deconstruct

Tens of thousands of mattresses that were sold exclusively at Costco stores have been recalled due to the risk of possible mold exposure.

Manufacturer FXI Inc. initially announced the recall of Novaform ComfortGrande 14-inch mattresses and Novaform DreamAway 8-inch mattresses in June and issued a joint press release with the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday. According to FXI, the recalled mattresses could have been exposed to water during manufacturing, leading to potential mold development.

Recalled mattresses were manufactured in a variety of sizes, from twin to California king, and ranged in price from $150 to $750. All of the Novaform mattresses were sold between January and June this year at Costco stores and on Costco's website in northwestern states, as well as California's San Francisco Bay area. Costco, according to the CPSC, is reaching out to known customers who purchased the recalled products directly as well.

The CPSC said FXI has received reports of 541 cases of mold on mattresses but no related injuries have been reported so far.

An embattled Louisiana police department has been hit with a second lawsuit alleging officers from a street crime unit dragged detainees to an unmarked warehouse dubbed the “Brave Cave,” where they were assaulted, stripped and subjected to body cavity searches.

The latest allegations against the Baton Rouge Police Department were detailed in a lawsuit filed Monday by Ternell Brown, a 47-year-old grandmother, who said she was taken to a “torture warehouse” after officers making a traffic stop found bottles of legal prescription medication in her car.

“She was forced to show officers that she was not hiding contraband in her vagina or rectum,” the Baton Rouge woman’s complaint stated. “After more than two hours, they let her go without charge.”Brown’s lawsuit, which also named the city and the parish of Baton Rouge and several officers as defendants, was filed a month after another resident, Jeremy Lee, filed a lawsuit alleging that he was taken in January to the “Brave Cave” and beaten by the officers.

The street crime unit called BRAVE, short for Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination, was disbanded after Lee filed his lawsuit, which included a body camera image of the 22-year-old perched on a chair in what appears to be a mostly empty warehouse.

"It’s essentially an unmarked interrogation warehouse where Baton Rouge citizens have been getting taken for years, strip-searched and sometimes beaten," Thomas Frampton, an attorney for Lee and Brown, said Thursday.

The officers named in the lawsuits "are well known for their brutality in the Baton Rouge community," Frampton said.

Lee was “left so badly beaten that the local jail refused to admit him until he was treated by a nearby hospital,” his complaint states. “There he was treated for broken bones and other injuries.”

Nearly three months into taking Ozempic for diabetes, Jenny Kent had already lost 12 pounds, and her blood sugar numbers were looking better than they had in a while.

Ozempic, the injectable drug approved for Type 2 diabetes, has taken the world by storm.

But for Kent something else changed after she started taking Ozempic.

"I was just constantly in a state of being overwhelmed," says Kent. "So my response to that was just I was just crying all the time. Sobbing, crying ... I still didn't put it together, so I kept ... taking my injections."

She's one of many people taking Ozempic and related drugs who describe mental health problems. But that side effect isn't mentioned in Ozempic's instructions for use, or drug label.

In July, the European Medicines Agency said that it was looking into the risk of thoughts of self-harm and suicidal thoughts with the use of Ozempic and similar drugs. As of July 11, the regulator, Europe's FDA, was evaluating more than 150 reports.

The FDA hasn't taken that step. For now, the agency is monitoring the situation. "We continue to conclude that the benefits of these medications outweigh their risks when they are used according to the FDA approved labeling," spokesperson Chanapa Tantibanchachai said in an email to NPR. She noted that weight-loss drug Wegovy, which contains the same active ingredient as Ozempic, semaglutide, includes a warning about suicidal thoughts on its label.

Even though the link between these drugs and mental health concerns isn't definitive, it's important that patients talk with doctors if they experience something unusual, says Dr. Jonathan Alpert, who chairs the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

"I always think it makes sense to take side effects like that seriously, particularly in drugs that are relatively new and that we're still learning about," he says.

Senate Republicans are predicting that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will need to reach out to House Democrats to get the votes to prevent a government shutdown at the end of next week.

GOP senators don’t think McCarthy will be able to unify his entire GOP conference behind any measure to prevent an Oct. 1 shutdown and will have to rely on Democrats to keep federal departments and agencies open.

But they predict the Speaker won’t reach out across the aisle until the last possible moment to avoid a backlash from House conservatives, who are threatening to offer a motion to essentially dump him as Speaker if he does not hew to their demands for major spending cuts.

The reality, they say, is that the only spending measure that can pass both the Senate and House is one that has bipartisan support.

A Wyoming ranch accused of abusing children and forcing them to perform manual labor lost its license earlier this year after state officials documented a litany of safety and sanitary violations. But the ranch found a way to stay open and will no longer need a license to care for children, a development that has alarmed youth rights advocates.

The Wyoming Department of Family Services in June revoked the group home license from Triangle Cross Ranch, a facility that claims it can help transform teenage boys from misbehaving rebels into “thoughtful, respectful, and responsible young men” for a $5,800 monthly fee.

