Month: September 2026

By Brady Caskey

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    BOISE, Idaho (KIVI) — Zoo Boise is home to one of the oldest spider monkeys on the planet, and his name is Elvis.

“This is Elvis, Elvis is our variegated spider monkey and he has been with the zoo since 1973,” said Melissa Wade, the General Curator at Zoo Boise.

Elvis has been a staple at Zoo Boise for decades.

“So, imagine a kid that came to the zoo when they were 10 years old, they’re still here in Boise and they come back to the zoo at 60 and they’re still seeing the same monkey. That’s pretty cool to be able to have that experience and see how long they can actually go through and live,” said Wade.

Wade explained that monkeys like Elvis usually live to about 25 years old in the wild.

“On our best guess, we could say that he’s at least 60, but he could be as old as 62 or 63,” she said.

A specially designed diet prepared daily by zoo staff plays a major role in keeping Elvis healthy.

“Tomorrow it looks like he’s gonna get some banana, he’s got some cooked butternut squash, he’s got some apples, and it looks like he’s got some radishes as well,” said Wade.

Elvis also has arthritis and receives treatment for it, but he remains very active despite his old age.

“He is a very popular monkey among a lot of our visitors; he’s very interactive, and people just adore his blue eyes,” said Wade.

Zoo Boise is also home to several other elderly animals like Mr. Mac, a 100-year-old tortoise; Sarah, another monkey who shares an exhibit with Elvis and is in her 40s; and Poppa Gibbon, who is also in his 40s.

Zoo staff make accommodations to exhibits as needed to help aging animals remain comfortable and healthy.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Sara Molina

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    DETROIT (WXYZ) — Detroit drivers say rising gas prices are forcing them to make difficult choices about how they spend their money, with some cutting back on groceries and other essentials to keep their tanks full.

“I will be on E before I get some gas for 4.99 from downtown,” driver Teandra said.

According to AAA, gas prices across the state are averaging $4.30 a gallon. Prices have spiked more than 25 cents in just the past week, and the average price is nearly 20 cents higher than it was at this time last year.

For drivers filling up every week, that extra cost adds up fast.

Naisha Wells lives in Detroit but makes the roughly 40- to 45-minute drive to Ann Arbor regularly to visit her 37-week-old daughter, True Miracle, who has been living in the neonatal intensive care unit.

“Ann Arbor from here is like 40, 45 minutes, so like financially throughout the week, I’m spending at least four (hundred) or 500 just on gas to get back and forth,” Wells said.

When asked whether those costs had forced her to cut back in other areas, Wells said yes.

“Yeah. I mean, because OK, like with work and like bills and stuff, sometimes, I have to call in and say ‘hey, I can’t pay my credit card until this Friday till I get paid because I got to get gas to go see my baby,’ and I had my baby in June,'” she said. “This is like a slap and a blow to the gut.”

Other drivers echoed that sentiment. Driver Vincent Jamison said the rising prices have turned routine decisions into difficult trade-offs.

“I can’t make a conscious decision on what I want. Is it the gas or buy another loaf of bread?” Jamison said.

Gas prices typically drop heading into the winter months as stations switch to a winter blend. But drivers said they are not expecting relief this year.

“I know it’s gonna be a lot harder because of the snow. It’s gonna be a struggle,” Jamison said.

The war in the Middle East continues to put pressure on oil prices. Despite the typical seasonal trend of falling prices, metro Detroit drivers are instead seeing prices rise.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. WXYZ verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Taylor Epps

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    BALTIMORE (WMAR) — Every day, Christen Ierardi prepares incubators, monitors fragile newborns and supports families in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital.

But long before she became a NICU nurse, she was one of the babies receiving care there.

As hospitals across the country recognize NICU Awareness Month in September, Ierardi’s story highlights the lasting impact neonatal care can have on patients and families.

Ierardi and her twin sister were born at 36 weeks and both spent time in the NICU at Ascension Saint Agnes.

“My mom had a complicated pregnancy,” Ierardi said. “I was here for 10 days, and my sister was here almost three months.”

It’s a story she heard a lot about growing up.

“Looking back on those pictures and hearing how well we were taken care of and how comfortable my mom was having to leave her babies here, I was like, ‘That’s a cool job,'” she said.

By middle school, Ierardi knew she wanted to pursue nursing. She became a certified nursing assistant while still in high school, completed nursing school and later applied for a position in the very NICU where she spent her earliest days.

“The hiring manager was actually one of the nurses who took care of us,” Ierardi said. “One of the nurse practitioners was one of our nurses. One of our doctors took care of us.”

