LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. (AP) — A speedboat went airborne and did a complete backward flip while racing at about 200 mph (322kph) before crashing into an Arizona lake.

Two racers inside the boat’s covered cabin survived the event, which saw the boat go over 30 feet (9 meters) in the air. They wore harnesses and helmets, and “were just a little banged up,” according to a social media post on Facebook by the Freedom One Racing team and an account by a race witness.

The Saturday crash took place on a 3/4-mile course (1.2 kilometer) at an annual speedboat race.

The flying boat still managed to cross the finish line and win the contest by registering a top speed of 200.1 mph (322 kph), Speedboat Magazine Publisher Ray Lee said.

Lee said the twin-hull Skater boat is designed to rise up and hydroplane across the surface of the water. Windy conditions and propeller adjustments called trims likely contributed to the boat taking flight, he said.

Lee says it’s an inherently dangerous sport, through courses have been shortened from a previous length of 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) that produced speeds in excess of 240 mph (386 kph). Safety precautions include reinforced cockpits with underwater diving gear.

Freedom One Racing released a video saying its boat operators got out safely and that the vessel was now back on a trailer. The video showed extensive damage to the boat, including splintered fiberglass.

Representatives for Freedom One Racing did not immediately respond to email and phone messages. The team emphasizes fundraising for charity.

SIMSBURY, Conn. (AP) — Sarah Loving had just returned home from lunch last Saturday with her husband and two young children when she looked out the window and spotted two bears walking across her backyard in Simsbury, Connecticut.

Her wildlife visitors didn’t really surprise her. In recent years, bears have been pretty common in Simsbury, a suburban community of 24,500, located about 12 miles (19 kilometers) northwest of Hartford, where overturned garbage cans are often found along the road on “trash day” after a bear has searched inside for a snack.

But when one of the bears stopped at her family’s wooden playset and began climbing up the stairs, Loving started filming. What came next, took her by surprise.

“He made it to the landing and then went down the slide, like he had done it before,” she said. In the video, the bear nonchalantly slides head first, its front paws breaking its fall in a pile of soft sand at the bottom. The bear then lays there for a few seconds, calmly looking around.

Loving said the pair hung out for a few more minutes before moving on to her neighbor’s yard. Their appearance lasted about 10 minutes.

“They seemed so comfortable on the playscape,” said Loving, whose family moved to Simsbury about two years ago, not knowing they might run across bears. “We just kept joking that they probably have been before, but we have not seen a bear go down playscape before, ever. That was a first.”

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — No, New England, that wasn’t a new strain of spring pollen coating your cars. It was dust carried across the country in a phenomenon known as “dirty rain.”

April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, but the light rain that fell across the region last Friday and Saturday brought dirt instead. Christian Bridges, a meteorologist with WGME-TV in Portland, Maine, was as perplexed as anyone until he checked the satellite imagery.

“You could see that dust got picked up in New Mexico two days before on Thursday by the same storm system,” he said. “It then brought it up into the far northern part of the U.S. and then eventually brought it all the way to New England.”

Strong wind brought the dust to an altitude of around 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), he said, below the level of rain clouds.

“So the rain kind of grabbed the dust as it was falling and brought it down to the ground,” Bridges said. “It’s kind of cool to think it was transported 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) across the country.”

Parts of Wisconsin, Michigan and the northern Great Lakes region also reported “dirty rain” or “mud rain” before it hit Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Bridges said such rain is unusual but not unprecedented and is similar to the way smoke from Western wildfires makes it way east.

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) — It’s spring in Detroit — warm weather, a few clouds, and a 100% chance of marshmallow downpours.

The source? A helicopter zooming above the green lawn of Worden Park on Friday, unloading sack-fulls of fluffy treats for hundreds of kids waiting eagerly below, some clutching colorful baskets or wearing rabbit ears.

The children cheered and pointed as the helicopter clattered by on its way to the drop zone. Volunteers in yellow vests made sure kids didn’t rush in and start grabbing marshmallows until after the deluge was complete.

For anyone worried about hygiene, don’t fret. The annual Great Marshmallow Drop isn’t about eating the marshmallows — kids could exchange them for a prize bag that included a water park pass and a kite.

The marshmallow drop has been held for over three decades in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan, hosted by Oakland County Parks.

One toddler, Georgia Mason, had no difficulty procuring a marshmallow at her first drop, her dad Matt said.

“Probably the most exciting part was seeing the helicopters. But once we saw the marshmallows drop, we got really excited,” Matt Mason said.

“And, yeah, we joined the melee,” he said, “We managed to get one pretty easy.”

Organizers said 15,000 marshmallows were dropped in all.

The helicopter made four passes, dropping marshmallows for kids in three age categories: 4-year-olds and younger, 5-7-year-olds, and those ages 8 to 12. A drop for kids of all ages with disabilities came later in the day.

“We do it because it’s great for community engagement,” Oakland County recreation program supervisor Melissa Nawrocki said.

