As thousands of kids prepare to hit the streets in Southern California dressed as Labubus, pop stars and monsters on Halloween, local authorities are sharing tips to keep trick-or-treaters safe as they grow their candy bounties.

Despite often-viral claims of Halloween candy laced with drugs, metal or other dangers, pedestrian safety is a primary concern for health care professionals, said Helen Arbogast, who leads the injury prevention program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Kids, especially ages 4 to 12, are more likely to be hit and killed or injured by vehicles on Halloween compared to other days of the year, and hospitals like CHLA see an uptick of pedestrian injuries on Halloween.

“It’s a busy time, but it’s late in the day and you have some of the less practiced pedestrians on the road,” Arbogast said. “We do see a fair amount of children who are hit by cars, who have falls, they might trip.”

Despite claims that spread each year of Halloween candy laced with drugs or metal, road safety should be top of mind for families taking kids trick-or-treating, experts say.

There are many ways families can reduce this risk, including making their trick-or-treaters more visible, Arbogast said.

Adults can carry flashlights, put reflective stickers on children’s costumes and accessories and place glow sticks in candy bags or give them to kids as necklaces and bracelets. When she takes her family and another trick or treating, Arbogast said she’ll be wearing a yellow vest with reflective patches with all the adults in the group carrying flashlights and surrounding the kids as they walk.

When Sgt. Nick Jensen with Garden Grove police supervises his kids and others on Halloween, he makes sure there’s an adult in the front and back of the group, each with a flashlight to help drivers see them and to look for obstacles in dimly lit yards and driveways.

Everyone in Jensen’s party has to travel together. They go to each home as a group and don’t move on to the next until an adult has done a head count.

“Keep them kind of on a short leash, per se, cause kids, they’re kids,” said Officer Ryan Railsback with Riverside police. “They like to dart out in traffic, and they get distracted really quick.”

When his kids were of trick-or-treating age, Railsback said he’d plan a route in advance and had an idea of how long it would take. His kids knew not to knock on a door unless he was with them. He encouraged parents to go up with their younger kids, but said those with older kids could also supervise from a sidewalk where they have a view of the door.

Parents should educate their kids on traffic safety, especially if they don’t often walk at night, Arbogast said. Talk to them about looking both ways when they cross the street, only crossing at corners and marked intersections, making eye contact with drivers before crossing and looking for headlights or backup lights, she said.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Arbogast said some families have also started driving next to their children who are trick-or-treating. She recommended adults walk with kids, so that they can get out in their community, get active and learn pedestrian safety through practice.

“When you get to an intersection, don’t do the work for them,” Arbogast said. “Don’t look both ways and not teach them to look both ways, because if they’re walking with you and they’re relying on you to do all the safety components, when they’re alone, they’re not going to know what to do.”

With middle and high schoolers using e-bikes and e-scooters more and more, Arbogast said families also need to keep an eye out for riders. She encouraged parents to tell older kids to trick-or-treat on foot, as e-bikes and e-scooters are often quieter than cars and ridden on sidewalks even though street legal ones can reach speeds of up to 28 miles per hour.

Drivers should slow down between about 5 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. and be especially vigilant, turning down music and other distractions and keeping lights on while driving on the road or entering and exiting driveways, Arbogast said.

“Even as you’re coming home from work and ready to get to dinner,” Arbogast said, “be thinking about other families that may have started trick or treating.”

There have been few credible cases of candy tampering in the past, Arbogast said, but she encouraged parents to still check their kids’ candy once they get home to make sure everything is properly wrapped and sealed.

In terms of costumes, Arbogast said parents should check that their kids’ costumes fit properly and won’t create tripping hazards. She also recommended using makeup rather than masks to improve visibility. Anaheim police urged families not to let their kids carry prop guns or other weapons that could be mistaken for real ones.

Jensen encouraged adults going to Halloween parties to have a designated driver or use rideshare if they’re planning to drink or use other substances.