The facility, which typically has five or fewer boys enrolled at a time, will now operate without a license because the owner said last month he was appointed guardian of the youth living there, a department spokesman said. The spokesman said the owner provided copies of the paperwork, which was filed in Wyoming.

And state officials will no longer conduct regular welfare inspections going forward due to another licensing exemption for ranches or farms that do not offer services to children who are homeless, delinquent or have an intellectual disability, according to the department’s rules.

“It’s incredibly troubling that they would have decided to go this route after losing their license to be a child caring facility,” said Donna Sheen, founder and director of the Wyoming Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit. She noted that the Department of Family Services will now need a specific allegation or complaint in order to investigate the ranch.

An NBC News investigation last year found that the ranch and Trinity Teen Solutions, a facility for girls run by the same family, had operated in rural Wyoming for years despite repeated complaints from youth of cruel and humiliating treatment. State inspectors documented numerous red flags at Triangle Cross Ranch, including misrepresenting its services, punishing boys for speaking with state officials and complaining about their treatment, and making children physically restrain each other.

Andrew Scavuzzo, who sued Triangle Cross Ranch over abuse he alleged took place at the ranch in 2012, said he’d been branded with a hot iron when he was a boy at the facility. He said he also had to haul dead animal carcasses, was forced by staff to huff gasoline and that boys had to box each other as punishment.

In April, a department official observed broken windows, and doors and lights that did not work during an inspection of the ranch. There was also a dead calf that had been lying in the yard for three days and the inspector witnessed a dog eating it. Youth were left alone while a staff member napped, inspection files show. Officials also noted that weapons, such as a large knife, and tobacco products were left lying unattended at the ranch.

The state found that one boy had to be taken to a hospital for self-harming after the ranch failed to give him his medication for 26 days. The ranch refused to take the boy back because he was too high risk, so he was sent to another group home, records show.

Inspectors found that Schneider, the ranch owner, had also moved the children to Montana earlier this year to hide them from state officials.

At the last inspection of the ranch in July, the state found additional violations, including an adult living in the children’s bunk house, lack of background checks, and one of two youth residing there without any bedding. Again, there was feces on the floor.

This time next year, a series of massive dams that block off the Klamath River will no longer exist. The soil and rocks originally dug and transported from a nearby mountain in the 1950s will be returned to their home and the river will run freely again.

The Iron Gate Dam, which opened in 1964 as the last of four dams that, at nearly 200 feet tall each, regulated the flow of the river and time releases for the local water supply in Northern California, is now part of the world’s largest dam removal and river restoration project. Iron Gate is scheduled to be the final stop for decommissioning crews.

Mark Bransom, the CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, said the river will be able to flow freely once the dam’s infrastructure is removed. He also said they have plans to help nature take back the area.

“As soon as the reservoir is drained, we’ll get out on the footprint there and begin some initial restoration activity,” Bransom said. “We want to stabilize the remaining sediments using native vegetation.”

In the age of extreme heat, record-setting drought and catastrophic flooding linked to climate change, there’s been a national push to “rewild,” a movement rooted in restoring nature to the state it was before human intervention, hoping this helps mitigate the effects of climate change.

A big part of that effort is centered around dams, many of which were originally constructed when infrastructural development took priority over environmental protection.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol warned on Wednesday that his country and its allies “will not stand idly by” if North Korea receives Russian help to boost its weapons of mass destruction – just days after the leaders of the two nuclear-armed nations held a closely watched summit.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Russia last week for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Ahead of the meeting US officials warned that the two leaders could strike a deal that would provide weapons for Moscow to use in its grueling war against Ukraine – and that could see sanction-hit Pyongyang gain access to vital Russian technology.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Yoon declared: “While military strength may vary among countries, by uniting in unwavering solidarity and steadfastly adhering to our principles, we can deter any unlawful provocation.”

He also called to reform the UN Security Council – of which Russia is a member – saying such a move “would receive a broad support” if Moscow did supply Pyongyang with information in exchange for weapons.

“It is paradoxical that a permanent member of the UN Security Council, entrusted as the ultimate guardian of world peace, would wage war by invading another sovereign nation and receive arms and ammunition from a regime that blatantly violates UN Security Council resolutions,” Yoon said.

A person inside a car with a license plate allegedly connected to the shooting deaths of a family of four in their Illinois home last weekend died Wednesday after trying to elude police in Oklahoma, officials said.

The male, whom authorities haven’t positively identified, crashed the vehicle while police in the Oklahoma city of Catoosa pursued it, and the vehicle caught fire, authorities said. The male was found dead in the driver’s seat with a gunshot wound, according to Chris Burne, deputy chief of police in Romeoville, Illinois.

A female passenger in the vehicle also had a gunshot wound, and she was listed in critical condition Wednesday, Burne said; the passenger’s name was not released.

The vehicle’s license plate, Burne said, is connected to a suspect in the weekend killings of two adults, their two children and their three dogs in Romeoville, some 30 miles southwest of Chicago.

