By GLENN GAMBOA

NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $70 million to the UNCF, as the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships to minority students works to raise $1 billion to strengthen all 37 of its historically Black colleges and universities.

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The gift is one of Scott’s largest single donations ever and among the first to be publicly disclosed in 2025. Famously private, Scott only discusses her donations through her website and does not confirm them until after the recipients do.

“This extraordinary gift is a powerful vote of confidence in HBCUs and in the work of UNCF,” the nonprofit’s President and CEO Dr. Michael L. Lomax told The Associated Press in a statement. “It provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our member institutions to build permanent assets that will support students and campuses for decades to come.”

Lomax said Scott’s donation would be used for UNCF’s pooled endowment, which aims to establish a $370 million fund — $10 million for each UNCF member HBCU. That fund will be invested and designed to pay out about 4% annually, which will then be divided among the HBCUs to help stabilize their budgets. Increasing HBCU endowments is a priority since they trail endowments at non-HBCUs by 70%, according to the UNCF.

The broader $1 billion fundraising effort is an attempt to help HBCUs address the funding disparity they face when compared to other colleges and universities. A 2023 study by philanthropic research group Candid and ABFE, a nonprofit that advocates for investments in Black communities, found that the eight Ivy League schools received $5.5 billion from the 1,000 largest U.S. foundations compared to $45 million for the 99 HBCUs in 2019.

Since Scott, a novelist who received the bulk of her fortune after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, promising to donate more than half her wealth, HBCUs have been among her favorite grantees. She previously gave UNCF $10 million in 2020.

Though Scott hasn’t addressed HBCU donations specifically, she wrote in 2020 that her funding decisions were “driven by a deep belief in the value different backgrounds bring to problem-solving on any issue.”

Scott hasn’t made any announcements about her giving since she acknowledged $2 billion in gifts in 2024, bringing her total to $19.2 billion. According to Forbes, Scott’s net worth is currently around $34 billion.

Her unusual donations — which are much larger than most foundations give at one time and carry no restrictions on when they can be used or what they can be used for — financially strengthened the nonprofits that received them, said Phil Buchanan, president of The Center for Effective Philanthropy, which studied Scott’s giving over three years.

“We didn’t see the fears people predicted come to pass,” said Buchanan, who disclosed that The Center for Effective Philanthropy received a one-time $10 million grant from Scott. Though some worried that the large gifts would cause the recipients to increase staffing too much or hurt their fundraising efforts, Buchanan said their study of 2,000 nonprofits saw little evidence of that. “Folks are pretty prudent,” he said. “This shows that if you carefully vet nonprofits, we can trust them to make good use of funds.”

It’s a lesson that UNCF hopes other funders will learn, following Scott’s example.

“We are deeply grateful for MacKenzie Scott’s continued support,” Lomax said. “By entrusting UNCF to decide how best to use these funds, she affirms that HBCUs merit investment at this scale and her generosity will strengthen our member institutions and provide pathways to success for tomorrow’s changemakers.”

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

An alligator loitering near a Lake County residence was apprehended by a pair of sheriff’s deputies earlier this month, with video released Saturday of their feat.

The video posted to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page shows two deputies who first encounter the roughly 6-foot-long gator at a residence’s front entrance back on Sept. 4.

“Dispatch received a call from a woman stating that there was an alligator on her front porch area,” the Facebook post reads. “Deputies responded to capture and safely relocate the surprise visitor. Not our first call like this… but it’s always a Florida classic!”

The gator then makes a run around to the side of the home pushing through an unlocked gate to the backyard with the deputies following with some caution, according to body-worn cameras in the video.

Drone footage then shows one of the deputies using a wire apparatus to snare one end of alligator. Then the second deputy does the same before the first mounts the gator to hold it down and clamp its mouth. The second deputy then tapes it shut.

The pair then transport it and load it into the rear seat of a sheriff’s office SUV followed by celebratory fist bumps with some neighborhood onlookers.

Comments on the Facebook post made light of the situation as well as praising the deputies’ efforts.

“Only in Florida does law enforcement carry alligator leashes,” reads one.

Another reads, “Whoa! Is Alligator Wrangler part of the police qualification in FL when applying? I think NYC has Sewer Rat Dodger as part of their qualification. Good job guys!”

By JIM GOMEZ, JOEAL CALUPITAN and AARON FAVILA

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine police arrested 49 people suspected of hurling rocks, bottles and fire bombs at officers and blocking heavily guarded roads and bridges leading to the presidential palace Sunday while a peaceful anti-corruption rally took place in the capital, officials and witnesses said.

