Sprinkles, candy eyes, or edible glitter (optional)
Instructions
1. Mix dry ingredients In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
2. Combine wet ingredients In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2–3 minutes). Then, mix in the egg and vanilla extract until well combined.
3. Mix dry and wet ingredients Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture until dough forms. Shape into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for 30 minutes. *While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350°F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. Roll and cut the dough Roll dough to about ¼ inch thick. Use Halloween cookie cutters (pumpkins, ghosts, bats, cats) to shape into cookies.
5. Bake and cool Bake 8–10 minutes or until edges are just golden. Cool completely before decorating.
6. Decorate! Now for the fun part! Divide icing into bowls and tint with food coloring. Pipe or spread on cookies to make spooky designs. Some ideas are: spiders, ghosts, skeletons, pumpkins, or bats. Enjoy the process, then enjoy your treat!
Ghosts are going to be crazy in 100 years from now, someone is going to say “I saw a little boy in the hallway doing the Macarena then just disappeared!!”
No. 8 Georgia Tech is a front-runner to reach the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game.
Staying on course will require the Yellow Jackets (8-0, 5-0) to avoid a misstep at N.C. State on Saturday night.
“We’re going into an environment up there that’s going to be an extremely challenging environment versus a challenging team,” Georgia Tech coach Brent Key said. “They haven’t gotten the outcome they’ve wanted the last few weeks. But if you turn the tape on and watch them play … you make a judgment based on the team and how they play.”
This is the sixth time in Georgia Tech history that the team is 8-0, and the first season since 1966. In each of those previous five situations, the Yellow Jackets won the next game to move to 9-0. Going back to last season, the Yellow Jackets own a program-tying seven consecutive ACC victories.
N.C. State (4-4, 1-3) has lost two in a row and four of its last five games. That includes giving up 89 points in losses at Notre Dame and Pittsburgh.
“Nobody’s given up,” Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren said. “We just got to play better and it starts with me. … (Our players are) frustrated, they’re mad, and they want to do something about it.”
Fit for a King
Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King is getting more attention with each win.
“He represents all that is great in college football,” Key said. “He is the best representative of any one individual for this entire sport that we play and we all love.”
Among King’s latest notable performances was completing 25 of 31 passes for 304 yards in last week’s 41-16 victory over Syracuse. That marked the highest single-game completion percentage in program history (.806) for a player with at least 30 attempts.
In last week’s game, he became the first Yellow Jacket to throw for three TDs and run for two more in the same game.
Taking notice
The rash of coaching firings at power conference schools hasn’t gone unnoticed in Raleigh. The Wolfpack will need a solid November to avoid back-to-back losing seasons for the first time under Doeren, who’s in his 13th season and is the program’s all-time winningest coach.
“I don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ve got to worry about my players. I’ve got to worry about my staff, my wife, my children. Those decisions aren’t mine to make.”
We meet again
These teams were in opposite ACC divisions for years, so they seldom met.
The Yellow Jackets won 30-29 last November in Atlanta, where the teams combined for 36 fourth-quarter points. Georgia Tech’s last visit to Raleigh came in 2020, suffering a 23-13 loss. That marked N.C. State’s first home victory against the Yellow Jackets since a 2000 overtime win.
In a rush
Hollywood Smothers’ ACC-leading 825 rushing yards have come despite N.C. State’s last three Bowl Subdivision opponents holding him to less than 90 yards.
Smothers scored a touchdown last year at Georgia Tech, but quarterback CJ Bailey had three of the Wolfpack’s rushing scores in that game. Smothers ran for 86 yards last week on just eight carries in a game that saw Pitt build a big third-quarter lead.
Reversal?
This is the first meeting with either in the top 10 since 2002 — almost 23 years to the day — in a game that saw the Wolfpack holding a 9-0 record and a No. 10 national ranking entering a visit from Georgia Tech.
But the Yellow Jackets, who were just 5-3 at the time, derailed the Wolfpack’s perfect season with a 24-17 win in Raleigh that started a three-game skid for N.C. State.
___
AP freelance writer Alan Cole in Atlanta contributed to this report.
By JOSH BOAK, CHRIS MEGERIAN and MARK SCHIEFELBEIN Associated Press
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump described his face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday as a roaring success, saying he would cut tariffs on China, while Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and start buying American soybeans.
