MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. (AP) — Crews battled “fire whirls” in California’s Mojave National Preserve this weekend as a massive wildfire crossed into Nevada amid dangerously high temperatures and raging winds.

The York Fire was mapped at roughly 120 square miles (284 square kilometers) on Monday night, with no containment.

The blaze erupted Friday near the remote Caruthers Canyon area of the vast wildland preserve, crossed the state line into Nevada on Sunday and sent smoke further east into the Las Vegas Valley.

A smoky haze blotted out the sun midday on the Las Vegas Strip and obliterated views of mountains surrounding the city and suburbs. Because of low visibility, the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas reported departure delays of nearly two hours.

A fire whirl — sometimes called a fire tornado — is a “spinning column of fire” that forms when intense heat and turbulent winds combine, according to the National Park Service.

The vortexes — which can be anywhere from a few feet tall to several hundred feet high, with varying rotational speeds — were spotted Sunday on the north end of the York Fire.

“While these can be fascinating to observe they are a very dangerous natural phenomena that can occur during wildfires,” the park service wrote.

The whirls require high temperatures to form. In Searchlight, Nevada — an unincorporated area about 12 miles (19.31 kilometers) from the California border where the fire burned — Monday’s high was 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service.

Significant portions of the U.S. population have been subject to extreme heat in recent weeks. Worldwide, July has been so steamy thus far that scientists calculate it will be the hottest month ever recorded and likely the warmest to hit human civilization.

Wind-driven flames 20 feet (6 meters) high in some spots charred tens of thousands of acres of blackbrush scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands and the famous Joshua trees in the New York Mountains in San Bernardino County.

Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said it could take the pinyon-juniper woodlands 200 to 300 years to become “a functional community again,” while the blackbrush scrub and Joshua trees are unlikely to regrow after this catastrophic blaze, which erupted without human intervention.

“It will change the habitat possibly permanently,” Anderson said.

Even more, deer and bighorn sheep could become trapped by the flames, she said. If any manage to survive the blaze, their resources in the newly scorched landscape would be severely limited.

In 2020, the Dome Fire ripped through the preserve, ravaging one of the world’s largest Joshua tree forests. Conservationists, including Anderson, are trying to revitalize the land by planting new trees since the species usually isn’t able to make a comeback naturally after a wildfire.

The desert hasn’t adapted to fires; such blazes are rare because there are few ignition points in the harsh terrain. Generally, most fires in the desert are caused by humans, Anderson said.

The cause of the York Fire remains under investigation, though authorities say it started on private land within the preserve. Other details were not available Monday.

To the southwest, the Bonny Fire burned about 3.6 square miles (9.3 square kilometers) in the rugged hills of Riverside County. The blaze was about 30% contained on Monday.

More than 1,300 people were ordered to evacuate their homes Saturday near the community of Aguanga that is home to horse ranches and wineries. However, the fire didn’t grow on Monday, and some were allowed back home.

One firefighter was injured in the blaze.

Gusty winds and the chance of thunderstorms into Tuesday will heighten the risk of renewed growth, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a statement.

By JILL COLVIN and BRIAN SLODYSKO (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump ‘s mounting legal woes are growing more expensive, leading his political operation to shell out tens of millions of dollars for attorneys’ fees, request a large refund from a supportive super PAC and launch a new legal defense fund.

Since the beginning of this year, Save America, Trump’s political action committee, has spent more than $40 million on legal fees for costs related to defending the former president, his aides and other allies, according to a person familiar with the spending who spoke on the condition of anonymity before Monday’s campaign finance reporting deadline. The group also received a $12.2 million “refund” from Make America Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC that it had previously donated money to, records show. The legal spending figure was first reported by The Washington Post.

At the same time, Trump’s allies are creating a new legal defense fund that will help pay the soaring legal fees as Trump faces dozens of criminal charges stemming from indictments in New York and Florida, with more expected as soon as this week. The Patriot Legal Defense Fund, as it is called, is intended to raise money to defray costs for those “defending against legal actions arising from an individual or group’s participation in the political process,” according to a filing made last month with the IRS. The group will be run by Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Michael Glassner.

