The Broward County school board voted 5-4 to suspend without pay Jessica Norton ‘s employment at Monarch High School, where her 16-year-old daughter played on the varsity volleyball team the last two seasons. She can also no longer work as a computer information specialist but must be given a job with equal pay and responsibility.

The board found that Norton’s actions violated the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bars transgender females from playing girls high school sports. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature adopted it in 2021, over the Broward board’s opposition.

“Our employee made a choice not to follow the law,” said board member Debbi Hixon, who proposed the censure. But, she said, “It was a first offense. We would not terminate someone on their first offense.”

Norton, who was removed from the school after the violation was discovered in November and then placed on paid leave, called the vote an “incorrect decision” but said it was better than being fired. She said she wasn’t sure if she would accept the punishment and return to work. She wanted to talk it over with her daughter, who left the school even though she had been her class president and a homecoming princess. Maybe they could return together, she said.

“I did nothing wrong. Nothing,” Norton said.

Treatment of transgender children has been a hot-button issue across the country over the last few years. Florida is among at least 25 states that adopted bans on gender-affirming care for minors and one of at least 24 states that’s adopted a law banning transgender women and girls from certain women’s and girls sports. The Nortons are plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit trying to block Florida’s law as a violation of their daughter’s civil rights. It remains pending.

During Tuesday’s hour-long debate, Hixon proposed Norton’s punishment after casting the deciding vote against an earlier motion, which called for a five-day suspension with no change in jobs. She said that was not severe enough. It failed by a 5-4 vote.

But, Hixon argued, firing Norton was too harsh for a seven-year employee with sterling evaluations and a caring reputation among students.

“This isn’t somebody who abused or harmed children,” Hixon said. “This is really about not following the law.”

Still, Hixon said, Norton put the district in a legally difficult spot by falsely attesting her child was born female on her state athletic eligibility form. The Florida athletic association fined Monarch $16,500 for violating the act, put the school on probation, and the district could be sued under the act if another student believes she was kept off the volleyball team and lost scholarship opportunities because of Norton’s daughter.

Hixon said she wanted Norton moved from her job as a computer information specialist because in that position she could learn of another transgender student who was playing girls sports and might not report that to administrators.

“That puts us as a school district in a bad place,” Hixon said.

The four other “yes” votes believed a five-day suspension or no punishment was appropriate but agreed to the 10-day ban as a compromise they could live with. They pointed to previous three-, five- and 10-day suspensions that were given to employees who had physically or verbally abused students as evidence Norton was being punished too harshly.

“I believe this case is unique,” member Allen Zeman said. “You can correctly surmise there have been problems with how we (the board) have dealt with it. You can also correctly surmise that rules and laws have been broken. But I think it is important that we come up with a solution that is consistent with the others.”

At least three board members supported Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s recommendation that Norton be fired because she had knowingly violated the law. Hepburn had overridden a committee’s recommendation that Norton be suspended 10 days.

Member Torey Alston said he believes the past suspensions cited by Norton’s supporters were too lax and shouldn’t preclude them from firing her. He said the board was sending the message that it would “go soft” on employees who violate statutes simply because they disagree with them.

“I have zero tolerance for breaking the law,” Alston said.

Norton and her husband stormed out of the meeting when member Brenda Fam repeatedly called her child a boy. Fam argued that Norton should face criminal charges though the Fairness act only carries civil penalties aimed at violating schools. She compared Norton to a parent who falsifies an address to get their child into a better school, an act that is a crime under Florida law.

Fam said she supports the Fairness act because it protects biological girls from having to compete against transgender girls who may be bigger and stronger. Norton and her supporters have argued her daughter has been on puberty blockers and estrogen for several years and has no physical advantages over her teammates or opposing teams.

“This was not a question about her son or her family, it was an issue about what she did as an employee and how she harmed others,” Fam said. She later denied misgendering Norton’s child, saying she was quoting from a newspaper article.

Norton, after the meeting, said Fam intentionally misgendered her child to anger her.

