By TASSANEE VEJPONGSA and RON TODT (Associated Press)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 40-year-old killed one man in a house before fatally shooting four others on the streets of a Philadelphia neighborhood, then surrendering to police officers after being cornered in an alley with an assault rifle, a pistol, extra magazines, a police scanner and a bulletproof vest, police said.

A 2-year-old boy and a 13-year-old were also wounded in the Monday night violence that made the working-class area of Kingsessing the site of the nation’s worst violence around the July Fourth holiday.

Police called to the scene found gunshot victims and started to help them before hearing more shots. Some officers rushed victims to hospitals while others ran toward the gunfire and chased the firing suspect. Officers ultimately arrested the assailant in an alley, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference. The shooter had no connection to the victims before the shooting, she said.

“On what was supposed to be a beautiful summer evening, this armed and armored individual wreaked havoc, firing with a rifle at their victims seemingly at random,” she said Tuesday afternoon.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, the homicide unit commander, said witness interviews and video indicated that the suspect went to several locations in a ski mask and body armor, carrying an AR-15-style rifle.

“The suspect then began shooting aimlessly at occupied vehicles and individuals on the street as they walked,” he said. The vehicles included a mother driving her 2-year-old twins home, and one was wounded in the legs and the other hit in the eyes by shattered glass.

Philadelphia police on Tuesday afternoon identified the victims as 21-year-old Lashyd Merritt, 29—year-old Dymir Stanton, 59-year-old Ralph Moralis and 15-year-old DaJuan Brown, all pronounced dead shortly after the Monday night gunfire; and 31-year-old Joseph Wamah Jr., who was found in a home early Tuesday, also with multiple bullet wounds.

Investigators believe Wamah was the first victim killed, but he wasn’t found by family members until hours later, Ransom said.

A 2-year-old boy shot four times in the legs and a 13-year-old shot twice in the legs were in stable condition, as were a 2-year-old boy and a 33-year-old woman injured by shattered glass.

Police said the suspect is believed to have acted alone and there was no reason to believe anyone else was involved. Police and prosecutors said no charges were planned at this point against a second person taken into custody who is believed to have obtained a gun somewhere and fired back at the shooter.

“When you are under fire in a mass shooting, there are rights to protect others and rights to protect yourself,” District Attorney Larry Krasner said.

Authorities asked for patience as they investigate every aspect of the shooting. That investigation, Outlaw said, “includes the ‘why.’”

Krasner said the suspect would face multiple counts of murder, as well as aggravated assault and weapons charges, and was expected to be denied bail.

Outlaw praised the bravery of officers who tended to victims and rushed them to hospitals as others “fearlessly ran toward the sounds of gunfire,” and captured the suspect.

“Their swift actions undoubtedly saved additional lives,” she said.

At a holiday weekend block party in Baltimore, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) to the southwest of Philadelphia, two people were killed and 28 others were wounded in a shooting. More than half of the victims were 18 or younger, officials said.

About four hours after the Philadelphia shooting, gunfire at a neighborhood festival in Fort Worth, Texas, killed three people and wounded eight.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney renewed his oft-repeated call to “do something about America’s gun problem.”

“A person walking down the city street with an AR-style rifle and shooting randomly at people while wearing a bulletproof vest with multiple magazines is a disgraceful but all-too-common situation in America,” Kenney said. “I was today at Independence Hall where they wrote that Constitution, and the 2nd Amendment was never intended to protect this.”

Krasner said that the morning after the shooting, he saw “completely empty streets” in the traumatized neighborhood on an otherwise beautiful morning.

“I saw every porch empty. I saw every door closed. I saw every curtain where there was a curtain pulled. I saw no kids playing,” he said, describing a bicycle left on a corner, apparently untouched for 12 or more hours, “as if everybody understood what happened here was so horrible that for right now this is a desert, and for right now everything that we associate with celebrating Fourth of July is off.”

Tim Eads said that on Monday night he heard fireworks, then gunshots, and saw police cars “flying by.” His wife was on the second floor “looking out the bay window and saw the shooter actually coming down this street here behind me.”

Eads saw the other man with a pistol who, he said, may have been firing at the shooter.

