In December, a mom on Long Island, New York, watched her young daughter get onto a school bus, then had to jump out of the way when a car came speeding past on the shoulder. That same month in Minnesota, a child leaving his school bus had to run to avoid being hit by a pickup truck.

Drivers nationwide continue to barrel illegally past stopped school buses, endangering children and caregivers — and sometimes worse. But some states have found it hard to enforce relatively new laws allowing on-board bus camera systems that record the violations.

Recent deaths during school bus stops include those of a parent and student in separate Texas crashes last year and of a high school student in Pennsylvania in 2022. They highlight continued careless driving around school buses despite flashing stop signs and obvious camera lenses. The recklessness may be part of a pattern of more aggressive driving noted by authorities that has caused more traffic deaths despite fewer miles driven overall since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A survey of school bus drivers last year, conducted by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, estimated 242,000 vehicles illegally passed school buses in a single day. That was up from the 232,000 estimate for 2019. That year, seven states passed laws to allow automatic camera surveillance to catch suspected violators.

Almost half of states have such laws now. Massachusetts and Oregon considered, but didn’t pass, similar legislation last year. A school bus camera program in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was held up last year amid debates in the state legislature over the size of fines and their impact on low-income communities.

But there are several reasons why enforcement might not have been as effective as intended.

Some safety authorities object to new camera laws that reduced fines and excluded license points and other more punitive actions allowed when the same violations are caught in person by law enforcement. Legislatures may have softened school bus penalties to gain consensus among skeptical lawmakers, authorities say.

Some states also are struggling with the limitations of cameras when it comes to enforcing laws requiring evidence police officers can see in person but cameras might not catch. The cameras might not show school bus markings mentioned in the law or whether students are actively getting on or off buses. Another technical issue: School bus cameras have flagged cars on different streets or in lanes separated by medians, where they’re not legally required to stop.

How it works

Typically, the automatic cameras are engaged when a bus driver turns on a flashing stop sign, triggering a computer program that detects violations and sends them to reviewers to check before mailing a violation notice. But the cameras can’t capture everything.

On New York’s Long Island, a state appeals court threw out a $250 ticket in November, saying evidence from bus cameras isn’t enough to prove a violation. Judges on the court said the camera did not establish that the school bus had correct markings or that it was actively picking up or dropping off passengers at the time of the ticket. That decision could endanger $25 million in annual fines from one county alone if other tickets are struck down.

In Pittsburgh, a district court judge told Stateline he dismisses most cases based on school bus cameras for insufficient evidence from the cameras.

Judge James Motznik said he also objects to the way Pennsylvania’s law, like most state laws allowing automatic camera evidence to identify bus-passing violations, undermines a traffic law that’s more punitive. The camera violations are issued as “civil complaints” with a lower fine and no loss of license points as required by the original traffic law against passing a stopped school bus.

“It was sold as a deterrent to enhance public safety,” Motznik said. “But it’s actually less of a deterrent. If a police officer witnessed this, there’d be a $500 fine, a license suspension, points toward losing your license. A camera sees the same thing, it’s $300 and goodbye.”

State legislatures sometimes have used less-punitive fines, without license points or suspensions, as a bargaining chip to reach agreement on camera enforcement such as school bus cameras, said Russ Martin, senior director of policy and government relations for the Governors Highway Safety Association.

“The thought was like, ‘We can make this more accepted by the public.’” Martin said. “But there’s another side to it. In some ways the points are more important than the fines for the worst violators — it means you can’t just pay your way out.”

Pennsylvania’s law on school bus cameras was updated last year partly to allow a lower-cost way for motorists to contest tickets, using a state hearing officer in a free process instead of a court that requires filing fees, said Jennifer Kuntch, a spokesperson for the state transportation department. Pittsburgh schools recorded more than 9,000 violations since the bus camera program began in July, the district announced last month.

On Long Island, the appeals court decision against the red-light camera evidence endangers not only Suffolk County’s program, which receives the $25 million in fine revenue a year, but also nearby Nassau County, where a class-action lawsuit is underway on behalf of 132,000 drivers with similar fines.

The appeals court ruling was vexing for local governments, said Paul Sabatino, an attorney and former Suffolk County legislative counsel. Cameras are a necessary part of enforcing the law against passing stopped school buses, he said.

“You can’t allow people to endanger children like that, and you can’t call out the National Guard to watch every school bus at every stop,” Sabatino said.

Many school districts use contractors such as Virginia-based BusPatrol, which claims 90% of the market for school bus cameras, with some competition from others such as RedSpeed USA and American Bus Video. The companies may include school bus stop-arm cameras within a package of other automated traffic enforcement.

Justin Meyers, president of BusPatrol, said the company already has addressed evidence questions in New York state by adding to its “evidence packets” the school bus markings and maps showing the bus is on an established route. Suffolk County is the company’s biggest customer, and BusPatrol has made a $40 million investment in equipping school buses there, Meyers said in an interview. It also operates in Pittsburgh.

The company uses computer algorithms and artificial intelligence to detect violations, which are then screened for accuracy by a BusPatrol employee before going to local law enforcement for a final decision on whether to issue a violation notice, Meyers said.