“The kids love it,” she continued. “The looks on their faces as they’re picking up their marshmallow and turning in the marshmallow for prizes is great.”

CHELSEA, Mich. (AP) — Residents of all ages in a small Michigan community helped a local bookshop move each if its 9,100 books — one by one — to a new storefront about a block away.

A “book brigade” of around 300 people stood in two lines on the sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books’ former location directly to the correct shelves and alphabetized in the new building, down the block and around the corner on Main Street.

“It was a practical way to move the books, but it also was a way for everybody to have a part,” Michelle Tuplin, the store’s owner, said. “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this’ and ‘that’s a good one.’”

Momentum had been building since Tuplin announced the move in January.

“It became so buzzy in town. So many people wanted to help,” she said Tuesday.

Tuplin said the endeavor took just under two hours — much shorter than hiring a moving company to box and unbox them. She hopes to have the new location open within the next two weeks.

The bookstore has been in Chelsea, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) west of Detroit, since 1997. Tuplin has been owner since 2017 and has three part-time employees.

“It’s a small town and people just really look out for each other,” said Kaci Friss, 32, who grew up in Chelsea and has worked at the bookstore a little over a year. “Anywhere you go, you are going to run into someone you know or who knows you, and is going to ask you about your day.”

About 5,300 people call Chelsea home.

Friss said Sunday’s book brigade reminded her of “how special this community is.”

SAN DIEGO (AP) — As the ground shook from a 5.2-magnitude earthquake, a herd of elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park sprung into action to protect their young.

A video shot of their enclosure at the park Monday morning shows the five African elephants standing around in the morning sun before the camera shakes and they run in different directions. Then the older elephants — Ndlula, Umngani, Khosi — scramble to encircle and shield the two 7-year-old calves Zuli and Mkhaya from any possible threats.

They remain huddled for several minutes as the older elephants look outward, appearing to be at the ready, their ears spread and flapping — even after the rocking stopped.

The quake was felt from San Diego to Los Angeles, 120 miles (193 kilometers) away. It sent boulders tumbling onto rural roads in San Diego County and knocked items off store shelves in the tiny mountain town of Julian near the epicenter but caused no injuries or major damage.

But it spooked the elephants.

Once in a circle, “they sort of freeze as they gather information about where the danger is,” said Mindy Albright, a curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

Elephants are highly intelligent and social animals that have the ability to feel sound through their feet. When they perceive a threat, they often bunch together in an “alert circle,” typically with the young clustered in the center and the adults facing outward to defend the group.

In the video, one of the calves can be seen running for refuge between the adults, a group of matriarchs that all helped raise her. But the other calf, the only male, remained on the edge of the circle, wanting to show his courage and independence, Albright said. Meanwhile, the female elephant, Khosi, a teenager who helped raise him along with his biological mother, Ndlula, repeatedly tapped him on the back with her trunk, and even on the face, as if patting him to say, “Things are OK,” and “Stay back in the circle.”

Zuli is still a baby and is coddled as such, Albright said, but his role will change over the next few years as he becomes a bull and moves to join a bachelor group while the female elephants stay with the family unit for their entire lives.

“It’s so great to see them doing the thing we all should be doing — that any parent does, which is protect their children,” Albright said.

About an hour later when an aftershock hit, they briefly huddled again and then dispersed once they determined everyone was safe.

KOKOMO, Miss. (AP) — Myrtle, a cherished pet tortoise, has been reunited with its family in Mississippi weeks after disappearing during a deadly tornado outbreak in March.

“He’s been through a lot,” said Myrtle’s grateful owner, Tiffany Emanuel. “I know that he knows just as much as I do that every step of the way I’m going to be there helping him, caring for him, making sure he gets, you know, the help that he needs.”

The Emanuel family fled their home in the rural Kokomo area as a tornado hit on March 15. They returned to find two pine trees had fallen on top of their tortoise’s backyard home.

Myrtle was missing.

Weeks later, a neighbor found the injured tortoise. He was taken to the Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue for medical treatment on April 4.

“The lady who found the tortoise called me and she said she had run into the owners,” said Christy Milbourne, the organization’s founder and codirector. “She said, ‘I think they’re going to be calling you.’ So, I was excited, and then the owners did call and say, ‘Yeah, that’s my tortoise.’”

Emanuel is now nursing Myrtle back to health.

“It feels good to kind of have some kind of happy out of so much sad and grief and loss,” Emanuel said.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) — Animal lovers now have a place to hang out with the “it” animals of the moment — big furry rodents.

In the back of a real estate office building in what is known as America’s oldest city, capybaras are crawling into visitors’ laps, munching on corn on the cob and hunting for scratches from humans at The Capybara Cafe in St. Augustine, Florida.

“You give them lots of scratches and love,” said Stephanie Angel, who opened The Capybara Cafe late last year. “A lot of times they’ll climb on your lap because they’re very used to people, and if you’re really good at giving scratches, they’ll actually fall over. So that’s always our goal to get them so comfortable that they fall over.”