“He was using my car as a shield shooting out into the street,” Eads said.

A resident named Roger who declined to give his last name said he and his family were eating in the living room at about 8:30 p.m. when they heard eight to 10 gunshots.

“Everybody thought it was fireworks but … been around here about three years so I heard it enough,” he said. “I looked out the window and seen a bunch of people running.”

He said he heard about four more shots and “thought it was the end of it.” Ten minutes later, he said, police came “flying down here,” and about five minutes later he heard rapid gunfire open up right outside the house.

The Philadelphia violence was the country’s 29th mass killing in 2023, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University, the highest on record by this time in the year.

The number of people killed in such events is also the highest by this time in the year.

There have been more than 550 mass killings since 2006, according to the database, in which at least 2,900 people have died and at least 2,000 people have been hurt. ___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of a victim’s first name to DaJuan Brown, not Daujan. His name was misspelled due to incorrect information from Philadelphia police. It has also been updated to correct the age of Lashyd Merritt. Merritt was 21, not 20.

By KELVIN CHAN (AP Business Writer)

Meta has unveiled an app called Threads to rival Twitter, targeting users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk.

Threads is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”

It went live late Wednesday in Apple and Google Android app stores, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying 10 million people had signed up in the first seven hours. There were some early glitches, including Zuckerberg’s posts — or Threads as they’re dubbed — not loading in several places including the United Kingdom, India and Lebanon. But his replies to other users did appear.

Threads launched in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan — and has already drawn celebrity users like chef Gordon Ramsay, pop star Shakira and actor Jack Black as well as accounts from Airbnb, Guinness World Records, Netflix, Vogue magazine and other media outlets.

The Twitter-like microblogging experience suggests that Meta Platforms has been gearing up to directly challenge the platform after Musk’s tumultuous ownership has resulted in a series of unpopular changes that have turned off users and advertisers.

Zuckerberg said in some early replies on Threads that he’s focused on making the app “a friendly place,” which will “ultimately be the key to its success.”

“That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently,” he wrote.

On Threads, there are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a thread, and users see the number of likes and replies that a post has received.

Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.

Despite that, Meta said its “vision is that Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video.”

Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.

Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.

Meta’s new offering, however, has raised data privacy concerns.

Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info,” according to its data privacy disclosure on the App Store.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointed it out in a snarky tweet saying, “All your Threads are belong to us” that included a screenshot of the disclosure. Musk replied “yeah.”

One place Threads won’t be rolled out is in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.

Meta has informed Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission that it has no plans yet to launch Threads in the 27-nation bloc, commission spokesman Graham Doyle said. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s main privacy regulator for the EU because the company’s regional headquarters is based in Dublin.

The company is working on rolling the app out to more countries but pointed to regulatory uncertainty for its decision to hold off on a European launch.

Analysts said its success is far from guaranteed, citing Meta’s track record of starting standalone apps that were later shut down. Also in question is whether it’s the right move for Meta, which announced tens of thousands of layoffs over the past year amid a tech industry slowdown.

Zuckerberg also has been focusing on the metaverse, investing tens of billions of dollars in the virtual reality concept.

Meta risks “spreading itself too thin,” said Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, a global market research company. “Meta is banking on a moment in time amidst peak Twitter frustration. However, this window of opportunity is already flooded with Twitter alternatives including Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Post.News and Hive, which are all competing for Twitter’s market share.”

Even so, Threads could be a fresh headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.

He’s made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data. He also is now requiring paid verification for users to access the online dashboard TweetDeck.

Musk’s rivalry with Zuckerberg could end up spilling over into real life. In an online exchange the two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a cage match face-off, though it’s unclear if they will actually make it to the ring.

Amid the Threads launch, Musk responded to a tweet showing a screenshot of him saying he deleted Instagram in 2018 because it was “weak sauce.”

“It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram,” he said.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and COLLEEN LONG (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thirty shot, two fatally, at a block party in Baltimore. At least three killed and 10 wounded at an annual July Fourth bash in Louisiana. A 7-year-old shot dead in Tampa after two groups gathered along a causeway for Independence Day started to fight. Nine others injured when bullets are sprayed from a car in the nation’s capital.

