible.” The 10-page report is written in dry, technical language. Still, it delivers a sense of the impending doom. The drama began last June after Mr. Lynch was acquitted in a high-stakes criminal trial in which he was accused of fraudulently inflating the value of his software company when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. To celebrate his win, he organized several cruises on the Bayesian, a gleaming blue, 184-foot-long superyacht that drew stares wherever it went. The boat was registered in the United Kingdom, one of the reasons British authorities are investigating. On Aug. 14, according to the report, the Bayesian set sail from the port of Milazzo in Sicily. Twelve passengers and 10 crew members were aboard. The cruise was set to end on the morning of Aug. 19. On the last night, the Bayesian’s crew received warnings of thunderstorms and decided to motor toward Porticello, which lies on a sheltered cove. The Bayesian’s captain, James Cutfield, an experienced New Zealand skipper, told his deckhands to wake him if the winds increased above 20 knots, or 23 miles per hour. At 3 a.m. on Aug. 19, just a few hours before Mr. Lynch and his guests were supposed to get off the yacht and head home, the deckhand on watch saw thunderclouds moving closer, the report said. At 3:55 a.m., the deckhand, Matthew Griffiths, who is in his early 20s, recorded a video of the approaching storm and posted it to Instagram. He noted the wind had increased to 30 knots — 10 more than the threshold for waking the captain. At 4 a.m., he woke the captain. That began an intense scramble among the crew and guests. According to the report, the chief engineer readied the boat to maneuver into the wind, which would make it more stable. The captain rushed up to the fly bridge, from where he could steer. Angela Bacares, Mr. Lynch’s wife and the Bayesian’s owner, left her cabin and headed to the bridge to check if the taxis arranged for 8 a.m. that day would have to be canceled because of the weather. The wind suddenly increased, the report said, and before the captain had a chance to turn the boat in the right direction, it “violently heeled over to 90 degrees.” In the next few minutes, the superyacht sank. Several crew members were initially trapped underwater in air pockets but managed to free themselves and swim clear of the vessel. They then plucked passengers from the sea and pulled them onto a life raft, where they helped bandage wounds. The survivors were soon rescued by another yacht in the cove, an old, converted tugboat that weathered the storm just fine. An operating manual on board the Bayesian, called the “stability book,” did not contain critical data that the boat was dangerously prone to capsizing if it was struck by high winds while at anchor. In that condition, the boat’s guard was essentially down, with its retractable keel raised and engine vents open, which could let in water with the boat on its side. Investigators also found that the so-called “angle of vanishing stability” — the angle at which the boat can no longer right itself — was 70.6 degrees, far less than for many sailboats that can tilt all the way on their sides, to 90 degrees or more, and still recover. Mr. Roberts said the Bayesian’s design was “sadly lacking.” The Italian Sea Group, a shipbuilding company that bought Perini Navi, the makers of the Bayesian, declined to comment. A representative for the Lynches said the family wasn’t commenting either. The report made no mention of the manufacturer’s claim, repeated for weeks, that a large hatch on the left side of the hull had been inappropriately left open by the crew, allowing water to rush in and sink the ship. The report made it clear that the ship sank on its right side and that the crew closed a number of hatches when the storm hit. The family of Recaldo Thomas, the cook who died, known as Rick, said they were troubled by the findings. They said in a statement provided by their lawyer that the report outlined a series of failures — “failures in the design, safety certification and seaworthiness of the Bayesian, as well as the management by some of the crew.” The Thomas family said that they “firmly believe that Rick died doing his job, and that his death was preventable.”