Few statistics available

There are few statistics on the extent of deaths and injuries from passing stopped school buses. Pennsylvania reviewed crash records at Stateline’s request and said 12 such crashes occurred in 2022 and 13 in 2021, with one death in each year — one a student, one a parent — and 23 injuries across both years. Those figures include a crash that killed a 16-year-old high school student in November 2022 as she was trying to board a school bus in York County.

Across the country, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found 53 fatalities, half of them school-age children, between 2000 and 2021 in accidents involving illegal passing of a school bus, according to an analysis requested by Stateline.

In Minnesota, school districts can apply for state funds to install school bus cameras. The Edina school district sought money last year after an “alarming” increase in bus-passing violations reported by bus drivers, along with two injuries to students, according to a press account in the local Sun Current newspaper. The district won $105,000 for cameras, a cost of about $4,000 per bus, and in January reported drivers had been ticketed for 70% of passing violations noticed by bus drivers, up from 5% without cameras.

In one of the Texas fatalities last year, a woman helping her child onto a bus in Upshur County was killed by a vehicle passing the bus, Sgt. Adam Albritton, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety, told Stateline. The crash was reported, a driver was charged with manslaughter, and police are reviewing footage from a video camera on the bus for evidence, Albritton said.

Texas was an early adopter of video cameras to catch school bus passing violations, commissioning a 2008 study on such cameras. The state did not include school bus cameras in its ban on automated traffic enforcement in 2019. Not all school districts participate, but Austin, Dallas and San Antonio are among those that do.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

HONOLULU — The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday that a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck just south of the Big Island of Hawaii.

The earthquake, which the USGS initially reported as magnitude 6.3 before downgrading it, was centered 11 miles south of Naalehu, Hawaii, at a depth of 6 miles. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no tsunami was expected.

Some shaking could be felt in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, which is about 200 miles to the north.

“Many areas may have experienced strong shaking,” from the earthquake that occurred shortly after 10 a.m. local time, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency posted on X. It also reiterated that there was no threat of a tsunami.

Big Island Mayor Mitch Roth was in Honolulu at a cardiologist appointment. “All of a sudden I felt like I was getting dizzy,” he said, thinking at first that it was the procedure and then realizing it was an earthquake. He immediately got on the phone with his emergency management officials.

“We’ll probably start hearing about damage in the next hour to an hour,” Roth said, pointing out that it was “a good sized earthquake” and that from what he’s heard, there is no tsunami threat.

Roth said he was headed to the Honolulu airport to try to get an earlier flight back to the Big Island.

Julia Neal, the owner of Pahala Plantation Cottages, said a mirror and brass lamp fell down during some forceful shaking. “We have a lot of the old wooden plantations homes and so they were rattling pretty loudly.”

Derek Nelson, the manager of the Kona Canoe Club restaurant in the Kona Inn Shopping Village in the oceanside community of Kona, on the island’s western side, said everyone felt it “big time,” but that there was no damage.

“I mean, it shook us bad to where it wobbled some knees a little bit. It shook all the windows in the village,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday slammed the report by a Justice Department special counsel into Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents that raised questions about the president’s memory, calling it “politically motivated” and “gratuitous.”

The report from Robert Hur, the former Maryland U.S. Attorney selected by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden found evidence that Biden willfully held onto and shared with a ghostwriter highly classified information, but laid out why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal charges, including a high probability that the Justice Department would not be able to prove Biden’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

The report described the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.” It noted that Biden could not recall defining milestones in his own life such as when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president.

Taking a question from a reporter at the conclusion of a gun violence prevention event at the White House, Harris said that as a former prosecutor, she considered Hur’s comments “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate.”

She noted that Biden’s two-day sit-down with Hur occurred just after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, where more than 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage — including many Americans.

“It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America,” Harris said, saying she spent countless hours with Biden and other officials in the days that followed and he was “on top of it all.”

She added that “the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”

Harris concluded saying a special counsel should have a “higher level of integrity than what we saw.”

Her comments came a day after Biden insisted that his “memory is fine.” and grew visibly angry at the White House, as he denied forgetting when his son died. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Friday that he will run for U.S. Senate, giving Republicans a prominent candidate who is well-positioned to run a competitive campaign for the GOP in a state that hasn’t had a Republican U.S. senator in 37 years.

The decision marks a surprise turnaround for Hogan, a moderate who had considered a presidential bid. During Hogan’s tenure as governor, he became a national figure as one of the rare Republicans willing to criticize Donald Trump. Last month, Hogan stepped down from the leadership of the third-party movement No Labels.

“My fellow Marylanders: you know me,” Hogan begins in a video released by his Senate campaign. “For eight years, we proved that the toxic politics that divide our nation need not divide our state.”

The former governor added that he made the decision to run for Senate “not to serve one party, but to try to be part of the solution: to fix our nation’s broken politics and fight for Maryland.”

“That is what I did as your governor and it’s exactly how I’ll serve you in the United States Senate,” Hogan said.

GOP leaders are eager to pick up the seat as they try to wrest control of the Senate from Democrats, who hold a slim majority and are defending more seats than Republicans in 2024.

In 2022, Hogan rebuffed an aggressive push from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans to run against Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen.

When he announced his decision not to run for Senate two years ago, Hogan expressed confidence he could win. “But just because you can win a race, doesn’t mean that’s the job you should do if your heart’s not in it. And I just didn’t see myself being a U.S. senator,” he said then.