“It worked. I don’t think that a school board member should be misgendering children,” Norton said. “It’s a horrible thing.”

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Wednesday’s downpours and subsequent flooding blocked roads, floated vehicles and delayed the Florida Panthers on their way to Stanley Cup games in Canada against the Edmonton Oilers.

The disorganized storm system was pushing across Florida from the Gulf of Mexico at roughly the same time as the early June start of hurricane season, which this year is forecast to be among the most active in recent memory amid concerns that climate change is increasing storm intensity.

The disturbance has not reached cyclone status and was given only a slight chance to form into a tropical system once it emerges into the Atlantic Ocean after crossing Florida, according to the National Hurricane Center.

“Regardless of development, heavy rainfall is forecast to continue across portions of the Florida peninsula during the next few days,” the hurricane center posted on its website Wednesday.

Numerous roads were flooded and impassable for vehicles. On major artery Interstate 95 in Broward County, southbound traffic was being diverted around a flooded section and contractors were on their way to pump the drainage system, the Florida Highway Patrol said in an email. The interstate wouldn’t reopen until after water is drained, the agency said.

The Miami weather service office issued increasingly dire warnings.

“Life-threatening flooding is now ongoing,” the service said on the X social media platform. “Please stay off the roadways and get to higher ground.”

Mayors in Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood declared a state of emergency for their cities on Wednesday afternoon. Later Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also declared a state of emergency for five counties — Broward and Miami-Dade on Florida’s Atlantic coast and Collier, Lee and Sarasota counties on the state’s west coast.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava also issued a local state of emergency.

In nearby Hollywood, Mike Viesel was driving home Wednesday afternoon with his dog Humi when he was caught in deep floodwater along a low-lying street, he told the Miami Herald.

As he slowed down and stopped, Viesel said other cars drove past him, sending even more water into his vehicle. His engine stalled.

“I’d walk out of my car,” he told the Herald, but his dog “has a problem with water.”

In Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood, the lobby of the building that Alfredo Rodriguez moved into a year ago already had water puddles inside on Wednesday morning. He told the Herald the building has flooded five times since he moved in.

“This is horrible. I can’t pull my car around,” he said of the flooded streets.

Dozens of flights were delayed or canceled at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The NHL’s Florida Panthers were delayed more than three hours from departing Fort Lauderdale for their nearly six-hour flight to Edmonton for Games 3 and 4 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Farther north, the National Weather Service in Melbourne confirmed that an EF-1 tornado hit Hobe Sound on Florida’s Atlantic Coast north of West Palm Beach on Wednesday morning.

The winds knocked down multiple banyan trees and caused some damage to a store, Martin County Fire Rescue officials said. No injuries were reported, but access to wealthy Jupiter Island was cut off by debris on the road.

It’s already been a wet and blustery week in Florida. In Miami, about 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell Tuesday and 7 inches (17 centimeters) in Miami Beach, according to the National Weather Service. Hollywood got about 5 inches (12 centimeters).

Bryan McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School, noted on X that some 9 inches (23 centimeters) had fallen on parts of South Florida from 7 a.m to 6 p.m. on Wednesday in addition to the rain that fell on Tuesday.

“We are in trouble,” McNoldy wrote.

More rain was forecast for the rest of the week, leading the weather service office in Miami to extend a flash flood watch through Thursday. Some places could see another 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain.

The western side of the state, much of which has been in a prolonged drought, also got some major rainfall. Nearly 6.5 inches (16.5 centimeters) of rain fell Tuesday at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, the weather service says, and flash flood warnings were in effect in those areas as well.

Forecasts predict an unusually busy hurricane season.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates there is an 85% chance that the Atlantic hurricane season will be above average, predicting between 17 and 25 named storms in the coming months including up to 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes. An average season has 14 named storms.

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Saying the chain lured students with “pervasive” lies, the Education Department is invoking its power to cancel student loans for borrowers who were misled by their colleges.

