Top News From WTOP - 5PM Update - August 13, 2026

From ABC News, I'm Michelle Franzen. There are reports sailors on board the USS Abraham Lincoln are dealing with dwindling essentials and even thoughts of suicide due to extended media deployments. A U.S. official tells ABC News a sailor aboard the carrier went overboard last month and was quickly recovered. The Navy in a statement denies the reports of suicide attempts but says it's addressing supply issues. ABC's Louis Martinez covers the Pentagon. We should point out, we should point out again, this ship was diverted to the Middle East. not it did not make a port of call in between for more than 210 days that is a long length of time and so yes there's going to be concerns when you're dealing day in and day out with the same kind of operations defense secretary Pete Hegseth also pushing back on report completely misrepresented this we make sure and Every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Luigi Mangione has already pleaded not guilty to charges of killing United Healthcare CEO in both his federal and state cases. Source is familiar with the matter tell ABC News. During a conference scheduled for federal court Friday, it is expected that a guilty plea will be announced in the federal case. Here's ABC's Matt River. This is not something that we were expecting to happen, let's say, on Monday. We first saw that this conference was added to the... the schedule for this week. We were wondering what was going on on Friday. Then sources tell us that this potential plea agreement would be discussed on Friday, and then it moves on to this, which it now appears, according to the sources that are talking to ABC News, that a guilty plea entered here is likely. Now, we should hedge once again that that can change up until the very last minute. Moments ago in Los Angeles, a jury has been selected to hear the evidence in the trial for D. D. Davis. He's the only person ever charged with the murder of Tupac Shakur. The panel of 12 jurors and four alternates will hear opening arguments from each side, Monday, August 17th. You're listening to ABC News. 502 on Thursday, August the 13th. We have clouds, more clouds and sun right now. Temperatures are holding in the upper 80s to low 90s.

Good afternoon. I'm Anne Kramer. And I'm Sean Anderson. A pair of breaking stories we're following for you here on WTOP first. President Trump's name could soon be back on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center facade, following a new vote today by the center's board. The New York Times reports that the board, the hand-picked members from President Trump, approved an inscription that would go beneath the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's main signage, and it would read... restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump. This move comes after a federal judge ordered Trump's name removed from the building back in May. WTOP's Jimmy Alexander takes a closer look at what the board also approved. President Trump's allies hold most of the seats on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center board, which has now approved a two-year shutdown of the performing arts venue for major renovations. Representative Joyce Beatty, who serves as a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center trustee through a position in Congress, confirmed the vote. A similar closure was supposed to start July 5th until U.S. District Judge Christopher stopped it, describing the board's earlier approval as ill-formed. and seemingly preordained. Cooper also found that only Congress can change the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center's name and ordered Trump's lettering taken down. And it was removed in June, although a massive tarp continues to cover the spot where it had been. The latest boat sets up a new test of Cooper's rulings. Jimmy Alexander, WTOP News. Well, Park Police are on the scene this afternoon at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall because it was defaced the vandals through bright, red, orange, and green paint on the memorial and used the paint to write the phrase, clean. hands and dirty with the dollar sign on the memorial. Social media photos show bubbles also overflowing out of the memorial's fountains after it appears the vandals dump bubble soap in there. The Interior Department is responding this afternoon. A department spokesperson calls the memorial a sacred place to honor the over 400,000 Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice in World War II and says the vandalism will not be tolerated. WTOP Scott Gilman is headed to the scene. We will get more from him when he gets there throughout the afternoon. Well, we have a third breaking story for you this afternoon. The Silver Spring Man, the former January 6th defendant who had been pardoned by President Trump and convicted of assault for filming himself touching a woman's hair on a metro train. He's now been sentenced to 180 days in jail. That's the maximum. The partners, our partners at 7 News report Brian Bettenker. will actually only serve 52 more days in jail because of time already served. He'd been locked up since April. The 28-year-old still faces a similar charge from another incident in Arlington. As we mentioned, he took part in the Capitol riots on January 6th, but...