A National Weather Service office in eastern Kentucky was scrambling to cover the overnight forecast on Friday as severe storms were moving through much of the eastern United States, according to the union that represents the department’s meteorologists. Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees, said the office in Jackson, Ky., was one of four that no longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk that is reshaping the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Fahy said on Friday that because of the threat for flooding, hail and tornadoes facing eastern Kentucky, the Weather Service had to find forecasting help for the office. A spokeswoman for the Weather Service said the Jackson office would be relying on nearby offices for support through the weekend. Multiple rounds of storms passed through eastern Kentucky on Friday morning and afternoon, and the overnight hours were expected to be stormy. A line of thunderstorms was forecast to sweep the region overnight, whipping up damaging winds and large hail. There is also a chance for isolated supercells, long-lasting storms that can deliver even stronger winds and bigger hail than typical thunderstorms and also generate tornadoes. Much of Kentucky, including a portion of the eastern section, is within the bull’s-eye of an area under what the Storm Prediction Center calls a “moderate” threat — a four out of five in its levels of risk — of severe thunderstorms. “It’s very rare that we see a moderate risk in our area, so I think people are aware,” said Jane Marie Wix, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in Jackson. By late Saturday morning, quieter weather and drier conditions are expected and will most likely continue into Sunday morning, before a chance for additional storms arrives close to the borders of Virginia and Tennessee by the middle of the day. It is not unusual for a forecasting office to rearrange staff members for extreme weather. But until recently, most would have at least two or three people scheduled around the clock. Three other offices, in northwestern Kansas, Sacramento and Hanford, Calif., also no longer have forecasters overnight, Mr. Fahy said, and four more, in Cheyenne, Wyo., Marquette, Mich., Pendleton, Ore., and Fairbanks, Alaska, are days away from the same fate. “For most of the last half century NWS has been a 24/7 operation — not anymore,” Mr. Fahy said. Nearly 600 people have left the Weather Service in recent months, through a combination of layoffs and retirements, after the Trump administration demanded that it and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, make significant cuts. The Weather Service’s 122 forecasting offices have traditionally operated 24 hours a day, with each one responsible for monitoring the weather in its region. Because of the staffing cuts, some offices have also curtailed the twice-daily launches of weather balloons that collect data that fuels daily forecasts and forecast models. An agreement last month between the Weather Service and its employees’ union warned of “degraded” services as more people leave, and five of the department’s former directors recently wrote an open letter saying they feared the cuts had been so deep that lives would soon be endangered. Kim Doster, a spokeswoman for NOAA, confirmed this week that “several local NWS offices are temporarily operating below around-the-clock staffing.” Editors’ Picks Rocking Pink and Ready to Party A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment Take It Outside! 24 Easy-to-Pack Recipes for Summer Picnics, Beach Days and More She said the Weather Service “does not anticipate a significant impact in services as we work to mitigate potential impacts and direct other regional offices to provide additional support.” The Weather Service has scrambled recently to reorganize staffing, sending forecasters to the offices most deeply affected by the losses. Balloon launches resumed in Omaha after the Nebraska congressional delegation announced that it had persuaded the White House to restore some of the staffing that had been lost there.

