Reaching 67 points is creating a ‘6-7’ frenzy at college basketball games across the country

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NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma coach Jennie Baranczyk hears the popular catchphrase “6-7” all the time at home, possibly more often than please and thank you.

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Getting an earful of it at a women’s basketball game, well, that was new for the mother of three.

Baranczyk and the sixth-ranked Sooners became the latest college team to send fans into a frenzy when they hit 67 points in an 89-61 victory against North Alabama on Friday.

Hundreds of students on a field trip screamed their approval along with the ubiquitous phrase and juggled their hands up and down to mimic a video that went viral earlier this year.

Sports viewers might have seen the motion before, perhaps in six or seven NFL games.

“I did not do it because I was like, ‘Yep,’” said Baranczyk, who has a son and two daughters. “I knew it. But I’m like, ‘Gotta give the people what they want sometimes.’”

Raegan Beers, who finished with 20 points and 11 rebounds in the victory, raved about the OU bench reaction. Teammates, assistant coaches and staffers celebrated simultaneously in similar fashion.

Beers said teammates Payton Verhulst, who made a 3-pointer to give Oklahoma a 66-33 lead, and Zya Vann were trying to draw fouls, presumably so they could shoot free throws.

“We got so excited to do that,” Beers said. “We knew the kids were going to get excited about that. That’s the joy of this game. That’s why I love this game. Just to have that energy in the building and lean into what is trending at the moment, which is 6-7, whatever that means. It was so much fun to have that moment and let the kids enjoy it.”

Dictionary.com made the viral term “6-7” its word of the year, and it isn’t even really a word. It’s a phrase kids and teenagers can’t stop repeating and laughing about while parents and teachers can’t make any sense of it.

The word — if you can call it that — exploded in popularity over the summer. It’s more of an inside joke with an unclear meaning, driven by social media.

Dictionary.com says its annual selection is a linguistic time capsule reflecting social trends and events. But the site admitted it too is a bit confused by “6-7.”

“Don’t worry, because we’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means,” the site said in its announcement last month.

How did “6-7” become a thing?

It all seems to trace back to rapper Skrilla’s song from 2024 called “Doot Doot (6-7).”

That song started appearing in TikTok videos with basketball players, including the NBA’s LaMelo Ball who stands 6-foot-7.

Then a boy, now known as “The 6-7 Kid,” shouted the ubiquitous phrase while another kid next to him juggled his hands in a video that went viral this year.

That’s all it took.

This Dictionary.com page shows the newest word of the year “6-7” on a computer screen, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

So what does “6-7” mean? The real answer is no one knows, but it’s widely regarded as harmless. Unlike some other trends that have come and gone, there’s not believed to be an inappropriate backstory to the craze.

According to Dictionary.com, the phrase could mean “so-so,” or “maybe this, maybe that” when combined with the juggling hands gesture.

Merriam-Webster calls it a “a nonsensical expression used especially by teens and tweens.”

Regardless, it’s trending at basketball games when a team nears 67 points, and in football games when it’s time for a dance.

It happened at the Prairie View-Oklahoma State women’s game earlier this week and at an Air Force-South Dakota women’s game.

Associated Press freelance writer Tim Willert contributed to this report.

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball

2 plead guilty to Roseville Lululemon thefts in multi-state crime spree that allegedly netted $1M

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A Connecticut couple who authorities say was part of a group that plundered nearly $1 million in goods from Lululemon stores across the U.S. admitted in Ramsey County District Court on Friday to stealing from several of the retailer’s Twin Cities locations last year.

Appearing out of custody by Zoom and in separate hearings, Jadion Anthony Richards, 45, and Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 46, both pleaded guilty to one count of felony organized retail theft under a “global resolution” agreement that covers charges filed against them in both Ramsey and Hennepin counties for thefts at Lululemon stores in Roseville, Edina, Minneapolis and Minnetonka.

Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, left, and Jadion Anthony Richards (Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

The charges brought against Richards and Lawes-Richards in November 2024 were the first for Ramsey County under a state law that took effect in August 2023 to address organized retail theft. The cases also mark the county’s first convictions.

The law was enacted after large jumps in shoplifting cases across the metro area, and several high-profile cases of organized retail crime, such as grab-and-run thefts from Best Buy locations in Maplewood, Burnsville and Blaine on Black Friday in 2021.