“This institution falsified data, knowingly misled students, and cheated borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

The Education Department will automatically erase loans for 317,000 people who attended any Art Institute campus between Jan. 1, 2004, and Oct. 16, 2017.

The department says it’s taking action after reviewing evidence from the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Iowa and Pennsylvania, which previously investigated complaints of fraud and sued the for-profit chain.

According to the department’s findings, the chain misled students about the success of graduates and about employment partnerships that would help students find jobs.

The chain told prospective students that more than 80% of graduates found jobs in their fields of study, but that was largely based on doctored data, the Education Department said. The true employment rate was below 57%.

Campuses also advertised graduate salaries that were based on fabricated data and included extreme outliers to make averages look better, the department said.

One campus included the annual salary of tennis star Serena Williams to skew the average salary, investigators found. Williams studied fashion at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The chain’s tactics led borrowers to borrow high amounts of debt for programs that didn’t pay off, the department said.

“The Art Institutes preyed on the hopes of students attempting to better their lives through education,” said Richard Cordray, chief operating officer of the Education Department’s Federal Student Aid office. “We cannot replace the time stolen from these students, but we can lift the burden of their debt.”

On Wednesday, the Education Department will start emailing borrowers who will get their loans canceled. They won’t need to take any action, and payments already made on the loans will be refunded.

At its height, the chain had dozens of campuses across the country, including in New York, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles. It was operated for decades by Education Management Corp., which collapsed in 2018 after years of legal trouble.

The company reached a $95.5 million settlement with the Justice Department in 2015 over allegations of illegal recruiting tactics. Soon after, it began closing campuses and later sold the remainder to another company.

The final eight campuses were shuttered last year.

The Biden administration has continued to cancel student loans through several existing programs even as it pursues a wider plan for one-time cancellation. That plan is a follow-up to one that the Supreme Court rejected last year.

In total, the Democratic administration says it has approved the cancellation of almost $160 billion in student loans, including through programs for public workers and those defrauded by their schools.

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Scientists around the world have been working for years to address the decline of coral reef populations. Just last summer, reef rescue groups in South Florida and the Florida Keys were trying to save coral from rising ocean temperatures. Besides working to keep existing coral alive, researchers have also been growing new coral in labs and then placing them in the ocean.

But protecting the underwater ecosystem that maintains upwards of 25% of all marine species is not easy. Even more challenging is making sure that coral grown in a laboratory and placed into the ocean doesn’t become expensive fish food.

Marine researcher Kyle Pisano said one problem is that predators like parrot fish attempt to bite and destroy the newly transplanted coral in areas like South Florida, leaving them with less than a 40% survival rate. With projects calling for thousands of coral to be planted over the next year and tens of thousands of coral to be planted over the next decade, the losses add up when coral pieces can cost more than $100 each.

Pisano and his partner, Kirk Dotson, have developed the Coral Fort, claiming the small biodegradable cage that’s made in part with drinking straws boosts the survival rate of transplanted coral to over 90%.

“Parrot fish on the reef really, really enjoy biting a newly transplanted coral,” Pisano said. “They treat it kind of like popcorn.”

Fortunately the fish eventually lose interest in the coral as it matures, but scientists need to protect the coral in the meantime. Stainless steel and PVC pipe barriers have been set up around transplanted coral in the past, but those barriers needed to be cleaned of algae growth and eventually removed.

Pisano had the idea of creating a protective barrier that would eventually dissolve, eliminating the need to maintain or remove it. He began conducting offshore experiments with biodegradable coral cages as part of a master’s degree program at Nova Southeastern University. He used a substance called polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biopolymer derived from the fermentation of canola oil. PHA biodegrades in ocean, leaving only water and carbon dioxide. His findings were published last year.

The coral cage consists of a limestone disc surrounded by eight vertical phade brand drinking straws, made by Atlanta-based WinCup Inc. The device doesn’t have a top, Pisano said, because the juvenile coral needs sunlight and the parrot fish don’t generally want to position themselves facing downward to eat.

