TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The matriarch of a wealthy South Florida family was convicted Thursday of murder charges in the killing of her former son-in-law, a prominent law professor who was locked in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife when he was gunned down in 2014.

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Jurors returned guilty verdicts in the weekslong trial of Donna Adelson, who was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation in the killing of Florida State University law professor Daniel Markel in Tallahassee where he taught. The case had riveted attention in Florida for more than a decade amid sordid details of a messy divorce, tensions with wealthy in-laws and custody fights leading to the killing.

When the judge announced that the jury had convicted Adelson of first-degree murder, the defendant exclaimed, “Oh!” and started shaking and crying.

Markel and Wendi Adelson were divorced and shared custody of their two children, but she wanted to move them more than 370 miles from Tallahassee to South Florida to be closer to her family. A judge ruled, however, that Wendi Adelson couldn’t move the children, and Markel refused to relocate.

The defense team uses a display depicting photos and arrows of how people are connected in the murder of Dan Markel during opening statements in the trial of Donna Adelson on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025 in Tallahassee, Fla. (Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via AP, Pool)

Prosecutors had argued at trial that Donna Adelson helped orchestrate Markel’s killing after he stood in the way of letting her daughter and two young grandsons make the move to South Florida.

Donna Adelson was the fifth person to go to trial for what prosecutors said was a murder-for-hire plot to kill Markel. Among those already serving a life sentence for the killing is Donna Adelson’s son, Charles Adelson. Wendi Adelson has denied involvement in the killing and has not been charged.

At trial, prosecutors had painted Donna Adelson as the calculated and controlling matriarch of an affluent South Florida family with the means and motive to orchestrate the killing of the ex-son-in-law she “hated.”

Phil Markel, right, and his family stand as jurors enter the courtroom for the trial of Donna Adelson on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025 in Tallahassee, Fla. (Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat via AP, Pool)

Defense attorneys insisted the state didn’t have sufficient evidence to link the aging grandmother to the murder plot, instead emphasizing the roles played by others and casting suspicion on two of Adelson’s adult children.

Charles Adelson is currently serving a life sentence, as is his ex-girlfriend Katherine Magbanua. Prosecutors said Magbanua served as the go-between for the two men hired to carry out the killing, Sigfredo Garcia, who was sentenced to life in prison, and Luis Rivera, who is serving a 19-year sentence after cooperating with the state.

By SETH BORENSTEIN

The world’s largest and most enduring iceberg is splintering into smaller pieces, to the point that it’s no longer the biggest chunk of ice floating in the oceans.

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The shrinking megaberg, known as A23A, is unlikely to survive through the end of November and may face a sudden and spectacular collapse like an avalanche of ice at sea, said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos.

“It’s an interesting thing to watch, certainly not unprecedented,” Scambos said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “But every time these happen, it’s sort of a big spectacular event.”

Because ice shelves already float on water, ice reductions like this won’t raise the sea level. But the reduction in ice shelves will cause melting land glaciers to flow into the oceans, and that causes sea levels to rise a few feet (meters).

A23A first broke away from Antarctica’s Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986 along a massive crack that scientist first noticed in the 1950s and called “the Grand Chasm.” It hovered close to the southern continent for about three-and-a-half decades uneventfully until the last couple years when it drifted north to the place where massive icebergs go to die, around South Georgia Island, Scambos said.

Earlier this year the iceberg was the size of Rhode Island and weighed in at a trillion tons, now it’s down to the size of Houston and shrinking fast. The world’s new biggest iceberg is D15A. It’s nearly twice as big as the shrunken A23A, according to Andrew Meijers of the British Antarctic Survey.

A23A has already spawned smaller chunks named A23D, A23E and A23F. NASA satellite images Thursday show the smaller bergs that weren’t detached on Saturday, just a few days before.

“It’s still quite thick, but it’s a lot thinner than it was when it left the continent,” Scambos said. “And so now it’s being flexed by long period waves, by tides, which sweep across the area. And with that flexing, even though it’s incredibly gentle and subtle. It’s finding weak spots in the iceberg, and those are breaking off.

“I expect its fracturing will accelerate,” Meijers said via email. As the iceberg moves further north and the Antarctic spring begins Meijers expects by the end of the season, A23A will likely rapidly fall apart into chunks too small to track, he said.

If the iceberg survives the Antarctic spring, the summer looks even more brutal, Scambos said. That’s when it can collapse with warm water even at the top and it will then look “sort of like an avalanche that’s floating” and even fall apart in a single day, he said.

Back in January, Meijers, who visited the iceberg at the end of 2023, painted a different picture of A23A: “The iceberg itself is colossal and it stretches from horizon to horizon … It’s a huge wall, a Game of Thrones style wall of ice that towers above the ship.”