Richards and Lawes-Richards pleaded guilty one year to the day after they stole just shy of $5,000 worth of goods from the high-end women’s athletic wear retailer’s Rosedale mall store in Roseville. They were arrested the next day after a Lululemon organized retail crime investigator notified police they were in the Woodbury store.

As part of the plea agreement, other charges against the couple will be dismissed: a second count of organized retail theft in Ramsey County, and two counts of felony theft stemming from two cases in Hennepin County.

Because they have no prior criminal history in Minnesota, their attorneys said in court Friday, the presumptive sentences under state guidelines are stayed prison terms to probation. Restitution will also be ordered at their sentencing hearings, which are scheduled for Jan. 30.

Theft scheme explained

According to the criminal complaints, Richards had a JW Marriot key card on him when he was arrested on Nov. 14, 2024. Police recovered more than $50,000 in stolen Lululemon goods in his hotel room at the hotel’s Mall of America location in Bloomington.

The Lululemon investigator told Roseville police the couple was alleged to have stolen over $30,000 from local stores between September 2024 and November 2024, and that their group was responsible for almost $1 million in thefts across the country. They allegedly pulled off thefts in Colorado and Utah before arriving in the Twin Cities.

The group usually traveled to an area and hit up Lululemon stores over two days, the complaints say. They then went back to the East Coast, where they made “unverified exchanges” at stores — meaning with no receipts — for other goods, which were later returned to credit cards. After a week or so, the group then headed out again to commit more thefts.

The Lululemon investigator told police that Richards used at least six credit cards to process nearly a half-million in fraudulent returns, the complaints say.

The investigator explained, based on store surveillance, how the couple carried out the theft scheme:

The group worked together using tactics such as distracting store associates and blocking their view by holding up jackets. Women in the group stuffed leggings and other clothing in their own jackets or under their shirts. The investigator suspected Lawes-Richards used a strap under her clothing to secure the merchandise.

They removed security sensors using a tool, and put one on an item Richards had just bought. They always left the store together with women leading. When a theft sensor beeped, Richards stopped and showed his bag to store associates with his purchased items. The others went on their way without looking back.

Nearly four dozen charges to date

The focus of Minnesota’s organized retail theft law is on people stealing items to resell on the black market, most always online.

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The law spells out that a person is guilty of organized retail theft if they’re working with at least one other person in “a retail theft enterprise,” they previously were involved in at least two separate retail thefts in a six-month period and they attempt to sell the merchandise or return it for anything of value.

The law increases the penalties compared to other theft. If stolen merchandise exceeds $5,000, a person who’s convicted could receive a prison term of up to 15 years, rather than 10 years. It includes an enhanced penalty if, during an offense, there is “a reasonably foreseeable risk of bodily harm to another.”

Minnesota prosecutors in 11 counties have filed 45 charges under the law through Nov. 7, according to Minnesota Judicial Branch data. This year, 19 charges have been filed; there were 24 in 2024. Dakota, Hennepin, Scott and Washington counties have each secured one conviction.

USDA data casts doubt on China’s soybean purchase promises touted by Trump

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By JOSH FUNK

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — New data the Agriculture Department released Friday created serious doubts about whether China will really buy millions of bushels of American soybeans like the Trump administration touted last month after a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The USDA report released after the government reopened showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit in South Korea that totaled 332,000 metric tons. That’s well short of the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China agreed to purchase by January and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she said they would buy in each of the next three years.

American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank’s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn’t much incentive for China to buy from America right now because they have plenty of soybeans on hand that they have bought from Brazil and other South American countries this year, and the remaining tariffs ensure that U.S. soybeans remain more expensive than Brazilian beans.

“We are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,” Ehmke said.

Beijing has yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached “consensus” on expanding trade in farm products. Ehmke said that even if China did promise to buy American soybeans it may have only agreed to buy them if the price was attractive.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the lack of Chinese purchases and whether farmers can still expect a significant aid package like Trump promised earlier.

The Chinese tariff on American beans remains high at about 24%, despite a 10-percentage-point reduction following the summit.

Soybean prices fell sharply by 23 cents to $11.24 per bushel Friday. Ehmke said “that’s the market being shocked by the lack of Chinese demand that was confirmed in USDA data today.” Prices are still higher than they were before the agreement when they were selling for $10.60 per bushel, but the price may continue to drop unless there are significant new purchases.