Dotson, a retired aerospace engineer, met Pisano through his professor at Nova Southeastern, and the two formed Reef Fortify Inc. to further develop and market the patent-pending Coral Fort. The first batch of cages were priced at $12 each, but Pisano and Dotson believe that could change as production scales up.

Early prototypes of the cage made from phade’s standard drinking straws were able to protect the coral for about two months before dissolving in the ocean, but that wasn’t quite long enough to outlast the interest of parrot fish. When Pisano and Dotson reached out to phade for help, the company assured them that it could make virtually any custom shape from its biodegradable PHA material.

“But it’s turning out that the boba straws, straight out of the box, work just fine,” Dotson said.

Boba straws are wider and thicker than normal drinking straws. They’re used for a tea-based drink that includes tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup. For Pisano and Dotson, that extra thickness means the straws last just long enough to protect the growing coral before harmlessly disappearing.

Reef Fortify is hoping to work with reef restoration projects all over the world. The Coral Forts already already being used by researchers at Nova Southeastern and the University of Miami, as well as Hawaii’s Division of Aquatic Resources.

Rich Karp, a coral researcher at the University of Miami, said they’ve been using the Coral Forts for about a month. He pointed out that doing any work underwater takes a great deal of time and effort, so having a protective cage that dissolves when it’s no longer needed basically cuts their work in half.

“Simply caging corals and then removing the cages later, that’s two times the amount of work, two times the amount of bottom time,” Karp said. “And it’s not really scalable.”

Experts say coral reefs are a significant part of the oceanic ecosystem. They occupy less than 1% of the ocean worldwide but provide food and shelter to nearly 25 percent of sea life. Coral reefs also help to protect humans and their homes along the coastline from storm surges during hurricanes.

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Investigators from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will try to determine what caused Thursday afternoon’s collapse that crushed two cars on a busy bridge that crosses the New River adjacent to the Broward County Courthouse.

The bridge reopened after rush hour Friday. A courthouse spokesperson said operations were not affected.

Mark Cerezin, the driver of one of the crushed cars, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he felt something was wrong and slammed on his brakes. Then a “big, huge, massive piece of blue steel” struck his car, bounced off the bridge and onto the other car. He got out of his car “in a state of shock.”

“I’m just grateful to be able to go home to my wife and to my friends,” he told the newspaper.

Fort Lauderdale Police identified the killed worker as Jorge De La Torre, 27. Police said he had been working on the building that is under construction when the collapsing crane caused him to fall.

One injured person was hospitalized, while one was released. The third person was treated at the scene.

OSHA said Phoenix Rigging & Erecting, Kast Construction and Maxim Crane Works are the companies under investigation. Phoenix Rigging declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Kast and Maxim did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

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But are these online wagers on the outcome of sporting events legally on tribal land, when really only the computer servers are located there, accepting bets made using mobile phones and computers from anywhere in Florida?

That’s a question two of the tribe’s gaming competitors are hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will take up soon and answer with a definitive “no.”

A decision by the nation’s highest court would be of “massive importance” for the future of online gaming across the U.S., since leaving in place an appellate ruling in the tribe’s favor would set a precedent for other end-runs around state prohibitions against gaming off tribal lands, said the firms, West Flagler Associates and Bonita-Fort Myers Corporation, which operate racetracks and poker rooms in Florida.

The companies sued Deb Haaland, secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees tribal gambling.

The U.S. Supreme Court accepts a tiny percentage of such petitions each year.

The two pari-mutuel firms say the compact signed by the governor and the tribe in 2021 gives the tribe a sports gambling monopoly and creates a “backdoor” way out of the state’s requirement, passed by voters in 2018 as an amendment to the Florida Constitution, that a citizens initiative is needed to expand casino gambling outside tribal land.