Since opening its doors in October in downtown St. Augustine, near the Flagler College campus, hundreds of animal lovers have visited the site to give the capybaras head scratches. Reservations are booked several months in advance by patrons like Leah Macri, who recently visited the northeast Florida location from Orlando with her daughter.

“Their fur kind of feels like straw a bit,” Macri said.

After entering a reception area with couches and an open pen of baby chicks, visitors are escorted into a smaller room in groups of a half dozen or so people. Blankets are placed over their laps, and three capybaras are brought into the room. Other animals like a skunk, wallaby and armadillo are also introduced into the room, and they crawl among the humans and into their laps. The cost is $49 per person for a half-hour encounter, and $99 for an hour-long encounter that involves the other animals.

Even though she had come for the capybaras, Macri enjoyed holding the armadillo the most.

“He was the cuddly, like the best. He was just the softest,” she said. “He was just very sweet.”

The capybara — a semi-aquatic South American relative of the guinea pig — is the latest in a long line of “it” animals to get the star treatment in the United States. During last year’s holiday shopping season, shoppers could find capybara slippers, purses, robes and bath bombs. Axolotls, owls, hedgehogs, foxes and sloths also had recent turns in the spotlight.

The web-footed capybaras can grow to more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) long and weigh well north of 100 pounds (45 kilograms).

Several zoos and wildlife parks across the U.S. offer encounters with capybaras, but Angel said none of them provide the intimacy with the animals that visitors get at the Capybara Cafe.

Angel said she plans to open another capybara cafe across the state in St. Petersburg, Florida, soon. The St. Augustine location doesn’t sell coffee or hot food, like a cafe implied in its name, but it does sell capybara-themed T-shirts, coffee mugs and stuffed animals.

The cafe was created to financially support the Hastings, Florida-based nonprofit Noah’s Ark Sanctuary Inc., an animal refuge, Angel said.

Chris Cooper, who visited the Capybara Cafe with his wife, was surprised at how rough and coarse the capybaras’ hair was.

“And I wasn’t expecting how affectionate they were,” said Cooper, who drove up 157 miles (253 kilometers) from Weeki Wachee to see the critters. “They enjoyed the hands-on rubs.”

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A Missouri foster mother has been charged with child abuse and endangerment as authorities investigate whether she traded an adopted daughter to someone in Texas for a monkey and mistreated other children in her care.

The 70-year-old woman from Winfield has been jailed on $250,000 bond since her arrest over the weekend, with her next court appearance set for next Tuesday. No attorney is listed for the woman in online court records. The 1,500-person town Winfield is about 45 miles (72.42 kilometers) northwest of downtown St. Louis.

Prosecutors wrote in asking for a cash-only bond that the girl’s mother was a foster or adoptive parent to more than 100 children. The filing said they had received information that some of those children also had suffered similar physical and emotional abuse.

The Associated Press is not identifying the woman in an effort not to identity her child.

The girl at the center of the case is in her teens. She told authorities she was beaten with wooden trim, shoes and a paddle, a detective with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office wrote in the probable cause statement. The girl said she tried to tell people what was happening but that no one believed her.

In February, a deputy who was working as a school resource officer in Missouri was contacted about the girl missing classes, the probable cause statement said. While investigating, the deputy was told of a rumor that the girl was traded for an exotic animal to someone in Texas.

The deputy asked authorities in Texas to check on the girl, and she was returned to Missouri, where child welfare officials had gotten a tip several months earlier that the girl was being abused.

Lincoln County prosecutor Mike Wood elaborated in an interview with that a witness described being asked to bring the child down to Texas and bring the monkey back in return. Wood said they will need to investigate further to see if that is credible.

“What was disturbing is that the idea that that was even a possibility, like how we could have a serious conversation that that even was something being considered or joked about is really kind of disheartening,” Wood told the station on Tuesday.

According to the probable cause statement, the girl said the woman she was staying with in Texas worked out of town and left her for days at a time to take care of exotic animals. The girl said she wasn’t subjected to sexual abuse or forced labor.

The woman told a detective she was friends with the girl’s adoptive mother and took her in to give the pair a break from each other. Charging documents describe the girl’s living conditions there as unsanitary and said she was inadequately supervised.

Wood didn’t immediately respond to a phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment. But the said in a Facebook post that more charges were expected as additional information becomes available. The post said authorities are now sifting through a decade’s worth of allegations of abuse.

“Numerous victims and witnesses have already contacted my office and I would encourage anyone else with information to continue reaching out to my office, as well as investigators,” the post said.

Baylee Watts, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Social Services, provided no information about the case, writing in an email that “information related to specific child abuse and neglect investigations is closed and confidential under Missouri law, except under very limited circumstances.”

