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Mario Cristobal has said throughout the week that star defensive back Keionte Scott could return to the field for Miami’s playoff game against Texas A&M on Saturday.

On Wednesday, the Hurricanes listed Scott as probable on the initial availability report. Additionally, the Hurricanes listed Damari Brown as questionable, linebacker Malik Bryant was out and wide receiver Daylyn Upshaw as doubtful.

Cristobal said Scott has been practicing and progressing toward playing.

“He looks OK, looks like he’s certainly progressing,” Cristobal said Wednesday. “He’s getting a fair amount of reps. And again, I stated on Sunday, we were hopeful and we still are. We feel confident in his progress and, you know, feel like he’s gaining ground towards being able to play on Saturday.”

Scott excelled in Miami’s first nine games of the season, racking up 44 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, three sacks and an interception this year. Pro Football Focus gives Scott a 90.3 defensive grade, which is fourth in the nation among cornerbacks with 100 or more snaps.

Scott missed UM’s last three regular-season games with a foot injury. His replacement, freshman Bryce Fitzgerald, has performed well in his place.

Miami safety Jakobe Thomas said Scott has stayed involved with the defensive backs, trying to help coach them up even while he was absent.

“Keionte’s the best teammate that I think I’ve ever had,” Thomas said. “He’s working absolutely as hard as he possibly can to get back as fast as possible at 100 percent. But day to day, he’s just in the room with us every day, motivating, keeping guys locked in (and) focused, helping us focus on the little minor details and everything.”

Brown would be a big loss for the Hurricanes. He has done well at outside cornerback this season. Brown has 24 tackles and one pass deflection, and he has earned a 75.9 defensive grade from PFF.

Here is Miami’s initial availability report for Texas A&M

OUT

-LB Malik Bryant

DOUBTFUL

-WR Daylyn Upshaw

QUESTIONABLE

-DB Damari Brown

PROBABLE

-DB Keionte Scott

By Corinne Purtill, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — When Greg heard about the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, and the alleged involvement of their son Nick, the news struck a painfully familiar chord.

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It wasn’t the violence that resonated, but rather the heartache and desperation that comes with loving a family member who suffers from an illness that the best efforts and intentions alone can’t cure.

Greg has an adult child who, like Nick Reiner, has had a long and difficult struggle with addiction.

“It just rings close to home,” said Greg, chair of Families Anonymous, a national support program for friends and family members of people with addiction. (In keeping with the organization’s policy of anonymity for members, The Times is withholding Greg’s last name.)

“It’s just so horrible to be the parent or a loved one of somebody that struggles with [addiction], because you can’t make any sense of this,” he said. “You can’t find a way to help them.”

Every family’s experience is different, and the full picture is almost always more complicated than it appears from the outside. Public details about the Reiner family’s private struggles are relatively few.

But some parts of their story are likely recognizable to the millions of U.S. families affected by addiction.

“This is really bringing to light something that’s going on in homes across the country,” said Emily Feinstein, executive vice president of the nonprofit Partnership to End Addiction.

Over the years, Nick Reiner, 32, and his parents publicly discussed his years-long struggle with drug use, which included periods of homelessness and multiple rehab stints.

Most recently, he was living in a guesthouse on his parents’ Brentwood property. Family friends told The Times that Michele Singer Reiner had become increasingly concerned about Nick’s mental health in recent weeks.

The couple were found dead in their home Sunday afternoon. Los Angeles police officers arrested Nick hours later. On Tuesday, he was charged with their murder. He is currently being held without bail and has been placed under special supervision due to potential suicide risk, a law enforcement official told The Times.

Experts in substance use cautioned against drawing a direct line between addiction and violence.

“Addiction or mental health issues never excuse a horrific act of violence like this, and these sort of acts are not a direct result or a trait of addiction in general,” said Zac Jones, executive director of Beit T’Shuvah, a nonprofit Los Angeles-based addiction treatment center.

The circumstances around the Reiners’ highly publicized deaths are far from ordinary. The fact that addiction touched their family is not.