“The weaponized Department of Justice and the deranged Jack Smith have targeted innocent Americans associated with President Trump,” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung. “In order to combat these heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies and to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense fund will help pay for their legal fees.” The fund was first reported by The New York Times.

Smith is the special counsel leading the federal investigations of Trump. His team has expressed interest in the payment of legal fees for Trump-aligned witnesses in the investigations and has sought information about it, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss ongoing criminal probes.

Trump’s PAC has also requested that his super PAC, MAGA Inc., return some of the money that it transferred to seed the group to help cover costs. It is unclear whether money was actually transferred or how much.

A spokesman for the super PAC did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump launched his PAC, Save America, in the days after the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe Biden. For weeks, the group bombarded supporters with a nonstop stream of text messages and emails that purported to raise money for an “election defense fund” that would be used to contest the election’s outcome.

But the $170 million that the effort raised in less than a month was not used to contest the election, records show. Instead, it was used to pay down campaign debt and replenish the coffers of the Republican National Committee, with Trump also stockpiling another large chunk for his future political endeavors. Last year, the Justice Department issued a round of grand jury subpoenas that sought information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.

Since then, Save America has served as a different sort of “defense fund,” covering the legal expenses for Trump operatives, allies and employees who have been ensnared in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation.

Some of Save America’s money has been used to boost other candidates, though it’s a pittance compared to how much Trump has spent on ballooning legal costs.

As the 2022 midterm elections approached, Trump pledged to back congressional candidates loyal to him. But of the roughly $65 million earmarked by Save America for political spending, less than a third — about $20 million — was used to back midterm candidates through campaign contributions or paid advertising.

“Forty million dollars — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Paul S. Ryan, a longtime campaign finance attorney in Washington, referring to the sum the group spent on legal fees this year. “There’s no legal issue. It’s really just a question for his donors: Do they want to be funding lawyers?”

___

Colvin reported from New York.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Angus Cloud, the actor who starred as the drug dealer Fezco “Fez” O’Neill on the HBO series “Euphoria,” has died. He was 25.

Cloud’s publicist, Cait Bailey, said Cloud died Monday at his family home in Oakland, California. No cause of death was given.

In a statement, Cloud’s family said goodbye to “an artist, a friend, a brother and a son.

“Last week he buried his father and intensely struggled with this loss,” the family said. “The only comfort we have is knowing Angus is now reunited with his dad, who was his best friend. Angus was open about his battle with mental health and we hope that his passing can be a reminder to others that they are not alone and should not fight this on their own in silence.”

“We hope the world remembers him for his humor, laughter and love for everyone,” his family added.

Cloud hadn’t acted before he was cast in “Euphoria.” He was walking down the street in New York when casting scout Eléonore Hendricks noticed him. Cloud was resistant at first, suspecting a scam. Then casting director Jennifer Venditti met with him and series creator Sam Levinson eventually made him a co-star in the series alongside Zendaya for its first two seasons.

To some, Cloud seemed so natural as Fez that they suspected he was identical to the character — a notion that Cloud pushed back against.

“It does bother me when people are like, ‘It must be so easy! You get to go in and be yourself.’ I’m like, ‘Why don’t you go and do that?’ It’s not that simple,” Cloud told Variety. “I brought a lot to the character. You can believe what you want. It ain’t got nothing to do with me.”

The part made Cloud the breakout star of one the buzziest shows in television. He had a supporting role in his first film, “The Line,” a college drama starring Alex Wolff and John Malkovich that premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Festival. Cloud was recently cast to co-star in “Scream 6.” He’s also made cameos in music videos for Juice WRLD, Becky G and Karol G.

The third season of “Euphoria” hasn’t yet begun filming.

“There was no one quite like Angus,” Levinson said in a statement. “He was too special, too talented and way too young to leave us so soon. He also struggled, like many of us, with addiction and depression. I hope he knew how many hearts he touched. I loved him. I always will. Rest in peace and God Bless his family.”

HBO said in a statement that Cloud “was immensely talented and a beloved part of the HBO and ‘Euphoria’ family. We extend our deepest condolences to his friends and family during this difficult time.”

By SAM MEDNICK (Associated Press)

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Neighboring nations are levying economic sanctions over a coup last week that toppled one of the West’s last democratic partners against West African extremists, and families in one of the world’s poorest nations could pay the price.