A rash of shootings as the U.S. celebrated the Fourth of July is spiking fears in communities across the country and highlighting the challenges police face in preventing such violence as temperatures warm and festivities move outside. Policing such events is a delicate balance for law enforcement, who must weigh the right of revelers to gather with the threat of violence that looms in public and private spaces in a nation awash with guns.

“In many ways, their hands are tied because these types of events are often on private property and people may not do anything to violate the law until someone brandishes a firearm and starts shooting,” said Tom Nolan, who was a Boston police officer for nearly three decades. “So can the police do anything to prevent that? I just think it’s an extraordinary challenge for them to be all places at all times and anticipate things that none of us are expecting.”

Violence often surges in the summer months, when teens are out of school and there are more social events that can quickly turn deadly when tempers flare. Curfews for young people and increased police presence on the streets are among the strategies cities have historically used to try to combat summer violence.

Police can prepare for parades and other large annual events by monitoring social media chatter ahead of time, requiring a law enforcement presence for permitted events and changing up their coverage plans depending on how many people are expected when. Ideally, police work with communities who want the protection.

But it’s impossible for law enforcement to monitor every block party or holiday gathering. Vacations can also lead to police departments being thinly staffed over holiday weekends and summer months, which means calls for loud music and other disturbances can get backed up while police deal with more pressing matters, Nolan said.

“During the time when their services are most in demand, they are stretched far more thinly than they would like to publicly admit,” said Nolan, who was a shift commander in the patrol division.

The gun violence that flared this week in Washington, D.C, Louisiana, Florida, Philadelphia, Texas, Baltimore and Boston left more than a dozen dead and more than 60 wounded — including children as young as 2 years old.

The wave of killings came as the Chicago suburb of Highland Park was marking the anniversary of last year’s mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead. Security was tight at events aimed at honoring those killed, and the day was capped by a drone show instead of fireworks to avoid the noise that could sound like gunfire.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the gun violence Wednesday, urging Congress to pass a ban on so-called assault weapons and placing blame on the proliferation of guns in the U.S.

“Lives are at stake here, folks. Lives are at stake in communities, the lives of our kids,” she said.

In Baltimore, police knew about the block party at the Brooklyn Homes last year and sent squads to the area to monitor for any potential violence, police said. There wasn’t any.

This year, police officials didn’t discover Sunday’s event was happening until the day of. It wasn’t advertised on social media and no one in the community told officers, so law enforcement officials weren’t properly prepared when violence broke out, interim Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley told reporters. He said police are looking at whether they could have done anything better to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again.

“These are events that are about celebration, about coming together, that are intergenerational and should be sacred to our communities. When a few decide to go and literally create a mass shooting, it’s completely unacceptable,” said Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, urging members of the public to work with police to find those responsible.

The 28 injured in Baltimore ranged in age from 13 to 32, with more than half of them younger than 18, officials said. Folding tables and plastic cups were scattered on the street, apparently left behind when people ran from the gunshots.

And police can do everything right but still won’t be able to find every gunman who wants to do harm.

The annual celebration in Shreveport, Louisiana, where a gunman opened fire late Tuesday had gone on for a decade with no trouble. Shreveport police said that officers who arrived on the scene had a hard time reaching victims because of the volume of parked cars.

“Now we are the victim of a mass shooting in our community simply because individuals decided to come in and disrupt a good time that individuals were having,” Tabatha Taylor, a Shreveport City Council member said. “A family event that has gone on for years in our community has been disrupted by gunfire because somebody decided to pull their guns and do this. Why? Why?”

The Tuesday shooting along the causeway that crosses Tampa Bay, which killed a 7-year-old, stemmed from an argument over Jet Skis that one group said were coming too close to children playing in the water. The night before, three people were killed and eight others were injured when several men fired indiscriminately into a crowd of hundreds that had gathered in a Texas neighborhood after a festival in the area. Five people were shot early Wednesday in Boston, where debris from fireworks and empty boxes were seen scattered on the street as law enforcement worked to collect evidence.

In New York City, the annual J’ouvert and West Indian Day Parade celebrations had been marred by violence for years. Police had to rethink how they approached the event and how they worked with the Brooklyn community ahead of time.