Flooding on the US Northeast coast has risen significantly as a critical network of Atlantic Ocean currents weakens, according to a new study — an alarming glimpse into the future as some scientists warn the current system could be just decades from collapse. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, known as the AMOC, works like a vast conveyor belt, transporting heat, salt and freshwater through the ocean and influencing climate, weather and sea levels around the planet. Coastal flooding is caused by a cluster of factors, chief among them climate change-driven sea level rise, but the AMOC also plays a critical role in the Northeast, according to the study published Friday in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Scientists used data from tide gauges — instruments which monitor sea level change — combined with complex ocean models to calculate how the AMOC has affected flooding in the region over the past decades. They found between 2005 and 2022, up to 50% of flooding events along the northeastern coast were driven by a weaker AMOC. Drilling down, that means AMOC-driven sea level rise contributed to up to eight flood days a year over this period. The models used by the scientists also give a glimpse into the future, allowing them to forecast coastal flooding frequency in the Northeast up to three years in advance, according to the study. The idea that the AMOC is influencing sea level rise in this region is not new, but this study is the first to find it’s substantially affecting flood frequency, said Liping Zhang, a study author and project scientist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are two main reasons why the AMOC affects sea level rise, said David Thornally, professor of ocean and climate science at University College London, who was not involved in the research. A strong AMOC is typically associated with dense deep water that flows along the western boundary of the North Atlantic. When the AMOC weakens, water becomes less dense, literally taking up more space and fueling sea level rise. A weaker AMOC also affects the flow of the Gulf Stream, causing water to flow back onto the coastal shelf and increasing sea level rise at the coast. Rising seas are a huge and urgent issue for society as the climate warms, making it vital to better understand how it’s being affected, Zhang told CNN. Coastal flooding can “reshape the coastal environment… (and) poses threats to both lives and infrastructure in coastal regions,” she said. The findings will be very useful for helping society better predict and plan for costly and devastating flooding events, UCL’s Thornally told CNN. “A study like this is a good way to demonstrate the day-to-day impacts of changes AMOC, rather than invoking dramatic scenes from Hollywood disaster movies which are exaggerated and thus easily dismissed,” he told CNN, referring to the movie The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts the world plunging into a deep freeze after the AMOC collapses. As the research relies on climate models, the results will depend on how well these represent the physics of the real world, he cautioned. “The high resolution means it probably does a good job — and it can mimic observed sea-level patterns — but it won’t be perfect,” he said, especially as this is a complex area of the ocean where different currents meet. Gerard McCarthy, an oceanographer at Maynooth University in Ireland, also not involved in the research, said the study is significant because it shows “how AMOC can help predict sea level extremes along this coast.” A slew of recent research has pointed to signs the AMOC could be on course to significantly weaken over the next decades as climate change warms oceans and melts ice, disrupting its delicate balance of heat and salinity. This would have catastrophic planetary impacts, including on sea level rise. “The science is still not clear,” McCarthy said, but a collapse would be a “high-impact event and it is critical that we know what to expect.”

The Atlantic Ocean has a toxic seaweed problem. Floating in brown islands of algae, this year’s sargassum bloom has already broken its own size record by millions of tons — and the growing season isn’t done yet. Now stretching across some 5,500 miles of ocean, the annual bloom is more than just an eyesore: Sargassum hurts ecosystems and economies wherever its overgrown arms reach. And they are spreading into Florida’s waterways, coating marinas and beaches in the Miami area. “Sargassum goes from being a very beneficial resource of the North Atlantic to becoming what we refer to as … a harmful algal bloom, when it comes ashore in excessive biomass,” said Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. “What we have seen since 2011 are excessive inundation events all around the Caribbean region, the Gulf, as well as the South Florida region,” explained LaPointe, who has studied the seaweed for decades. For more than a decade, Atlantic coastal communities have been inundated by more and more sargassum. Images of white sand beaches stretching into azure waters have been altered by the toxic and putrid invasion. In the water, it’s home to larvae and other organisms that can irritate the skin of any passing swimmers. As it rots on shore, it emits harmful gases— an infamous stench. It’s a blight on beaches that repels tourists during the high-travel season, ultimately hurting towns that rely on tourism to fuel their economy. Rising ocean temperatures due to human-caused climate change have spurred this sargassum surplus, supercharging the seaweed. In April, the University of South Florida estimated this year’s bloom is already at 31 million tons — “40% more” than the previous record from June 2022, according to LaPointe. The sargassum bloom itself is not a new phenomenon. It’s long