“Through this artifice, the Compact transparently attempts to get around the Florida Constitution,” the firms’ attorneys said. “The whole point of the Compact is to provide a hook for dodging Florida’s constitutional requirement of a popular referendum to approve off-reservation sports betting.”

A lot of money is at stake. The tribe launched its online sports betting operation late last year, and Florida’s share of 2024 revenues is already more than $120 million. State economic forecasters predict the revenue sharing from tribal gaming could total $4.4 billion through the end of this decade.

The pari-mutuel firms also sued DeSantis and leaders of the Florida Legislature, which authorized the compact, in a case pending before the Florida Supreme Court. The tribe argued the legislature has the authority to decide where online gambling is initiated and the amendment doesn’t change that.

“The 2021 Compact is an historic agreement between the Tribe and State that settled years of disputes,” the Seminole Tribe said in a court filing.

The tribe now counts about 5,000 members, descended from the Native Americans who survived in the Florida Everglades, resisting federal efforts to remove them in the 19th century. The sovereign tribe operates seven casinos across Florida and owns the Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos business, with locations in 76 countries.

Attorneys for DeSantis and the legislative leaders argue sports betting is different from casino gambling and therefore isn’t prohibited by the amendment. They also note that rivals can get in on the action — and get paid a revenue share — by allowing their customers to make online bets from their properties to the tribe’s servers.

“As an important source of revenue for both the Seminole Tribe and the State — and even the Tribe’s competitors — the 2021 compact serves the public interest and has been upheld in federal court,” attorneys for DeSantis and the legislative leaders told the state justices.

The pari-mutuel firms’ latest petition before the U.S. Supreme Court was filed Feb. 8, after an appellate panel reversed a federal district court decision in their favor. If the justices don’t weigh in, Florida’s example could inspire other states to allow tribes to expand online gaming, Daniel Wallach, a South Florida attorney and sports betting law expert said in a high court brief.

Miami resident Jason Molina started sports betting recently after he learned about it from a friend. He says he loves it and has placed bets on everything from Russian slap fighting to Korean ping pong matches.

“It’s something new to my world,” Molina said. “It’s just a way to have more on the game and be more enthusiastic about it.”

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The families of Oliver and five others killed with guns are using artificial intelligence to create messages in their loved ones’ voices and robocalling them to senators and House members who support the National Rifle Association and oppose tougher gun laws. The protest is being run through The Shotline website, where visitors select which offices receive calls.

The campaign launched on Valentine’s Day because it’s the sixth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which left the 17-year-old Oliver, 13 other students and three staff members dead. Oliver was murdered as he lay wounded on the floor, the fatal bullet blasting through the hand he raised as the 19-year-old killer leveled his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.

Manuel and Patricia Oliver, Joaquin’s parents, say the campaign is based on the oft-cited idea that if someone wants laws changed, the first step is calling elected representatives. Immigrants from Venezuela who became U.S. citizens, they want the sale of guns like the AR-15 banned.

“We come from a place where gun violence is a problem, but you will never see a 19-year-old with an AR-15 getting into a school and shooting people,” Manuel Oliver said. “There’s a reason for the gun violence in a Third World country. There’s no reason for the gun violence and the amount of victims in the United States.”

After Joaquin’s murder, the Olivers founded Change the Ref, which is sponsoring the website with March for Our Lives, a group created by Stoneman Douglas students. Both recruit young people through nontraditional demonstrations like the AI calls and “die-ins,” where students protested inside a supermarket chain that donated to a pro-NRA politician.

“When you keep being traditional … listening over and over and over to the same people lecturing you with the same stats, nothing changes,” Patricia Oliver said.

To make the recordings, the Olivers and other families gave an AI company audio of their loved ones and it re-created their voices, changing tone and pattern based on relatives’ suggestions.

Joaquin’s AI voice identifies him and then says, “Many students and teachers were murdered on Valentine’s Day … by a person using an AR-15, but you don’t care. You never did. It’s been six years and you’ve done nothing.”