Today, she works alongside healthcare professionals who helped care for her as an infant. She and her fellow nurses take special care to walk families through the process.

“Every baby that we care for is a little extension of yourself, and you see them as kind of like your own,” she said.

The work brings both joyful moments and heartbreak: caring for tiny patients while parents wait for them to be healthy enough to come home.

“That parent who no longer has their baby with them as you thought you would,” Ierardi said. “That was a challenge, something I couldn’t fully understand until experiencing that.”

Four years ago, her perspective shifted even further when she returned to Ascension Saint Agnes not as a nurse, but as a parent.

Her newborn son developed an infection and experienced breathing difficulties shortly after birth, requiring a weeklong stay in the NICU with many of Ierardi’s coworkers caring for him.

“There was always that confidence that he was in wonderful hands,” she said. “But that separation was something I can’t even put into words.”

The experience shaped the way she cares for parents today.

“Explaining, ‘I’ve been there, and he’s gonna get home to you. What can I do to make it a little bit easier?'” she said. “It enhanced my connection to parents and meeting their needs a little bit more.”

As NICU Awareness Month shines a spotlight on the challenges families face and the healthcare professionals who support them, Ierardi hopes people recognize the compassion that fills neonatal intensive care units every day.

“There’s a lot of bright sides to every story,” she said. “We’re here to help, and we’re here to hold hands, and they’re fighters. They’re the best patients.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Caroleina Hassett

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    SANDY, Utah (KSTU) — They say a little hard work and some elbow grease makes a successful fall cleanup, but there was someone missing.

“I met Alyia my freshman year when I started playing lacrosse. She was the most happy, kind, funny person ever,” said Hannah Qureshi, Alyia’s best friend.

“Alyia was a ray of sunshine,” said her mother Melissa Christensen, “she used to always just tell me, “Mom, it takes zero energy to be a good person.”

It was Alyia’s dream to clean up her mom’s backyard, but that dream was cut short on August 21. Alyia had epilepsy and experienced a seizure that took her life.

“We didn’t expect to lose her. And if I could do anything, it would be bring awareness to this and that there’s alarms and there’s things that you can do to save your kids,” Christensen said, “Losing her is like losing a part of me, and same with her siblings, like she was like the glue in our family.”

With Alyia gone, the backyard fell quiet until Saturday, when her lacrosse teammates showed up to finish what she started.

“I just want to be here to support her family and make what dreams she had and projects she was doing come true,” Qureshi said.

“It’s so easy to change people’s lives just by one nice thing. Just spread kindness, and these kids have done it in such a beautiful way,” Christensen said, “this would mean the world to her.”

Even the boys lacrosse team showed up to lend a helping hand.

“This is a good group of boys. They just want to do the right things a lot of times in life, and this just is a demonstration of the character that they have and the parents that are raising them to be good boys,” said the Alta High School boys varsity lacrosse coach Brandon Horoba.

Even with a finished backyard, they have to learn how to go on with a gaping hole on the lacrosse field, and in their heart.

“For me this season, I’m definitely doing it for her,” Qureshi said.

“I think it’s going to be hard the first time they take the field… but they’ve got to realize that that was her happy place, and so they need to make it their happy place,” Horoba said.

“As a 16-year-old, you just wouldn’t realize like how much of an impact she could make…from the old lady next door to the people at the gym,” Christensen said, “I can’t think of a better legacy for a kid.”

To support Alyia’s family, you can visit their GoFundMe.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Sooji Nam

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    SAN MATEO COUNTY, California (KPIX) — It was a normal field survey along the California coastline in San Mateo County that turned into a fascinating discovery.

“She did a reverse Google image search and found out that it might be a molar of an Ice Age mastodon. And so, at that point, the Midpeninsula Open Space Preserve (Midpen) contacted me about confirming whether it was a tooth or not because it was gigantic,” Wayne Thompson, a paleontologist with Pacific Paleontology, told CBS News Bay Area.

Thompson said Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist with Balance Hydrologics, was doing research for Midpen on how to support the threatened California red-legged frog.

“What initially appeared to be an oddly shaped rock was later confirmed by paleontologists to be an intact, adult Pacific mastodon molar,” the press release stated.

Researchers believe the tooth is 10,000 years old.

“I confirmed it was a mastodon tooth. And everybody is pretty excited about it, because these don’t show up all that often,” Thompson said.

Thompson has been a paleontologist for the past five decades.

“Typically, what you find out is that mastodon teeth tend to get broken up pretty easily. This one’s hardly broken at all. So, the skull that it came from is very nearby,” he said. “The coloring is very characteristic of mastodon teeth that are preserved.”

