Nearly every Windows user has had a run in with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” at some point in their computing life. Now, after more than 40-years of being set against a very recognizable blue, the updated error message will soon be displayed across a black background.

The changes to the notorious error screen come as part of broader efforts by Microsoft to improve the resiliency of the Windows operating system in the wake of last year’s CrowdStrike incident, which crashed millions of Windows machines worldwide.

“Now it’s easier than ever to navigate unexpected restarts and recover faster,” Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft wrote in a Wednesday announcement.

As part of that effort, Microsoft says it’s “streamlining” what users experience when encountering “unexpected restarts” that cause disruptions. And that means a makeover to the infamous error screen.

Beyond the now-black background, Windows’ new “screen of death” has a slightly shorter message. It’s also no longer accompanied by a frowning face — and instead shows a percentage completed for the restart process.

Microsoft says this “simplified” user interface for unexpected restarts will be available later this summer on all of its Windows 11 (version 24H2) devices.

And for PCs that may not restart successfully, Microsoft on Wednesday also said it’s adding a “quick machine recovery” mechanism. The will be particularly useful for during a widespread outage, the tech giant noted, as Microsoft “can broadly deploy targeted remediations” and automate fixes with this new mechanism “without requiring complex manual intervention from IT.”

Microsoft said this quick machine recovery will also be “generally available” later this summer on Window 11 — with additional capabilities set to launch later in the year.

By REBECCA SANTANA and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala and Honduras have signed agreements with the United States to potentially offer refuge to people from other countries who otherwise would seek asylum in the United States, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday at the conclusion of her Central America trip.

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The agreements expand the Trump administration’s efforts to provide the U.S. government flexibility in returning migrants not only to their own countries, but also to third countries as it attempts to ramp up deportations.

Noem described it as a way to offer asylum-seekers options other than coming to the United States. She said the agreements had been in the works for months, with the U.S. government applying pressure on Honduras and Guatemala to get them done.

“Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,” Noem said. “We’ve never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the United States.”

During U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such accords called safe-third country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed “safe.”

The U.S. has had such an agreement with Canada since 2002.

The practical challenge was that all three Central American countries at the time were seeing large numbers of their own citizens head to the U.S. to escape violence and a lack of economic opportunity. They also had extremely under-resourced asylum systems.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed deals with El Salvador and Guatemala that allowed the U.S. to send migrants from other nations there. But in Guatemala’s case it was to only be a point of transit for migrants who would then return to their homelands, not to apply for asylum there. And in El Salvador, it was broader, allowing the U.S. to send migrants to be imprisoned there.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico would not sign a third safe country agreement, but at the same time Mexico has accepted more than 5,000 migrants from other countries deported from the U.S. since Trump took office. She said Mexico accepted them for humanitarian reasons and helped them return to their home countries.

The U.S. also has agreements with Panama and Costa Rica to take migrants from other countries though so far the numbers sent have been relatively small. The Trump administration sent 299 to Panama in February and fewer than 200 to Costa Rica.

The agreements give U.S. authorities options, especially for migrants from countries where it is not easy for the U.S. to return them directly.

Sherman reported from Mexico City.

More than a decade ago, Logan Hensler dared to dream on the backyard rink in Woodbury.

Those dreams are about to become reality for the 18-year-old defenseman, who is expected to hear his name called in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft. A smooth skater blessed with a 6-foot-2, 200-pound frame, Hensler finished as the No. 12 ranked North American skater, according to NHL Central Scouting.

As he reflected on his journey to this point, Hensler highlighted the importance of having his dad Joe, mom Alicia, and younger brothers Dylan and Dain in the stands with him on Friday night at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” Hensler said. “I’m really excited to get to share it with the family.”

There were some brief discussions between parents Joe and Alicia a couple of months ago about how much it was going to cost for the family to attend the 2025 NHL Draft. Were they going to be able to make it work?

“Just trying to figure out what we could and couldn’t do,” Joe Hensler said. “We were talking about it in the kitchen and our youngest actually spoke up almost declaring that he was going to be there no matter what.”

Leave it to the preteen to be the voice of reason.

“We were like, ‘Well, I guess the decision has been made, right?’ ” Joe Hensler said with a laugh. “We knew we had to make it happen so we could be together for it.”

This has been a long time coming for the family. It was pretty clear from a young age that Hensler was going to excel in the sport. He refined his skills on the backyard rink, developed into a standout as a peewee and bantam in the local youth association, and parlayed that into a roster spot with the highly touted Minnesota Blades.

“He started to get recognized outside of the neighborhood,” his father said. “We would have people come talk to us about opportunities down the road, and they had a little bit broader view than what we had at the time.”

The ascension continued for Hensler after he helped Hill-Murray take third place in the state tournament as a freshman. His natural ability piqued the interest of the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in Plymouth, Mich.

That left the family with a decision, and they enlisted the help of Hill-Murray boys hockey coach Bill Lechner, who has been around long enough to know whether a kid is ready to compete at that level. There was no question when it came to Hensler.

