AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Widening manhunt for Texas gunman slowed by ‘zero leads’

CLEVELAND, Texas (AP) — A widening manhunt for a Texas gunman who fatally shot five neighbors continued coming up empty Sunday as officers knocked on doors, the governor put up $50,000 in reward money and the FBI appeared no closer to catching the killer after nearly two days of searching with a team that has grown to hundreds of people.

“I can tell you right now, we have zero leads,” James Smith, the FBI special agent in charge, told reporters while again asking the public for tips in the rural town of Cleveland, where the shooting took place just before midnight Friday.

The search for the gunman near Houston has grown in scale: Authorities said that by Sunday evening more than 200 police from multiple jurisdictions were searching for Francisco Oropeza, many of them going door to door in hopes of any clues that would lead to the 38-year-old suspect. Local officials and the FBI also chipped in reward money, bringing the total to $80,000 for any information about Oropeza’s whereabouts.

Oropeza is considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the area Friday night, likely on foot. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said authorities had widened the search area beyond the scene of the shooting, which occurred after the suspect’s neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard late at night because a baby was trying to sleep.

At a Sunday vigil in Cleveland, Wilson Garcia, the father of the 1-month-old, described the terrifying efforts inside his home by friends and family that night to escape, hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

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A powerhouse US doctor slain in Sudan, ‘killed for nothing’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bound to Sudan by ailing parents and his devotion to treating the poor there, American doctor Bushra Ibnauf Sulieman kept working as long as he could after fighting engulfed Sudan’s capital.

For days after battles between two rival Sudanese commanders erupted in Khartoum on April 15, the 49-year-old Sulieman treated the city’s wounded. He and other doctors ventured out as explosions shook the walls of homes where Khartoum’s people cowered inside. Gunfire between the two factions battling for control resounded in the streets.

“Say, ‘Nothing will happen to us except what God has decreed for us,’” Sulieman, a U.S.-born gastroenterologist who divided his time and work between Iowa City, Iowa, and Khartoum, said in one of his last messages to worried friends on Facebook last week, as fighting persisted. ”And in God let the believers put their trust.”

The morning that Sulieman decided he had to risk the dangerous escape from Sudan’s capital with his parents, American wife and his two American children was the morning that the war found Sulieman, friends say.

In the wholesale looting that has accompanied fighting in the capital, Khartoum, a city of 5 million, a roving band of strangers surrounded him in his yard Tuesday, stabbing him to death in front of his family. Friends suspect robbery was the motive. He became one of two Americans confirmed killed in Sudan in the fighting, both dual nationals.

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GOP election officials walking fine line on fraud, integrity

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Republican secretaries of state in Ohio, West Virginia and Missouri have promoted their states’ elections as fair and secure. Yet each also is navigating a fine line on how to address election fraud conspiracies as they gear up campaigns for U.S. Senate or governor in 2024.

The split-screen messaging of Ohio’s Frank LaRose, West Virginia’s Mac Warner and Missouri’s Jay Ashcroft shows just how deeply election lies have burrowed into the Republican Party, where more than half of voters believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president. Even election officials who tout running clean elections at home are routinely pushing for more voting restrictions and additional scrutiny on the process as they prepare to face GOP primary voters next year.

All three withdrew their states last month from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a bipartisan, multistate effort to ensure accurate voter lists. LaRose did so less than a month after calling the group “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have” and vowing to maintain Ohio’s membership. He defied backlash against the organization stoked by former President Donald Trump before relenting.

The three also have supported increased voter restrictions in their states — part of a national trend for Republicans that they say is intend to boost public confidence. Those bills impose new voter ID requirements, shrink windows for processing ballots or ease the ability to consolidate voting precincts.

For Republicans aspiring to higher office, “it’s kind of hard to skip some of these things if you want to succeed” in GOP primaries, said Nancy Martorano Miller, an associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton.

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Pope speaks of secret peace ‘mission,’ help for Ukraine kids

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday revealed that a secret peace “mission” in Russia’s war in Ukraine was under way, though he gave no details, and said the Vatican is willing to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia during the war.

“I’m available to do anything,” Francis said during an airborne press conference en route home from Hungary. “There’s a mission that’s not public that’s underway; when it’s public I’ll talk about it.”

Francis gave no details when asked whether he spoke about peace initiatives during his talks in Budapest this weekend with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in Hungary.

Deportations of Ukrainian children have been a concern since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Francis said the Holy See had already helped mediate some prisoner exchanges and would do “all that is humanly possible” to reunite families.

“All human gestures help. Gestures of cruelty don’t help,” Francis said.

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When states limit care, some trans people do it themselves

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — With her insurance about to run out and Republicans in her home state of Missouri ramping up rhetoric against gender-affirming health care, Erin Stille nervously visited a foreign pharmaceutical site as a “last resort” to ensure she could continue getting the hormones she needs.

Stille, 26, sent a $300 bank transfer to a Taiwan-based supplier for a 6-month supply of estrogen patches and androgen-blocking pills. For three weeks she feared she’d been scammed but breathed a sigh of relief when a large package arrived at her home in St. Peters.

“It’s definitely a little scary,” Stille said. “Taking a chance like this, I could have my money stolen and there’s not much I can do about it. But I figured, at this point, that the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Stille, and others nationwide, are scrambling to form contingency plans as Republican politicians rapidly erode access to the gender-affirming treatments many credit as life-saving.