It continues, “I died that day in Parkland. My body was destroyed by a weapon of war. I’m back today because my parents used AI to re-create my voice to call you. Other victims like me will be calling too, again and again, to demand action. How many calls will it take for you to care? How many dead voices will you hear before you finally listen?”

The NRA did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

In 2020, the Olivers used AI to create a video of Joaquin urging young voters to choose candidates who support stricter gun laws. Critics accused them of politicizing his death to thwart their rights as law-abiding gun owners.

“They put words in a dead kid’s mouth. If my father did this to me I would haunt him for the rest of his life,” one wrote on YouTube.

The Olivers bristle at the suggestion they don’t know what Joaquin would say.

“I know exactly what my son thought,” Manual Oliver said. “Joaquin took enough time to write his thoughts, his principles, his ideas, his way of living, his dreams, his goals. Everything is out there on social media.”

Others involved in the new campaign include the families of 23-year-old Akilah Dasilva, one of four people slain during a 2018 shooting at a Waffle House restaurant in Tennessee, and 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who died in the 2022 massacre at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. There are also the parents of 15-year-old Ethan Song, who died in an accidental shooting, and a 20-year-old murder victim and the family of a man who committed suicide.

Brett Cross, the uncle who was raising Uziyah, said the boy wanted to help people as a police officer. In the AI’s message, Uziyah’s voice says, “I’m a 4th grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Or at least I was when a man with an AR-15 came into my school and killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers and me.” His voice then tells lawmakers, “What is it going to take for you to help make sure violence like this stops?”

Cross said his family is participating “so that no other child will have to go through what Uzi did. No other parent should have to go through what we have.”

Song shot himself in 2018 at his best friend’s house in Connecticut while the two played with a handgun, one of several firearms the other boy’s father hadn’t locked away. Mike and Kristin Song created a message in their son’s voice pushing for a federal law making it a crime to not properly store guns in homes where children live.

“You would think the stacking up of our dead children’s coffins would be enough to create a cultural shift in this country, but sadly our message is really falling on deaf ears,” Kristin Song said.

Other families who lost loved ones to gun violence will be allowed to add their victim’s re-created voice to the project, which runs indefinitely.

The Olivers aren’t alone among Stoneman Douglas families in their public advocacy since the massacre, with positions taken on both sides of the gun debate.

But while many others stick primarily to addressing rallies, social media posts and lobbying — and have had some success — the Olivers, particularly Manuel, get in opponents’ faces and challenge allies to be brazen. They call themselves “the rebel side of the gun violence prevention movement.”

Manuel Oliver’s rally speeches are often laced with obscenities. He was arrested in 2022 after he climbed a construction crane near the White House, unfurling a banner that demanded President Joe Biden enact stricter gun laws. Months later, he was ejected from a White House event for yelling at the president.

An artist, he painted an anti-gun mural across the street from the NRA’s Virginia headquarters as gun-toting counter-protestors watched. He tours the country with a one-man play about his son and his murder, the performances punctuated by him hammering holes into a life-size portrait of Joaquin, each representing the bullets that struck him.

“We don’t have nothing to lose here — we already lost everything,” Manuel Oliver said. “For me, (protesting) is normal. The only thing that is not normal is that we are allowing our society to let people die.”

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Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips, in a ruling posted Wednesday, said a jury should decide whether fired Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson displayed a “wanton and willful disregard” for the students’ and teachers’ safety when he failed to confront the shooter during the six-minute attack inside a classroom building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Peterson has insisted he didn’t know where the shots were coming from and was acquitted last year of criminal charges, but the level of proof required in a lawsuit is significantly lower. The families, who have accused Peterson of cowardice, are seeking an unspecified amount from Peterson and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which did not argue for dismissal. Phillips hopes to begin the trial sometime this year.

“A reasonable trier of fact could find that the deputy’s failure to confront the shooter, and failure to take any action to fulfill his alleged duty of protecting the students and teachers, while choosing to remain outside in a protected location to ensure his own safety constituted a conscious and indifference to consequences” to those inside, Phillips wrote in the ruling dated Tuesday.