Nearly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. has personally experienced addiction, a 2023 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

Two-thirds of Americans have a family member with the disease, a proportion that is similar across rural, urban and suburban dwellers, and across Black, Latino and white respondents.

“Substance use disorders, addiction, do not discriminate,” Jones said. “It affects everyone from the highest of the high [socioeconomic status] to people that are experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. … There is no solution that can be bought.”

During interviews for the 2015 film “Becoming Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical film directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Nick Reiner, the family told journalists that Nick, then in his early 20s, had been to rehab an estimated 18 times since his early teens. Nick Reiner has also spoken publicly about his use of heroin as a teenager.

Such cycles of rehab and relapse are common, experts said. One 2019 study found that it took an average of five recovery attempts to effectively stop using and maintain sobriety, though the authors noted that many respondents reported 10 or more attempts.

Many families empty their savings in search of a cure, Feinstein said. Even those with abundant resources often end up in a similarly despairing cycle.

“Unfortunately, the system that is set up to treat people is not addressing the complexity or the intensity of the illness, and in most cases, it’s very hard to find effective evidence-based treatment,” Feinstein said. “No matter how much money you have, it doesn’t guarantee a better outcome.”

Addiction is a complex disorder with intermingled roots in genetics, biology and environmental triggers.

Repeated drug use, particularly in adolescence and early adulthood when the brain is still developing, physically alters the circuitry that governs reward and motivation.

On top of that, co-occurring mental health conditions, traumas and other factors mean that no two cases of substance abuse disorders are exactly the same.

There are not enough quality rehabilitation programs to begin with, experts said, and even an effective program that one patient responds to successfully may not work at all for someone else.

“There is always the risk of relapse. That can be hard to process,” Greg said.

Families Anonymous counsels members to accept the “Three Cs” of a loved one’s addiction, Greg said: you didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it and you can’t control it.

“Good, loving families, people that care, deal with this problem just as much,” he said. “This is just so common out there, but people don’t really talk about it. Especially parents, for fear of being judged.”

After the killings, a family friend told The Times that they had “never known a family so dedicated to a child” as Rob and Michele Reiner, and that the couple “did everything for Nick. Every treatment program, therapy sessions and put aside their lives to save Nick’s repeatedly.”

But the painful fact is that devotion alone cannot cure a complex, chronic disease.

“If you could love someone into sobriety, into recovery, into remission from their psychiatric issues, then we’d have a lot fewer clients here,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, love isn’t enough. It’s certainly a part of the solution, but it isn’t enough.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, help is available. Call 988 to connect to trained mental health counselors or text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By JOSH FUNK, AP Transportation Writer

The U.S. government admitted Wednesday that the actions of an air traffic controller and Army helicopter pilot played a role in causing the collision last January between an airliner and a Black Hawk near the nation’s capital, killing 67 people.

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It was the deadliest crash on American soil in more than two decades.

The official response to the first lawsuit filed by one of the victims’ families said that the government is liable in the crash partly because the air traffic controller violated procedures about when to rely on pilots to maintain visual separation that night. Plus, the filing said, the Army helicopter pilots’ “failure to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid” the airline jet makes the government liable.

But the filing suggested that others, including the pilots of the jet and the airlines, may also have played a role. The lawsuit also blamed American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, for roles in the crash, but those airlines have filed motions to dismiss.

And the government denied that any air traffic controllers or officials at the Federal Aviation Administration or Army were negligent.

At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter collided with the American Airlines regional jet while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, just across the river from Washington, D.C., officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew members, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.

Attorney says loss of life was needless

Robert Clifford, one of the attorneys for the family of victim Casey Crafton, said the government admitted “the Army’s responsibility for the needless loss of life” and the FAA’s failure to follow air traffic control procedures while “rightfully” acknowledging others –- American Airlines and PSA Airlines -– also contributed to the deaths.

The families of the victims “remain deeply saddened and anchored in the grief caused by this tragic loss of life,” he said.

The government’s lawyers said in the filing that “the United States admits that it owed a duty of care to plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident.”