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A man cannot redeem nearly $60,000 in chips from a now-defunct casino that he bought at an online auction because they were “pilfered” by an employee of a company who was supposed to destroy them, a New Jersey appellate panel has ruled.

The man tried to cash in the 389 chips in January 2023 with the state Treasury Department’s Unclaimed Property Administration, which was responsible for covering the redemption value of outstanding chips the Playboy Hotel and Casino had issued to patrons while in operation from 1981 to 1984. As part of its closing, the casino had transferred funds to the UPA to cover such redemptions.

The man told the UPA he had bought the chips — which were worth $59,500 — at an online auction and did not know their source. New Jersey State Police eventually determined that the casino had hired a company that was supposed to destroy the chips after it closed, but a former employee of that company “had pilfered several boxes of unused chips” sometime around 1990 and put them in a bank deposit box, the appellate panel noted.

The ex-employee told authorities that he later declared bankruptcy and forgot about the bank deposit box. The bank where the chips were stored opened the box in 2010 and confiscated the chips, eventually sending them to the auction house from which Hawkins purchased them.

The UPA rejected the man’s claim in June 2023, noting the chips had not been issued to patrons in the normal course of casino operations.

The man appealed the decision, claiming in part that the UPA had relied on insufficient evidence and acted arbitrarily and capriciously, But in its ruling issued April 1, the appellate court said the man was not entitled to the funds because he did not present chips that had been issued by the casino.

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (AP) — A pair of critically endangered, nearly 100-year-old Galapagos tortoises at the Philadelphia Zoo have become first-time parents.

In an announcement Friday, the zoo said it is “overjoyed” at the arrivals of the four hatchlings, a first in its more than 150-year history. The babies are the offspring of female Mommy and male Abrazzo, the zoo’s two oldest residents.

The quartet is being kept behind the scenes inside the Reptile and Amphibian House for now, “eating and growing appropriately,” the zoo said. They weigh between 70 and 80 grams, about the weight of a chicken egg. The first egg hatched on Feb. 27 and more that still could hatch are being monitored by the zoo’s animal care team.

“This is a significant milestone in the history of Philadelphia Zoo, and we couldn’t be more excited to share this news with our city, region and the world,” President and CEO Jo-Elle Mogerman said in a statement.

“Mommy arrived at the Zoo in 1932, meaning anyone that has visited the Zoo for the last 92 years has likely seen her,” she said. “Philadelphia Zoo’s vision is that those hatchlings will be a part of a thriving population of Galapagos tortoises on our healthy planet 100 years from now.”

Mommy is considered one of the most genetically valuable Galapagos tortoises in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ species survival plan. She is also the oldest first-time mom of the Western Santa Cruz Galapagos species. The last clutch of such tortoises to hatch at an AZA-accredited zoo was in 2019 at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, South Carolina. The San Diego Zoo, Zoo Miami and Honolulu Zoo also have breeding pairs.

The zoo plans a public debut of the hatchlings on April 23, as well as a naming contest.

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (AP) — A 70-year-old man who plays in an area senior hardball league popped into Victus Sports this week because he needed bats for the new season. Plus he just had to take some cuts with baseball’s latest fad and see for himself if there really was some wizardry in the wallop off a torpedo bat.

Ed Costantini, of Newtown Square, picked up the custom-designed VOLPE11-TPD Pro Reserve Maple, and took his hacks just like MLB stars and Victus customers Anthony Volpe or Bryson Stott would inside the company’s batting cage and tracked the ball’s path on the virtual Citizens Bank Park on the computer screens.

Most big leaguers use that often indistinguishable “feel” as a qualifier as to how they select a bat.

Costantini had a similar process and thought the hype surrounding the torpedo since it exploded into the baseball consciousness over the weekend was a “hoax.” But after dozens of swings in the cage, where he said the balance was better, the ball sounded more crisp off the bat, the left-handed hitter ordered on the spot four custom-crafted torpedo bats at $150 a pop.

“The litmus test that I used was, I could see where the marks of the ball were,” Costantini said. “The swings were hitting the thickness of the torpedo as opposed to the end of the bat.”

More than just All-Stars want a crack at the torpedo — a striking design in which wood is moved lower down the barrel after the label and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin — and Costantini’s purchase highlighted the surge of interest in baseball’s shiny new toy outside the majors.

Think of home runs in baseball, and the fan’s mind races to the mammoth distances a ball can fly when slugged right on the nose, or a history-making chase that captivates a nation.

Of lesser interest, the ol’ reliable wood bat itself.

That was, of course, until Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger hit back-to-back homers for the New York Yankees last Saturday to open a nine-homer barrage. Victus Sports, known as much for their vibrant bats painted as pencils or the Phillie Phanatic dressed as a King’s Guard, had three employees at the game and they started a text thread where they hinted to those back home that, perhaps more than home runs were taking off.

Business was about to boom, too.