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By WAFAA SHURAFA and JULIA FRANKEL, Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel has handed over the bodies of 30 Palestinians, according to the Red Cross and hospital officials in Gaza, a day after Palestinian fighters returned the remains of two hostages to Israel.

A doctor at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis confirmed receiving the bodies and said they were all unidentified. The Red Cross said that its teams had facilitated the transfer.

The exchange is the latest indication that the fraught Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement is moving forward, despite Israeli strikes on Gaza this week that killed more than 100 people following the killing of an Israeli soldier.

Gaza and Israel grapple with latest exchange of bodies

Ahmed al-Farra, head of the pediatric unit at Nasser Hospital, confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday morning that the hospital received the unidentified bodies of 30 Palestinians from Israel. He said all the bodies of Palestinians turned over as part of the ceasefire pact have arrived without identification details.

Photos showed the remains, in white body bags, arranged in rows inside the grounds of Nasser Hospital. Health officials have struggled to identify bodies without access to DNA kits.

The return brings the number of Palestinian bodies returned by Israel to 225, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It is unclear if the bodies returned by Israel were killed in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, died in Israeli custody as detainees or were recovered from Gaza by troops during the war.

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In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late Thursday that the remains returned by Palestinian fighters had been confirmed as those of Sahar Baruch and Amiram Cooper, both taken hostage during the 2023 attack by Hamas that set off the war.

Hamas has now returned the remains of 17 hostages since the start of the ceasefire, with 11 others still in Gaza and set to be turned over under the terms of the agreement.

On Friday a small crowd of Israelis gathered in the plaza known as Hostages Square, praying together for the return of the dead hostages still in Gaza.

“We cannot give up until everybody, all the bodies will be here,” said Rimona Velner, a Tel Aviv resident who joined the gathering. “It’s very important to the families and for us … to close this circle.”

Warning to Hamas

A senior U.S. official and a second source familiar with negotiations said that in messages passed to Hamas by mediators on Wednesday, Israel warned the group that its fighters had 24 hours to leave the yellow zone or face strikes.

That deadline passed Thursday evening, after which the senior U.S. official said “Israel will enforce the ceasefire and engage Hamas targets behind the yellow line.” Hamas did not respond to a request for comment.

On Friday, Shifa hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said that one person had been killed by Israeli gunfire in northern Gaza. Israel’s military said its troops had fired after the person approached troops in a way that posed a threat.

Government officials from eight Arab and Muslim nations will gather in Istanbul on Monday to discuss the next steps for Gaza, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Friday.

The talks follow a meeting between the countries’ leaders and President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations Security Council, preceding the ceasefire agreement. They mark the latest effort to create an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, outlined in a 20-point U.S. plan.

The ceasefire, which began Oct. 10, is aimed at winding down a war that is by far the deadliest and most destructive of those ever fought between Israel and Hamas.

In the October 2023 attack on Israel, Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.

In the two years since, Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 68,600 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and is staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by independent experts.

Israel, which some international critics have accused of committing genocide in Gaza, has disputed the figures without providing a contradicting toll.

Israeli fire kills teen in West Bank

In the central West Bank town of Silwad on Friday, mourners thronged the streets for the funeral of Yamen Hamed, 15, who Palestinian health officials say was shot by an Israeli soldier overnight. Samed Yousef Hamed kissed his son goodbye.

Samed said his son left home Thursday to hang out with friends. Soon after, he learned the teen had been injured and Israel’s army was preventing an ambulance from reaching him. Ahed Smirat, the ambulance driver who tried to reach Hamed following the shooting, told the AP that troops held him up multiple times. By the time they let him through, troops told him the teen had died, he said.

Israel’s military called the teen a “terrorist,” and said troops had fired believing that he was holding an explosive. Hamed’s funeral was Friday.

The shooting is the latest in a surge of military killings of Palestinian children in the West Bank that has accompanied a general upswing in violence in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Some were killed during Israeli military raids in dense neighborhoods, others by sniper fire in peaceful areas.

The killings have risen as the Israeli military has stepped up operations in the occupied West Bank since the war’s onset in what it calls a crackdown on fighters.