“You could tell right away with him,” Lecher said. “We’ve had these conversations with a lot of families. We weren’t going to lie to them. Even if we wanted him to stay for our sake, we knew he was ready to go.”

The thought of moving away from home gave Hensler some pause.

“It was really challenging,” he said. “I took until the last minute to sign the contract that they gave me.”

The experience with the NTDP gave Hensler the tools needed too succeed by putting him in situations to fail. He had to learn how to handle adversity in real time. That was exemplified by a stretch of play during Hensler’s first year, when he started to internalize some of his mistakes on the ice.

“It was starting to pile up on him a little bit and he took it all on himself,” NTDP coach Nick Fohr said. “I remember having him in my office and going through the clips. He started to realize it wasn’t all on him, and he started to let go of the mistakes. It seemed like it almost freed him up mentally, and everything started to go in the right direction for him.”

The growth was on full display during Hensler’s second year with the NTDP as he slowly separated himself from some of his peers.

“I’m really thankful for that experience,” he said. “It was probably the best decision I’ve made so far in my career.”

That put Hensler in position to hit the ground running when he got to the University of Wisconsin, and while he had to navigate ups and downs as a freshman, he impressed Badgers men’s hockey coach Mike Hastings with his maturity.

“The best part about him is he’s got an unbelievable balance of humility and confidence,” Hastings said. “I was really proud of him looking at where he started and where he finished, because it says a lot about him not taking anything for granted.”

What was the biggest lesson Hensler is going to take away from his first year in college?

“The physical side of it,” he said. “Just using my size and strength to my advantage is important. That was the biggest learning curve I had going to college. It’ll be huge to keep building on that while I continue to elevate my game.”

As excited as he is to have Hensler back on campus this year, Hastings is eager to see where he ends up this weekend.

“I believe anybody that invests in Logan Hensler is going to be glad that they did,” Hastings said. “He’s a great young man and a special player.”

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By MELISSA GOLDIN

As the number of Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war continues to rise, social media users are falsely claiming that a Harvard University study has determined that hundreds of thousands in the Gaza Strip are also missing.

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“Israel has ‘disappeared’ nearly 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 2023,” reads one X post that had been shared and liked more than 35,700 times as of Thursday. “Harvard has now confirmed what we’ve been screaming into a deaf world: This is a holocaust — and it’s still happening.”

But Harvard did not publish the report in question. Moreover, these claims misrepresent data from the report that was intended to address an entirely unrelated topic.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: A Harvard University study found that nearly 400,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are missing as a result of the Israel-Hamas war.

THE FACTS: Harvard published no such study. This estimate misrepresents a map included in a report by a professor at Israel’s Ben Gurion University that shows the distance between new aid distribution compounds in Gaza and three main populations centers. Using spatial analysis, the report determined that these compounds are inadequate and also does not address how many people in Gaza are missing. It was published on the Harvard Dataverse, a repository managed by the university where researchers can share their work. Contributors do not need to be affiliated with Harvard and publish directly to the repository without approval from the university.

“If anyone had asked me about these numbers I would have set things straight right away,” said the Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies who authored the report. “Instead the number was circulated and recirculated by people who had not read the report or stopped to think about it for a moment.”

The inaccurate estimate comes from a post on the blogging site Medium. In the post, the author uses a map from Garb’s report showing how many people live in what are currently Gaza’s three main population centers — Gaza City, central refugee camps and the Muwasi area — according to estimates from the Israeli Defense Forces, to determine how many Palestinians are allegedly unaccounted for. The author subtracts the former number — 1.85 million — from the population in Gaza before the Israel-Hamas war began — 2.227 million — for a total of 377,00 missing people.

But the numbers on the map are not comprehensive.

“These IDF numbers were not intended to sum to 100% of the Gaza population,” Garb said. “There may be Gazans in other locations outside these areas of concentration.”

Many Palestinians also have left Gaza since the war began in October 2023, a fact the Medium post does not take into account. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in January that about 100,000 had left.

According to Garb, the map was meant to show how difficult it would be for people in these areas to reach new aid distribution compounds. He also noted that it had a typo, which he intends to fix. There are approximately 700,000 people in the Muwasi area, not 500,000.

The author of the Medium post did not respond to a request for comment.

Other estimates have put the number of missing people, typically defined as those who are dead under the rubble of Gaza, much lower than what the Medium post alleges. A June 2024 study published in The Lancet, for example, found that between about 15,000 to 38,000 people could have been missing at that time.

“Clearly time has passed, and more have died and been buried under rubble. But it is unlikely that numbers of people buried under rubble could increase to 400,000 since then,” said Shelly Culbertson, a senior policy researcher at RAND who studies disaster and post-conflict recovery. She added that even if missing people included those who had completely lost communication with their families, it is unlikely that the number would reach 400,000.

Garb lamented the negative impact this type of misinformation could have for Palestinians and those trying to help them.

“If somebody like me who’s doing serious work thinks twice next time about, oh my god, do I even want to put out something about Gaza if I have to sully myself with this stuff, they’ve done a disservice — done a disservice to the Palestinian cause, which they are ostensibly trying to further. I mean, they need to realize that,” he said.

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.