Yankees crowed about the torpedo-shape concept that had baseball buzzing — and pitchers grumbling. The scuttlebutt and headlines stoked their super curious peers, most with an eye out for any legal, offensive edge, into asking Victus and other bat manufacturers about the possibility of taking a swing with the most famous style of bat since Roy Hobbs grabbed a “Wonderboy.”

Torpedo bats are driving an unprecedented surge in lumber curiosity

Victus spent most of the last 14 years trying to help shape the future of baseball. The company’s founders just never imagined that shape would resemble a bowling pin.

“It was the most talked about thing about bats that we ever experienced,” Victus co-founder Jared Smith said.

Victus isn’t the only company producing the bulgy bats, but they were among the first to list them for sale online after the Yankees’ made them the talk of the sports world. The torpedo bat took the league by storm in only 24 hours, and days later, the calls and orders, and test drives — from big leaguers to rec leaguers — are humming inside the company’s base, in a northwest suburb of Philadelphia.

“The amount of steam that it’s caught, this quickly, that’s certainly surprising,” Smith said. “If the Yankees hitting nine home runs in a game doesn’t happen, this doesn’t happen.”

Victus was stamped this season as the official bat of Major League Baseball and business was already good: Phillies slugger Bryce Harper is among the stars who stick their bats on highlight reels.

But that torpedo-looking hunk of lumber? It generated about as much interest last season in baseball as a .200 hitter. Victus made its first torpedoes around 2024 spring training when the Yankees reached out about crafting samples for their players. Victus, as dialed-in as anyone in the bat game, only made about a dozen last season, and about a dozen more birch or maple bats this spring.

This week alone, try hundreds of torpedoes.

“Every two minutes, another one comes out of the machine,” Smith said.

Who knew there would be a baseball bat craze?

On a good day, Victus makes 600-700 bats, but the influx of pro orders — the company estimates at least half of every starting lineup uses Victus or Marucci bats — has sent production into overdrive. The creation of a typical bat is usually a two-day process, but one can be turned around without a finish in about 20 minutes. Victus crafted rush-order bats Monday morning for a few interested Phillies and dashed to Citizens Bank Park for delivery moments before first pitch. All-Star third baseman Alec Bohm singled with one.

Stott tested bats at the hit lab down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, churning through styles until the company found the right fit.

“They connect all these wires to you, and you swing 1,000 bats,” Stott said. “And they kind of tell you where you’re hitting the ball mostly.”

Rookie of the year?

Here’s the surprising part of the torpedo bat: For all its early hype, the bat is no rookie in the game.

The lethal lumber has been used by some sluggers in baseball for at least a year or two only, well, no one really noticed. Giancarlo Stanton and Francisco Lindor used torpedoes last season. Other players experimented with it and no one — not the bulk of other players or journalists or fans — ever really picked up on the newfangled advance in hitting innovation.

Smith said only “a few baseball junkies” inquired about the bats.

“I think it’s just one of those things that until you’re looking for it, you might not see it,” Smith said. “Now when you look at pictures, you’re like, oh yeah, it’s a torpedo.”

Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees front-office staffer who now works for the Miami Marlins, was credited as the one who developed the torpedo barrel to bring more mass to a bat’s sweet spot.

A member of Victus’ parent company, Marucci Sports, worked with Leanhardt in a Louisiana branch of their hit lab last year to get the bat off the ground and into the hands of big leaguers.

“I think getting past the shape being different was the hardest barrier,” Smith said. “Then the team goes out and hits those home runs like they did and everyone is willing to try it.”

Before last weekend, Victus had no plans to mass produce the bat, making it only available to professionals.

Now, Smith said, “I think it’s our job to kind of educate the public in what’s out there.”

The odd shape off the bat — like making a sausage, the meat is simply pushed down the casing — has little to no effect at Victus on the dynamics of making a baseball bat. The cost is the same as a standard bat, too, with a sticker price starting at around $200. Only the slogan is punched up: Get your hands on the most-talked about bat in the game.

The bat kings deliver their biggest hit yet

Victus was created by Smith and Ryan Engroff in a Blackwood, New Jersey, garage in 2012 and exploded in popularity over the last decade thanks in the large part to its bat art. Bruce Tatum, an in-house artist known as “The Bat King,” calls his memorable designs such as the No. 2 pencil and notably used in the Little League Classic “swingable art.” The Victus walls look straight out of an art gallery, only instead of classic paintings, rows and rows of colorful bats emblazoned with everything from Harper’s face to Gritty’s eyes are on display.

“Normally people are here to talk about the Bat King,” Smith said, laughing.

He was busy, sketching ideas for next year’s bats for the baseball All-Star game in Philadelphia.

“Bruce’s cheesesteak bat, I’m just telling you, is going to be the talk of the town,” Smith said. “I guarantee it.”

Victus has over 300 employees and 60 alone inside their King of Prussia headquarters. The company has outgrown its base and is busting at the seams, and when a bat suddenly goes viral, “all our seams are exposed.”