The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that the U.S. would lower tariffs implemented earlier this year as punishment on China for its selling of chemicals used to make fentanyl from 20% to 10%. That brings the total combined tariff rate on China down from 57% to 47%
President Donald Trump described his face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday as a roaring success, saying he would cut tariffs on China, while Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and start buying American soybeans.
“I guess on the scale from 0 to 10, with ten being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” Trump said. “I think it was a 12.”
Trump said that he would go to China in April and Xi would come to the U.S. “some time after that.” The president said they also discussed the export of more advanced computer chips to China, saying that Nvidia would be in talks with Chinese officials.
Trump said he could sign a trade deal with China “pretty soon.”
Xi said Washington and Beijing would work to finalize their agreements to provide “peace of mind” to both countries and the rest of the world, according to a report on the meeting distributed by state media.
“Both sides should take the long-term perspective into account, focusing on the benefits of cooperation rather than falling into a vicious cycle of mutual retaliation,” he said.
Sources of tension remain
Despite Trump’s optimism after a 100-minute meeting with Xi in South Korea, there continues to be the potential for major tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Both nations are seeking dominant places in manufacturing, developing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and shaping world affairs like Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs since returning to the White House for a second term, combined with China’s retaliatory limits on exports of rare earth elements, gave the meeting newfound urgency. There is a mutual recognition that neither side wants to risk blowing up the world economy in ways that could jeopardize their own country’s fortunes.
When the two were seated at the start of the meeting, Xi read prepared remarks that stressed a willingness to work together despite differences.
“Given our different national conditions, we do not always see eye to eye with each other,” he said through a translator. “It is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then.”
There was a slight difference in translation as China’s Xinhua News Agency reported Xi as telling Trump that having some differences is inevitable.
Finding ways to lower the temperature
The leaders met in Busan, South Korea, a port city about 76 kilometers (47 miles) south from Gyeongju, the main venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
In the days leading up to the meeting, U.S. officials signaled that Trump did not intend to make good on a recent threat to impose an additional 100% import tax on Chinese goods, and China showed signs it was willing to relax its export controls on rare earths and also buy soybeans from America.
Officials from both countries met earlier this week in Kuala Lumpur to lay the groundwork for their leaders. Afterward, China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang said they had reached a “preliminary consensus,” a statement affirmed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said there was “ a very successful framework.”
Shortly before the meeting on Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the meeting would be the “G2,” a recognition of America and China’s status as the world’s biggest economies. The Group of Seven and Group of 20 are other forums of industrialized nations.
But while those summits often happen at luxury spaces, this meeting took place in humbler surroundings: Trump and Xi met in a small gray building with a blue roof on a military base adjacent to Busan’s international airport.
The anticipated detente has given investors and businesses caught between the two nations a sense of relief. The U.S. stock market has climbed on the hopes of a trade framework coming out of the meeting.
Pressure points remain for both US and China
Trump has outward confidence that the grounds for a deal are in place, but previous negotiations with China this year in Geneva, Switzerland and London had a start-stop quality to them. The initial promise of progress has repeatedly given way to both countries seeking a better position against the other.
“The proposed deal on the table fits the pattern we’ve seen all year: short-term stabilization dressed up as strategic progress,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Both sides are managing volatility, calibrating just enough cooperation to avert crisis while the deeper rivalry endures.”
The U.S. and China have each shown they believe they have levers to pressure the other, and the past year has demonstrated that tentative steps forward can be short-lived.
China had faced new tariffs this year totaling 30%, of which 20% were tied to its role in fentanyl production. But the tariff rates have been volatile. In April, he announced plans to jack the rate on Chinese goods to 145%, only to abandon those plans as markets recoiled.
Then, on Oct. 10, Trump threatened a 100% import tax because of China’s rare earth restrictions. That figure, including past tariffs, would now be 47% “effective immediately,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.
Xi has his own chokehold on the world economy because China is the top producer and processor of the rare earth minerals needed to make fighter jets, robots, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
China had tightened export restrictions on Oct. 9, repeating a cycle in which each nation jockeys for an edge only to back down after more trade talks.