Megabergs spawning is a natural process that has happened for centuries, Meijers said, and so is their breaking apart around South Georgia Island when the current and warmer waters get hold of them, Scambos said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Carl Pedro, Sr. arrived at Ellis Island in New York from Italy in 1906, a few years before opening his first shoe shop in St. Paul. His granddaughter, Gina Pitera, 72, has waited years for the former site of her father’s and grandfather’s luggage store — which was demolished in 2011 — to welcome a new generation of visitors.

For decades, residents of the Fitzgerald neighborhood have longed for some green space of their own in the area south of the Minnesota State Capitol campus and tucked between Interstate 35E and Seventh Street, a few blocks from the core of downtown St. Paul.

On Thursday, they finally got their wish. A who’s who of elected officials and downtown advocates, including Mayor Melvin Carter, City Council President Rebecca Noecker and longstanding community residents, gathered to inaugurate the city’s newest parkland — Pedro Park, at 10th and Robert streets.

Measuring about a half block, the new park spans a covered event pavilion and picnic shelter, cafe tables, seating, a dog run, play area, gardens, plaza space, tree plantings and open lawn area directly across from the former Lunds & Byerlys grocery and down the street from the former St. Joseph’s Hospital.

“We’re so excited,” said Lowertown resident Jamie Daniels, who visited the park Thursday with their 8-year-old daughter. “It went from a place you might accidentally find yourself at to a place you want to go to.”

The 0.87-acre park fills in the area previously occupied by a public safety annex building and Pedro’s Luggage and Brief Case Center, on a block ringed by apartments and condominiums, restaurants and the former grocery store. When they weren’t at loggerheads over financing and design, St. Paul Parks and Recreation worked closely with the Friends of Pedro Park and the St. Paul Parks Conservancy on the project, which was laid out on paper, in various concept iterations, as far back as the late 1990s.

The $7 million park project drew funding from state bonding dollars, city general funds, private fundraising and the city’s new 1% “Common Cent” sales tax, which was approved by voters in November 2023, the same year the annex building was demolished.

It also drew support from no shortage of gardeners, fundraising volunteers and community advocates, who kept hope alive over the decades that Pedro Park would become reality.

“There were 30 people out here on a Monday night planting annuals,” said conservancy director Michael-jon Pease to a sizable crowd huddled in the rain Thursday under the covered shelter. “People were emailing me, ‘When can I start weeding?’”

Senior residents of the Pointe and City Walk condominiums had advocated for a park in the center of the Fitzgerald neighborhood since the mid-1990s. The Fitzgerald Park “Park at the Heart” concept was included in the St. Paul Riverfront Corp.’s master plans for the area in 1997, and then the city’s comprehensive plan in 2006.

Pedro’s business was demolished in 2011, with the Pedro family gifting the underlying 0.45 acres of land to the city on the condition that it become greenspace within five years. Instead, facing a hefty maintenance backlog for Parks and Rec projects, the city planted flowers — a half-acre “urban flower field” — in sloping, recessed earth, creating a placeholder of sorts in 2014.

Then-Mayor Chris Coleman tried to convert the neighboring public safety annex building into modern office space in 2017, over the objection of neighbors who had expected to see the building eventually torn down to make room for Pedro Park. That year, during his first campaign for mayor, Carter seemed to embrace the idea of a full-sized park, but later promoted the development plans for modern office space proposed by the Ackerberg Group.

Legal action against the city filed by Pedro family member Marilyn Pitera and a group of downtown residents led into the pandemic and a national shift to remote work. Ackerberg eventually withdrew its plans, and the city and neighborhood residents went back to literal drawing boards, leaning on community surveys and a bevy of both public and private funds to finally move the new Pedro Park toward reality.

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By RIO YAMAT

The Trump administration said Thursday it is abandoning a Biden-era plan that sought to require airlines to compensate stranded passengers with cash, lodging and meals for flight cancellations or changes caused by a carrier.

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The proposed rule would have aligned U.S. policy more closely with European airline consumer protections. It was proposed last December in the final weeks of then-President Joe Biden’s administration, leaving its fate in the hands of his Republican successor.

In a document posted Thursday, President Donald Trump’s Transportation Department said its plan to scrap the proposed rule was “consistent with Department and administration priorities.”

Industry trade group Airlines for America, a vocal critic of the proposal, said it would have driven up ticket prices for consumers.

“We are encouraged by this Department of Transportation reviewing unnecessary and burdensome regulations that exceed its authority and don’t solve issues important to our customers,” the group said Thursday in a statement.

The proposed rule sought compensation starting at $200 when a flight is canceled or significantly delayed because of a mechanical problem with the plane or an airline computer outage. Compensation as high as $775 was proposed for delays of nine hours or more.

Airlines already promise some level of customer service when they cause flight cancellations or severe delays, but passengers usually have to ask for help at the airport, and airline promises don’t carry the weight of federal rules.

Biden’s Transportation Department was also considering free rebooking on the next available flight, including flights on rival airlines, as well as meals and lodging when passengers are stranded overnight. Many of the largest U.S. airlines already promise that kind of help when a delay or cancellation is their fault.