“We all know it; we know the ritual. Pick up the paper the day after and you look at the number of homicides, how many shootings took place? What happened at the parade?” Mayor Eric Adams said last year as he took a victory lap following a peaceful Labor Day weekend. “It didn’t happen this weekend. It did not happen. Why? Because four days out, we brought together our commissioners and we said we are going to be a team.”

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Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed.

By MELINA WALLING and SETH BORENSTEIN (Associated Press)

The planet’s temperature spiked on Tuesday to its hottest day in decades and likely centuries, and Wednesday could become the third straight day Earth unofficially marks a record-breaking high. It’s the latest in a series of climate-change extremes that alarm but don’t surprise scientists.

The globe’s average temperature reached 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool based on satellite data, observations, and computer simulations and used by climate scientists for a glimpse of the world’s condition. On Monday, the average temperature was 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 degrees Celsius), setting a record that lasted only 24 hours.

For scientists, it’s a sweaty case of I-told-you-so.

“A record like this is another piece of evidence for the now massively supported proposition that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who was not part of the calculations.

On Wednesday, 38 million Americans were under some kind of heat alert, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Sarah Kapnick. She said the global heat is from a natural El Nino warming of the Pacific that heats up the planet as it changes worldwide weather on top of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Even normally cooler communities are feeling the heat. In North Grenville, Ontario, the city turned ice-hockey rinks into cooling centers as temperatures Wednesday hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), with humidity making it making it feel like 100.4 degrees (38 degrees Celsius).

“I feel like we live in a tropical country right now,” city spokeswoman Jill Sturdy said. “It just kind of hits you. The air is so thick.”

University of Maine climate scientist Sean Birkle, creator of the Climate Reanalyzer, said the daily figures are unofficial but a useful snapshot of what’s happening in a warming world. Think of it as the temperature of someone who’s ill, he said: It tells you something might be wrong, but you need longer-term records to work like a doctor’s exam for a complete picture.

While the figures are not an official government record, “this is showing us an indication of where we are right now,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Sarah Kapnick. And NOAA indicated it will take the figures into consideration for its official record calculations.

Even though the dataset used for the unofficial record goes back only to 1979, Kapnick said that given other data, the world is likely seeing the hottest day in “several hundred years that we’ve experienced.”

Scientists generally use much longer measurements — months, years, decades — to track the Earth’s warming. But the daily highs are an indication that climate change is reaching uncharted territory.

With many places seeing temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius), the new average temperatures might not seem very hot. But Tuesday’s global high was nearly 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (a full degree Celsius) higher than the 1979-2000 average, which already tops the 20th- and 19th-century averages.

High-temperature records were surpassed this week in Quebec and Peru. Beijing reported nine straight days last week when the temperature exceeded 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius). Cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon, to Tampa, Florida, have been hovering at all-time highs, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Alan Harris, director of emergency management for Seminole County, Florida, said that they’ve already exceeded last year in the number of days they’ve had their extreme weather plan activated, a measure initiated when the heat index will be 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42.22 degrees Celsius) or greater.

“It’s just been kind of brutally hot for the last week, and now it looks like potentially for two weeks,” Harris said.

In the U.S., heat advisories include portions of western Oregon, inland far northern California, central New Mexico, Texas, Florida and the coastal Carolinas, according to the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. Excessive heat warnings are continuing across southern Arizona and California.

Higher temperatures translate into brutal conditions for people all over the world. When the heat spikes, humans suffer health effects — especially young and elderly people, who are vulnerable to heat even under normal conditions.

“People aren’t used to that. Their bodies aren’t used to that,” said Erinanne Saffell, Arizona’s state climatologist and an expert in extreme weather and climate events. “That’s important to understand who might be at risk, making sure people are hydrated, they’re staying cool, and they’re not exerting themselves outside, and taking care of those folks around you who might be at risk.”

Overall, the heat means something a little different to everyone.

In West Texas, it’s cool wraps and Gatorade for construction workers, said Joe Staley, a job site superintendent for a company that builds wastewater treatment plants. In Portland, it’s extra water on backyard vegetable gardens, said Martha Alvarado. In Minnesota, it’s a difficult workout on the family vineyard thanks to extra humidity for Joe Roisen.