The former two-term governor who left office early last year will be running for an open seat due to the retirement of Sen. Ben Cardin. Hogan made his Senate bid known just hours before Maryland’s filing deadline.

Hogan announced in March that he would not challenge Trump for the GOP’s White House nomination. Last month, he squelched speculation of a third-party presidential run and endorsed former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination for president.

The rarely open Maryland Senate seat already has drawn U.S. Rep. David Trone into the Democratic primary, as well as Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince George’s County in the suburbs of the nation’s capital. Trone, the wealthy founder of a chain of liquor stores called Total Wine & More, has poured $23 million of his own money into his campaign so far.

Seven Republicans have filed to enter the GOP primary, but none is as well known as the former governor. Hogan was only the second Republican governor to ever win reelection in Maryland, a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1.

He won his first term as governor in 2014 in an upset, using public campaign financing against a better-funded candidate. Running on fiscal concerns as a moderate Republican businessman, Hogan tapped into voter frustration over a series of tax and fee increases to defeat then-Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.

Hogan, who had never held elected office before, focused on pocketbook issues from the outset. He lowered tolls, an action he could take without approval from the General Assembly, long controlled by Democrats. But he also faced challenges, including unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015. Hogan sent the National Guard to help restore order.

In June of that year, Hogan was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma but continued working while receiving treatment. He has been in remission since November 2015.

Maryland’s last Republican U.S. senator was Charles Mathias, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1987. Mathias was known as a liberal Republican who often clashed with his party over issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights.

The Florida Supreme Court is hearing arguments Wednesday on whether a ballot measure to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution should go before voters in November.

It’s one of several states where abortion might be on the ballot this year.

There has been a major push across the country to put abortion rights questions to voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and removed the nationwide right to abortion.

Since that 2022 decision, most Republican-controlled states have new abortion restrictions in effect, including 14 that ban it at every stage of pregnancy. Most Democrat-dominated states have laws or executive orders to protect access.

Additionally, voters in seven states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont — have sided with abortion rights supporters on ballot measures.

It’s not clear yet how many states will vote on measures to enshrine abortion access in November. In some, the question is whether amendment supporters can get enough valid signatures. In others, it’s up to the legislature. In Florida, there’s legal wrangling on the details.

WHAT’S SECURELY ON 2024 BALLOTS?

MARYLAND

Maryland voters this year will also be asked whether to enshrine the right for women to end their pregnancies in the state’s constitution in a ballot question put before them by lawmakers last year. The state already protects the right to abortion under state law and Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1. Abortion is allowed in Maryland until viability.

NEW YORK

New York lawmakers agreed to ask voters to bar discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, pregnancy outcome and reproductive healthcare as part of a broader equal protection amendment. It would also bar discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin and disability. The language of the constitutional amendment does not mention abortion specifically. Abortion is allowed in New York law until viability.

WHERE ELSE COULD ABORTION BE ON THE BALLOT IN 2024?

ARIZONA

A signature drive is underway to add a constitutional right to abortion in Arizona. Under the measure, the state would not be able to ban abortion until the fetus is viable, with later abortions allowed to protect a woman’s physical or mental health. Supporters must gather nearly 384,000 valid signatures by July 4. Current law bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

ARKANSAS

Proponents of an amendment to allow abortion in many cases have until July 5 to gather nearly 91,000 valid signatures to get it on the Nov. 5 ballot. The measure would bar laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allow abortion later in pregnancy in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. Because it allows limits as soon as 20 weeks, the proposal does not have the support of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which includes Arkansas. The state has a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy with narrow exceptions.

COLORADO

There are dueling efforts on abortion in Colorado. One measure would create a voter-initiated law to ban access throughout pregnancy and the other would amend the state constitution to protect it. The abortion rights amendment would also require Medicaid and private health insurance to cover abortion.

Supporters on each side have until Aug. 5 to submit more than 124,000 signatures to get a measure on the ballot. Amending the constitution in Colorado requires the support of 55% of voters. But the ban could be passed with a simple majority. Abortion is legal at all stages of pregnancy in Colorado.

FLORIDA

Advocates collected nearly a million signatures to put a state constitutional amendment to legalize abortion until viability on the ballot, surpassing the nearly 892,000 required. State Attorney General Ashley Moody has asked the state Supreme Court to keep the measure off the ballot, saying there are differing views on the meaning of “viability” and that some key terms in the proposed measure are not properly defined.

If the measure goes before voters, 60% of them would have to vote yes for it to take effect.

Abortion is legal in Florida through the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. But a 2023 law would drop that to six weeks — often before women know they’re pregnant — if the 15-week ban survives a court challenge.

MISSOURI

Pushes are underway to get dueling abortion-related ballot measures before Missouri voters in 2024. Abortion rights advocates in Missourians for Constitutional Freedom are pushing for one that would guarantee abortion is legal until viability.

A group of moderate Republicans are taking a different approach and calling for an amendment that would allow abortion up to 12 weeks, and after that only under limited exceptions.

Abortion is currently banned at all stages of pregnancy with limited exceptions in Missouri.