Before the trade agreement, Trump had said farmers would receive an aid package to help them survive the trade war with China. That was put on hold during the shutdown, and now it’s not clear whether the administration will offer farmers aid like Trump did in his first administration.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, right, films a social media post on a combine with farm owner Tyler Everett during a farm tour in Lebanon, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

American farmers have been through this before after Trump’s first trade war with China. The trade agreement China signed with the United States in 2020 promised massive purchases of U.S. crops. But the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted trade between the two nations just as the agreement went into effect. In 2022, U.S. farm exports to China hit a record, but then fell.

Soybean prices are actually still a little higher than they were a year ago even without China’s normal purchases of roughly one-quarter of the U.S. crop. That’s because this year’s soybean crop is a little smaller while domestic demand remained strong with the continued growth in biodiesel production.

But farmers are dealing with the soaring cost of fertilizer, seed, equipment and labor this year, and that is hurting their profits. The Kentucky farmer who is president of the American Soybean Association, Caleb Ragland, has said he worries that thousands of farmers could go out of business this year without significant Chinese purchases or government aid.

Ragland said he’s still optimistic that China will follow through on the purchases, but it’s hard to be confident in that right now with so few sales reported.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, right, speaks during a farm tour in Lebanon, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

“We don’t want to assume they won’t. But it’s going to be a wonderful day when we actually deliver those soybeans, and when there’s my money in hand and so forth and the transaction’s complete,” Ragland said.

China is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans. China bought more than $12.5 billion worth of the nearly $24.5 billion worth of U.S. soybeans that were exported last year.

But China quit buying American soybeans this year after Trump imposed his tariffs and continued to shift more of their purchases over to South America. Even before the trade war, Brazilian beans accounted for more than 70% of China’s imports last year, while the U.S. share fell to 21%, World Bank data shows.

Ragland said that every vender he talks to has told him they are increasing their prices for next year, which will continue to put pressure on farmers.

“We’re still looking at sharp losses and the red ink as we figure budgets for 26 is still very much in play,” he said.

AP Writer Didi Tang contributed to this report from Washington.

Epstein files reveal his obsession with Trump

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Julie K. Brown and Emily Goodin, Miami Herald

President Donald Trump is mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails over 1,000 times — the most cited person in the tranche released this week by the House Oversight Committee.

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Despite all the questions the emails have raised about his relationship with Epstein, Trump on Friday continued to fan the flames of the scandal. On his social media platform “Truth Social,” Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate some of the influential figures named in the emails.

“I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote.

But no one is named more in the Epstein emails than Trump himself, revealing that years after his friendship with Epstein had waned, Trump remained front and center in Epstein’s emails as a figure whom he could use as currency in his conversations with journalists, world leaders, academics and wealthy men.

As Congress debates whether to force the release of DOJ’s files, the Miami Herald has reviewed many of the documents that are part of a trove of communications held by Epstein’s estate. In recent months, Epstein’s calendars have also been released by Democrats on the Oversight Committee and, like his emails, they reveal Epstein’s continued association with influential people in the years after he pleaded guilty in Florida to sex charges involving a minor.

The messages about Trump were among more than 20,000 documents released by the committee Wednesday. They were obtained from Epstein’s estate pursuant to a subpoena — and are separate from “the Epstein files” that members of Congress are trying to pry out of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The Herald searched the most recent trove for documents containing Epstein’s e-mail address and variations on Trump’s name, isolating unique pages to avoid counting duplicate files twice. Other names were also searched, including former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden. No one was mentioned more than Trump.

Emails show that the late financier and convicted sex offender tried to cast himself as a Trump expert and led his friends, girlfriends and political acquaintances to believe he had the inside track on Trump — for everything from who was being nominated to his cabinet to where the president was spending Thanksgiving.

More than once, Epstein suggests that he has compromising information on Trump, both before and after his first term as president.

The emails span a decade, from about 2009 to Epstein’s arrest in July 2019. Part of that period includes December 2018 — right as Epstein was once again under scrutiny. On Nov. 28, 2018, the Miami Herald published an investigation, Perversion of Justice, which examined how Epstein received an unusual federal immunity deal even though the FBI had evidence that he had raped and sexually abused dozens of girls in his Palm Beach mansion. The series went viral and led to public outrage and demands in Congress to reopen the investigation.

Several emails, written just days after the Herald’s series, suggest that the financier was weighing what to do in response to the renewed scrutiny of his case.

An unknown writer, whose name is redacted from the email, tries to console Epstein on Dec. 3, 2018, saying “It will all blow over! They’re really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that…!”