In Dallas, the heat also means a sense of camaraderie for musician Sam Cormier, who often plays outdoors. Apartment dwellers with their windows open step out to bring him a drink. People are still walking around outside, even with the weather, and he plays with just his guitar, which is lighter than other equipment. He’d rather be outside sweating, he said, than inside on a computer.

NOAA’s Kapnick said the global heat is from a natural El Nino warming of the Pacific that heats up the globe as it changes worldwide weather on top of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

“Not all records are meant to be broken. In almost every corner of our planet, people are facing the brunt of unprecedented heat waves,” said United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen. “We ignore science at our own peril. … It is the poorest and most vulnerable that continue to suffer from our inaction.”

The highs come after months of “truly unreal meteorology and climate stats for the year,” such as off-the-chart record warmth in the North Atlantic, record low sea ice in Antarctica and a rapidly strengthening El Nino, said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado.

Wednesday may bring another unofficial record, with the Climate Reanalyzer again forecasting record or near-record heat. Antarctica’s average forecast for Wednesday is a whopping 4.5 degrees Celsius (8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1979-2000 average.

Because humanity hasn’t stopped pumping heat-trapping gases into the air, future generations will look back at the summer of 2023 as “one of the coolest of the rest of your life,” said Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler.

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Borenstein reported from Washington, and Walling from Chicago. Follow them on Twitter at @borenbears and @MelinaWalling.

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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME and GERALD IMRAY (Associated Press)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — At least 16 people, including three children, were killed by a leak of a toxic nitrate gas being used by illegal miners to process gold in a settlement of closely packed metal shacks, South African police and local officials said late Wednesday.

Emergency services initially announced that as many as 24 people might be dead in the Angelo settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. But police and Gauteng Province Premier Panyaza Lesufi later said the number of deaths had been confirmed as 16 after a recount of the bodies.

“It’s not a nice scene at all. … It’s painful, emotionally draining and tragic,” Lesufi, who visited the scene, was quoted as saying in news reports.

Teams were searching the area looking for other casualties deep into the night. The bodies of the victims remained lying on the ground hours after the leak was reported around 8 p.m. as emergency services waited for forensic investigators and pathologists to arrive to process the scene. The bodies were still there at 3 a.m.

“We can’t move anybody. The bodies are still where they are on the ground,” said emergency services spokesperson William Ntladi.

A forensic investigator was seen covering the body of a small child with a blanket. Another body could be seen covered in a white cloth with a shoe sticking out. It lay under a strip of yellow police tape cordoning off the area.

Police said the three children killed were 1, 6 and 15. Two people were taken to the hospital for treatment, police said.

Boksburg is the city where 41 people died after a truck carrying liquefied petroleum gas got stuck under a bridge and exploded on Christmas Eve.

Ntladi said Wednesday’s deaths were caused by a nitrate gas that leaked from a gas cylinder being kept in a shack. He said the cannister had emptied out in the leak and teams were able to begin going over an area stretching out 100 meters (yards) from the cylinder to check for more casualties.

Investigators were searching through narrow alleys between shacks, cast into darkness by the lack of streetlights — a common situation in the deeply impoverished informal settlements found in and around South Africa’s cities. Six police cars, an armored vehicle and one ambulance were parked at the entrance to the Angelo settlement.

Ntladi said the information authorities had indicated the cylinder that caused the leak was being used by illegal miners to separate gold from dirt and rock.

Lesufi, the Gauteng premier, tweeted videos of the dusty inside of a shack where at least four gas cylinders can be seen on metal stands. The video also shows what Lesufi said was the cylinder responsible for the leak lying on the floor next to the entrance of the shack.

Authorities didn’t say if the illegal miners they believed to be responsible for the gas leak were among the casualties.

Illegal mining is rife in the gold-rich areas around Johannesburg, where miners go into closed off and disused mines to search for any deposits left over.

Mining fatalities underground are also common and the South African government department responsible for mining announced recently that at least 31 illegal miners were believed to have died in a gas explosion in a disused mine in the city of Welkom in central South Africa. The cause was methane gas, the mining department said.