In the capital of Niger, many people live in makeshift shelters tied together with slats of wood, sheets and plastic tarps because they can’t pay rent. They scramble daily to make enough money to feed their children.

Salou Hassan and his family live in a two-room hut on the side of the road, along with some 140 people. The family sleeps on wooden slats close to the floor, with no electricity or running water, and they bathe in public showers.

“The most difficult part is finding food for my children,“ Hassan, whose sons are 5 and 6 years old, said Monday.

Hassan, 30, sells water door to door, earning about $6 a day when things go well. His wheelbarrow’s been broken and he doesn’t have the nearly $70 he needs to fix it. His wife sweeps stalls at the central market, making less than half what Hassan does.

Hassan has hardly been aware that the country’s president was overthrown.

“I’m looking for money for food for my family,” he said.

Meanwhile, Niger’s neighbors are threatening armed intervention against the junta run by the head of the presidential guard, although analysts say there is only a slim chance of the regional body successfully sending troops.

Both the United States and France have sent forces and hundreds of millions of dollars of military and humanitarian aid in recent years to Niger, which was a French colony until 1960. The country was seen as the last major partner standing against extremism in a Francophone region where anti-French sentiment had opened the way for the Russian private military group Wagner.

After neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso ousted the French military, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger in March to strengthen ties and announce $150 million in direct assistance, calling the country “a model of democracy.”

Since the coup that ousted Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum, however, people have been toting Russian flags and praising that country in pro-junta demonstrations.

The West African regional body known as ECOWAS announced travel and economic sanctions against Niger on Sunday over the coup, and said it would use force if the coup leaders don’t reinstate Bazoum within one week.

Since the 1990s, the 15-nation bloc has tried to protect democracies against the threat of coups, with mixed success.

Niger relies heavily on foreign aid and sanctions could further impoverish its more than 25 million people. ECOWAS suspended all commercial and financial transactions between its member states and Niger, as well as freezing Nigerien assets held in regional central banks.

The sanctions could be disastrous and Niger needs to find a solution to avoid them, the country’s Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou told French media outlet Radio France Internationale on Sunday.

“When people say there’s an embargo, land borders are closed, air borders are closed, it’s extremely difficult for people … Niger is a country that relies heavily on the international community,” he said.

Four nations are run by military governments in West and Central Africa, where there have been nine successful or attempted coups since 2020.

In the 1990s, ECOWAS intervened in Liberia during its civil war, one of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa and one that left many wary of intervening in internal conflicts. In 2017, ECOWAS intervened in Gambia to prevent the new president’s predecessor, Yahya Jammeh, from disrupting the handover of power. Around 7,000 troops from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal entered the country, according to the Global Observatory, which provides analysis on peace and security issues. The intervention was largely seen as accomplishing its mission.

If the regional bloc uses force, it could trigger violence not only between Niger and ECOWAS forces but also between civilians supporting the coup and those against it, Niger analysts say.

While unlikely, “the consequences on civilians of such an approach if putschists chose confrontation would be catastrophic,” said Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Morocco-based think tank.

Lyammouri does not see a “military intervention happening because of the violence that could trigger,” he said.

Blinken on Sunday commended the resolve of the ECOWAS leadership to “defend constitutional order in Niger” after the sanctions announcement, and joined the bloc in calling for the immediate release of Bazoum and his family.

The military junta, which seized power on Wednesday when members of the presidential guard surrounded Bazoum’s house and detained him, is already cracking down on the government and civil liberties.

On Sunday evening it arrested four government officials, including the minister of petroleum and son of a former president; the minister of education; the minister of mines; and the president of the ruling party. The arrests were recounted to The Associated Press by a person close to the president, who was not authorized to speak about the situation, and a Nigerien analyst who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal.

Also Sunday, junta spokesman Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane banned the use of social media to put out messages he describe as harmful to state security. He also claimed without evidence that Bazoum’s government had authorized the French to carry out strikes to free Bazoum.

Observers believe Bazoum is being held at his house in the capital, Niamey. The first photos of him since the coup appeared Sunday evening, sitting on a couch smiling beside Chad’s President Mahamat Deby, who had flown in to mediate between the government and the junta.

