A 26-year-old passenger who died when she was trapped after a crash in St. Paul loved her four young children more than anything, her mother said Wednesday.

Qiara Gleason, whose nickname was Keke, was on her way home when the 35-year-old who was driving crashed and the vehicle started on fire.

Qiara “Keke” Gleason, 26, was the passenger in a single-vehicle crash on Nov. 2, 2025, at Arlington and Prosperity avenues. She died at the scene. (Courtesy of the family)

“Qiara didn’t deserve this, and for her children to grow up without a mom is unreal to me,” said her mother, Nichole Castile.

Officers responded about 3:25 a.m. Sunday to Arlington and Prosperity avenues to a single-vehicle crash. The vehicle was fully engulfed in flames and was on the grass with heavy front-end damage.

The driver, who had a leg injury, was lying behind the vehicle. She reported she’d tried to get Gleason out, but had not been able to, police have said.

St. Paul Fire Department medics took the driver to the hospital with a non-life threatening injury to her leg. She was unable to complete field sobriety tests, due to her injury, and police obtained a search warrant for medical staff to draw her blood for testing, according to police. Results are pending.

Daughter asking ‘Where’s my mom?’

The woman driving was an acquaintance of Gleason’s, Castile said. She said she wants answers about what happened in the crash and for the driver to be charged.

Gleason “had a bright smile,” her mother said. “She was a loving person. … God blessed me with her.”

Gleason’s oldest child, a girl, will turn 4 this weekend. She was also the mother to a 1-year-old son and 6-month-old twin boys.

Gleason’s daughter has been asking, “Where’s my mom? I want to go home with my mom.” Castile has been struggling with what to say. “How are you supposed to tell a kid at that age that your mama ain’t coming back?”

Relatives have started a GoFundMe (gofund.me/ec4673213), which says donations will “help support the care and daily needs of her four children as they adjust to life without their mom.” Funds will go to Castile as she raises Gleason’s children.

The family has experienced tragedy in the past. Gleason’s first cousin was Philando Castile, 32, who a St. Anthony police officer fatally shot during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights in 2016.

Gleason’s older sister, Rene Gleason, died at 31 in 2017. She was an innocent bystander when she was wounded in a shooting in Minneapolis three years earlier, was prescribed painkillers, and became dependent on them.

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By MATTHEW PERRONE

U.S. health regulators on Wednesday sent warning letters to 18 websites selling counterfeit or unapproved versions of Botox and similar injectable drugs commonly used to smooth wrinkles.

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The Food and Drug Administration said it was taking action after receiving reports of injuries in connection with the products, including toxic side effects.

Botox is a diluted, purified form of botulinum, one of the most toxic substances in the world. The ingredient works by temporarily blocking nerve signals and causing muscles to relax. While most famously approved for cosmetic use, Botox is also approved in the U.S. for a number of medical conditions, including muscle spasms, eye disorders and migraines.

The FDA warning letters mostly went to cosmetic websites. In each case, the FDA said the companies were offering unofficial or mislabeled versions of Botox-like drugs that haven’t been approved by the agency. In addition to the original drug, introduced by Allergan in 1989, the FDA has approved several competing versions.

FDA-approved Botox drugs carry the agency’s most serious warning, a boxed label alerting doctors and patients that the medications can cause serious or life-threatening side effects.

In rare cases, the toxin can spread beyond the injection site to other parts of the body, paralyzing or weakening muscles needed for breathing and swallowing. Signs of botulism include difficulty swallowing or breathing, slurred speech and muscle weakness. Those symptoms can occur several hours after an injection.

In a press release Wednesday, the FDA said patients should only receive the drugs from health professionals who are licensed and trained to administer them. Patients experiencing signs of botulism should “seek immediate medical care,” the agency noted.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

Google Maps is heading in a new direction with artificial intelligence sitting in the passenger’s seat.

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Fueled by Google’s Gemini AI technology, the world’s most popular navigation app will become a more conversational companion as part of a redesign announced Wednesday.

The hands-free experience is meant to turn Google Maps into something more like an insightful passenger able to direct a driver to a destination while also providing nearby recommendations on places to eat, shop or sightsee, when asked for the advice.

“No fumbling required — now you can just ask,” Google promised in a blog post about the app makeover.

The AI features are also supposed to enable Google Maps to be more precise by calling out landmarks to denote the place to make a turn instead of relying on distance notifications.

AI chatbots, like Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have sometimes lapsed into periods of making things up — known as “hallucinations” in tech speak — but Google is promising that built-in safeguards will prevent Maps from accidentally sending drivers down the wrong road.

All the information that Gemini is drawing upon will be culled from the roughly 250 million places stored in Google Maps’ database of reviews accumulated during the past 20 years.

Google Maps’ new AI capabilities will be rolling out to both Apple’s iPhone and Android mobile devices.

That will give Google’s Gemini a massive audience to impress — or disappoint — with its AI prowess, given the navigation app is used by more than 2 billion people around the world. Besides making it even more indispensable, Google is hoping the AI features will turn into a showcase that help gives Gemini a competitive edge against ChatGPT.

Prodded by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Google has been steadily rolling out more of its own technology designed to ensure its products continue to evolve with the upheaval being unleashed by AI. The changes have included an overhaul of Google’s ubiquitous search engine that has de-emphasized a listing of relevant web links in its results and increasingly highlighted AI overviews and conversational responses provided through an AI mode.

By TRÂN NGUYỄN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Republicans filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block a new U.S. House map that California voters decisively approved at the ballot.

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Proposition 50, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, is designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. The lawsuit claims the map-makers illegally used race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters, and asks the court to block the new boundaries ahead of the 2026 elections. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The lawsuit was filed by The Dhillon Law Group, the California-based firm started by Harmeet Dhillon, who is now an assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The map is designed to favor one race of California voters over others,” Mike Columbo, whose plaintiffs include a state Republican lawmaker and 18 other voters, said at a news conference Wednesday. “This violates the 14th Amendment, guarantee of equal protection under the law, and the right under the 15th Amendment.”

Newsom’s office said on a social media post that the state hasn’t reviewed the lawsuit but is confident the challenge will fail.

“Good luck, losers,” the post reads.

It’s unclear whether a three-judge panel convened to hear such cases would grant a temporary restraining order before December 19, the date when candidates can start collecting voters’ signatures to lower the costs of their filing fee. It’s essentially the first step in officially running in the 2026 midterm elections. Columbo said he’s hoping to get a decision in the upcoming weeks.

Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits in California to block Democrats’ plan with little success so far.