Wednesday’s tragedy was likely to stoke more anger at illegal miners, who are often migrants from neighboring countries, operate in organized gangs and are blamed for bringing crime into neighborhoods.

Violence against illegal miners erupted last year and raged for days in an area west of Johannesburg after a group of 80 men, some of whom were believed to be illegal miners, were charged with gang raping eight women who were working on a TV shoot at a disused mine.

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

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More AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

By KELVIN CHAN (AP Business Writer)

Meta unveiled an app to rival Twitter on Wednesday, appearing to target users looking for an alternative to the social media platform owned — and frequently changed — by Elon Musk.

Called Threads, the new offering is billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”

The app went live just after midnight Wednesday in the U.K. in Apple and Google Android app stores in more than 100 countries including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Early celebrity users include chef Gordon Ramsay, the pop star Shakira and Mark Hoyle, better known as the YouTuber LadBaby.

Users get a Twitter-like microblogging experience, according to screenshots provided to media, suggesting that Meta Platforms has been gearing up to directly challenge the platform after Musk’s tumultuous ownership has resulted in a series of unpopular changes that have turned off users and advertisers.

There are buttons to like, repost, reply to or quote a “thread,” and counters showing the number of likes and replies that a post has received.

“Our vision is that Threads will be a new app more focused on text and dialogue, modeled after what Instagram has done for photo and video,” the company said.

Posts are limited to 500 characters, which is more than Twitter’s 280-character threshold, and can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long.

Instagram users will be able to log in with their existing usernames and follow the same accounts on the new app. New users will have to set up an Instagram account.

Meta emphasized measures to keep users safe, including enforcing Instagram’s community guidelines and providing tools to control who can mention or reply to users.

Meta’s new offering, however, has raised data privacy concerns.

Threads could collect a wide range of personal information, including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, location data, purchases and “sensitive info,” according to its data privacy disclosure on the App Store.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pointed it out in a snarky tweet saying, “All your Threads are belong to us” that included a screenshot of the disclosure. Musk replied “yeah.”

One place Threads won’t be rolled out is in the European Union, which has strict data privacy rules.

Meta has informed Ireland’s Data Privacy Commission that it has no plans yet to launch Threads in the 27-nation bloc, commission spokesman Graham Doyle said. The Irish watchdog is Meta’s main privacy regulator for the EU because the company’s regional headquarters is based in Dublin.

While Meta had teased Threads with a listing on Apple’s U.K. App Store earlier this week, it could not be found in the French, German or Dutch versions. The company is working on rolling the app out to more countries but cites regulatory uncertainty for its decision to hold off on a European launch.

Analysts said its success is far from guaranteed, citing Meta’s track record of starting standalone apps that were later shut down.

Also in question is whether it’s the right move for Meta, which has announced tens of thousands of layoffs over the past year amid a tech industry slowdown.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg also has been focusing on the metaverse, investing tens of billions of dollars in the virtual reality concept.

Meta risks “spreading itself too thin,” said Mike Proulx, a research director at Forrester, a global market research company. “Meta is banking on a moment in time amidst peak Twitter frustration. However, this window of opportunity is already flooded with Twitter alternatives including Bluesky, Mastodon, Spill, Post.News and Hive, which are all competing for Twitter’s market share.”

Even so, Threads could be a fresh headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.

He’s made a series of changes that have triggered backlash, the latest being daily limits on the number of tweets people can view to try to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data. He also is now requiring paid verification for users to access the online dashboard TweetDeck.

Musk’s rivalry with Zuckerberg could end up spilling over into real life. In an online exchange the two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a cage match face-off, though it’s unclear if they will actually make it to the ring.

By ZEN SOO (Associated Press)

HONG KONG (AP) — Coco Lee, a Hong Kong-born singer and songwriter who had a highly successful career in Asia, has died by suicide, her siblings said Wednesday. She was 48.

The star had been suffering from depression for several years, Lee’s elder sisters Carol and Nancy Lee said in a statement posted on Facebook and Instagram, with her condition deteriorating drastically over the last few months.

“Although, CoCo sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her,” the statement read.