provided a home to species from sea turtles to fish as winds and tides push it from the coast of West Africa toward Brazil, up into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. “Sargassum has been around for eons. Colombus ran into it right in the Sargasso Sea,” La Pointe told CNN. “But what we are seeing now is above and beyond what we had historically.” Sargassum’s growth is also being driven by an excess of nitrogen in the water, LaPointe said — and that’s a key factor behind this year’s monster bloom. Some nitrogen may be coming from the atmosphere, carried in the air from the burning of fossil fuels or dust from the Sahara Desert. But there’s one major source: agricultural fertilizers. Used in the American heartland as well as in the Amazon basin where there’s been rapid deforestation for farming, the nitrogen-rich fertilizers are likely making their way into the Mississippi and Amazon Rivers as runoff, which then carries it into the Atlantic. And the Amazon basin has notched its lowest water levels on record amid two straight years of extreme drought — the worst since records began being kept in 1950. “What happens when you have a severe drought in the world’s largest watershed? You get all this organic matter that dries up. Plants dry up and die. And then, when the rain hits, what happens? All those nutrients wash out,” LaPointe hypothesized, adding that “first flush” events like this are full of concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus at peak levels, which go on to feed the bloom’s growth explosion. Toxic to tourism Unsurprisingly, the constant inundation of stinky, brown seaweed along the coast is not good for economies driven by tourism. This year’s bloom has already been making an appearance along Florida’s east coast, from the Keys to Saint Augustine, according to reports on a sargassum monitoring site, and southeastern Florida could see more in the coming weeks. The unwanted algae has also been spotted in popular destinations from Mexico to Barbados and farther south. “It’s not good for the environment, because what you’re smelling is hydrogen sulfide gas which is toxic,” LaPointe said. In some places, the beaches are cleared of seaweed from sunrise to sunset — an expensive endeavor combing up sargassum that inundates the coastline with every wave. Some of the machinery used to clean the beaches adds its own pollution to the scenic environment, too. “Resorts have gone out to their beaches with heavy equipment like front-end loaders, bulldozers, dump trucks to try to remove the sargassum to make those beaches available,” LaPointe said, as tourists don’t want mounds of sargassum to mar their tropical views. “The tourists check out, and they don’t come back.” This is a major tangle for places like Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which exists in the heart of the sargassum belt between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The problem has become so pronounced along the Riviera Maya, Mara Lezama, the governor of Quintana Roo, a state in the peninsula, has taken to social media to say her state is working with the Mexican Navy to collect the seaweed in the water while also installing a nearly 6-mile barrier in the water to protect Quintana Roo’s Mahahual, Playa del Carmen and Puerto Morelos beaches. The barriers, which are similar to booms that contain oil spills, are just over a yard deep and are designed to keep the seaweed from reaching the coast. As it approaches, the decaying sargassum can also create health problems for animals and humans. “When it arrives to the coastal area, it creates a shadow from the sun, so everything that is below — all the life is not getting sunlight. So, it starts to affect the ecosystem, coastal ecosystem, and many things die,” said Christian Appendini, professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. “Then when it gets over the beach, it starts to decompose. And when it decomposes, it releases all the contaminants it has.” Ammonia is another problem emitted by the decaying seaweed, LaPointe noted. The chemical compound “strips the oxygen out of the waters along our coastal ecosystems like mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds,” he said. “When you see the mass inundation events along the beaches, say in the Mexican Riviera, for example, you don’t see many fish or crabs,” LaPointe continued. “If you do, they’re probably dead because there’s no oxygen in that water.” Seaweed with a silver lining With sargassum cementing itself as an ongoing problem, some are looking into putting the seaweed to good use, instead. Appendini says research is ongoing to find ways to use the sargassum for biofuel, building bricks, or as membranes for cleaning water, since it is particularly absorbent. “They absorb all the heavy metals and contaminants in the water,” he told CNN. “That’s also why sargassum can be very toxic, because when it’s drifting in the ocean it’s just assimilating all the toxic elements in the ocean like cadmium, arsenic and other minerals and elements.” There’s also the possibility of carbon sequestration by sinking the excessive biomass to the bottom of the ocean. And there’s interest in possibly using sargassum to replace one of the globe’s other problems: plastic. “If we could harvest this sargassum and produce this biodegradable product that could replace single use plastics, that would begin to restore the oceans regarding the serious plastic pollution that we’re seeing,” LaPointe said. As the sargassum situation remains pervasive for more than a decade now, Appendini said the record-breaking bloom should make the world pay attention. “I think the sargassum blooms are like a warning that we need to be more mindful of how we are developing in this world,” Appendini said. “We need to change … how we do things.”