In anticipation of the ECOWAS decision Sunday, thousands of pro-junta supporters took to the streets in Niamey, denouncing France, waving Russian flags along with signs reading “Down with France” and supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin and telling the international community to stay away. There has been no clear explanation of the Russian symbols, but the country seems to have become a symbol of anti-Western feelings for demonstrators. Protesters also burned down a door and smashed windows of the French Embassy, before the Nigerien army dispersed them.

France said Monday that President Emmanuel Macron is closely monitoring the situation in Niger and has discussed the crisis with regional leaders and European and international partners.

By REBECCA BOONE (Associated Press)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho mother Lori Vallow Daybell has been sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday in the murders of her two youngest children and a woman she saw as a romantic rival in a case that included bizarre claims that her son and daughter were zombies and that she was a goddess tasked with ushering in an apocalypse.

Vallow Daybell, 50, was found guilty in May of killing her two youngest children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, as well as conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell, her fifth husband’s previous wife. Vallow Daybell will serve three life sentences one after the other, the judge said.

The husband, Chad Daybell, is awaiting trial on the same murder charges. Vallow Daybell also faces two other cases in Arizona — one on a charge of conspiring with her brother to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and one of conspiring to kill her niece’s ex-husband. Charles Vallow was shot and killed in 2019, but her niece’s ex survived an attempt later that year. Vallow Daybell has not yet entered a plea on the Arizona charges.

At the Fremont County Courthouse in St. Anthony, Idaho, Judge Steven W. Boyce said the search for the missing children, the discovery of their bodies and the evidence photos shown in court left law enforcement and jurors traumatized, and he would never be able to get images of the slain children out of his head.

A parent killing their own children “is the most shocking thing really that I can imagine,” Boyce said.

Vallow Daybell justified the murders by “going down a bizarre religious rabbit hole, and clearly you are still down there,” the judge said.

“I don’t think to this day you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused,” he said.

Boyce heard testimony from several representatives of the victims, including Vallow Daybell’s only surviving son, Colby Ryan.

“Tylee will never have the opportunity to become a mother, wife or have the career she was destined to have. JJ will never be able to grow and spread his light with the world the way he did,” Ryan wrote in a statement read by prosecuting attorney Rob Wood. “My siblings and father deserve so much more than this. I want them to be remembered for who they were, not just a spectacle.”

JJ’s grandmother Kay Woodcock, who first raised the alarm about the missing children in 2019, told the judge that it has been 1,536 days since she was last able to hug and kiss her grandson.

JJ was a preemie and had autism, and his biological parents weren’t able to care for him so he was adopted by Woodcock’s brother Charles and Lori Vallow.

Vallow Daybell appeared stoic through most of the testimony, but wiped her eyes when Woodcock talked about how confident she had been that Vallow Daybell would be a good mom.

“I knew she would be 1,000% involved in his care,” Woodcock said.

The Woodcocks frequently visited JJ, cooking and playing together and patting his back as he fell asleep at night. Now they have only memories and “immeasurable grief,” Woodcock said.

“Lori is a monster that has not taken any responsibility or shown an ounce of remorse for her vile actions,” she said.

The murder scheme and Tammy Daybell’s death left a deep rift in her family, Tammy’s sister Samantha Gwilliam told the court.

“Why? Why plan something so heinous? You are not exalted beings, and your behavior makes you ineligible to be one,” Gwilliam said, referring to a religious belief that Vallow Daybell purportedly incorporated into her claims. “Because of the choices you made, my family lost a beloved mother, sister and daughter.”

Tammy Daybell’s mother was fighting cancer, and spent the last months of her life watching the murder trial, Gwilliam said. “I miss my sister every day. I will grieve her, and the loss of my mother, every single day of my life,” Gwilliam said.

Boyce also heard from Vallow Daybell before handing down the sentence. She quoted Bible verses about how people should not judge each other.

“I mourn with all of you who mourn my children and Tammy,” Vallow Daybell said, crying and calling Tammy Daybell her “eternal friend.”

“Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case,” she said. “Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medication happen.”