Lee attempted suicide at home over the weekend and she was rushed to a hospital, her sister said. They said that she was in a coma and died on Wednesday.

Born Ferren Lee in Hong Kong, Lee later moved to the U.S. where she attended middle and high school in San Francisco. She became a singer after winning first runner up in an annual singing competition held by broadcaster TVB in Hong Kong, and released her first album in 1994 at the age of 19.

Though Lee initially started off as a Mandopop singer, she later branched out to release albums in Cantonese and English over her nearly 30-year career. She was best known for her powerful voice and live performances.

“CoCo is also known to have worked tirelessly to open up a new world for Chinese singers in the international music scene, and she went all out to shine for the Chinese,” her sisters said in their post. “We are proud of her!”

She also was the first Chinese singer to break into the American market, and her English song “Do You Want My Love” charted at #4 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Breakouts chart in December 1999.

Lee was the voice of heroine Fa Mulan in the Mandarin version of Disney’s “Mulan,” and also sang the Mandarin version of the movie’s theme song “Reflection.”

In 2011, Lee married Bruce Rockowitz, a Canadian businessman who is the former CEO of Hong Kong supply chain company Li & Fung. While she had two stepdaughters from her marriage with Rockowitz, Lee didn’t have children of her own.

In Lee’s most recent Instagram post, dated Dec. 31, 2022, she shared several pictures of herself, including tattoos of the words “love” and “faith” as well as a picture of what appears to be a drainage bag taped to her body.

“Love & Faith — my two favorite words that I carry strongly in my heart which I desperately needed to get through this incredibly difficult year,” she wrote in the caption.

“Life seemed unbearable at times but I adapted the attitude of a ‘female warrior’ to face them head on fearlessly,” the caption read.

In March, she posted about having to relearn how to walk after undergoing surgery for an old leg injury that was triggered after going overboard during a dance practice in October 2022.

“Successful surgery. Even though I’m in a lot of pain and I have to re-learn how to walk again, I know I can do it,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Yes I can and I will!”

Mandopop singer-songwriter Wang Leehom paid tribute to Lee in an Instagram post, describing her as the “biggest star” whom everyone wanted to work with.

“In the music industry, Coco Lee broke down international barriers, before any other Chinese singer did,” he wrote. “Let’s always remember her, as a brave pioneer, and an important musical legend.”

Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai posted a message on Facebook that read “R.I.P., your bright smile will always be remembered.”

ACADEMICS

Six athletes from Old Dominion, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Virginia Wesleyan each made the Virginia Sports Information Directors Academic All-State Team.

A student-athlete had to carry at least a 3.25 GPA and be a sophomore or higher in standing to be eligible. Each school could nominate up to six student-athletes.

The Monarchs’ honorees were Anessa Arndt (women’s soccer), Leah Onosato (women’s golf), Jan Marpe (men’s soccer), Owen Rolph (men’s swimming), Callie Culhane (women’s lacrosse) and John Morton (football).

Representing UVA were Lexi Cuomo (women’s swimming), Ben Vander Plas (men’s basketball), Jake Gelof (baseball), Kate Douglass (women’s swimming), Connor Shellenberger (men’s lacrosse) and Owayne Owens (men’s track & field).

The Hokies’ athletes included Ryan Fishback (men’s tennis), Elizabeth Kitley (women’s basketball), Rebecca Mammel (women’s track and field), Sarah Shackelford (women’s swimming and diving), Jordan Tilley (women’s lacrosse) and Kobe Valociek (men’s golf).

Representing the Marlins were Abigail Mahoney (volleyball), Rachel Quigley (women’s soccer), Madison Hudson (softball), Caitlyn Myers (softball), Felix Bevc (men’s tennis) and Everett McCloskey (men’s soccer).

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

HU hires Jenkins

Brian Jenkins has been named Hampton University’s director of football operations.

The Cincinnati, Ohio, native spent the past two years with the Minnesota Vikings, serving as team operations assistant and personnel operations associate.

LOCAL BASEBALL

Pilots extend win streak to five

Ryan Dolley (James Madison) and Aaron Manias (Nebraska) each had two hits and an RBI to lead the Peninsula Pilots to a 5-4 victory over the Wilson Tobs on Tuesday night in Hampton.