David Brill, a lead lawyer for the families and survivors, said in an email Wednesday that evidence supports her ruling.

“Her Honor read all of the filings that the parties submitted, gave the parties all of the time that they needed for argument and was extraordinarily attentive throughout, and applied the law to the evidence of Peterson’s willful and wanton disregard for the lives of the students and staff at (Stoneman Douglas) – evidence which was, frankly, compelling,” he said.

Peterson’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.

At a hearing last month, Peterson attorney Michael Piper argued that his client had no legal duty to confront shooter Nikolas Cruz during the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre. Piper cited appellate court cases that say police officers don’t have a legal obligation to protect others from third-party harm and cannot be sued for decisions they make during a crisis.

“There is a difference between legal duty and what I guess I’ll call societal expectations,” Piper argued then. All the public will hear is that Peterson was in uniform and had a gun, he said, yet “when faced with this murderous rampage going on in this three-story building, he doesn’t have a duty to stop it?”

“People are outraged” that a law enforcement officer doesn’t have such a duty, but “yes, that is exactly what we are saying. That is exactly what the law is.”

But Phillips, in her ruling, said the extent of this officer’s duty is also something for the jury to decide, saying there is a “genuine dispute” over whether Peterson had a “special relationship with students, teachers and administration” that went beyond what law enforcement officers typically have with the public.

The families and survivors have already settled claims with the FBI — whose agents failed to investigate a warning about Cruz — and the Broward school district for a combined $153 million.

Peterson, the first U.S. police officer to be charged criminally with failing to act during a school shooting, was acquitted of child neglect in June. Legal experts said the Florida law that prosecutors applied wasn’t written to address Peterson’s actions.

Security videos played during that trial show that 36 seconds after Cruz’s attack began, Peterson left his office in the administration building, about 100 yards (92 meters) away, and jumped into a cart with two unarmed civilian security guards. They arrived a minute later at the three-story classroom building and Peterson got out near the east doorway to the first-floor hallway.

Cruz was at the hallway’s opposite end, firing his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.

Peterson, who was not wearing a bullet-resistant vest, didn’t open the door. Instead, he took cover 75 feet (23 meters) away in the alcove of a neighboring building, his gun still drawn. He stayed there for 40 minutes, long after the shooting ended and other police officers had stormed inside.

For nearly three decades, Peterson worked at schools, including nine years at Stoneman Douglas. He retired shortly after the shooting and was then fired retroactively.

Cruz, 25, pleaded guilty to the shootings in 2021. In a 2022 penalty trial, the jury could not unanimously agree that Cruz deserved the death penalty and he was then sentenced to life in prison. Florida subsequently changed its death penalty law so that only an 8-4 vote is required for a judge to sentence a convicted murderer to death.

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Police arrived around 8 a.m. and began lifesaving measures, but the baby was unresponsive, Hollywood police spokesperson Deanna Bettineschi said in a statement. She said an investigation is continuing and offered no additional details about the baby.

The workers were preparing to replace the roof at the apartment complex in Hollywood, just south of Fort Lauderdale, when they found the baby inside a box in the trash bin, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.

John Mitala, who owns Infinity Roofing, told the newspaper that one of the workers spotted the box, which didn’t belong to the company, and opened it. They immediately called police.

“The guys were shook,” Mitala said. “No one expects something like that. It’s really affected the entire company.”

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While some of his classmates at the Parkland, Florida, school have worked on advocating for gun control, entered politics or simply took a step back to heal and focus on their studies, Koerber’s background in technology — he’d originally wanted to be a rocket scientist — led him in a different direction: to build a smartphone app.

The result was Joy, which uses artificial intelligence to suggest bite-sized mindfulness activities for people based on how they are feeling. The algorithm Koerber’s team built is designed to recognize how a person feels from the sound of their voice — regardless of the words or language they speak.

