Today is Thursday, July 3, the 184th day of 2024. There are 181 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 3, 1863, the pivotal three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended in a major victory for the North as Confederate troops failed to breach Union positions during an assault known as Pickett’s Charge.

Also on this date:

In 1775, Gen. George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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In 1944, during World War II, Soviet forces recaptured Minsk from the Germans.

In 1950, the first carrier strikes of the Korean War took place as the USS Valley Forge and the HMS Triumph sent fighter planes against North Korean targets.

In 1971, singer Jim Morrison of The Doors died in Paris at age 27.

In 1979, Dan White, convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (mahs-KOH’-nee) and Supervisor Harvey Milk, was sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan presided over a gala ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.

In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air jetliner over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard.

In 2011, Novak Djokovic (NOH’-vak JOH’-kuh-vich) won his first Wimbledon, beating defending champion Rafael Nadal.

In 2012, Andy Griffith who made homespun American Southern wisdom his trademark as the wise sheriff in “The Andy Griffith Show,” died at his North Carolina home at age 86.

Today’s Birthdays:

Playwright Tom Stoppard is 88.
Attorney Gloria Allred is 84.
Actor Kurtwood Smith is 82.
Country singer Johnny Lee is 79.
Humorist Dave Barry is 78.
Actor Betty Buckley is 78.
Talk show host Montel Williams is 69.
Country singer Aaron Tippin is 67.
Rock musician Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yaz, Erasure) is 65.
Actor Tom Cruise is 63.
Actor Thomas Gibson is 63.
Actor Connie Nielsen is 60.
Actor Yeardley Smith is 61.
Actor-singer Audra McDonald is 55.
Hockey Hall of Famer Teemu Selanne is 55.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is 54.
Actor Patrick Wilson is 52.
Former mixed martial artist Wanderlei Silva is 49.
Actor Olivia Munn is 45.
Formula One driver Sebastian Vettel is 38.
Rock singer-songwriter Elle King is 36.

Brooks Lee and Carlos Correa drove in runs to back a strong start by Simeon Woods Richardson, and the Minnesota Twins beat Miami 2-1 on Wednesday night to end the Marlins’ eight-game winning streak.

Byron Buxton singled off Janson Junk to begin the game. He advanced on a wild pitch and Willi Castro’s single before scoring on a sacrifice fly by Lee that ended the Twins’ 18-inning scoreless streak.

Kyle Stowers homered for the second straight game, a solo shot off Woods Richardson to tie it in the second. It was his fifth homer in nine games and 15th overall.

Castro, who went 3 for 4, doubled leading off the fourth, Lee and Correa followed with two straight singles for a 2-1 lead.

Brock Stewart replaced Woods Richardson (4-4), who allowed a run on two hits in five innings, to begin the sixth and surrendered a leadoff double to Jesús Sánchez. Stowers had a two-out single to score Sánchez from second and tie the game, but it was ruled the ball glanced off base umpire Emil Jimenez and Sánchez was returned to third. Stewart struck out Eric Wagaman to keep it 2-1.

Four relievers combined for three scoreless innings and Jhoan Duran pitched the ninth for his 13th save in 15 opportunities.

Junk (2-1), making his third straight start after five appearances in long relief, allowed two runs on six hits in six innings with seven strikeouts.

Miami won the opener 2-0 when Edward Cabrera became the first Marlins starter to go seven innings.

Key moment

Danny Coulombe retired Otto Lopez on a flyout to the warning track in left with the bases loaded in the seventh to keep it 2-1. Harrison Bader threw the tying run out at the plate for the second out.

Key stat

Stowers hadn’t had a home run since hitting two against the Cubs on May 14 — a span of 31 games — before hitting one against the Braves in the first game of the win streak.

Up next

Twins RHP David Festa (2-2, 5.40) starts Thursday’s rubber game opposite Marlins RHP Eury Pérez (0-2, 6.19).

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State disaster assistance will help rebuild public infrastructure damaged in wildfires that burned in St. Louis County in May.

In a news release Tuesday, Gov. Tim Walz said he authorized the emergency assistance and that the total amount of funding will be determined when damage assessments are complete.

“The fires that spread across Northern Minnesota earlier this year caused severe damage and major loss,” Walz said in the news release. “I’m grateful for Minnesota’s emergency management team as they work closely with St. Louis County to assess the damage and help communities recover.”

Josh Brinkman, emergency management coordinator for the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, explained that the state offers a 75% reimbursement for public safety costs and to rebuild roadways, bridges and power cooperative infrastructure.

But it doesn’t offer much help to the owners of more than 140 structures and over 30 year-round homes that burned in the Camp House and Jenkins Creek fires.