When you’re dealing with an immediate and serious health concern, your top priority is getting the most effective care as quickly as possible. But what’s the best place to find that care? Outside of obvious situations—like chest pain you think could be a heart attack—it can be confusing to know if you should get a ride to the emergency room or if you can head to your nearest urgent care. Here’s exactly when you should get emergency medical attention and when you can find what you need at an urgent care facility—or even at a virtual appointment. Advertisement When to go to the ER Emergency rooms are famous for their long wait times and expensive bills. But even if you’re motivated to avoid these inconveniences, it’s essential you go to the ER when it’s warranted. Go to the ER or call 911 anytime your symptoms could be life-threatening, according to UChicago Medicine. Experts say that if you or someone you are with is experiencing any of the following symptoms, you should go to an emergency department: Symptoms of a heart attack: chest pain, pain in the arm or jaw, shortness of breath Symptoms of a stroke: weakness on one side of the body, slurred speech, suddenly not being able to speak or see, weakness or drooping on one side of the body Significant trauma or injury, especially to the head or neck Severe lower abdominal pain Severe allergic reaction Serious burns Heavy bleeding Symptoms of sepsis: sudden confusion, high fever that does not get better with medicine Stopped breathing

Right now, it’s politically hot to spit out fluoride. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long railed against fluoride in public water supplies, claiming that it correlates to lower IQs in kids. (Research suggests that fluoride may be linked to lower IQ scores only at very high exposures.) Dozens of places in the U.S.—including Miami-Dade County, Fla., Peshtigo, Wis., and the entire state of Utah—have recently passed restrictions banning the fluoridation of public water supplies. Florida just announced plans to ban fluoride beginning July 1, 2025. Advertisement More states and localities may follow suit after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on May 13 that it is taking steps to remove ingestible fluoride supplements prescribed to children from the market. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also said in April that it’s studying the health risks of fluoride, and Kennedy has signaled that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop recommending water fluoridation. These concerns contrast with the views of most U.S. dentists and pediatricians, who advise that fluoride is safe in small doses and one of the few bright spots in the fight against cavities since its addition to water in 1945. About 1 in 4 kids have dental decay by kindergarten, with those at lower economic levels affected most. “I am concerned about the fluoride issue,” said Dr. Mike Simpson, a Republican congressman from Idaho, to Kennedy during a May 14 congressional hearing. “I've seen the benefits, having been a practicing dentist for 22 years.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services (HHS) Director under the Trump Administration, told Congress on Wednesday that he believes people “shouldn’t be taking medical advice from [him]”. The comments were made at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on May 14, as the committee reviewed the Trump Administration’s 2026 budget request, which was released on May 2. During the hearing, Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan asked Kennedy whether, if he had a child now, he would vaccinate them for measles. Advertisement “Probably for measles,” Kennedy said before backtracking. “I don’t think people should be taking advice — medical advice — from me….I think if I answer that question directly, it will seem like I'm giving advice to other people, and I don't want to be doing that.” Kennedy has been known for his controversial stances on vaccines, raising questions about vaccine safety. Since being tapped to lead HHS, he has tried to distance himself from the anti-vaccine movement and recently backed vaccination as a preventive tool during a measles outbreak. He still maintains however, that vaccines should be left to parents’ discretion, and has continued to spread misinformation about the measles vaccine. “Okay, but that’s kind of your jurisdiction, because the CDC [Center for Disease Control] does give advice,” Pocan responded. The CDC provides guidance on disease prevention, the development of best health practices, and providing access to immunizations.