An American spokesman declined to comment on the filing, but in the airline’s motion to dismiss, American said “plaintiffs’ proper legal recourse is not against American. It is against the United States government … The Court should therefore dismiss American from this lawsuit.” The airline said that since the crash it has focused on supporting the families of the victims.

Investigators highlight factors that contributed to crash

The National Transportation Safety Board will release its report on the cause of the crash early next year, but investigators have already highlighted a number of factors that contributed, including the helicopter flying 78 feet higher (24 meters) than the 200-foot (61-meter) limit on a route that allowed only scant separation between planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway and helicopters passing below. Plus, the NTSB said, the FAA failed to recognize the dangers around the busy airport even after 85 near misses in the three years before the crash.

The government admitted in its filing that the United States “was on notice of certain near-miss events between its Army-operated Black Hawk helicopters and aircraft traffic transiting in and around helicopter routes 1 and 4” around Washington.

Before the collision, the controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. FAA officials acknowledged at the NTSB’s investigative hearings that the controllers at Reagan had become overly reliant on the use of visual separation. That’s a practice the agency has since ended.

Witnesses told the NTSB that they have serious questions about how well the helicopter crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot.

Investigators have said the helicopter pilots might not have realized how high they were because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder.

The crash victims included a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches who had just attended a competition in Wichita, Kansas, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.

General Daily Insight for December 18, 2025

Soft words are likely to land better than bombastic arguments. A meet-up between the emotional Moon and cerebral Mercury, both in loquacious Sagittarius, helps us talk through feelings. With romantic Venus trining healing Chiron at 4:17 pm EST, we may find that kindness repairs old aches as we name needs honestly. As Venus goes on to engage with extravagant Jupiter, perhaps adjusting our sense of fairness will be necessary to move forward. When compassion replaces defensiveness, we can solve problems without shutting down.

Aries

March 21 – April 19

Perspective could now open doors that felt closed. Relational Venus in your 9th House of Travel and Big Ideas trines healing Chiron in your 1st House of Identity, inviting a brave conversation that widens understanding across different backgrounds. A teacher, student, or faraway friend may open up about a sore spot. Your straightforward support helps both of you release old judgment. It’s not wrong to want clarity, but choose humility over being right. Your courage invites the answers you’ve been seeking.

Taurus

April 20 – May 20

Healing a shared worry is possible now. Trust deepens as sensual Venus in your intimacy zone trines therapeutic Chiron in your 12th House of Closure, helping you address tender boundaries without blame. You may revisit holiday expenses or repay a favor as a private fear surfaces. Your ability to be vulnerable while remaining basically calm could also help someone else feel safe enough to soften. Although painful memories might be easy to access, forgiving the past frees energy for honest closeness.

Gemini

May 21 – June 20

A promise deserves careful words. You’re potentially on the hunt for harmony as appeasing Venus in your partnership sector trines wounded healer Chiron. It’s not a bad thing to want agreement with someone important in your daily world, but your quick mind can race too far ahead. Slow down to check shared assumptions, and you’ll avoid crossed wires that cause unnecessary second-guessing. Although your social network might offer helpful feedback, let one voice matter most so the plan actually moves forward.

Cancer

June 21 – July 22

Gentle course corrections have the potential to make your day. Venus, the planet of self-worth, in your 6th House of Work and Wellness collaborates with therapeutic Chiron, calling for patient routines that are kinder to your body. You can still care about results, but consistent fixes build the reputation you want at home and at work. When you model calm accountability rather than reacting with protection or blame, you’ll likely find others willing to own their part and do what they can to support you.

Leo

July 23 – August 22

When care meets courage, play returns. Loving Venus in your 5th House of Romance and Creativity trines wounded healer Chiron in your adventurous 9th house, urging you to share a heartfelt idea or invite someone out with confidence. Your companion may hesitate, yet your enthusiasm draws them in because you keep it playful while honoring real feelings. One bold step close to home can rekindle joy and prime the pump for bigger journeys. Lead with warmth so creativity flows toward connection.