She also claimed that she regularly is visited by the spirits of the three victims, and that the children’s spirits had told her to “stop worrying” and that she “didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Because of these communications, I know for a fact that my children are happy and busy in the spirit world,” Vallow Daybell said. “Because of my communications with my friend Tammy Daybell I know that she is also very happy and extremely busy.”

Wood pointed to the two Arizona cases as well as the three murders in six weeks in Idaho.

“A defendant who is willing to murder her own children is willing to murder anyone,” Wood said. “Society can only be protected from this defendant by a sentence of life in prison without parole.”

Vallow Daybell was committed multiple times for treatment to make her mentally competent for the court proceedings. But Wood said there is no evidence that her crimes were impacted by her “alleged mental illness,” which includes a diagnosis of a delusional disorder featuring bizarre content and hyper-religiosity, as well as a personality disorder with narcissistic features, according to a doctor’s report provided to the court.

“The evidence is overwhelming that she did know right from wrong,” Wood said, noting testimony from several people who said she lied to them about the deaths.

In July 2019, Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in a suburban Phoenix home. Cox told police he acted in self-defense. He was never charged and later died of natural causes.

Vallow Daybell was already in a relationship with Chad Daybell, a self-published writer of doomsday-focused fiction loosely based on Mormon teachings. She moved to Idaho with her kids and brother to be closer to him.

The children were last seen alive in September 2019. A few weeks later Tammy Daybell was killed. Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow married just two weeks after Tammy’s death in November 2019.

The childrens’ bodies were found buried in Chad Daybell’s yard the following summer.

Defense attorney Jim Archibald argued during the trial that there was no evidence tying Vallow Daybell to the killings, but plenty showing she was a loving, protective mother whose life took a sharp turn when she met Chad Daybell and fell for his “weird” apocalyptic religious claims. He suggested that Daybell and Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, were responsible for the deaths.

Daybell told her they had been married in several previous lives and she was a “sexual goddess” who was supposed to help him save the world by gathering 144,000 followers so Jesus could return, Archibald said.

Vallow Daybell’s former friend Melanie Gibb testified during the trial that Vallow Daybell believed people in her life had been taken over by evil spirits and turned into “zombies,” including JJ and Tylee.

Too many Americans — and too many American economists in particular — have an unhealthy obsession with the 1%: how much money they make, how much wealth they have, how they got there, how to join their ranks, and so on.

Rising economic inequality is a real problem, but the U.S. would be better off focusing on more important challenges, such as how to increase productivity or improve the economic prospects of the bottom 50%.

The latest manifestation of the inequality obsession is the debate over the admissions policies of a handful of elite schools. Last week a new research paper addressed the issue of the 1% directly: It estimates that while children of lower-income families have slightly better odds of getting into elite schools (assuming they have similar scores) than upper middle-class students, children of the 1% have a much better chance than everyone else. This is an issue that is elite almost by definition, since most colleges and universities don’t have highly selective admissions.

There are other issues where the debate is too centered on the competition between the upper middle class and the rich. Consider the discussion of urban housing, which is increasingly focused on why desirable areas of many cities are so expensive, or the attention paid to student loan debt rather than other forms of debt that keep more vulnerable members of society down.

The discourse inevitably affects policy, resulting in student debt relief, an expansion of the child income tax credit to higher earners, industrial policy for highly skilled jobs, even a regulatory crackdown on artificial intelligence. True, some of these programs also benefit lower-income people, but they could be better targeted.

It is also true that the difference between the upper middle class and super rich is more of an economic issue than it used to be, because more people are in the upper middle class. One of the most striking trends in inequality has been the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s.

According to a study from the Pew Research Center, the middle class shrank 11 percentage points between 1971 and 2014, from 61% to 50%. Most of the decline was due to Americans joining the upper middle class, defined as earning at least three times the median income. The other striking trend was the growth in income of the top 5% — especially the top 0.01%. The difference in earnings between someone in the top 10% and someone in the top 1% is much larger. So maybe making it to the top 10% no longer feels like enough for many people, and they are obsessed with improving their status (and becoming more unhappy).

But it is important to note that the American system is not completely rigged. The average salary of an Ivy League graduate and someone from a good state school is not very different. Most of the CEOs from top Fortune 500 companies went to high-quality state schools such as Texas A&M.

But the data also suggest a simple solution: Top graduate schools and employers should expand their recruiting, because clearly there are talented students everywhere.

