Photos from the Met Gala, the story of a bride killed on her wedding day, coronation previews, and more of the week's news

To illustrate what summer weather was like in the U.S. from 1920 to 2022, Stacker consulted data from the NOAA.

LOS ANGELES — Kevin Costner and his wife of nearly 19 years, Christine Baumgartner, are divorcing, a representative for the actor said Tuesday.

"It is with great sadness that circumstances beyond his control have transpired which have resulted in Mr. Costner having to participate in a dissolution of marriage," Costner's publicist Arnold Robinson said in a statement.

Costner and Baumgartner, a model and handbag designer, began dating in 1998 before getting married at his Colorado ranch in 2004. 

They have two sons, ages 14 and 15, and a 12-year-old daughter together.

It was the second marriage for Costner, 68, the Oscar and Emmy winning star of TV's "Yellowstone" and films including "Dances With Wolves," "The Bodyguard" and "Bull Durham."

Costner also has four adult children from previous relationships.

Photos: Kevin Costner through the years

ST. LOUIS — Anheuser-Busch is now telling retail customers that a recent controversy is just a tempest in a pint glass.

In a letter to wholesalers that was forwarded to some local bars and restaurants, the brewery addressed the backlash to a marketing campaign featuring transgender social-media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which led to a steep decline in Bud Light sales over the last month.

“This was one single can given to one social media influencer,” the letter states. “It was not made for production or sale to the general public. This can is not a formal campaign or advertisement.”

Mulvaney, 26, posted a video on TikTok showing a can of Bud Light with her face on it that was given to her to celebrate her 365th day of girlhood. The video also showed her sipping a beer as part of March Madness, and she joked that she did not know which sport she was promoting.

A-B’s letter was forwarded to retailers, bars and restaurants by Grey Eagle, a Fenton-based company that distributes Anheuser-Busch products to a 14-county region around St. Louis. Grey Eagle does not distribute to the city of St. Louis, Jefferson County and parts of Washington and Iron counties.

Grey Eagle included a cover letter. “Anheuser-Busch did not intend to create controversy or make a political statement,” it said.

“In reality, the Bud Light can posted by a social media influencer that sparked all the conversation was provided by an outside agency without Anheuser-Busch management awareness or approval,” Grey Eagle continued in its letter. “Since that time, the lack of oversight and control over marketing decisions has been addressed and a new VP of Bud Light marketing has been announced.”

Todd Allen, most recently the global vice president of Budweiser, is the new vice president of marketing for Bud Light, which is a bigger brand.

Robert Lachky, the former chief creative officer at Anheuser-Busch, said the decision to use a transgender influencer to sell Bud Light was a calamitous mistake.

”The minute you step into the political or religious spectrum, when you know your target audience is going to have a real issue with this, you know you’ve alienated at least half of your target audience,” he said.

”In the end, people don’t like getting preached to, especially when it comes to drinking beer.”

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Lachky left the company in 2009, shortly after it was acquired by Belgian-based InBev. He said the corporate marketing immediately began to slide after the acquisition when the company brought in foreign-born marketers who did not understand the American audience.

Now that the marketers are all American again, they still do not understand who consumes Bud Light and other mainstream Anheuser-Busch products, he said.

”None of these marketing folks has ever been to a NASCAR race, none has been to a football game or a rodeo,” he said.

“That’s insanity. That’s marketing incompetence,” he said.

Even so, Kris Hansford, who owns the Trainwreck Saloon in Rock Hill and Westport, said she has not heard much pushback from the controversy.

The only incident that stood out is when a customer noticed a rainbow tattoo on a server and asked her about it.

“I guess you drink Bud Light, too,” the customer said.

Looking back at the incident, Hansford said, “That’s rude.”

25 transgender celebrities who broke barriers

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Fallon Fox

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Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski

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NEW YORK — Text messages that helped lead Fox News to part ways with star host Tucker Carlson included one in which he declared that Trump supporters beating a protester was "not how white men fight," according to The New York Times.

The text was one of a trove of messages from Carlson and other Fox News hosts uncovered in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network for airing false allegations that the company's machines were used to steal the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump.

The sides settled just as the trial was getting underway, with Fox agreeing to pay Dominion nearly $800 million.

While some of Carlson's texts have been publicly released, the one quoted by the Times remains redacted by the court, as do numerous other exhibits. Media organizations, including The Associated Press, continue to try to lift the redactions.

The Times reports that Carlson sent the text to a producer hours after Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He describes a video he had seen a couple of weeks earlier of Trump supporters beating someone he described as "an Antifa kid."

Carlson wrote about his conflicting emotions in watching the fight, which he described as "three against one, at least."

"Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously," he wrote, according to the Times. "It's not how white men fight."

"I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed," Carlson wrote, after admitting part of him was rooting for the attackers. "If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?"

Before his ouster last month, Carlson was Fox's top-rated host. He drew controversy for supporting theories such as the idea that immigrants are being admitted to the U.S to "replace" people born here. Critics have called that white supremacy, an accusation he has denied.

Messages sent Wednesday to Carlson and his attorney seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Tucker Carlson the latest in a string of high-profile Fox News oustings. Here's the list.

Tucker Carlson

Roger Ailes

Bill O'Reilly

Eric Bolling

Glenn Beck

Fox News and Tucker Carlson part ways

HENRYETTA, Okla. (AP) — The bodies of seven people were discovered Monday during a search for two missing teenagers, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed.

The bodies were discovered during a search of a rural property near the town of Henryetta, agency spokesman Gerald Davidson said.

He said the state medical examiner will have to identify the victims.

Earlier Monday, a missing endangered person advisory was issued after 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer were reported missing. The two were reportedly seen traveling with convicted sex offender Jesse McFadden. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol canceled the Amber Alert Monday afternoon.

For updates:

Take a look at the top 10 paw-pular names by state and Washington D.C., brought to you by Wag!.

An Oklahoma sex offender shot six people in the head and then himself, an Oklahoma police chief Wednesday.

Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said that the victims all sustained between one and three wounds to the head. He said that Jesse McFadden, 39, then shot himself.

“The evidence is that Jesse McFadden murdered six people and then killed himself. Beyond that, I don’t know what his thought process was," Prentice said. “I’m not going to express a theory because I follow the evidence, and I don’t have any evidence about what the motive was.”

Earlier Wednesday, a woman whose daughter and three grandchildren were among the seven bodies found on a rural Oklahoma property said that sheriff's investigators told her that her son-in-law, a convicted sex offender, shot all six victims in the head before killing himself.

Janette Mayo said investigators with the Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Office told her Wednesday that McFadden, 39, shot and killed all the victims, including her daughter, Holly Guess, 35, before turning the gun on himself.

“They were all shot in the head,” Mayo said. “My daughter was shot multiple times.”

Family members have questioned how a rapist accused of soliciting nude images from another teen while behind bars was ever allowed to go free.

The shooting happened as a series of ominous text messages — sent by McFadden to his young accuser hours before his trial was to begin on felony charges of soliciting and possessing images of child sex abuse — suggested that he blamed the woman for ending his “great life” and that he was determined not to return to prison.

According to screen grabs of the messages, forwarded to KOKI in Tulsa by the now 23-year-old woman McFadden allegedly groomed from prison, he said he was having success at a marketing job and “making great money.”

“Now it's all gone,” he texted. “I told you I wouldn't go back.”

“This is all on you for continuing this,” he finished.

A solicitation conviction can mean a 10 year sentence; the pornography charge could mean 20 years behind bars.

Muskogee County District Attorney Larry Edwards said the young woman shared the text messages with him as well. "They are tragic. Let’s just say that. He more or less blames her for what he did and that’s the part I really have the problem with, because she didn’t do anything wrong,” Edwards told Tulsa-based KOTV.

Authorities began a search after McFadden failed to appear at his long-delayed jury trial on Monday in Muskogee County. His body was later discovered along with his wife, her son and daughters, and two other teens who were visiting the family over the weekend.

Now family members of the victims are asking why McFadden, sentenced to 20 years in 2003 for first-degree rape in the sexual assault of a 17-year-old, was freed three years early, in part for good behavior, despite facing new charges that he used a contraband cell phone in 2016 to trade nude photos with the woman, then 16. He was released in 2020 after 16 years and nine months, even though the charges could send him back to prison for many years if convicted.

“And they rushed him out of prison. How?" asked Mayo. She said she was told that her daughter and her grandchildren, Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13, were all shot to death.

“Oklahoma failed to protect families. And because of that my children -- my daughter and my grandchildren -- are all gone,” Mayo told The Associated Press. "I’ve lost my daughter and my grandchildren and I’m never going to get to see ’em, never going to get to hold them, and it’s killing me.”

Justin Webster, who said he allowed his 14-year-old Ivy Webster to join a sleepover at the McFadden home not knowing anything about the man's past, raised similar concerns about McFadden's release.

“To get to save some other children, to make a change is what I want to do," Webster told The AP during a tearful interview Tuesday in Henryetta, expressing a determination to “tell Ivy’s story and our story and get our government officials and everybody to start speaking up loud and keeping those pedophiles in jail.”

"There needs to be repercussions and somebody needs to be held accountable. They let a monster out. They did this,” Webster said.

A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday on why McFadden was released despite facing new felony charges.

Prosecutors objected to any early release from prison, noting that he tied a 17-year-old’s hands and feet to bedposts, cut her shirt off and raped her at knifepoint. At one point, he threatened to use the knife on her if she "did not shut up,” the records show.

The circumstances have alarmed Republican state Rep. Justin Humphrey, who chairs his chamber’s Criminal Judiciary Committee. He told The AP in a text that he's working with another lawmaker on legislation that would “stop tragedies of this nature from occurring again.”

He said the effort also will involve trying to determine how a person could commit sex crimes in prison and be released on good behavior, and how McFadden was able to be in contact with minors while on sex offender supervision.