Midpen is not disclosing the exact location of where the fossil was found, but told CBS News Bay Area that it was within the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains in San Mateo County.

“These Ice Age creatures are really coming more to the surface. Also on construction sites because they do afford environmental protections, and so new construction sites, they are discovered,” Thompson said.

Mastodons went extinct around 11,700 years ago, and researchers believe the species lived in areas of what has now become states like California, Oregon, the northern Rocky Mountain region of the western U.S. and some parts of Mexico.

“The mastodons are interesting to me just because the wooly mammoth and everything like that. It makes me think of elephants, but we don’t have those over here,” Donovan Summers, who was visiting San Mateo County, said.

“I think that’s pretty cool. I hope people are aware of that and don’t disturb the artifacts. Let the professionals do the discovery to find more, to contribute to science,” Rick Guan, another resident, said.

Midpen donated the fossil to Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, where researchers hope to determine its exact age and also print a 3D copy of the fossil for educational outreach.

“We get a really good idea that climate has changed so drastically compared to what we are going through now. And we can certainly make scientific models that include the data for paleontology and fossils in our conversation for global climate change going forward. If the animals could talk, they would say, ‘Please slow down,'” Thompson said.

While Lynch was unavailable for an interview with CBS News Bay Area on Sunday, Midpen’s press release provided a quote.

“As a geologist, I’ve gone out and seen stuff in the field, but definitely nothing as exciting as this,” Lynch said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Kennedy Cook

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    DENVER (KCNC) — Four years ago, Colorado teen Zykyrah “Ky” Bess-Reed was just getting started on wheels. Now, at 14, she’s a member of Team USA and training for the world stage.

“I started out on some lime green rollerblades,” Ky recalled.

Now, she’s heading to the Speed Skating World Championships: “We are about to go to Paraguay here soon, so I am training for that.”

Speed skating may look simple from the outside, but Ky says she quickly learned just how much work goes into the sport.

“What shocked me was how much work you got to put in,” she said.

Her coach, Kelly Springer, described it simply: “We put wheels on our feet and we go as fast as we can.” But she added that speed skating requires much more than speed.

“It’s a very demanding sport. A lot of technique involved,” Springer said.

Right now, Ky is in the peak phase of her training, practicing every day, sometimes twice a day.

“It’s definitely hard. My coach is whipping my butt right now, but that’s a good thing,” Ky said.

And while making Team USA at such a young age is an accomplishment, getting to the starting line at the World Championships comes with a significant cost. Between skates, wheels and bearings, along with travel expenses like flights and lodging, fundraising is a major part of the sport.

For Ky’s family, the trip to Worlds in Paraguay is expected to cost roughly $10,000.

And as Ky knows, simply showing up to a race isn’t enough.

“You can’t just show up to a race and race it and expect to win a trophy,” she said.

Now, she’s hoping the community will help her take the next step all the way to the world stage.

To support Ky’s journey to Worlds and follow her story, visit sendkytoworlds.com.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Wakisha Bailey

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    PHILADELPHIA (KYW) — Fifteen-year-old Mas’ood Holloman is a baseball player, an entrepreneur and now a published author.

His first children’s book, “Finding My Voice,” is inspired by his own experience growing up with a stutter.

The story follows a young baseball player who faces speech challenges but ultimately learns to embrace his stutter as part of what makes him unique.

“He goes through struggles. It’s based off of me,” Mas’ood said.

Mas’ood’s mother first noticed his stutter when he was about 3 years old. Because Mas’ood has a twin brother, she was able to see that their speech was developing differently.

Mas’ood said his stutter has changed over the years, but so has his confidence.

His aunt encouraged him to turn his experience into a book that could help other young people facing similar challenges.

“[She said] we should write a kids’ book because I stutter, and for the people who stutter just like me,” Mas’ood said. “She said it would inspire them to keep going.”

The book’s main character also plays baseball, just like Mas’ood. When he is not working on the field, the young author is busy promoting and selling his book.

Every Thursday afternoon, Mas’ood sets up a stand at the Point Breeze Community Market in Philadelphia. He also takes his sales pitch door to door.

That determination is how Mas’ood first arrived at the CBS Philadelphia studios with his mother and a copy of his book in hand.

Now, he hopes his story will remind other children that a stutter does not have to stand in the way of their goals.

“It makes me proud inside that I actually wrote a book,” Mas’ood said.

Mas’ood is already working on a second book titled “The Young Voice of a Muslim.”

He sells “Finding My Voice” Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Point Breeze Community Market.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.