Frankel reported from Jerusalem. AP reporter Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

By MICHAEL CASEY, GEOFF MULVIHILL and KIMBERLEE KRUESI, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Two judges could rule as soon as Friday on whether President Donald Trump’s administration must replenish SNAP food aid benefits for November despite the government shutdown.

The grocery-buying ability for about 1 in 8 Americans could hinge on the outcomes.

Even if a judge rules the benefits cannot be suspended for the first time in SNAP’s 61-year history, many beneficiaries are likely to face delays in getting the debit cards they use to buy groceries reloaded. That process can take one to two weeks, so it’s likely too late to get funds on cards in the first days of November.

In a hearing in Boston Thursday on a legal challenge filed by Democratic officials from 25 states, one federal judge seemed skeptical of the administration’s argument that SNAP benefits could be halted.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani told lawyers that if the government can’t afford to cover the cost, there’s a process to follow rather than simply suspending all benefits. “The steps involve finding an equitable way of reducing benefits,” said Talwani, who was nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama.

Talwani seemed to be leaning toward requiring the government to put billions of dollars in emergency funds toward SNAP. That, she said, is her interpretation of what Congress intended when an agency’s funding runs out.

“If you don’t have money, you tighten your belt,” she said in court. “You are not going to make everyone drop dead because it’s a political game someplace.”

Government lawyers say a contingency fund containing some $5 billion cannot legally be used to maintain SNAP, a program that costs about $8 billion a month. The states say it must be used for that purpose and point to more money available in a second federal account with around $23 billion.

Talwani said her ruling would apply nationwide, not just in the states that are part of the challenge. That could defy the intentions of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has limited the use of nationwide injunctions, though it hasn’t prohibited them.

A hearing on a second, similar challenge filed by a coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations is scheduled before a Rhode Island-based federal judge for Friday.

Any ruling in either case is likely to face an appeal.

Meanwhile, states, food banks and recipients have been bracing for an abrupt shift in how low-income people can get groceries.

The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the debit cards used in the program.

Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills.

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At a Washington news conference Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department runs SNAP, said the contingency funds in question would not cover the cost of SNAP for long. Speaking at a press conference with House Speaker Mike Johnson at the Capitol, she blamed Democrats for conducting a “disgusting dereliction of duty” by refusing to end their Senate filibuster as they hold out for an extension of health care funds.

A push this week to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown failed in Congress.

To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a family of four’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line, which is about $31,000 per year. Last year, SNAP provided assistance to 41 million people, nearly two-thirds of whom were families with children, according to the lawsuit.

Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey; and Kruesi from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro in Washington, D.C., contributed.

Mark Coyle wants the money to talk.

The Gophers have $20.5 million to spend via revenue-sharing payments to current players for the 2025-26 academic year, and the U’s athletics director has put what he believes to be a larger investment into Minnesota’s men’s basketball program, which hasn’t been to an NCAA tournament since 2019 — and has advanced to the Sweet 16 just once since 1998.

University of Minnesota Athletics Director Mark Coyle on the sidelines during a Gopher’s NCAA football game against the Northwestern State Demons at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Like our fans, I’m frustrated that we haven’t had more success with our men’s basketball program,” Coyle said in a Pioneer Press interview in September.

For competitive reasons — and because no organization is compelling them to do so — how much money being divvied up by schools to its sports programs remains in the dark. That’s true across the country.

One estimate is new head coach Niko Medved has roughly 15% of that $20.5 million to work this school year; that’s a little more than $3 million.

An industry-wide norm is for top-level football programs to receive approximately 75% of revenue sharing, so Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck would be getting in the ballpark of $15 million. Meanwhile, Gophers women’s basketball, volleyball and men’s hockey would be getting the remaining 10%, or roughly $2 million.

The U also is adding a few scholarships to football and other women’s sports — volleyball, hockey, soccer, softball and gymnastics, which will also come out of the $20.5 million total.