As the number of extreme heat days continues to rise due to climate change, the high temperatures are taking a toll on our health—extreme heat has been linked to a range of health issues, including heatstroke, dehydration, and respiratory problems. But some people are at greater risk than others: warmer days are putting pregnant people at a higher risk for health complications. One Climate Central analysis published on May 14 found that extreme heat caused by climate change is posing dangerous risks for maternal health and birth outcomes. Between 2020 to 2024, the average number of pregnancy heat-risk days—defined as days in which maximum temperatures are warmer than 95% of temperatures observed in a given location—doubled in 222 countries. The greatest increase in heat-risk days occurred primarily in developing areas with limited access to health care, including the Caribbean, parts of Central and South America, and sub-Saharan Africa. “Pregnant women and their fetuses are more vulnerable to climate-related changes, especially around heat and extreme heat,” says Shruthi Mahalingaiah, associate professor of environmental, reproductive, and women's health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Mahalingaiah adds that, when it comes to extreme heat, someone who is pregnant might not be able to regulate temperatures in the same way as someone who is not. “This is because the pregnant woman’s body is already undergoing vast changes to accommodate supporting a fetus, and it’s harder to regulate and especially cool the fetal environment to a healthy range.” Enduring this extreme heat puts expectant mothers at a greater risk of developing high-risk conditions like pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, says Anna Bonell, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. It also impacts the fetuses' development. “The fetus doesn't have its own capacity to regulate its temperature, and we know that [much of] the development of the fetal organs are temperature sensitive,” says Mahalingaiah. Some studies have linked exposure to extreme heat with increased risk of birth defects including neural tube defects like spinal bifida. “We also know very clearly now that you have an increased risk of pre-term birth, still birth, smaller babies, as well as congenital abnormalities [when exposed to extreme heat],” says Bonell. One 2024 study published by the journal JAMA Network Open found that the rates of preterm and early-term births increased when local temperatures were abnormally hot for more than four consecutive days. Pre-term births can have wide-reaching health impacts for a child. “A baby that's born pre-term has an increased risk of dying, and also then has an increased risk of multiple hospitalizations and ongoing illnesses,” Bonell adds. Extreme heat is also impacting the effectiveness of contraception and pregnancy tests—items which can be easily damaged by high temperatures, rendering them ineffective. One analysis from MSI Reproductive Choices found that, since 2011, an estimated 11.5 million women in 26 countries have had their access to contraception disrupted due to climate-related displacement. Advertisement And although climate change is impacting everyone, the health risks are greatest amongst marginalized communities. “Lower income populations [who have] less access to health care are going to be at a natural disadvantage for all things,” says Howie Wu, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. Individuals that don't have access to air conditioning and shade are more susceptible to heat-related complications, while those who live close to highways are likely to face greater exposure to pollutants. Other climate related stressors have also been linked to pregnancy complications. Air pollution has been found to increase the likelihood of high blood pressure during pregnancy, low birth weight, preterm birth, and negative impacts on fetal brain and lung development, according to the World Health Organization. And a 2020 study published in Environment International found that severe storms, like cyclones and hurricanes, could trigger early births, due to factors such as increased stress, environmental contamination, and disruption of health services. Advertisement The impact of extreme weather on accessing care can have a range of consequences. A December 2023 report published by XDI, a data driven organization that quantifies climate risks, found that human-driven climate change has increased the risk of damage to hospitals by 41%—and experts note that disruptions can have ripple effects. “In New York City, for example, Hurricane Sandy led to consequences when it came to the [ability to provide] prenatal care,” says Wu. “These extreme weather events have consequences on care providers that I think are underappreciated and probably understudied.” Experts all stress, however, that much more work needs to be done to understand the way our changing climate is impacting pregnancies and fetal development. “It's very important to think about the upstream and the downstream in the reproductive life cycle for pregnant people,” says Mahalingaiah. “And we have a lot more work to do to really understand it all.”