High School Basketball: Vikings storm past Panthers

Since the recovery of sunken treasure began decades ago from an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of South Carolina, tens of millions of dollars worth of gold has been sold. But scientists, historians and collectors say that the real fortunes will begin to hit the auction block on Saturday in Reno. For the first time, hundreds of Gold Rush-era artifacts entombed in the S.S. Central America, known as the “Ship of Gold,” will go on public sale. A few of the items from the pre-Civil War steamship, which sank in a hurricane on its way from Panama to New York City, could fetch as much as $1 million.

The spectacle of incandescent lava spewing from Hawaii's Mauna Loa has drawn thousands of visitors and is turning into a tourism boon for a Big Island town near the world’s largest volcano. Some hotels in and around Hilo are becoming fully booked in what is normally a slower time of the year for business. Helicopter tours of Mauna Loa, which began erupting Sunday after being quiet for 38 years, are also in high demand by tourists and journalists. Hawaii's travel industry normally falls off this time of year between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

People in Hawaii are asking if anything can be done to stop or divert the flow of lava as molten rock from Mauna Loa volcano inches toward a highway on the Big Island. It's an issue that comes up every time lava approaches infrastructure or towns. And over the decades, people have tried rock wall berms and other barriers to divert lava flows. The Army once even dropped bombs on Mauna Loa. Whether it can be done successfully depends on force of the lava flow and the terrain. But many in Hawaii also question the wisdom of interfering with nature and Pele, the Hawaiian deity of volcanoes and fire.

Known for her feminist themes and often brutally frank, highly personal and self-critical work, American cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb has died at the age of 74. A close collaborator of her cartoonist husband, Robert Crumb, she died of cancer Tuesday at their longtime home in France. That's according to the manager of the website that sells Crumb’s work. Kominsky-Crumb was known for work that was not only autobiographical but also bracingly sexual and explicit. She met Crumb in the early 1970s in San Francisco, where she was part of the all-female Wimmen’s Comix collective before breaking with the group and starting “Twisted Sisters” with Diane Noomin.

The College Football Playoff will include 12 teams, starting with the 2024 season.

A prosecutor says Donald Trump “knew exactly what was going on” with top Trump Organization executives who schemed for years to dodge taxes on company-paid perks. The argument challenges defense claims that the former president was unaware of the plot at the heart of the company’s tax fraud case. Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass lobbed the bombshell allegation during closing arguments Thursday. He promised to share more details when he resumes on Friday, buoyed by the judge’s decision to grant prosecutors permission to veer into territory that had been considered off limits because Trump is not on trial.

The College Football Playoff says it will expand to a 12-team event starting in 2024. The announcement came after the Rose Bowl agreed to amend its contract for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. That was the last hurdle CFP officials needed cleared to expand the four-team format. The expansion is expected to produce about $450 million in additional gross revenue for the conferences and schools that participate. The plan to expand the playoff was unveiled publicly in June 2021 and it took 18 months of haggling and delays to finally complete.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — As hundreds of students mourned together inside the University of Idaho's stadium Wednesday night, family members of four slain classmates urged them to raise their eyes from grief and focus on love and the future.