Epstein replies: “yes. thx. it’s wild. because i am the one able to take him down.”

None of the documents directly implicate Trump in Epstein’s sex crimes and Trump has adamantly denied he was involved in any wrongdoing. Still, Epstein, in an email two months later, makes it clear that Trump knew about “the girls.”

Writing to author Michael Wolff, he says: “trump said he asked me to resign. never a member ever. of course he knew about the girls he asked ghislaine to stop…”

The exchange seems to reference Trump’s statement that he had kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, where Maxwell had been recruiting girls for massages.

The messages also reveal that Epstein tried to leverage his association with Trump with world leaders.

In one message, Epstein suggests that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov should use him to get “insight” on Trump before their first meeting in Helsinki in 2018.

“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on (Trump) talking to me,” Epstein wrote to former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland in a June 2018 email in advance of Trump’s meeting with Putin.

The emails also show Epstein’s preoccupation with Trump’s money and power, as he tallies how much of Trump’s worth is what Epstein’s accountant described as “nonsense” — and how much of Trump’s empire is the result of smoke and mirrors.

Trump “represents his ‘income’ as the GROSS receipts of his clubs,” means a nothing at all ZERO. no income as we no it,” Epstein wrote in January 2019 to Kathryn Ruemmler, former president Barack Obama’s White House counsel with whom Epstein shared many emails. “He lists his ‘assets,’ and their VALUE — but not the corresponding loans, against it. so no net number, hence meaningless.”

The emails don’t show any messages between Trump and Epstein — or between Epstein and Trump’s White House staff or cabinet members.

It’s unclear if this is because most of his contact with Trump was prior to 2009, or because Trump didn’t use email to communicate with Epstein — or because Epstein was making it all up.

Trump has said in the past that he doesn’t like to use email.

“I’m not an email person myself. I don’t believe in it,” he said in his first term as president. “I think it can be hacked, for one thing. When I send an email, I mean, if I send one, I send one almost never. I’m just not a believer in email. A lot of people have taught me that, including Hillary (Clinton). But, honestly, it could be maybe attacked. Who knows.”

The president is famous for working the phone, often dialing directly from his cell phone instead of going through the White House switchboard. During his presidency, he has been criticized for using a personal, less secure iPhone for communications.

Epstein doesn’t say in his communications that he has spoken directly with Trump. In fact, they reflect how much he keeps details about the president to himself, walking a fine line between boasting of his inside knowledge and distancing himself from a man whom he considered to be of lesser intelligence.

“i have met some very bad people, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body,” Epstein wrote to Lawrence H. Summers, former President Obama’s treasury secretary and president emeritus of Harvard University.

The massive file release also contained many bizarre details — like when Epstein sent Trump a truck filled with $10,000 in baby food as payment for a bet concerning Trump’s former wife Marla Maples and her pregnancy.

In one interesting message to Maxwell, Epstein describes Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked,” adding that one of the sex trafficking victims “spent hours at my house with him… he has never once been mentioned.” But the victim, whose name is redacted from the email, is the late Virginia Giuffre — who before her death wrote that she had no knowledge of Trump being involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Despite this and other notable blank spots — the president is unlikely to put the scandal behind him anytime soon. The White House continues to characterize the Epstein controversy as a Democratic “hoax.”

The new email dump, which came as Democrats were divided over ending the longest government shutdown in history, was described by White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt as nothing more than a political “smear.”

But the emails are being scrutinized by the public and by influencers on social media, many of whom — both on the left and the right — are inaccurately decoding them. The emails are addressed to a variety of people and sometimes only Epstein’s side of the conversation is shown. None of them are in chronological order, making them hard to read and decipher.

“If anything they raise a lot more new questions than they answer,” acknowledged Matthew Dallek, a political science professor at George Washington University. “They just whet people’s appetite for more.”

Trump has stoked some of the public’s scrutiny with reports that he lobbied Republican representatives Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert to take their signatures off a petition that would force a vote in the House on a bill requiring the Justice Department to release all its Epstein files.

The lawmakers — who were critical to the petition’s success — declined to be swayed.

The petition successfully garnered the necessary 218 signatures. And the House will vote on it next week, Speaker Mike Johnson said. While it is expected to pass the House, it faces long odds in the Senate. Then it must clear one final obstacle before it becomes law: Trump would have to sign it — or veto it.

sStaff writers Claire Healy, Ben Weider and Shirsho Dasgupta contributed to this story.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.