The folks at Victus — who previously have experimented with NFL’s tush push, a fresh wrinkle that some might try to legislate out of the game.

MLB has relatively uncomplicated bat rules, stating under 3.02: “The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.” It goes on to state there may be a cupped indentation up to 1 1/4 inches in depth, 2 inches wide and with at least a 1-inch diameter, and experimental models must be approved by MLB.

The torpedo is 100% legal.

Year after year, Victus’ bat business has picked up. Jonny Gomes used a Victus bat when he went deep in the 2013 World Series and Harper stamped the company as a major player when he played for Washington and swung a “We The People” bat and tossed it in the air to win the 2018 Home Run Derby.

“Our product kept getting better and it got to the point where he probably felt like we had the best bat, and we felt like we had the best bat,” Smith said.

Does it work?

There’s not enough data yet to truly know how much oomph — or hits and homers — a torpedo bat may help some hitters. Cincinnati’s Elly De La Cruz picked one up for the first time Monday and had a single, double and two home runs for a career-high seven RBIs.

Not all hitters are believers —- or at least feel like they need to tinker with their lumber.

Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who hit an AL-record 62 homers in 2022 and 58 last year en route to his second AL MVP award, declined to try the new bat, asking, “Why try to change something?” Phillies All-Star shortstop Trea Turner said the hoopla was “blown out of proportion.”

“You’ve still got to hit the ball,” Turner said.

Turner, though, said he was open to trying the torpedo.

Arizona pitcher Zac Gallen grew up a Mark McGwire fan and compared the fad to the bloated barrel used by the retired St. Louis Cardinals’ slugger’s old Nerf bat.

“The concept seems so simple. For it to take this long is wild,” Gallen said.

No matter. The bat is here today and not going anywhere — except perhaps flying off the shelves.

“For bats to be the hot topic out in the zeitgeist is cool,” Smith said. “It’s kind of like our time to shine, in a way.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s “bodega cats” are beloved fixtures in the Big Apple — but they’re on the wrong side of the law.

The convenience store cats that live at many of the city’s bodegas and delis look innocent enough, spending their days lounging in sun-soaked storefronts or slinking between shelves of snack foods as they collect friendly pets from customers.

Officially, though, most animals from stores that sell food, with bodega owners potentially facing fines if their tabby is caught curling up near the tins of tuna and toilet paper.

The pets’ precarious legal position recently came into the spotlight again when a petition circulated online that advocated for the city to shield bodega cat owners from fines, racking up more than 10,000 signatures.

But inspecting bodegas is a state responsibility. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets said in a statement that its goal is to ensure compliance with food safety laws and regulations, though it noted that inspectors aim to offer “educational resources and corrective action timelines and options” before looking at fines.

Many fans argue that the cats actually help keep the stores clean by deterring other ubiquitous New York City creatures, like rodents and cockroaches.

However, some shopkeepers say the felines’ most important job is bringing in customers.

At one bodega in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a fluffy gray and white cat named Mimi has become even more of a star attraction after a customer posted a video of her to TikTok that was viewed over 9 million times.

Sydney Miller, the customer who shared the video, said the experience has helped her build a lasting rapport with Mimi’s caretaker, Asam Mohammad, a Yemeni immigrant who has only been in the U.S. for a few years.

“Ultimately, the cats are a symbol of community building and the special, unique type of connection that happens in a city like New York,” said Miller, a poet and digital content producer.

Mohammad said that one of Mimi’s offspring, a white furball named Lily, is also now a big hit with customers.

“He’ll play with anybody,” said Mohammad. “Before, it’s Mimi, but now all of them are famous.”

Another of Mimi’s kittens, Lionel, has taken up residence at a nearby bodega owned by the same family, where he is more than a salesman or a pest control technician.

On a recent evening, Mohammad’s cousin Ala Najl, who is Muslim, had been fasting for Ramadan since 5 a.m. and had another hour and 17 minutes to go. Feeling a bit restless, Najl decided to play with Lionel. He unrolled his red prayer rug, baiting the muscular cat into a friendly game of tug-of-war.

The playful tussle helped distract Najl as he fought through hunger pangs.

“Yes, he helps me for that,” Najl said.

At another Greenpoint bodega, shopkeeper Salim Yafai said his cat, Reilly, is so popular that one longtime customer even tried to buy him, asking Yafai for a price.

“I said $10,000. He said $1,000. I said, ‘No.’” Yafai said.

HONOLULU (AP) — A Hawaii boat captain who rebuilt her whale-watching tour business after losing three boats in the deadly 2023 Lahaina wildfire captured iPhone footage of her dog barking excitedly when a humpback swam near them over the weekend and poked its head out to greet Macy, a golden retriever.

Chrissy Lovitt and Macy, 11, were in a fishing boat about 2 miles (roughly 3 kilometers) off Lahaina on Saturday when they spotted a humpback whale in the waters.

“And he heard her barking and he just swam over to meet her,” Lovitt recalled Tuesday. “And it was the best day of her life.”

In the video, Macy is seen barking frantically as the whale nears the boat. The whale’s head emerges and it appears to turn and look at the excited dog.

“She’s been barking at whales her whole life, but they haven’t wanted to do anything with her,” Lovitt said.

Macy is Lovitt’s trusty companion when she leads a boatload of tourists to marvel at whales. “She loves the ocean,” said Lovitt, now a Maui boat captain for 25 years. “She grew up on it.”

Macy is “obsessed with sea life and whales,” Lovitt added. “She’s 11 and I know we don’t get forever with her. But this has been on her bucket list so I’m just super happy for her.”

Lovitt had just started a when the massive inferno wiped out most of Lahaina, including her three boats, equipment and vehicles. On the day of the fire Aug. 8, Lovitt and her partner were trying to secure their boats in the fierce winds when the flames arrived. They had no choice but to head out in the ocean on a boat. There, Lovitt said, they helped the U.S. Coast Guard rescue people who were forced to jump in the water to flee the flames.

They relaunched their business in December and have been setting aside free seats on tours for fire survivors, hoping whale-watching will help them heal from the tragedy.

Lovitt said she hopes business continues doing well until the end of this month, when the whales tend to return to Alaska.

Ophelia the escaped zoo otter is back home but Louie remains elusive — perhaps in search of a mate.

The two North American river otters escaped two weeks ago from the NEW Zoo & Adventure Park in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Ophelia was captured Friday night, the zoo said in a .

Her return was kept under wraps until Tuesday while she was held for observation. A veterinarian’s examination Monday cleared her for return to her enclosure.

However, she “may not always be visible to guests,” the zoo said. “Ophelia has always been a bit shy and enjoys tucking into things to take naps throughout the day.”

The mammals escaped through a hole in a fence during a snow storm.

Louie remains on the lam. “This is otter breeding season and we expect that, as a male otter, Louie is likely ranging a bit further from home than Ophelia did.”

It’s unlikely Louie is too far away, the zoo said. Otters are territorial creatures.

He’s undoubtedly safe — otters are native to the area — and poses no harm to humans.

The zoo has had help from a tracker, motion-activated cameras and reports from residents who see the critters, particularly those who are able to take photos or video of the animal.

SNOW HILL, N.C. (AP) — It had been decades since Greene Central High School’s band competed in North Carolina’s statewide competition for musicians. While band members hoped to do well, they weren’t prepared for the surprise they got.

It started when band director Andrew Howell solemnly stepped onto the bus where his students from the small school in eastern North Carolina were waiting after the contest on March 19. He told them they had been through a growing experience — comments that were met with groans. Heads dropped, anticipating the worst.

Then he pulled out a plaque awarding the band with a superior rating, the North Carolina Bandmasters Association’s highest ranking, setting off screams and cheers. The video of their celebration, recorded by trumpet player Haley Kinzler, has now been seen by millions after it was posted on TikTok and other social media sites.

“I didn’t expect to get a superior,” Kinzler told The Associated Press. “Halfway through, I thought it was going to be, like, a sad video.”

Just a few years ago, there were only about a dozen students in the band, which last competed in the competition in 1987.

Greene Central High School wasn’t alone in winning a superior rating at the event, which wasn’t a head-to-head matchup of schools. Howell said. But it was the first time his school’s band had scored that rating, he said.

Howell, who took over the program in 2019, said he took a few minutes to calm himself after learning how well his band had done and composed in his head a speech he had planned to give them. That went out the window when he stepped onto the bus, he said.

“I share in their excitement when they’re successful, and just seeing how excited they were for that — I think that was the most rewarding part of the entire experience,” he said.

A babysitter looked under a bed to reassure a worried child that there wasn’t a monster hiding there — and came face-to-face with a man who wasn’t supposed to be there, a sheriff’s office in Kansas said in a news release.

The 27-year-old was booked into jail this week after a struggle with the babysitter that knocked the child to the ground.

The Barton County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were called late Monday to the home near Great Bend, a city of around 15,000 in the western part of the state. The suspect was gone when they arrived, but the babysitter told them that the child had been complaining about a “monster” before she found the suspect.

The man once lived in the home, but that there was a protection from abuse order issued against him to stay away from the property, the sheriff’s office said.

Deputies searched but were unable to find the man until the next day, when he was captured after a foot chase, the news release said.

Online court records show the man had posted bond about 10 days earlier after he was charged with criminal threat, domestic battery and violating a protection from abuse order. Those allegations were alleged to have occurred in January and February.

But following his latest arrest, a judge ordered him jailed without bond. The sheriff’s office said additional requested charges include aggravated burglary, aggravated battery and child endangerment.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Thieves took eight Corvettes from the lot of a Kentucky automobile plant where the legendary muscle car is built, but officers recovered the vehicles and made an arrest, police said.