What might also matter is what happens directly after their talks. Trump plans to return to Washington, while Xi plans to stay on in South Korea to meet with regional leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which officially begins on Friday.
“Xi sees an opportunity to position China as a reliable partner and bolster bilateral and multilateral relations with countries frustrated by the U.S. administration’s tariff policy,” said Jay Truesdale, a former State Department official who is CEO of TD International, a risk and intelligence advisory firm.
___
Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Seung Min Kim and Michelle Price in Washington contributed to this report. Boak reported from Tokyo and Megerian reported from Busan, South Korea.
This recipe is a classic treat with a Halloween twist!
Ingredients
1 pound fresh strawberries (washed and thoroughly dried)
8 ounces white chocolate chips or white melting wafers
Candy eyeballs (available at most grocery or craft stores)
1 teaspoon coconut oil or vegetable shortening (optional, for smoother melting)
Parchment paper
Instructions
1. Prepare strawberries Make sure the strawberries are completely dry and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Melt the white chocolate Place the white chocolate and coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl and heat in 20–30 second intervals, stirring between each, until smooth and fully melted.
3. Dip the strawberries Hold each strawberry by the stem and dip it into the melted white chocolate, coating it almost to the top. Let the excess chocolate drip off, then set each strawberry on the parchment paper.
4. Add the eyes While the chocolate is still wet, gently press two candy eyeballs near the top front of each strawberry.
5. Chill and enjoy Place the tray of strawberries in the fridge for about 15–20 minutes, or until the chocolate is firm. Then, serve chilled and enjoy this Halloween-themed treat!
Naomi is a gentle 12-year-old tabby who came to us after her owner became homeless and wanted a better life for her. Now, Naomi is hoping to find a loving home where she can spend her golden years in comfort and peace.
She’s a sweet and affectionate girl who enjoys cuddles and the occasional playful moment. Naomi gets along well with other calm, friendly cats and would do best in a quiet home where she can relax and feel safe. A sunny windowsill or a cozy blanket would make her happiest spot in the world.
Naomi is healthy for her age, not on any medications, and fully litterbox trained. While she doesn’t have a favorite toy, she’s sure to bring warmth and companionship wherever she goes. She’d do well with gentle children who understand how to treat an older cat with kindness.
If you’re looking for a calm, loving companion to share your days with, Naomi might be your perfect match.
Jon Scheyer inherited a seemingly impossible task at Duke in following retired Hall of Fame coaching great Mike Krzyzewski. Yet the sixth-ranked Blue Devils have kept on winning.
They’re starting this year as Atlantic Coast Conference favorite again.
The Blue Devils are coming off a 35-win season that included reaching the Final Four, while the 38-year-old Scheyer became the first coach to twice win the ACC Tournament in his first three seasons. The Blue Devils lost all five starters from that team — including Associated Press national player of the year and No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Cooper Flagg — but added the No. 1-ranked recruiting class and stand as the preseason pick to win a league race featuring No. 11 Louisville and 25th-ranked rival North Carolina.
This is the 10th time in 13 years that Duke is the ACC favorite. Winning the ACC will depend on integrating a recruiting class headlined by power forward Cameron Boozer — 247Sports’ No. 3-ranked recruit — alongside returnees like Isaiah Evans and Maliq Brown.
“I think if you keep putting yourself in that position of being in that moment, being right there, it’s only a matter of time before you break through,” Scheyer said of the program’s status as frequent national-title contender. “And I feel that’s where our program is.”
The Cardinals lost to the Blue Devils in last year’s ACC final and reached March Madness in Pat Kelsey’s first season. It was quick rise from a two-year wilderness under Kenny Payne: 12 wins, 52 losses, a 5-35 record in ACC regular-season play.
Louisville is Duke’s top challenger, with Kelsey having retooled his roster through the transfer portal.
“We don’t talk about the past. We don’t talk about the future,” Kelsey said. “Our sole focus is excellence in the now.”
Top players
Darrion Williams helped Texas Tech reach the NCAA Elite Eight last year before declaring for the NBA draft. But the 6-foot-6 guard returned to college basketball for his senior season and transferred to N.C. State, where he is preseason ACC player of the year under new coach Will Wade.