Fears became even more pronounced in Missouri this month after Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a first-of-its-kind emergency rule that places strict restrictions on that care for minors — and adults.

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150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nation’s worst

DIXON, Ill. (AP) — Gertie Wadsworth was in the arms of her grandmother that bright day when sunshine dissolved distasteful memories of a long, brutal winter. Christan Goble held the 3 1/2-year-old girl in a crowd of more than 200 on the bridge over the Rock River. After a procession down Galena Avenue from the Baptist Church on May 4, 1873, the Rev. J.H. Pratt began baptizing parishioners in the brisk, rapid current.

Then, with a sharp crack and a crescendo of shrieking spectators loaded on the pedestrian walkway in front of towering trusses, the 4-year-old bridge twisted, splintered and rolled over. Forty-six people perished, many immured by the unrelenting gridiron just below the water’s surface. Along with 56 injuries, the Truesdell bridge tragedy, 150 years ago Thursday, remains the worst vehicular-bridge disaster in American history.

“It’s not as though the bridge just collapsed and went straight down,” says Tom Wadsworth, 70, a retired magazine editor and expert on the calamity. “It turns over on top of these people. … As the (Chicago) Tribune said, the truss ‘fell over with the weight and imprisoned the doomed in an iron cage with which they sunk and from which there was no escape.’”

Wadsworth wouldn’t be telling the story had Gertie Wadsworth, his great-grandmother, not survived. Family lore holds that as Goble, 51, plunged to her death, she tossed the toddler into the river beyond the reach of the failing superstructure. The tot was rescued downstream.

Post-Civil War Dixon, 103 miles (166 kilometers) west of Chicago, was a growing city split by the formidable Rock River, a tributary of the Mississippi on which, a few miles north and a half-century later, a young Ronald Reagan would work as a lifeguard after the future president’s family moved to Dixon in 1920.

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First Republic up in air as regulators juggle bank’s fate

NEW YORK (AP) — Regulators continued their search for a solution to First Republic Bank’s woes over the weekend before stock markets were set to open Monday.

San Francisco-based First Republic has struggled since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in early March, as investors and depositors have grown increasingly worried that the bank may not survive as an independent entity for much longer. The bank’s stock closed at $3.51 on Friday, a fraction of the roughly $170 a share it traded for a year ago.

First Republic has been seen as the most likely next bank to collapse due to its high amount of uninsured deposits and exposure to low interest rates.

Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president who served as President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation “would prefer to sell the bank in its entirety than in pieces.”

“What will most likely happen is the FDIC will seize control and then simultaneously resell the asset to the successful bidder,” Cohn said.

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What’s behind shortages of Adderall, Ozempic and other meds?

Shortages of drugs like Adderall are growing in the United States, and experts see no clear path to resolving them. For patients, that can mean treatment delays, medication switches and other hassles filling a prescription.

In recent months, unexpected demand spikes, manufacturing problems and tight ingredient supplies have contributed to shortages that stress patients, parents and doctors. For some drugs, such as stimulants that treat ADHD, several factors fueled a shortage and make it hard to predict when it will end.

Shortages, particularly of generic drugs, have been a longstanding problem. The industry has consolidated and some manufacturers have little incentive to solve shortages because cheap generics generate thin profits.

Here’s a deeper look at the issue.

HOW MANY DRUG SHORTAGES ARE THERE?

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Curry scores playoff career-high 50 as Warriors down Kings

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — With his big-game swagger on display for the world and that signature mouthpiece dangling from a celebratory grin, Stephen Curry drove fearlessly to the basket with jaw-dropping acrobatics all afternoon and he fired with precision from way back in a Game 7 extravaganza for the ages.

He even playfully pretended to push the button and Light the Beam, Sacramento-style.

Curry scored a playoff career-high 50 points in the most prolific Game 7 performance ever and answered time and again to will the Warriors on in their quest for a repeat, sending Golden State into the Western Conference semifinals with a 120-100 win against the Sacramento Kings in Sunday’s winner-take-all Game 7.

Curry led a memorable comeback in the series, too, perhaps improbable even for the defending champions when they got down 2-0 and given their road woes all season.

“It’s amazing ‘cuz you’re still in the fight,” Curry said. “Better than the alternative of on the outside looking in. Having been down 0-2 in this series, nothing was guaranteed, you don’t take anything for granted.”

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Panthers oust record-setting Bruins 4-3 in OT in Game 7

BOSTON (AP) — Brandon Montour tied it with 1 minute left in regulation, and Carter Verhaeghe scored the game-winner at 8:35 of overtime to lead the Florida Panthers to a 4-3 Game 7 victory on Sunday night and eliminate the record-setting Boston Bruins from the playoffs.

Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves as the Panthers won three in a row after falling behind 3-1 in the series to advance in the postseason for just the second time since reaching the Stanley Cup Final in 1996. They will face the Toronto Maple Leafs in the second round.

Boston rallied from a two-goal deficit to take a 3-2 lead, but Florida pulled Bobrovsky for one final push and Montour tied it with his second of the game. Verhaeghe won it on a wrist shot from the right faceoff circle that just made it under the crossbar.

That eliminated the Bruins, who set NHL records with 65 wins and 135 points in the regular season but become the second Presidents’ Trophy winner in five years to lose in the first round.

Sam Reinhart also scored for Florida. The Bruins had not lost three games in a row all season.