MONTANA

Abortion rights proponents have proposed a constitutional amendment in Montana that would bar the government from denying the right to abortion before viability or when it’s necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person. But Attorney General Austin Knudsen ruled that the measure is legally insufficient. Advocates are appealing to the state’s top court. If the court allows it to move ahead, supporters would need to gather more than 60,000 signatures by June 21 to get it on the ballot. Abortion is currently legal until viability in Montana.

NEBRASKA

Advocates are trying to collect about 125,000 signatures needed by July 5 to put a constitutional amendment before voters to protect abortion rights until fetal viability. Under a law adopted last year, abortion is banned after 12 weeks, with some exceptions.

NEVADA

Signatures are being gathered to place an abortion access amendment on Nevada’s ballot in November. Under the amendment, abortion access for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy or later to protect the health of the pregnant person, which is already assured under a 1990 law, would be enshrined in the constitution. It requires more than 102,000 valid signatures by June 26 to place the measure on the ballot. Voters would need to approve it in both 2024 and 2026 to change the constitution.

The measure is one of several attempts by Nevada abortion rights groups to get a ballot question before voters in 2024 or 2026.

SOUTH DAKOTA

South Dakota advocates are attempting to gather more than 17,500 signatures by May 7 to get a measure on the ballot that would loosen restrictions but does not go as far as many abortion rights advocates would like. It would ban any restrictions on abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, allow restrictions in the second trimester with an exception for the woman’s physical health and allow abortion bans in the third trimester. Planned Parenthood is not supporting the measure.

Abortion in the state is now banned at all stages of pregnancy with narrow exceptions.

WHICH STATES CAN BUT LIKELY WON’T PUT ABORTION ON THE BALLOT?

There are some states where the balance of power or other circumstances make abortion-related measures — most of them seeking bans or limits — unlikely to reach voters in 2024.

IOWA

To put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, Iowa lawmakers have to approve it in two consecutive sessions. In 2021, both chambers advanced a resolution to find there is no constitutional right to abortion in the state. Republicans control the Legislature and governor’s office, but the amendment has not emerged as a priority this year and Gov. Kim Reynolds has said she’ll let the issue move through the courts rather than pushing for a vote. Abortion is currently banned 20 weeks into pregnancy. A stricter ban, which would kick in when cardiac activity can be detected, around six weeks, has been adopted but put on hold by a court.

MAINE

Democrats are calling for a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. But they would not have the required two-thirds majority of lawmakers in each legislative chamber to adopt it and send it to voters without the support of several Republican lawmakers. Abortion is already allowed throughout pregnancy.

PENNSYLVANIA

Pennsylvania has a similar process as Iowa with a similar amendment to find no constitutional right to abortion up for consideration. Lawmakers passed it in 2022. But Democrats have since taken control of the state House, making it unlikely to pass, which is required before it can go to a statewide referendum. Abortion is now legal in Pennsylvania for up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

WISCONSIN

The Wisconsin Assembly in January approved calling for a binding statewide referendum for a law to ban abortions after 14 weeks of pregnancy. Even if the state Senate approves, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has promised to veto it. Abortion is legal within the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Yet one play later, after Montana scored against Cincinnati on a quarterback sneak, John Madden and the CBS crew introduced a new wrinkle that changed sports broadcasting forever. As the production team showed the replay of Solomon’s grab, Madden drew over a freeze-frame of the play, diagramming how Solomon sprung open.

It was the first time a sports broadcast had used a telestrator.

“Bad circles,” Madden quipped about his penmanship during Super Bowl XVI.

Fast forward 42 years. During the 49ers’ eighth Super Bowl appearance this Sunday in Las Vegas for the 58th edition, the broadcast will feature augmented reality, cameras inserted into the uprights, drones and more TV magic. But it all stems from the telestrator, which was invented by a NASA scientist and revolutionized how football games are seen and understood by fans watching at home.

“When John Madden first started using the telestrator, he fell in love with it,” said Dennis Deninger, a Syracuse University sport management professor and longtime ESPN production executive. “Madden’s description of (the telestrator) was that it helped make the fan smarter. You can just show the fans what it is you know as a coach and illustrate it for them.”

Madden was such a passionate educator that he once taught an extension course at the University of California, Berkeley, titled “Man To Man Football.” There he drew plays on a chalkboard for his students, just as he later did for America with the telestrator.

Deninger traced the history of football productions back to the first Super Bowl in 1967. The networks then treated the game as simply an “extension” of the regular season, he said. Production crews went from about seven or eight cameras to 11 and 12 for the main event.

Then Monday Night Football began in 1970, and every other broadcast had to catch up. ABC, the Monday game’s home until 2005, valued the production quality and used double the number of cameras as the Super Bowl did back then, Deninger said.

“And that was it until you got to the telestrator era,” Deninger said. “What happened then was the whole concept of television sports changed. When it first began, it was, ‘We will bring the game to you at home.’ It was a vestige of radio. And then, when (ABC executive) Roone Arledge put Monday Night Football on the air in 1970, it turned into, ‘We will bring you to the game.’”

That trend has continued — in excess. Broadcasts now do more than bring fans to the game: They bring an enhanced, theatrical viewing experience to them. And they do it for more fans. The 1982 game remains the highest-rated Super Bowl ever, with a 49.1% household share, but that meant roughly 85 million Americans watched. This Sunday could set a record with 115 million.

This year, CBS has 165 cameras — well more than they could feasibly use in one telecast. There are a record 48 4K cameras with super-slow-motion capability. The crew has 24 robotic cameras, 20 pylon cams, 23 augmented reality cameras and three drones. There’s a camera at the highest point in Vegas, at the top of the 1,149-foot Stratosphere Hotel.

For the first time ever, they have “doink” cameras built into the uprights. The idea came to CBS executives last year when Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker missed a field goal off the left goalpost. CBS earned the NFL’s approval by testing the groundbreaking technology in the preseason. On Sunday, three cameras on each goal post with 4K zoom and slow-motion capabilities can capture not just missed kicks but other scenes that unfold on the field from a unique perspective.

“It’s all about the storytelling,” said Harold Bryant, CBS Sports executive producer and executive vice president of production. “We’re not going to force any elements. We’re going to find out what works to help tell the story of the game. The story of the moment.”

When the 49ers defeated the Bengals for their first Lombardi Trophy, there was no score bug at the bottom of the screen. When each offense broke the huddle, the down and distance would flash in yellow block font. Now there are three-dimensional and augmented reality graphics.

Comparing the production of this Sunday’s broadcast to 1982 would be like comparing a Martin Scorsese film to a grade-school theater production. The scale is just so different.

CBS and parent company Paramount have 115 hours of programming planned for the week leading up to the Super Bowl across multiple platforms. Both CBS and Nickelodeon are broadcasting the actual game, the latter for the first time ever in an effort to appeal to young fans. Augmented reality versions of cartoon icon SpongeBob SquarePants and his buddy Patrick Star join two traditional broadcasters, and animations of slime will fill the screen after touchdowns.

CBS chairman Sean McManus described the technological evolution through the years as “quantumly.”

“Every time technology changes, creative people find ways to use that technology,” said Deninger, who wrote a forthcoming book about the Super Bowl’s impact on society.

All advertising time slots are already sold on both channels, CBS executives said. A single 30-second ad goes for roughly $7 million; for Super Bowl XVI, that figure was $324,300, per USA Today.

McManus declined to detail how much production costs, but the advertising revenue of more than $500 million will more than pay for it.

“The investment that we’re making is the best use of our Paramount dollars that I could imagine,” McManus said. “Because so much of the image and the prestige of Paramount Global will be determined by how good a job we do.”

Even in the broadcast booth, where commentators have more or less the same job now as they always have, it’s hard to draw parallels from Super Bowl XVI to LVIII. Madden, who died in 2021, was a former coach who is regarded as the greatest football announcer ever for his ability to both educate and humor fans. Tony Romo, this Super Bowl’s color commentator, is a former quarterback who initially impressed audiences by predicting plays before they unfolded with uncanny accuracy.

More recently though, some fans have soured on Romo’s schtick, tiring of his enthusiasm with partner Jim Nantz and occasional word salads.

“Well, it’s a normal arc of someone’s career,” Romo said when asked about the criticism. “Honestly, I think a lot of people were rooting against (Patrick) Mahomes just because he’s been there. They want to see people new. It’s just part of an arc when you do something at a high level, I think that’s normal.”

With all the new gadgets and gizmos, doink cams and slime, Madden’s beloved telestrator has remained a constant. When Romo draws on the screen, he’ll be explaining a play by Mahomes or Purdy, not a Montana pass. But after all these years, the broadcast will still bring about half of America to the game.

SAN DIEGO — The pop-pop-pop of gunfire cracked just as the rain started to fall in grisly synchronicity. Then the screams began.

Within moments, civilians lay strewn across the ground, some lifeless, others writhing in pain. Blood flowed in streams that pooled with the rainwater on the muddying ground littered with shell casings.

Three gunmen quickly opened fire on a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department armored BearCat truck arriving in response. It crawled along an alleyway. Half a dozen SWAT members pointed rifles into open doorways or fired back from behind corners.

One assailant, wearing black gloves and a graying black beard, stood on a third-floor apartment balcony and, as deputies came closer, threw a Molotov cocktail at two white cars parked below. The explosion sent a blast of heat and sound, its boom punctuated by the gunman’s AK-47.

“Help me!” bellowed a man rolling on the ground, blood shooting from his severed leg. Another man groaned next to him, hidden by smoke billowing around the cars.

It seemed like something out of an action movie. And, in a way, it was.

The rounds were blanks, the Molotov cocktail wasn’t lit, the smoke came from a machine. The explosion was controlled, the victims and gunmen were actors, and the blood was fake. However, the deputies, firefighters and doctors from across the region were real.

They were in the middle of a simulation on a Saturday afternoon in mid-January in a commercial lot on the north end of San Diego, conducted by Strategic Operations, a local company run by former Hollywood producers and military combat veterans.

First responders and law enforcement agents have for decades used simulations to train for mass casualty events such as shootings or natural disasters, especially after the Columbine school shooting in 1999. But in recent years, as mass shootings have become increasingly common in the United States, the simulations have become more and more realistic. Now they feature visceral sound effects, trained actors, pyrotechnics and even virtual reality. The trainings also have become more and more expensive for public agencies.

But hyper-realistic simulations are essential for learning how to respond to an active shooter, triage mass casualties and coordinate among departments in a chaotic environment, said Sgt. Colin Hebeler, who works in the Infrastructure Security Group within the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The department has two facilities where deputies go through similar simulation training.

“If we can provide these trainings that are as close to the real-life event as possible, you will actually induce that same kind of stress and the reaction that you might have during a real-life incident,” he told Stateline.

Stop the killing, stop the dying

Training has evolved in Hebeler’s 16 years in the department, expanding well beyond both the classroom and limited simulations that involved plastic pieces that looked like guns and shouts of “Bang, bang.” Although expensive, simulated mass shootings are far more intense, realistic and frequent now, he said.

“If it does happen, we’re going to be prepared,” Hebeler added. “We don’t want this to be one of those catastrophic events that comes out on the news, and everyone says, ‘Well, the law enforcement messed up.’”

Law enforcement agencies continue to face public scrutiny over how they respond to mass shooting events — highlighted by last month’s scathing report from the U.S. Department of Justice on the response to the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 people dead, all but two of them elementary school children.

First responders are trained to focus on two things in a mass shooting event: Stop the killing and stop the dying. By waiting 77 minutes outside the fourth grade classrooms where the active shooter was before confronting and killing him, Uvalde law enforcement failed to follow protocols and that cost lives, the federal report found.

Uvalde showed “layer upon layer upon layer of failures,” said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government. Simulations highlight the sights, sounds and smells of an active shooter event in a controlled environment so the failures seen in Uvalde don’t occur, she said.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re the first officer or by yourself or there’s 20 of you, you go in and you stop the shooter, and then you start trying to help the people who’ve been injured,” she said.

“Simulations are really about acclimating you to what you might encounter on that given day, so that you are able to maintain that focus and subsequently your safety as best as possible.”

But she wanted to be clear about one point: This kind of training should never be used in schools among children. It is far too traumatic.

Simulation’s increased use

Seventeen miles east of downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, Wake Technical Community College is building a 60,000-square-foot facility with an 8-acre driving pad that is dedicated to reality-based simulation training for police, fire and emergency medical workers.

From the outside, observers wouldn’t realize the massive gray complex is full of buildings and streets, with spaces designed to mimic the commercial, jail, residential and school spaces first responders would experience in their communities. Trainees can drive into the facility, pull up to a specific location inside and respond to the simulated event — a school shooting, for example, or a fire inside a supermarket.

During mass shooting simulations, trainees will experience the disaster through all their senses: It could smell like smoke, there might be flashing lights and sirens, role players may act as screaming victims or use simulated munitions filled with paint. The $60 million facility, which is slated to open this spring, was funded by a bond that Wake County voters approved in 2018.

For officers, simulation training is much more effective than shooting at a line of paper targets, or simply going over shoot/don’t-shoot scenarios, said Jamie Wicker, provost of public safety education at Wake Tech. Training for mass shooting events has developed over many years with the help of veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, she added.

“It’s one thing to describe chaos. It’s completely different to experience chaos,” said Wicker, who has been in law enforcement for more than 20 years, in part as a trainer. “This is managed chaos.”

This approach has been backed up by researchers who have studied the effectiveness of simulation training for first responders.

When officers respond to a mass shooting, they’re running, maybe up a flight of stairs or while carrying people. They will see victims who are injured or dead. They will be worried about the shooter’s location. Meanwhile, parents may be rushing to the scene, along with additional first responders from agencies across the region who might not have interacted with one another before.

While an increased heart rate can produce positive reactions such as adrenaline and sharpened senses, it can quickly turn negative, leading to tunnel vision, auditory exclusion or impaired judgment, Dolly said.

“You want to, at some level, induce that in a training environment,” he said. “It conditions the officer to inoculate them from being overwhelmed by all that when the time comes.”

For the past decade, federal law enforcement has viewed the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, known commonly as the ALERRT Center, as the national standard for active shooting simulation training. Hundreds of thousands of police officers have received training from the center, which was formed in the wake of Columbine and has been housed at Texas State University since 2002.

Funded by a line item in the Texas state budget and federal grants, ALERRT is mandated to train 80,000 Texas officers every two years at its facility in San Marcos — a city between Austin and San Antonio. But center experts also go to all 50 states to spread their training, going to schools during breaks and to businesses, at no cost to trainees or their agencies.

Sometimes they use local drama students to play victims, wearing makeup and moulage, simulating a wound. “They love it,” said Larry Balding, external resources director with the center.

For the training, ALERRT likes long hallways and T intersections — stress points for law enforcement responding to an active shooter. Beyond learning how to stop the shooter, trainees focus on getting victims to an operating table. Gunshot victims only have around 30 minutes before it’s too late, said Balding, who used to be in the fire service.

“Nobody will ever be 100% ready,” he said. “But if you can get a new officer, get him trained, trying to get the mindset right, that’s what we want to do.”

When asked where simulation training is heading in the field of first responders, Balding didn’t hesitate: virtual reality.

Training in the virtual world

The floor of the San Diego Convention Center was filled with lifelike mannequins — bleeding, blinking, moving and able to be poked and prodded and to respond to questions. Some were even pregnant, with a baby ready to squirm out when prompted.