The Pilots (11-15) have won five straight.

Henry Garcia (Howard), Trey Morgan (VMI) and Darnell Parker (Wichita State) also had two hits each for Peninsula, which scored three runs in the first inning.

The Pilots will host the Martinsville Mustangs at 7 p.m. today.

COLLEGE GYMNASTICS

Cox star among 6 W&M signees

Cox High’s Samantha Burd is one of six newcomers to the William & Mary women’s gymnastics program.

Burd was a 2022 state champion in all-around, balance beam and bars and a 2021 state champ on beam.

The other four freshmen to join the Tribe were Madeline Frazier of Monacan High in Midlothian, Melanie Faulkner of Round Rock, Texas, Olivia Mile of Mount Sinai, New York, and Summer Penziof Commack, New York.

Graduate transfer Tori Sipes of Windham, New Hampshire, is also new to the team.

COLLEGE TRACK AND FIELD

UVA, VT will send athletes to USATF meet

Four members of the UVA men’s track and field team will compete at the USATF Championships this week at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Competition begins Thursday.

Derek Johnson (3,000 steeplechase) and Ethan Dabbs (javelin) will compete in the senior division, while Justin Rogers (pole vault) and Tyler Zawatski (javelin) will compete in the U20 division.

Meanwhile, Virginia Tech will send four athletes and two volunteer assistant coaches to the USATF meet. Chauncey Chambers (triple) and Ben Nagel (800 meters) and volunteer assistant coaches Rachel Baxter and Bridget Williams (pole vault) will compete in the senior division. Kenna Stimmel (pole vault) and Judson Lincoln IV (400) will take part in the U20 division.

Briefly

• The University of Virginia announced the hiring of Sonia LaMonica as its fourth women’s lacrosse coach. LaMonica had been Towson’s head coach for the past 14 seasons, compiling a 139-91 record.

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME and GERALD IMRAY (Associated Press)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — At least 16 people, including three children, were killed by a leak of a toxic nitrate gas being used by illegal miners to process gold in an informal settlement, police and local government authorities said Wednesday.

Emergency services initially announced that as many as 24 people might be dead in the Angelo settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. But police and Gauteng Province Premier Panyaza Lesufi later said the number of deaths had been confirmed as 16 after a recount of the bodies.

Teams were still searching the area looking for other casualties. The bodies of the victims remained lying on the ground hours after the leak was reported as emergency services waited for forensic investigators and pathologists to arrive.

“We can’t move anybody. The bodies are still where they are on the ground,” said emergency services spokesman William Ntladi.

An official was seen covering the body of a child with a blanket. Another body could be seen covered in a white cloth with a shoe sticking out. It lay under a strip of yellow police tape cordoning off the area.

Police said the three children killed were aged 1, 6 and 15. Two people were taken to the hospital for treatment, police said.

Boksburg is the city where 41 people died after a truck carrying liquefied petroleum gas got stuck under a bridge and exploded on Christmas Eve.

Ntladi said Wednesday’s deaths were caused by a nitrate gas that leaked from a gas cylinder being kept in a shack. He said the cannister had emptied out in the leak and teams were able to begin going over an area stretching out 100 meters (100 yards) from the cyclinder to check for more casualties.

Ntladi said the information authorities had indicated the cylinder that caused the leak was being used by illegal miners to separate gold from dirt and rock.

Lesufi, the Gauteng premier, tweeted videos of the dusty inside of a shack where at least four gas cyclinders can be seen on metal stands. The video also shows what Lesufi said was the cylinder responsible for the leak lying on the floor next to the entrance of the shack.

Authorities didn’t say if the illegal miners they believed to be responsible for the gas leak were among the casualties.

Illegal mining is rife in the gold-rich areas around Johannesburg, where miners go into closed off and disused mines to search for any deposits left over.

Mining fatalities underground are also common and the South African government department responsible for mining announced recently that at least 31 illegal miners were believed to have died in a gas explosion in a disused mine in the city of Welkom in central South Africa. The cause was methane gas, the mining department said.

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

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More AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa