Isiah Whitlock Jr., the veteran character actor best known for his roles in “The Wire,” “Veep” and several Spike Lee films, has died. He was 71.

Whitlock died Tuesday in New York after battling a short illness, his manager, Brian Liebman, told Deadline.

“If you knew him — you loved him,” Liebman wrote in an Instagram post. “A brilliant actor and even better person. May his memory forever be a blessing. Our hearts are so broken. He will be very, very missed.”

With more than 125 credits to his name — including two upcoming films — Whitlock was a versatile actor capable of adapting to many different roles. His most frequent collaborator was Spike Lee, who Whitlock worked with on “25th Hour,” “She Hate Me,” “Chi-Raq,” “BlacKkKlansman” and “Da 5 Bloods.”

On the small screen, he was most famous as corrupt state senator Clay Davis on HBO’s “The Wire.” Whitlock appeared sporadically in the first four seasons before joining the main cast for the final season.

The show introduced many to Whitlock’s trademark, the drawn out expletive “sheeeeeit,” uttered by his characters in apparent disbelief. Whitlock said he picked up the tic from an uncle, then brought it to his first two films with Lee.

By the time he made it to “The Wire,” producers and writers wrote it into the script for him, leading to a number of memorable moments and dozens of on-the-street fan interactions.

“They don’t quite do it the way I do it,” Whitlock told Slate in 2008. “They kind of butcher it.”

Whitlock returned to HBO in 2014 on “Veep” as defense secretary George Maddox, who unsuccessfully competes for a presidential nomination against Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character.

His final role came as Metropolitan Police Chief Larry Dokes in the Netflix miniseries “The Residence,” following a recurring role as the mayor of New Orleans in Showtime’s “Your Honor.” His voice will be heard in the Disney Pixar animated sci-fi film “Hoppers,” due out in March.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — Rescue crews responding during high winds to a report of an injured hiker who fell down a slope near a Southern California mountain trail found the man and two of his companions dead, authorities said.

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The three bodies were discovered Monday evening along the Devil’s Backbone Trail at Mount Baldy, which rises more than 10,000 feet east of Los Angeles, according to a statement from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

The department said it received a call around 11:30 a.m. Monday from someone reporting that their 19-year-old friend had tumbled 500 feet down a remote mountainside. The caller had hiked to an area with cellular service and provided GPS coordinates to rescuers.

A helicopter crew spotted the injured hiker and two other people but strong winds prevented the aircraft from landing. A second landing attempt hours later was also unsuccessful because of winds.

A medic was eventually hoisted down from a helicopter and found all three people dead around 7:30 p.m., the sheriff’s statement said. Their identities were not released as of Tuesday and the cause of the deaths wasn’t immediately known.

Southern California had been buffeted by strong Santa Ana winds, with isolated gusts reaching 70 mph in some areas.

The deaths occurred in wilderness near where actor Julian Sands died three years ago. Sands, who starred in “A Room With a View” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” was reported missing after setting off on a solo hike in January 2023. His body was found five months later.

DETROIT (AP) — Meta is buying artificial intelligence startup Manus, as the owner of Facebook and Instagram continues an aggressive push to amp up AI offerings across its platforms.

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The California tech giant declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition. But The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta closed the deal at more than $2 billion.

Manus, a Singapore-based platform with some Chinese roots, launched its first “general-purpose” AI agent earlier this year. The platform offers paid subscriptions for customers to use this technology for research, coding and other tasks.

“Manus is already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses worldwide,” Meta said in a Monday announcement, adding that it plans to scale this service — as Manus will “deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI.”

Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, added that joining Meta will allow the platform to “build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made.” Manus confirmed that it would continue to sell and operate subscriptions through its own app and website.

The platform has grown rapidly over the past year. Earlier this month, Manus announced that it had crossed the $100 million mark in annual recurring revenue, just eight months after launching.

Some of Manus’ initial financial backers reportedly included China’s Tencent Holdings, ZhenFund and HSG. And the company that first launched the platform — Butterfly Effect, which also operates under the name monica.im, which was founded in China before moving to Singapore.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that there would be “no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI” following its transaction, and that the platform would also discontinue its services and operations in China. Manus reiterated that it would continue to operate in Singapore, where most of its employees are based.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to revive its commercial AI efforts as the company faces tough competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. In June, the company made a $14.3 billion investment in AI data company Scale and recruited its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead a team developing “superintelligence” at the tech giant.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration announced on Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota after a series of fraud schemes in recent years.

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Acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Jim O’Neill announced on the social platform X that the step is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”

“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” he said.

The announcement comes after years of investigation that began with the $300 million scheme at the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier in December that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants are Somali Americans, they said.

Earlier coverage: Video alleging fraud in Minnesota draws federal response; state casts doubt on it

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration “will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught.” Walz has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.