Among the 140 health care presenters last month at a conference organized by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, a membership nonprofit that seeks to promote simulation training to reduce errors in medical care, were companies that want to take the industry in a whole new direction with virtual reality.

Whether first responders use Oculus headsets to learn how to interact with patients in an emergency room or use lifesaving tools at the scene of a shooting, localities are turning more to virtual reality training for first responders, said Dr. Barry Issenberg, president of the society.

“It’s the reduction of errors, safer care, safer way of training,” said Issenberg, who is also the director of the Gordon Center for Simulation and Innovation in Medical Education at the University of Miami. “What we’re doing is not just a cool idea, but ultimately going to make an impact for their constituents.”

The society worked with the Hollywood-style facility, which organized the simulation for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and other local first responders who participated the day before. Around 100 visiting academics and health care workers in town for a conference were among the onlookers.

While researchers have found in several studies that virtual reality can add some benefits to health care training, there is still some skepticism.

Dolly, at the National Policing Institute, sees “some promise” with virtual reality for training police officers. It can be a cost-effective alternative to in-person simulations and can help officers train in shoot/don’t-shoot scenarios.

However, he does see limitations with not being able to run around and experience viscerally the confusion of a mass shooting, which can be fully felt with an in-person simulation.

Back at the San Diego shooting simulation, screams still pierced the air.

Gunfire continued for another minute, as the seven deputies dashed from room to room in the complex of buildings. They killed the shooters, then carried some of the wounded down flights of stairs.

After the shots finally stopped, the screams of victims were nearly drowned out by the wail of ambulance sirens.

Firefighters and emergency medical technicians rushed bloodied victims in stretchers to nearby pop-up emergency and operating rooms, where Navy doctors tried to keep their footing on floors slippery with blood and worked to close victims’ wounds.

Wearing blue scrubs and shoe coverings, doctors turned victims on their side and searched for exit wounds. One demanded O negative blood.

An hour after the first shots rang out, the simulation ended. The first responders gathered in the ER in a semicircle. An instructor quieted the room, asked for the beeping heart monitors to be shut off and turned to the participants.

“So, what did we learn?”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

TOKYO — Seiji Ozawa, the Japanese conductor who amazed audiences with the lithe physicality of his performances during more than four decades at the helm of the San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony and other orchestras, has died, his management office said Friday. He was 88.

The internationally acclaimed maestro, with his trademark mop of salt-and-pepper hair, led the San Francisco Symphony from 1970-76, but was likely best known as the director of the Boston Symphony for more than 30 years until departing in 2002. From 2002 to 2010, he was the music director of the Vienna State Opera.

He died of heart failure Tuesday at his home in Tokyo, according to his office, Veroza, Japan.

He remained active in his later years, particularly in his native land. He was the artistic director and founder of the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival, a music and opera festival in Japan. He and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1984, won the Grammy for best opera recording in 2016 for Ravel’s “L’Enfant et Les Sortileges (The Child and the Spells.)”

In 2022, he conducted his Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival for the first time in three years to mark its 30th anniversary. That turned out to be his last public performance.

“Music can link the hearts of people — transcending words, borders, religion, and politics. It is my hope that through music, we can be reminded that we are all of the same human race living on the same planet. And that we are united,” Ozawa said in a statement.

“It is with great sadness that I share the news of Seiji Ozawa’s passing earlier this week at the age of 88,” said San Francisco Symphony CEO Matt Spivey, who said the conductor left an “indelible mark” on both the orchestra and the city.

“Ozawa’s tenure ushered in an exciting new era at the San Francisco Symphony. He brought a modern sensibility to the organization and captivated audiences in San Francisco through his expert conducting and charismatic presence.”

At Boston, he was credited with helping the BSO become the biggest-budget orchestra in the world, with an endowment that grew from less than $10 million in the early 1970s to more than $200 million in 2002.

Ozawa was born Sept. 1, 1935, to Japanese parents in Manchuria, China, while it was under Japanese occupation.

After his family returned to Japan in 1944, he studied music under Hideo Saito, a cellist and conductor credited with popularizing Western music in Japan. Ozawa revered him and formed the Saito Kinen (Saito Memorial) Orchestra in 1984 and eight years later founded the Saito Kinen Festival — renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival in 2015.

Ozawa first arrived in the United States in 1960 and was quickly hailed by critics as a brilliant young talent. He attended the Tanglewood Music Center and was noticed by Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1961-62 season. After his New York debut with the Philharmonic at age 25, The New York Times said “the music came brilliantly alive under his direction.”

He led the San Francisco Symphony from 1970 to 1976, splitting his time between San Francisco and Boston for part of his tenure in the Bay Area.

“Ozawa’s legacy includes the San Francisco Symphony’s first European tour in 1973, highlighted by a memorable appearance in Soviet Moscow alongside the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich,” Spivey said. “Other significant milestones of Ozawa’s tenure included the establishment of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in 1973 and a string of adventurous recordings, notably a popular release of William Russo’s Blues Symphony.”

He came to prominence at a time there were few nonwhite musicians on the international scene. Ozawa embraced the challenge and it became his lifelong passion to help Japanese performers demonstrate they could be first-class musicians. In his 1967 book “The Great Conductors,” critic Harold C. Schonberg noted the changing ranks of younger conductors, writing that Ozawa and Indian-born Zubin Mehta were the first Asian conductors “to impress one as altogether major talents.”