After Coyle fired head coach Ben Johnson and courted Medved away from Colorado State in March, revenue sharing was discussed in the hiring process.

“Those conversations he and I had were very upfront, talking about that,” Coyle said. “We wanted to invest a little bit more in men’s basketball to help that program get jumpstarted.”

Medved’s first team at Minnesota will debut against Gardner-Webb on Monday night at Williams Arena. A Roseville native, U alum and former Minnesota assistant coach, the new coach was encouraged by what Coyle pitched him last spring.

“I felt good about the direction that they wanted to take men’s basketball,” Medved said Thursday. “’It’s kind of like, if not now, then when? And that it was a priority to get this program back up and running.”

The Gophers have yet to play an official game, but Coyle comes into Year 1 of Medved’s tenure encouraged by the roster build. Only two players from Ben Johnson’s last team remain, and nine transfers were brought in.

“I think by the kids he signed, that he brought in here, I think that (revenue sharing sum) helped us through that process,” Coyle said. “But we need to continue to, again, get information.”

Facts are few on how other Big Ten teams are dividing up their own revenue-sharing pies. Similar to Minnesota, Iowa has a brand new men’s basketball coach in Ben McCollum, who arrives from Drake, and the Hawkeyes also are believed to be trying to boost that program early in his tenure. A similar 15% or $3 million sum might be used there, too.

Nebraska and Wisconsin are believed to be distributing 75-80% to football, which also would leave a comparable sum for men’s basketball and its other programs.

Revenue started in July, and Coyle said he hasn’t heard startling anecdotes or intel from his coaches on what their competition is doing.

“I haven’t had coaches run in here and say, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re so far off. It’s not even close,’ ” Coyle said. “So, I feel like we’re very consistent with our peers in the Big Ten and (schools we are) recruiting against. But, again, we’ll continue to evaluate on a day-to-day basis.”

Revenue sharing payments, which came via the House vs. NCAA settlement, are set to increase 4% to a total of $21.3 million for next year. Coyle has said UMN leadership is currently determining how that money will be distributed for the 2026-27 school year.

“That ultimately is the administration and Mark Coyle’s decision,” Fleck said to the Pioneer Press this week. “Our job is to coach the football team and do everything we can to put the best product on the field. He’s got really hard decisions and tough decisions to make. But I don’t see it as jockeying for position. I don’t. I think that’s the athletic director’s job to disperse that money, how he feels fit and how they feel fit.”

The goal, or hope, is that some level of transparency will follow the advent of revenue sharing. Coyle said that could come in the form of raw data on, for example, what a men’s starting basketball point guard is expected to make.

“At some point, we’ve got to have some kind of national standards around what we’re doing with eligibility, transfer regulations, NIL regulations,” Medved said. “I hate to say this, but we’re still probably four or five years away (from) really finding where this lands.”

Medved has just joined the Big Ten’s coaching fraternity, but he’s been a college head coach for 12 years, making three NCAA tournament appearances across seven years at Colorado State. He’s been around the block.

“The culture among basketball coaches is different than football coaches. I figured that out,” Medved said. “We talk a lot, we’re probably a little bit more open with each other as far as what’s going on. … There’s still a little bit of gamesmanship, right? Not everybody’s putting all their cards on the table.”

One note on revenue sharing is how each sport must budget their lump annual sum. It must be distributed via contracts with current players, but another amount must be set aside to offer incoming players once each sport’s transfer portals open in 2026.

Revenue sharing constitutes a salary cap era for schools and players, who are still not considered university employees, while Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) represents de facto bonuses to players.

Along with revenue sharing, the College Sports Commission was created to handle regulation and enforcement of player compensation, including NIL. The commission set up the “NIL Go” portal to approve third-party deals for rules compliance.

In addition to revenue sharing, the Gophers’ NIL collective, Dinkytown Athletes, is working to boost those funds for each U sport.

“Are we where we need to be? No, not as far as where I want to take the program,” Medved said. “But we have come a long ways. Now, where we go from here, I think, will be the next step. But I feel like everybody understands the urgency behind that. I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

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