Virgo

August 23 – September 22

Your domestic sphere can feel lighter when truth is front and center. An honest check-in soothes tensions as connection-craving Venus in your vulnerable 8th house aligns with tender Chiron in your 4th House of Home and Family, inviting repairs to patterns learned long ago. Someone at home may finally tell the story behind a bothersome habit. Careful listening helps everyone choose kinder routines. Although you’ll probably have to work around certain quirks or insecurities, clear agreements about chores or expenses are necessary to move forward.

Libra

September 23 – October 22

Ready to talk and really listen? As relationship planet Venus in your communication sector reaches out to tender Chiron in your 7th House of One-on-One Bonds, a significant person may be ready to move a discussion toward understanding. You value fairness, Libra, so restate what you hear before sharing your view, and watch a defensive posture relax into something closer to partnership. There may still be legitimate differences between the two of you, but naming any shared goals should point you toward workable next steps.

Scorpio

October 23 – November 21

Scorpio, your values speak softly yet with strength. Financial calm grows as lavish Venus in your 2nd House of Money and Self-Worth reins in anxious Chiron in your practical 6th house, encouraging a realistic plan that honors both generosity and limits. You might renegotiate shared bills with a partner or map out a fresh budget for gifts. Once you start looking, you’ll likely find ways to protect your savings without draining joy from meaningful moments. Follow your heart, but keep the numbers true.

Sagittarius

November 22 – December 21

Warm confidence hums beneath every choice. Venus, planet of pleasure, spotlights your 1st House of Identity, but that doesn’t necessarily make you shallow. Wise Chiron weighing in from your self-expression sector gives you an informed perspective. When you know what’s not worth worrying about anymore, you can convincingly convey an openhearted ease that inspires others to meet you halfway. Use this window to reintroduce yourself in the spaces that matter to you. Your natural optimism is likely to carry your message further than you expect!

Capricorn

December 22 – January 19

A quiet, thoughtful pause can nourish you now. A release begins as Venus, planet of values, in your 12th House of Solitude and Closure brings perspective to moody Chiron in your private 4th house. You may write a letter you never send or sort keepsakes that you’re finally ready to let go of. Although there may be other people involved in a situation that you’re chewing on, some forgiveness rituals might be just for you. Let calm acceptance replace any harsh self-critique.

Aquarius

January 20 – February 18

Connecting with friends and acquaintances could inspire you today. Your 11th House of Social Networks brightens as free-loving Venus there trines thoughtful Chiron, offering opportunities for deep growth. In turn, perhaps you’ll help a group project or community effort regain spirit and momentum. Reach out to someone who often feels overlooked, and you may discover a brilliant workaround when their differing perspective refreshes the team’s stuck pattern. The answers you need are available if you’re willing to seek them out!

Pisces

February 19 – March 20

Broadening your reputation could help you now. As harmonious Venus in your 10th House of Career and Status trines world-weary Chiron in your self-worth sector, adding a human touch to your public messages and reviews has the potential to make them more relatable and convincing. No matter what your role, you can share a mistake you learned from, and people will see your integrity more clearly. You may still have your sore spots, but give yourself credit for growth over time.

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — A pilot was taken to the hospital with injuries Wednesday after a small plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in southern New Hampshire, authorities said.

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Emergency crews found the aircraft upside down in a snow bank in the parking lot of a wooded condominium complex in Nashua Wednesday afternoon.

Police said the pilot was the only person on board and was the only person injured. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.

The Velocity V-Twin plane crashed at the Cannongate Condominiums shortly after departing from the nearby Nashua Airport around 2:10 p.m. local time, according to the FAA.

• Airplane wreckage rests in a wooded neighborhood, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
• Airplane wreckage rests in a wooded neighborhood, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Show Caption1 of 2Airplane wreckage rests in a wooded neighborhood, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) Expand

Aerial video from NBC10 Boston showed damage to the roof of one of the condos near the crash site.

President Donald Trump addressed the nation at a crucial time as he tries to rebuild his steadily eroding popularity.

Public polling shows most U.S. adults are frustrated with his handling of the economy as inflation picked up after his tariffs raised prices and hiring slowed.

The Associated Press provided a livestream of Trump’s address below:

Contributing: Josh Boak, Associated Press