The competition between the very rich and the very very rich is not the most pressing issue of our time. America’s resources are not unlimited, and we should focus on problems that not only reflect our values but also promote general prosperity.

More Americans may be upper middle class than ever before, but there is still a significant population falling further behind. If the goal is broader prosperity and mobility, then America should worry less about admissions to elite schools — and more about K-12 education, job retraining, and making the labor market more fluid for people who didn’t happen to go to the right school. Better to focus on the question of how the bottom 30% can make it into the top 70% than how the top 10% can join the top 1%.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS (AP Business Writer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Troubled trucking company Yellow Corp. is shutting down and headed for a bankruptcy, the Teamsters said Monday.

An official bankruptcy filing is expected any day for Yellow, after years of financial struggles and growing debt. Its expected liquidation would mark a significant shift for the U.S. transportation industry and shippers nationwide.

“Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said, in an announcement saying the union had been served with legal notice for the bankruptcy filing. “This is a sad day for workers and the American freight industry.”

Yellow did not have a comment when reached by The Associated Press Monday. As of Monday afternoon, no bankruptcy filings from the company could be found on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website.

The company’s collapse arrives just three years after Yellow, formerly known as YRC Worldwide Inc., received $700 million in pandemic-era loans from the federal government. But the company was in financial trouble long before that — with industry analysts pointing to poor management and strategic decisions dating back decades.

Former Yellow customers and shippers will face higher prices as they take their business to competitors, including FedEx or ABF Freight, experts say — noting that Yellow historically offered the cheapest price points in the industry.

Yellow is one of the nation’s largest less-than-truckload carriers. The closure of the 99-year-old Nashville, Tennessee-based company risks a loss of 30,000 jobs.

Safety vests that appeared to belong to former Yellow workers were zip-tied to the fence of a closed YRC Freight terminal in St. Louis, Missouri on Monday. Names and years worked at the company were written on them.

“Ron Fisher 2017-2023 was here,” one vest read.

Reports of Yellow preparing for bankruptcy emerged last week — as the Nashville, Tennessee-based trucker saw customers leave in large numbers, per The Wall Street Journal and FreightWaves. And the company reportedly stopped freight pickups earlier in the week.

Yellow shut down operations on Sunday, according to The Journal, following the layoffs of hundreds of nonunion employees on Friday.

The bankruptcy preparation reports arrived just days after Yellow averted a strike from the Teamsters, which represents Yellow’s 22,000 unionized workers, amid heated contract negotiations. On July 23, a pension fund agreed to extend health benefits for workers at two Yellow Corp. operating companies, avoiding a planned walkout. The fund gave Yellow “30 days to pay its bills,” notably $50 million that Yellow failed to pay the Central States Health and Welfare Fund earlier in the month.

Yellow has racked up hefty bills over the years. As of late March, Yellow had an outstanding debt of about $1.5 billion. Of that, $729.2 million was owed to the federal government.

In 2020, under the Trump administration, the Treasury Department granted the company a $700 million pandemic-era loan on national security grounds. Last month, a congressional probe concluded that the Treasury and Defense departments “made missteps” in this decision — and noted that Yellow’s “precarious financial position at the time of the loan, and continued struggles, expose taxpayers to a significant risk of loss.”

The government loan is due in September 2024. As of March, Yellow had made $54.8 million in interest payments and repaid just $230 million of the principal owed, according to government documents.

The current financial chaos at Yellow “is probably two decades in the making,” said Stifel research director Bruce Chan, pointing to poor management and strategic decisions dating back to the early 2000s. “At this point, after each party has bailed them out so many times, there is a limited appetite to do that anymore.”

A Wednesday investors note from financial service firm Stephens estimated that Yellow was burning daily amounts of $9 million to $10 million in recent days.

Yellow handled an average of 49,000 shipments per day in 2022 according to Satish Jindel, president of transportation and logistics firm SJ Consulting. On Friday, he estimated that number was down to between 10,000 and 15,000 daily shipments.

Yellow’s prices have historically been the cheapest compared to other carriers, Jindel said. “That’s why they obviously were not making money,” he added. “And while there is capacity with the other LTL carriers to handle the diversions from Yellow, it will come at a high price for (current shippers and customers) of Yellow.”