Ozawa is largely credited with elevating the Tanglewood Music Center, a music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, to international prominence. In 1994, a 1,200-seat, $12 million music hall at the center was named for him.

As Spivey noted, Ozawa’s impact extended far beyond Boston and San Francisco. “He created several international academies for young musicians and was also deeply involved in the musical landscape of his native Japan, founding the Saito Kinen Orchestra.”

Ozawa was one of five honorees at the annual Kennedy Center Honors in 2015 for contributing to American culture through the arts.

In later years, Ozawa’s health deteriorated. He canceled some appearances in 2015-16 for health reasons, including what would have been his first return to the Tanglewood music festival — the summer home of the Boston symphony — in a decade.

His passing drew notes of sadness from around the world. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Chairman Daniel Froschauer said in his comment posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Ozawa “has left a great artistic legacy with the Vienna Philharmonic. We will sorely miss Seiji Ozawa as a friend and musical partner. Our thoughts are with his family.”

Ozawa’s management office said his funeral was attended only by close relatives as his family wished to have a quiet farewell.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed over a dozen people overnight and into Thursday in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Hamas’ cease-fire terms and vowed to expand the offensive into the southern Gaza town.

More than half of strip’s population has fled to Rafah, on the mostly sealed border with Egypt, which is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid. Egypt has warned that any ground operation there or mass displacement across the border would undermine its four-decade-old peace treaty with Israel.

The overnight strikes killed at least 13 people, including two women and five children, according to the Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. At the scene of one of the strikes, residents used their cellphone flashlights as they dug through the rubble with pick-axes and their bare hands.

“I wish we could collect their whole bodies instead of just pieces,” said Mohammed Abu Habib, a neighbor who witnessed the strike.

Israel’s four-month-old air and ground offensive — among the most destructive in recent history — has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, driven most people from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation.

Netanyahu has said the offensive will continue and expand until “total victory” over Hamas, which started the war by launching a wide-ranging attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage.

Israel has also vowed to bring back the over 100 captives still held by Hamas after most of the rest were freed during a cease-fire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

But both of those goals appear increasingly elusive, as Hamas re-emerges in parts of northern Gaza, which was the first target of the offensive and suffered widespread destruction. Israel has only rescued one hostage, while Hamas says several have been killed in airstrikes or failed rescue missions.

ALARM GROWS AS ISRAEL EYES RAFAH

Netanyahu said preparations were underway to expand the offensive into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people who fled from other areas are crowded into squalid tent camps and overflowing U.N.-run shelters.

The Palestinian death toll from four months of war has already reached 27,840, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures but says most of the dead have been women and children.

International aid organizations have warned that any major operation in Rafah would compound what is already a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged coastal enclave.

“If they aren’t killed in the fighting, Palestinian children, women and men will be at risk of dying by starvation or disease.” said Bob Kitchen, of the International Rescue Committee. “There will no longer be a single ‘safe’ area for Palestinians to go to.”

Outside the hospital where bodies from the overnight strikes were brought, relatives wept as they said farewell to their loved ones. Warda Abu Warda said she felt helpless.”Where do we go after Rafah? Do we go to sea?” she asked.

GAPS REMAIN IN TALKS OVER CEASE-FIRE AND HOSTAGE RELEASE

The United States, Qatar and Egypt are trying to broker another cease-fire agreement to ensure the release the remaining hostages. But Hamas has demanded an end to the war, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.

But visiting Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an agreement was still possible and that negotiations would continue, the latest sign of a growing divide between the two close allies on the way forward. A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Thursday for more negotiations.

Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from families of the hostages and the wider public to bring them home, even if it requires a deal with Hamas. At least one senior Israeli official has acknowledged that saving the captives and destroying Hamas might be incompatible.

Hamas is still holding over 130 hostages, but around 30 of them are believed to be dead, with the vast majority killed on Oct. 7. The group is widely believed to be holding the captives in tunnels deep underground and using them as human shields for its top leaders.

Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip and Chehayeb from Beirut.

A federal judge formally ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll, endorsing the jury’s verdict from the defamation trial last month.

The judgment was made in a one-page order on Thursday.

The issuance of the judgment takes Carroll one step closer to obtaining her award, but it is only the beginning of a process that can take months or longer to play out, in part depending on how long the appeals process lasts.

This will be the second judgment Carroll has won against Trump. Last year a jury awarded her $5 million in damages after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation for denying Carroll’s rape allegation, saying she wasn’t his type, and suggesting she made up the story to sell copies of a book.

Trump set aside $5.5 million in an account that is controlled by the court. That money will not be released until all appeals, including potentially to the Supreme Court, are exhausted. Last May, Trump appealed the verdict to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which has not yet heard arguments.

In the current case, a jury found Carroll should receive $83.3 million in damages to repair her reputation, to compensate her, and to punish Trump. The judge found that the prior verdict should carry over to statements at issue in the last trial since they were similar.

Trump will likely post a bond that will stay the enforcement of the judgment for the duration of the appeal.

A spokesman for Carroll had no comment. An attorney for Trump could not immediately be reached.

This story has been updated with additional details.