“At a state-declared disaster, what we really don’t get a whole lot of is what we would term ‘individual assistance,’ and that would be individual assistance direct to the homeowner,” Brinkman said.

Federal assistance would offer that; however, both the county and state need to reach certain monetary thresholds to unlock federal funds, and those were not met, Brinkman said. That’s because so many of the fires burned on federal land, and federal incident management teams were brought in to lead the response. Federal funds spent on the ground to battle the blaze can’t be put toward that threshold.

“We can’t match the federal dollars with federal dollars … Because so many federal dollars were spent on the response side, it kind of hurt us a little bit, or hampers the ability to get federal dollars for the recovery side,” Brinkman said.

The Trump administration has said it wants to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and FEMA has canceled some grants and delayed opening grant applications for others.

But Brinkman said none of that came into play since the damage threshold had not been met.

“None of the changes at the federal level impacted whether or not we would get that assistance,” Brinkman said.

The St. Louis County Assessor’s Department has started visiting properties damaged by the Camp House and Jenkins Creek wildfires.

Property owners may be eligible for property tax relief if their property sustained damage that resulted in a value loss of 50% or more. Owners of homesteaded residences potentially also could qualify for relief with even less-substantial losses. That relief may include property tax abatements in the year of the disaster, and property tax credits for taxes payable in the following year.

The Camp House and Jenkins Creek fires burned across more than 12,000 and 16,000 acres, respectively. At the same time, the Munger Shaw fire burned more than 1,200 acres.

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By RIO YAMAT, Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who is awaiting trial in the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur, has lost a bid for a new trial in a separate battery case tied to a jailhouse fight.

The ruling came Wednesday after a tense hearing in a Las Vegas courtroom that underscored the high-profile status of the defendant and his upcoming trial in one of hip-hop’s most infamous crimes.

The jurors who convicted Davis of battery in the jailhouse fight were put on the witness stand Wednesday. One by one, each of them denied claims by Davis’ son and a man who describes himself as a journalist that they overheard one of the jurors talking about the battery case during a lunch break ahead of deliberations.

Duane Davis looks back during a hearing on claims of juror misconduct in his jailhouse battery case at the Regional Justice Center on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Las Vegas. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool)

Both Davis’ son, Duane Davis Jr., and the self-described journalist, Richard Bond, testified Wednesday about hearing the juror’s comments in the hallway outside of the courtroom on the final day of a two-day trial in April.

“Those two witnesses do have a relationship and a bias and a motive to testify in a certain way, whether subconsciously or not,” Clark County District Judge Nadia Krall said while ruling from the bench.

It was revealed Wednesday when prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo questioned the men separately that they considered each other friends, that Bond had been sending money to both Duane Davis and his son, and that Bond had advised them to fire their attorney, Carl Arnold.

“Ever taken a class on journalistic ethics?” DiGiacomo asked Bond.

“No, I have not taken a class on journalistic ethics,” Bond said.

Duane Davis looks back during a hearing on claims of juror misconduct in his jailhouse battery case at the Regional Justice Center on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Las Vegas. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool)

The fight in December 2024 in a common room was captured on security video. Prosecutors said Davis was being escorted by a corrections officer back to his unit when he and another man exchanged words and then started fighting. Arnold said he was ambushed and acted in self-defense.

DiGiacomo, who also is prosecuting Duane Davis in the Shakur killing, said after court that he had no comment. A spokesperson for Arnold’s office also declined to comment.

Arnold said in court Wednesday that his client did not receive a fair trial in the battery case because of the juror’s apparent comments. The juror himself denied it multiple times while on the witness stand.

Wednesday’s hearing was not the first time that the credibility of those with ties to Davis has been questioned in court.

Davis, the only person ever charged in Shakur’s death, had sought to be freed from custody shortly after his arrest in September 2023. But a judge rejected his request, saying she suspected a cover-up of the true source of funds for his bond.

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A music record executive offering to underwrite Davis’ $750,000 bail at the time testified that he obtained the money legally and wanted to help Davis because he’s “always been a monumental person in our community.”

But the judge said she was skeptical after receiving two identical letters apparently from an entertainment company that Cash “Wack 100” Jones says wired him the funds as payment for his work. One letter was signed with a name that had no ties to the company, the judge said, while the other included a misspelled name and a return address tied to a doctor’s office.

Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He’s accused of orchestrating the fatal drive-by shooting of Shakur nearly 30 years ago at a traffic light near the Las Vegas Strip.

Prosecutors say the evidence against Davis is strong, including his own accounts of the shooting throughout the years in interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir. His trial is scheduled for February.

Shakur’s death at 25 came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.