—-

AP Business Writer Matt Ott contributed to this report.

By ANWARULLAH KHAN and RIAZ KHAN (Associated Press)

KHAR, Pakistan (AP) — An Afghan branch of Islamic State on Monday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Pakistan that killed at least 54 people at a pro-Taliban party’s election rally, in one of the region’s worst attacks in recent years.

Islamic State in Khorasan Province made the claim in a statement posted on its Amaq website. It said the attacker detonated an explosive vest, and that the bombing in the northwestern town of Bajur was part of the group’s continuing war against forms of democracy it deems to be against Islam.

Hours earlier, hundreds of mourners in Bajur carried caskets draped in colorful cloths to burial sites following the previous day’s attack at the election rally for the Jamiat Ulema Islam party. Officials said Sunday’s bombing killed 54 people, including at least five children, and wounded nearly 200.

The attack appeared to reflect divisions between Islamist groups, which have a strong presence in the district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan. The Jamiat Ulema Islam party has ties to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.

At least 1,000 people were crowded into a tent near a market for the rally ahead of fall elections, according to police.

“People were chanting God is Great as the leaders arrived,” said Khan Mohammad, a local resident who said he was standing outside the tent, “and that was when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb.”

Mohammad said he heard people crying for help, and minutes later ambulances arrived and began taking the wounded away.

Police had suggested in their initial investigation that Islamic State in Khorasan Province was a suspect. The group is based in neighboring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida.

Pakistan security analyst Mahmood Shah also previously had said that breakaway factions of the Pakistani Taliban could be possible suspects, though the group distanced itself from the attack.

The Pakistani military spent years fighting the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, in Bajur before declaring the district clear of militants in 2016. But the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, headed by hard-line cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman, has remained a potent political force.

On Monday, police recorded statements from some of the wounded at a hospital in Khar, the district’s principal town.

Female relatives and children wailed and beat their chests at family homes Monday as the dead were taken for funerals, following local customs. Hundreds of men followed the caskets to mosques and open areas for special funeral prayers and then into the hills for burial.

As condolences continued to pour in from across the country, dozens of people who had lesser injuries were discharged from hospital, while the critically wounded were taken to the provincial capital of Peshawar by army helicopters. The death toll continued to rise as some critically wounded people died in hospital, physician Gul Naseeb said.

Gul Akbar, the father of an 11-year-old boy who was wounded in the attack, told The Associated Press that his entire family was in a state of shock after hearing about the bombing Sunday. He said he first went to the scene of the attack, and later found his son Taslim Khan being treated in a hospital in Khar.

“What would I have done if he had also been martyred? Five children died in this barbaric attack, and we want to know what our children did wrong,” he said.

Rehman’s party is preparing to contest elections, which are expected in October or November. Abdul Rasheed, one of the party’s senior leaders, said the bombing was aimed at weakening the party but that “such attacks cannot deter our resolve.”

Rehman’s party is part of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government, which came to power in April 2022 by ousting former Prime Minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence vote in the legislature.

Sharif called Rehman to express his condolences and assure the cleric that those who orchestrated the attack would be punished. Khan condemned the bombing Sunday, as did the U.S. and Russian embassies in Islamabad.

The Pakistani Taliban also distanced themselves from the bombing, saying that it was intended to set Islamists against each other. Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, wrote in a tweet that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.”

The bombing came hours before Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng arrived in Islamabad, where he signed new agreements to boost trade and economic ties to mark a decade of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a sprawling package under which China has invested $10 billion in Pakistan over 10 years, according to Sharif.

“We will not tolerate any obstacles in the way of friendship with China,” Sharif said, as he stood next to He.

But the government canceled a cultural event that had been arranged in honor of He, according to Sharif, while the nation mourns.

Some Chinese nationals have also been targeted by militants in northwestern Pakistan and elsewhere.

Rehman, who has long supported Afghanistan’s Taliban government, survived at least two known bomb attacks in 2011 and 2014, when bombings damaged his car at rallies.

Sunday’s bombing was one of the worst in northwestern Pakistan in the last decade. In 2014, 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar.

In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. And in February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.

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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this story from Islamabad.