The cars were taken from the GM Bowling Green Assembly plant in southern Kentucky, the home of the Chevrolet Corvette since the early 1980s. The eight cars were valued at $1.2 million, police said.

Police said the thieves cut a fence at the plant to get the cars out. A man later arrested and charged with the theft of three cars said while being booked into jail that if he “would have made it back to Michigan, I would have been paid big,” according to a police report.

The first car was located Saturday when a woman at an apartment complex in Bowling Green called police to say she saw a man park a new Corvette with stickers on it at the complex and then walk away.

Police contacted the manager of the assembly plant, who checked the inventory and reported that eight Corvettes were missing, according to a Bowling Green Police report.

Police later located four more Corvettes at different locations.

The last three were found after officers received a call from a transporter driver who said he was asked to come to a location to pick up an older model Corvette to transport to Michigan. When the driver arrived, he saw three new 2025 Corvettes and told police the two men trying to move them were in a hurry. He also noticed damage on the bottom of the cars and called the transaction “weird,” according to the citation.

When police arrived, they detained a 21-year-old man after a chase and charged him with receiving stolen property, fleeing arrest and engaging with organized crime. Another man fled in a Jeep with Ohio tags, police said.

Bowling Green Police Public Information Officer Ronnie Ward said Tuesday that no other arrests have been made.

Two river otters, Louie and Ophelia, weaseled their way out of their Wisconsin zoo enclosure last week during a winter storm, appearing on security camera footage cavorting across the snow, as the search continued Tuesday.

The NEW Zoo & Adventure Park said the two North American river otters escaped through a small hole that they enlarged in a buried fence, and their flight was quickly noticed by zookeepers on their morning rounds.

But Louie and Ophelia don’t appear to have gone far, their tracks showed them exploring nearby bodies of water and returning to the zoo’s perimeter now and again, the zoo said in a news release.

Footage released by the zoo shows an otter leaving the stoop of a building and launching itself into a belly slide on the snow, its forepaws snapping to its side, nose leading the way and back legs thrusting for an extra boost.

It’s the undeniable “bounce, bounce, sliiiiide” of the otter, the zoo said in a Facebook post, and creates one of the more recognizable mammal tracks.

Louie and Ophelia are expected to stay close because otters are territorial creatures, the zoo said, adding their species are native to the area and capable of surviving, with the local ponds and streams offering food and shelter.

Search efforts include a hired tracker, motion-activated cameras and public calls to send in photos and video of sightings of the critters.

Reports of Louie and Ophelia have come in, along with some videos and photos, since their escape. One, which appears to be security camera footage, shows an otter gliding over the snow in a wooded area, its tail following the rut its body made in the snow.

Searchers are hoping Louie and Ophelia are seen in the same location at least twice, giving the zoo a place to search. The zoo said the otters are not a danger to the public, and likely wouldn’t approach a human.

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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) — A new thermal vent spewing steam in the air at Yellowstone National Park is gaining attention, mainly because it’s visible from a road rather than any significant change in the park famous for its thousands of geysers, hot springs and bubbling mud pots.

When Yellowstone’s roads open to car traffic in April, tourists will be able to view the new steam column from a pullout as long as the vent remains active. It’s located in an area about a mile (1.6 kilometers) north of the Norris Geyser Basin.

The thermal feature was first spotted by scientists last summer and inspired them to trudge across a marsh and measure 171-degree (77-degree Celsius) steam venting from the base of a wooded hill. A thin coat of gray mud confirmed the vent was new, according to by scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory overseen by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Mike Poland, scientist in charge of the observatory, said Monday that such features are often forming and constantly changing in Yellowstone.

“The feature itself is new. That there would be a new feature is, you know, mundane,” he said. “The noteworthy part … was just that it was so noticeable. But the sort of overall idea that there would be a new feature that formed is pretty normal.”

The new steam plume is located within a 200-foot (60-meter) area of warm ground and appears to be related to hot water that surfaced as a new feature 700 feet (215 meters) away in 2003.

The plume diminished over the winter. Whether it will remain visible from afar this summer, or be stifled by water in the vent, remains to be seen, geologists say.

Still, geological changes in Yellowstone draw interest because the park overlies a volcano that was responsible for powerful eruptions in the distant past. The volcano has had no lava eruption for 70,000 years and no major eruption for 631,000 years, however.

The volcano’s magma chamber between 5 and 10 miles (8 and 16 kilometers) under the surface heats the underground water that bubbles up as the park’s famous hydrothermal features. Only between 10% and 30% of the chamber currently holds liquid magma.

Despite Yellowstone’s sometimes dramatic geological events — including a hydrothermal explosion that hurled hot water and rocks and sent tourists running last summer — there is no sign the volcano will erupt again any time soon.

Yellowstone’s thermal features come and go, but the park’s most famous one, Old Faithful Geyser, is still going strong.

“There’s so many thermal features. Not only do they come and go, but they change,” Poland said.