“In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the first thing that came to mind after we’ve experienced this horrible, traumatic event — how are we going to personally recover?” he said. “It’s great to say OK, we’re going to build a better legal infrastructure to prevent gun sales, increased background checks, all the legislative things. But people really weren’t thinking about … the mental health side of things.”

Like many of his peers, Koerber said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for a “very long time” and only recently has it gotten a little better.

“So when I came to Cal, I was like, let me just start a research team that builds some groundbreaking AI and see if that’s possible,” said the 23-year-old, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley earlier this year. “The idea was to provide a platform to people who were struggling with, let’s say sadness, grief, anger … to be able to get a mindfulness practice or wellness practice on the go that meets our emotional needs on the go.”

He said it was important to offer activities that can be done quickly, sometimes lasting just a few seconds, wherever the user might be. It wasn’t going to be your parents’ mindfulness practice.

“The notion of mindfulness being a solo activity or something that’s confined to sitting in your room breathing is something that we’re very much trying to dispel,” Koerber said.

Mohammed Zareef-Mustafa, a former classmate of Koerber’s who’s been using the app for a few months, said the voice-emotion recognition part is “different than anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“I use the app about three times a week, because the practices are short and easy to get into. It really helps me quickly de-stress before I have to do things like job interviews,” he said.

To use Joy, you simply speak into the app. The AI is supposed to recognize how you are feeling from your voice, then suggest short activities.

It doesn’t always get your mood right, so it’s possible to manually pick your disposition. Let’s say you are feeling “neutral” at the moment. The app suggests several activities, such as 15-second exercise called “mindful consumption” that encourages you to “think about all the lives and beings involved in producing what you eat or use that day.”

Yet another activity helps you practice making an effective apology. Another has you write a letter to your future self, with a pen and a paper — remember those? Feeling sad? A suggestion pops up asking you to track how many times you’ve laughed over a seven-day period and tally it up at the end of the week to see what moments gave you a sense of joy, purpose or satisfaction.

The app is available for a $8 monthly subscription, with a discount if you subscribe for a whole year. It’s a work in progress, and as it goes with AI, the more people use it, the more accurate it becomes.

“Kai is a leader of this next generation who are thinking intentionally and with focus about how to use technology to meet the mental, physical, and climate crises of our times,” said Dacher Keltner, a professor at UC Berkeley and Koerber’s faculty advisor on the project. “It comes out of his life experience, and, unlike past technologists, he seems to feel this has to be what technology does, make the world healthier.”

A plethora of wellness apps on the market claim to help people with mental health issues, but it’s not always clear whether they work, said Colin Walsh, a professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University who has studied the use of AI in suicide prevention. According to Walsh, it is feasible to take someone’s voice and glean some aspects of their emotional state.

“The challenge is if you as a user feel like it’s not really representing what you think your current state is like, that’s an issue,” he said. “There should be some mechanism by which that feedback can go back.”

The stakes also matter. Facebook, for instance, has faced some criticism in the past for its suicide prevention tool, which used AI (as well as humans) to flag users who may be contemplating suicide, and — in some serious cases — contact law enforcement to check on the person. But if the stakes are lower, Walsh said, if the technology is simply directing someone to spend some time outside, it’s unlikely to cause harm.

“The driver is there’s a huge demand there, or at least the perception of a huge demand there” Walsh said of the explosion of wellness and mental health apps in the past few years. “Despite the best of intentions with our current system — and it does a lot of good work — obviously, there’s still gaps. So I think people see technology see as a tool to try to bridge that.”

Koerber said people tend to forget, after mass shootings, that survivors don’t just “bounce back right away” from the trauma they experienced. It takes years to recover.

“This is something that people carry with them, in some way, shape or form, for the rest of their lives,” he said.

His work has also been slower and deliberate than tech entrepreneurs of the past.

“I guess young Mark Zuckerberg was very ‘move fast and break things,’” he said. “And for me, I’m all about building quality products that, you know, serve social good in the end.”

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