Court records show McFadden was charged with the new crimes in 2017 after the young woman's relative alerted authorities. Set free in October 2020, he was arrested the next month and then released on $25,000 bond pending the trial, which was repeatedly delayed, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

McFadden married Holly Guess in May 2022; what she knew of his record isn't clear. Mayo said the family didn’t learn about her son-in-law's criminal history until a few months ago.

“He lied to my daughter, and he convinced her it was all just a huge mistake,” said Mayo, of Westville. “He was very standoffish, generally very quiet, but he kept my daughter and the kids basically under lock and key. He had to know where they were at all times, which sent red flags up.”

According to Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice, the seven bodies were found on the property where McFadden lived near Henryetta, a town of about 6,000 about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City. The dead bodies included the two teens who had been reported as missing and in danger — Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16.

Brittany Brewer’s father confirmed that his daughter was among the dead. At a vigil Monday night, Nathan Brewer said “It’s just a parent’s worst nightmare, and I’m living it.”

The grim discovery could push the number of people slain in mass killings past 100 for the year, according to a database maintained by The AP and USA Today in a partnership with Northeastern University.

___

Associated Press data journalist Larry Fenn and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas man went next door with a rifle and began shooting his neighbors, killing an 8-year-old and four others inside the house, after the family asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because they were trying to sleep, authorities said Saturday.

San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told reporters at the scene that authorities were still searching for 39-year-old Francisco Oropeza following the overnight shooting in the town of Cleveland, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Houston. He said Oropeza used an AR-style rifle in the shooting.

“Everyone that was shot was shot from the neck up, almost execution-style,” Capers said during an earlier news conference at the scene.

Capers said there were 10 people in the house and that no one else was injured. He said two of the victims, all believed to be from Honduras, were found laying over two children inside.

“The Honduran ladies that were laying over these children were doing it in such an effort as to protect the child,” according to Capers, who said a total of three blood-covered children were found in the home but were determined to be uninjured after being taken to a hospital.

Capers said two other people were examined at the scene and released.

The confrontation followed family members walking up to the fence and asking the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. The suspect responded by telling them that it was his property, according to Capers, and that one person in the house got a video of the suspect walking up to the front door with the rifle.

Three of the victims were women and one was a man. Their names were not released. Capers said the victims were between the ages of 8 and about 40 years old.

Authorities have previously been to the suspect's home, according to Capers. “Deputies have come over and spoke with him about him shooting his gun in the yard,” he said.

Capers said some of those in the house had just moved from Houston earlier in the week, but he did not know whether they were planning to stay there.

The U.S. is on a record pace for mass killings this year, with at least 18 shootings since Jan. 1 that left four or more people dead. The violence is sparked by a range of motives: murder-suicides and domestic violence; gang retaliation; school shootings and workplace vendettas.

_____

Associated Press writer Ken Miller contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — A federal jury in New York concluded Thursday that British singer Ed Sheeran didn't steal key components of Marvin Gaye's classic 1970s tune "Let's Get It On" when he created his hit song "Thinking Out Loud," prompting Sheeran to joke later that he won't have to follow through on his threat to quit music.

The emotions of an epic copyright fight that stretched across most of the last decade spilled out as soon as the seven-person jury revealed its verdict after more than two hours of deliberations.

Sheeran briefly dropped his face into his hands in relief before standing to hug his attorney, Ilene Farkas. As jurors left the courtroom, Sheeran smiled at several of them and mouthed the words: "Thank you."

He then spoke for about 10 minutes with plaintiff Kathryn Townsend Griffin, the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-created the 1973 soul classic with Gaye. They hugged and smiled with each other.

Sheeran later addressed reporters outside the courthouse, revisiting his claim made during the trial that he would consider quitting songwriting if he lost the case.

"I am obviously very happy with the outcome of this case, and it looks like I'm not going to have to retire from my day job, after all. But at the same time, I am unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all," the singer said, reading from a prepared statement.

He also said he missed his grandmother's funeral in Ireland because of the trial, and he "won't get that time back."

Before leaving the courthouse, Griffin waited in a hallway with her lawyers, saying she was relieved the trial was over.

"I'm just glad it's over," she said. "We can be friends."

She said she was pleased that Sheeran approached her immediately after the verdict and the two conversed at length.

"It showed me who he was," Griffin said.

She said her copyright lawsuit wasn't personal. "I did what I had to do to protect my father's intellectual property. I'm very proud of my father and his work and me doing what I have to do," Griffin added.

The verdict came after a two-week trial that featured a courtroom performance by Sheeran as the singer insisted, sometimes angrily, that the trial was a threat to all musicians who create their own music.

Sheeran sat with his legal team throughout the trial, defending himself against the lawsuit by Townsend's heirs. They said "Thinking Out Loud" had so many similarities to "Let's Get It On" that it violated the song's copyright protection.

Sheeran's song, which came out in 2014, was a hit, winning a Grammy for song of the year.