Hours after discovering their bodies, police identified Nathaniel Huey Jr. as a suspect in the case and an unnamed female as a “person of interest,” Burne said at a news conference Wednesday.

The female person of interest was reported missing and endangered by family members on Tuesday evening. She was then entered into the Law Enforcement Agencies Data System, a police communications and information network, Romeoville police said.

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence yet of a wooden structure crafted by the hands of a human ancestor. Two tree trunks, notched like Lincoln Logs, were preserved at the bottom of the Kalambo River in Zambia. If the logs' estimated 476,000-year-old age is correct, it means that woodworking might predate the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, and highlights the intelligence of our hominin ancestors.

Archaeologists unearthed the logs at Kalambo Falls, on Lake Tanganyika in northern Zambia, a site that has been investigated by scientists since the 1950s. Previous excavations around a small lake just upstream from the falls yielded stone tools, preserved pollen and wooden artifacts that have helped researchers understand more about human evolution and culture over the span of hundreds of thousands of years.

But a new analysis of five modified pieces of wood from Kalambo is pushing back the earliest occupation of the site and giving researchers new insight into the minds of our Middle Pleistocene (781,000 to 126,000 years ago) ancestors.

In a new study published Wednesday (Sept. 20) in the journal Nature, researchers led by Larry Barham, a professor in the Department of archaeology, classics, and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool in the U.K, detail the wooden objects they unearthed. These include two that were found with stone tools below the river and three that were covered in clay deposits above the river level. These wooden artifacts survived over hundreds of thousands of years due to the permanently elevated water table.

Through luminescence dating of sand samples from the site, which involves measuring how long ago the sand grains were exposed to light, Barham and his colleagues found three clusters: a cut log and a tapered piece of wood dating to 324,000 years ago; a digging stick dating to 390,000 years ago; and a wooden wedge and two overlapping logs dating to 476,000 years ago.

Grammy- and Oscar-nominated indie musician Sufjan Stevens is relearning how to walk after the autoimmune disease Guillain-Barre Syndrome left him immobile, representatives confirmed to The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, Steven shared the news on his Tumblr page. In the post, he explained that he has been hospitalized, which is why he has been unable to participate in the promotion for his forthcoming album, “Javelin,” his first since 2020’s “The Ascension.” “Javelin” will be released on Oct. 6.

“Last month I woke up one morning and couldn’t walk. My hands, arms and legs were numb and tingling and I had no strength, no feeling, no mobility. My brother drove me to the ER and after a series of tests — MRIs, EMGs, cat scans, X-rays, spinal taps (!), echo-cardiograms, etc.,” he wrote. Neurologists finally diagnosed with him Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

“Luckily there’s treatment for this — they administer immuno-hemoglobin infusions for five days and pray that the disease doesn’t spread to the lungs, heart and brain. Very scary, but it worked,” he continued, adding that he spent about two weeks “stuck in a bed, while my doctors did all the things to keep me alive and stabilize my condition. I owe them my life.”

On Sept. 8, Stevens says he was transferred to an acute rehab to undergo intensive physical and occupational therapy, and to learn how to walk again.

Washington is reaching a consensus: the government will shut down in 10 days — and Republicans will bear the brunt of voter disgust over it.

With House GOP leadership on Wednesday again showing little progress in moving a stopgap funding bill to prevent a shutdown, officials have begun a two-pronged effort to prepare for a shutdown that seems less avoidable every day.

There is the official side of government, where the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget has been working with agencies to make contingency plans for when funding runs out. And there is the political arena, where party operatives are focused on a different goal: inflicting maximum pain on their Republican adversaries and seeking to pin them with blame for an interruption in federal services and paychecks for government workers.

While both sides will inevitably throw blame at the other, Republicans are feeling a keen sense of apprehension that their party will suffer badly should a shutdown transpire.

“We always get the blame,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a senior appropriator. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.”

A Malaysian man who sold a dozen black rhino and white rhino horns to a confidential source was sentenced to a year and a half in a U.S. prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York said. Teo Boon Ching, known as the "Godfather," had pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wildlife trafficking, the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said in a statement.

"As long as you have cash, I can give you the goods in 1-2 days," Ching, 58, told the confidential source during a meeting in Malaysia in 2019, according to prosecutors.

The Malaysia meetings lasted for two days, and during that time, Ching described himself as a "middleman" who buys rhino horns poached by co-conspirators in Africa and ships them to customers around the world, according to prosecutors. Ching also sent the source photos of rhino horns that were for sale.

Later that year, authorities directed the source to buy 12 rhino horns from Ching, which were delivered to the source in a suitcase. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lab confirmed two of the horns were from a black rhino, which the World Wildlife Fund considers to be critically endangered, and the other 10 horns were from white rhinos, which are not considered to be endangered but are instead "near threatened," according to the group.

Ching was arrested in Thailand in 2022 and eventually extradited to the U.S. According to prosecutors, he conspired to traffic approximately 480 pounds of poached rhino horns worth about $2.1 million.