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The melee outside the country’s seat of power unfolded while more than 33,000 other protesters rallied in a historic park and a democracy monument in Manila. They expressed outrage over a corruption scandal involving lawmakers, officials and construction company owners who allegedly pocketed huge kickbacks from flood-control projects in the impoverished Southeast Asian country that is regularly buffeted by storms and typhoons.

The hourslong rampage by about 100 mostly club-wielding people, some of whom waved Philippine flags and displayed carton posters with anti-corruption slogans, wounded about 70 Manila law enforcers, according to the Manila police. Schools were canceled due to the violence.

Police said they lobbed tear gas to try to disperse the attackers, who sprayed graffiti on walls, toppled steel posts, shattered glass panels and ransacked the lobby of a budget inn along a popular road dotted with university campuses, banks and restaurants before dispersing at night.

Hours after the assault, police have yet to identify the attackers, some of whom carried black flags with the caricature of a skull and crossbones. It was also unclear if they had earlier participated in the peaceful protests before heading toward the presidential office. It was not immediately known if President Marcos Jr. was in the Malacanang presidential palace during the chaos.

Police said in a statement after the arrests that the situation was “contained” but warned that violence and vandalism would not be tolerated.

Protesting corruption

“I feel bad that we wallow in poverty and we lose our homes, our lives and our future while they rake in a big fortune from our taxes that pay for their luxury cars, foreign trips and bigger corporate transactions,” student activist Althea Trinidad told The Associated Press in Manila.

Trinidad lives in Bulacan, a flood-prone province north of Manila where officials said the most flood-control projects were being investigated either as substandard or nonexistent.

“Our purpose is not to destabilize but to strengthen our democracy,” Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, the head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in a statement. He called on the public to demonstrate peacefully and demand accountability.

Marcos first highlighted the flood-control corruption scandal in July in his annual state of the nation speech.

He later established an independent commission to investigate what he said were anomalies in many of the 9,855 flood-control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9.5 billion) that were supposed to have been undertaken since he took office in mid-2022. He called the scale of corruption “horrible” and accepted his public works secretary’s resignation.

Public outrage erupted when a wealthy couple who ran several construction companies that won lucrative flood-control project contracts showed dozens of European and American luxury cars they owned during media interviews. The fleet included a British luxury car costing 42 million pesos ($737,000) that they said they bought because it came with a free umbrella.

The Gophers men’s basketball program’s initial recruiting class under new head coach Niko Medved is off to a stronger start.

It’s still early in the cycle, but the three total recruits in the 2026 class have the U at seventh in the nation, according to 247Sports.

And there is a “possibility” for one more, Medved said Monday.

“It’s got to be the right guy,” he said. “We’ve got some guys that have visited that we really, really like, so we will see where that goes.”

One of those candidates is four-star shooting guard Joseph Hartman. The Gainesville, Fla. product visited the Gophers last week. Hartman has more than 15 offers and has posted about other recent visits to Butler and Iowa.

Quinn Costello, a four-star forward prospect from Boston, visited the U in late August, but he committed to Michigan in the last few weeks. Costello’s high school teammate, four-star guard Lucas Morillo, also visited Dinkytown and has yet to commit.

The Gophers current recruiting class includes four-star wing Nolen Anderson (Wayzata), three-star point guard Cedric Tomes (East Ridge) and three-star center Chadrick Mpoyi (Irvine, Calif.)

Schedule buzz

Medved didn’t have to look far for a breakdown of the Gophers’ newly released Big Ten schedule; he heard about it at a family function on Sunday.

“They know it better than I do,” Medved said Monday with a laugh. “Honestly, (I) just kind of focus on today.”

Scouting of the U’s upcoming conference opponents will come later. On Monday, Medved led his debut team in its first official practice at William Arena.

Medved knows the Gophers open up against Indiana — and new Hoosiers head coach Darian DeVries — at The Barn on Dec. 3 and then travel to powerhouse Purdue on Dec. 10. He is also aware of another highlight: rivals Iowa and Wisconsin are part of a three-game stretch (along with Southern Cal) at The Barn in early January.

“They were laying out all this stuff, who we go to and who comes here,” Medved said of his family. “… That just seems so far down the horizon right now.”

The Gophers have less than a month to prepare for their two exhibition games against North Dakota State (Oct. 16) and North Dakota (Oct. 25). The season opener against Gardner-Webb is at Williams Arena on Nov. 3.

Injury news

B.J. Omot, a transfer wing from the University of California, has been fully cleared to practice, Medved said. Omot, a Mankato native, missed summer workouts to have surgery for a stress fracture in his shin.

“He’s been building up, but getting him back out there has been great for us,” Medved said. “That gives us another player that we are really really excited about.”

Chance Stephens, a transfer from Maryland, is dealing with illness and has been sidelined. And Max Gizzi, a transfer from Huntington, broke his foot, had surgery and is out for an estimated six weeks.

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