The league returns two top-tier scorers in Notre Dame point guard Markus Burton (league-best 21.3 points) and Syracuse guard J.J. Starling (seventh at 17.8).
Top transfers
Beyond the Wolfpack’s Williams, the Cardinals added three of 247Sports’ top 20 transfers in Ryan Conwell, Isaac McKneely and Adrian Wooley — all 6-4 guards who shot better than 40% on 3-pointers last year.
Conwell averaged 16.5 points at Xavier and will play for his fourth school in as many seasons. McKneely averaged 14.4 points at Virginia, while Wooley (18.8) was Conference USA freshman of the year at Kennesaw State.
North Carolina added 7-footer Henri Veesaar, who left Arizona to join a Tar Heels team that desperately needs reliable frontcourt play.
Top freshmen
Boozer is one of six McDonald’s All-American freshmen, including Duke teammates in his brother Cayden (a point guard) and forward Nikolas Khamenia.
The ACC will have an 18-game league slate, down from 20 games, as the league tries to reverse a downward trend of NCAA bids (four last year). The move is designed to give ACC teams two more spots to schedule quality nonconference matchups that could bolster postseason résumés. The ACC had moved to 20 games in 2019-20 with the arrival of the ESPN-partnered ACC Network.
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina man accused of killing four of his children after human remains were found inside the trunk of a vehicle at their home appears to have spread the slayings over several months, a sheriff said Wednesday.
Wellington Delano Dickens III, 38, was charged Tuesday with four counts of murder. The sheriff’s office said investigators believe Dickens killed three of his biological children, ages 6, 9 and 10, as well as his 18-year-old stepchild.
The local sheriff and prosecutor speak about man who turned himself in and said he had killed four of his children found in a car at his North Carolina home. (AP Video)
Dickens had contacted Johnston County 911 late Monday and said he had killed his children. He told deputies that arrived at his home on the outskirts of Zebulon — about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Raleigh — that four of his children were deceased and had been placed inside the vehicle parked in his garage, the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office said.
The arrest warrants filed against Dickens listed May 1 as the date of the killings. But Sheriff Steve Bizzell said at a news conference in nearby Smithfield on Wednesday that based on interviews investigators now believe the deaths were spread out over time.
Bizzell said Dickens killed his 6-year-old child in May, the 9-year-old in August, the 10-year-old in late August or early September, and the 18-year-old in September. The state medical examiner’s office is trying to determine how they died, he added.
Bizzell said he didn’t yet know why Dickens killed the children, “but as the sheriff, as a father and as a grandfather, I can stand here and say there’s no reason for a father to murder his children.”
In a 911 call recording obtained Wednesday by WRAL-TV, a man who identified himself as Wellington Dickens and giving the home’s address tells the dispatcher that he had killed his children.
“It’s a lot to explain, but in a nutshell it’s probably my fault … It’s my fault. It’s bad,” the man says, adding that he didn’t use knives or firearms.
“It started out as me over-disciplining — that’s it,” he says. “I beat on them sometimes. They didn’t want to eat, I didn’t force them to eat, I’ve told them it was a punishment not to eat. I did a bunch of different little things.”
Dickens remained held without bond after a Wednesday afternoon hearing on three of the counts, records show. He made his first court appearance Tuesday on the other murder count. Reached by phone, Michelle Moore, Dickens’ court-appointed attorney, declined to comment. Dickens’ next court appearance is Nov. 13.
Johnston County District Attorney Jason Waller said the investigation remains active and ongoing.
The deputies who responded to Dickens’ 911 call found his 3-year-old son alive inside the home, as Dickens had told them they would, authorities said. The sheriff’s office said the 3-year-old was unharmed.
The deputies discovered human bodies in the trunk and they appeared to have died some time ago, Bizzell said.
Dickens’ great uncle told a television station Tuesday that Dickens was an Iraq War veteran.
Some neighbors said Tuesday that they didn’t remember seeing the family, especially after Dickens’ wife, Stephanie Rae Jones Dickens, died in April 2024. Authorities had determined she died from complications from a miscarriage, and doctors ruled her death as natural, Bizzell said.
Asked how the children’s deaths were concealed for so long, sheriff’s Capt. Don Pate said the family members “were just very secluded” and that Dickens’ extended family was not welcome to visit.
