National News at a Glance

Engineer of Florida Bridge Reported Cracks Days Before Collapse

An engineer reported cracks on a newly installed pedestrian bridge in Miami two days before it collapsed on a busy roadway, killing at least six people, state officials said Friday. The report, by the lead engineer with the company in charge of the bridge’s design, was made in a voicemail message for a Florida Department of Transportation employee, who was out of the office and did not receive it until Friday, a day after the collapse. The company, Figg Bridge Group, did not consider the cracking a safety hazard, according to a recording of the message released by the Transportation Department.

‘This Is Not a Drill’: Students on the Terror of Lockdowns

School gun violence and the terror it creates have riveted America again since a gunman shot and killed 17 people last month at a high school in Parkland, Florida. But with each heinous attack successfully carried out, there have been many more scores of threats in schools across the country. And while thankfully no one dies because of a threat, fake or foiled attacks terrorize students, too. In the past month, since the Parkland shooting, there have been more than 465 bomb or gun threats or both, according to the Educators School Safety Network, a nonprofit that provides school safety training.

Assaults Increased When Cities Hosted Trump Rallies, Study Finds

President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies were associated with a rise in violence when they came to town, according to a study published Friday. A city that hosted a Trump rally saw an average of 2.3 more assaults on the day of the event than on a typical day, according to the study, led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the journal Epidemiology. One explanation the researchers offered: the aggressive mood on display by Trump and his followers had spread through “social contagion.”

No Heads Rolled at the White House Friday. But Anxiety Abounds.

No one was fired at the White House Friday. Which was news. Seeking to tamp down the anxiety inside the West Wing, President Donald Trump refrained from any firings-by-tweet. But the steady reports of coming firings has left the president’s top advisers in limbo, and has undercut their authority. Multiple White House officials have said Trump intends to fire Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, his second national security adviser, which would follow Trump’s firing this week of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Some aides say they wake up each morning wondering if they will have a job by the end of the day.

5 Doctors Are Charged With Taking Kickbacks for Fentanyl Prescriptions

In March of 2013, a sales manager for Insys Therapeutics, the maker of Subsys, a form of the highly addictive painkiller fentanyl, told Manhattan doctor Gordon Freedman he would receive more money if he increased the number of new patients he prescribed Subys. “Got it,” Freedman replied, according to authorities, and within a year he had become one of the country’s top prescribers of the painkiller drug. The exchange was in a federal indictment unsealed Friday in Manhattan, charging Freedman and four other New York doctors with participating in a bribery and kickback scheme that prosecutors said sought to increase the drug company’s sales and preyed on unwitting patients.

Where Are U.S. Winters Warming the Most? In Cold Places.

Winters in the United States have gotten warmer in the past 30 years, and some of the coldest parts of the country have warmed up the most. In Minnesota, winters between 1989 and 2018 were an average of 3 degrees warmer, compared to a 20th century baseline, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed by The New York Times. Florida’s winters were 1.4 degrees warmer, on average, during that time. While warmer winters have become more common across most of the country, the most significant temperature increases have been in the Northern Great Plains, stretching from Montana to Michigan.

How the NRA Keeps Federal Gun Regulators in Check

For years, the National Rifle Association has used its sway in Washington to preserve the limited capacity of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It benefits the NRA to have a smaller ATF in charge of gun regulation, one senior bureau official acknowledged, rather than a larger, more politically powerful agency such as the FBI that can more effectively demand additional resources from Capitol Hill. Now, the ATF is on the verge of a crisis. The agency is facing a staffing shortage, is set to lose its tobacco and alcohol enforcement authorities, and President Donald Trump has yet to nominate a director to oversee the agency.

‘Rewilding’ Missing Carnivores May Help Restore Some Landscapes

Since their reintroduction — or rewilding — to Yellowstone and Idaho in the 1990s, gray wolves have done so well that they’re reclaiming other parts of the northern Rockies, and tidied up explosive deer and elk populations, which had eaten valleys barren. That helped bring back vegetation, controlling erosion and helping the return of birds, beavers and other animals. Oregon State University ecologist William Ripple and a postdoctoral researcher now suggest in a paper published Wednesday that with proper attention and care, the "rewilding" of lions, tigers, bears and other species of large carnivores could result in ecological benefits like those seen with gray wolves.

Andrew McCabe, a Target of Trump’s FBI Scorn, Is Fired Over Candor Questions

Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director and a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s scorn, was fired Friday after Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejected an appeal that would have let him retire this weekend. McCabe declared that his firing, and Trump’s persistent needling, were intended to undermine the special counsel’s investigation in which he is a potential witness. McCabe is accused in a yet-to-be-released internal report of failing to be forthcoming about a conversation he authorized between FBI officials and a journalist.