“The neighbors said they never saw them come outside, and they were homeschooled, so they were just confined to the house,” Pate said.
Bizzell said deputies went to the same Zebulon home with emergency workers when Stephanie Dickens died last year. The sheriff said it was determined then that she had experienced excessive bleeding the night prior but refused to go for medical treatment.
DETROIT (AP) — Making electric vehicles and their batteries is a dirty process that uses a lot of energy. But a new study says that EVs quickly make up for that with less overall emissions through two years of use than a gas-powered vehicle.
The study also estimated that gas-powered vehicles cause at least twice as much environmental damage over their lifetimes as EVs, and said the benefits of EVs can be expected to increase in coming decades as clean sources of power, such as solar and wind, are brought onto the grid.
The work by researchers from Northern Arizona University and Duke University, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Climate, offers insight into a transportation sector that makes up a big part of U.S. emissions. It also comes as some EV skeptics have raised concerns about whether the environmental impact of battery production, including mining, makes it worthwhile to switch to electric.
“While there is a bigger carbon footprint in the very short term because of the manufacturing process in creating the batteries for electric vehicles, very quickly you come out ahead in CO2 emissions by year three and then for all of the rest of the vehicle lifetime, you’re far ahead and so cumulatively much lower carbon footprint,” said Drew Shindell, an earth science professor at Duke University and study co-author.
What the researchers examined
The researchers evaluated several harmful air pollutants monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as emissions data, to compare the relative impact over time of EVs and internal combustion engines on air quality and climate change.
Their analysis said that EVs produce 30% higher carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline vehicles in their first two years. That can be attributed to the energy-intensive production and manufacturing processes involved in mining lithium for EV batteries.
They also sought to account for how the U.S. energy system might develop in coming years, assuming growth in clean energy. And they modeled four different scenarios for EV adoption, ranging from the lowest — a 31% share of vehicle sales — to the highest, 75% of sales, by 2050. (EV sales accounted for about 8% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2024.)
The researchers said the average of those four models found that for each additional kilowatt hour of lithium-ion battery output, carbon dioxide emissions drop by an average of 220 kilograms (485 pounds) in 2030, and another 127 kilograms (280 pounds) in 2050.
The consistent decrease in CO2 emissions from EVs is “not only driven by the on-road vehicles, but also reduction that has been brought due to electricity production,” said lead author Pankaj Sadavarte, a postdoctoral researcher at Northern Arizona University.
Greg Keoleian, a University of Michigan professor of sustainable systems who wasn’t involved in the research, called it a “valuable study” that echoes other findings and “confirms the environmental and economic benefits” of EVs.
“Accelerating the adoption of battery electric vehicles is a key strategy for decarbonizing the transportation sector which will reduce future damages and costs of climate change,” he said.
Researchers take optimistic view of the grid’s future
Shindell, the Duke researcher, said the grid will evolve to have more solar and wind power.
“When you add a bunch of electric vehicles, nobody’s going to build new coal-fired power plants to run these things because coal is really expensive compared to renewables,” he said. “So the grid just overall becomes much cleaner in both the terms of carbon emissions for climate change, and for air pollution.”
“The great news is the rest of the world isn’t slowing down in terms of its embrace of this technology,” said Ellen Kennedy, principal for carbon-free transportation at RMI, a clean energy nonprofit. As for the U.S., she said, “I think it’s important to keep in mind states and local governments, there’s a lot that’s happening on those fronts.”
One thing the study didn’t address was recycling or disposal of batteries at the end of their life. Kennedy said battery recycling will improve, helping to address one of the environmental impacts of their production.
A challenging time for EVs in the United States
The study comes at a notable time given the challenges that EVs face in the U.S.
EVs have seen more interest in recent years as an alternative to gas-powered cars and trucks — particularly as they become more affordable and charging infrastructure becomes more available.
But growth has slowed amid shifting federal policy toward EVs and an industry step back from ambitious EV production promises.
“The study is important to show how really misguided the current administration’s policies are,” Shindell said. “If we want to protect us from climate change and from the very clear and local damage from poor air quality, this is a really clear way to do it: Incentivize the switch from internal combustion engines to EVs.”
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