was part of the group of defendants pardoned by President Trump. 505, new developments today in the high-profile case involving a missing mother from Manassas Park. It's been more than two years now since she was last seen. A couple of months, her husband goes on trial on charges. He murdered her. Here's WTOP's Neil Ogenstein from what happened in court today in Prince William County. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Nuresh bat sat between his lawyers during a motions hearing today. He's set to go on trial that's expected to last seven weeks. in the disappearance of his wife, Mom Takalabat. Today's motions hearing focused on how the trial will run. The judge denied a prosecution request to send out a questionnaire for potential jurors to try to speed up the voir dire process. The judge agreed with the defense that potential jurors would be more likely to look up news reports about the case ahead of time. And the judge denied a request to allow audio recording of the trial. Subpoenas in the case shall prosecute. Procedure's plan to call forensics and blood spatter experts as well as mapping experts to track Nareshbot's movements. Prosecutters have suggested Nareshbot killed his wife, cut up her remains with a power saw, and dumped several large garbage bags in nearby dumpsters. In Manassas, Neil Ogdenstein, WTOPP News. A daycare worker is facing charges. After allegedly attacking a three-year-old in Reston, 61-year-old Jaspa Barrage is accused of pulling the boy's hair, pushing his head into a basket, and pushing the child to the ground. Fairfax County police say it happened back on August 7th at the Bright Horizons daycare on Commerce Park Drive in Reston. Barrage is charged with misdemeanor assault and battery. Detectives want to speak with anyone who might have information about the case or others possibly related. Money news now on WTOP. We'll check in with John Wardock. Some mixed news for the local real estate market. On the plus side, Redfin says D.C. home prices are up more than a percent compared to last year. But on the downside, the number of homes sold slipped 1.6 percent. And homes are staying on the market longer. Redfin says 47 days. That's three more days than this time last year. Stocks finished with gains. Thursday after a report showed inflation, tame at the wholesale level. Those are the prices in the pipeline before hitting consumers. At the closing bell, the Dow Jay Jones Industrial Leverage rose 69 points Thursday. The S&P 500 added 50. That gauge would close at a record high, and the NASDAQ added 214 points. And coming up Friday, we close out the week with news on retail sales. John Werdock. WTLP News. Coming up here on WDTOP, Washington Commander Superstar Quarterback, Jaden Daniels, is making headlines off the field. And it's a feud with his alma mater, LSU. A legal feud. We'll talk about it next with a law professor from Ohio University. Well, the headline today coming out of commanders camp has nothing to do with what's happening on the field. We've been talking about it all afternoon. It involves quarterback Jaden Daniels. His team of attorney sent a cease and desist letter to his alma mater, LSU, all seemingly connected to his signature.

The jersey number five that he wore at the university and wears now for the commanders. This also involves Daniel's name, image, and likeness. You know, the NIL thing that's happening all through all different levels of sports. Well, joining us live to explain is Ohio University Professor of Sports Management, Jim Strode. Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Of course. Happy to be with you. So can you elaborate a little bit here? Bring us up to date on what has Jaden Daniels and his attorney so upset here. Well, it appears that what James Daniels and his legal team are doing is basically saying that the property rights for the number five should be attributed to him, and that is his name, image, and likeness. So the revenue that LSU has generated both in the past, as well as in the future on jerseys that they sell with the number five, that money should be rightfully his. But LSU has never retired Daniel's number five or number nine. Of course, that belonged to Joe Burrow, who also won the Heisman in LSU. Is the university at all professor under any obligation not to let other players wear these numbers? Not that I'm aware of, but in the public domain, when we think about how LSU fans or any casual LSU fans may think of the number five, you know, again, Joe Burrow wore that number, but they may think of Jaden Daniel and they purchase that jersey based on the idea that I'm buying his jersey. So that's really the argument is it may not have his name Daniels on the back of the jersey, but that number five, if consumers believe that's associated with him, then he... should be receiving some of those earnings. You know, this is also, as we mentioned, a name image and likeness case. I mean, is there something else here? What about using Jaden Daniels' name? Hey, he played at LSU to either recruit athletes or even sell season tickets. I mean... a school's got to be able to market its past in some way, isn't it? Well, in a sense, right? I mean, you think about how athletic departments in the past have made millions of dollars that was not shared with student athletes in the past off of jerseys, off of posters that featured student athletes in this new era. And again, we're sort of in this uncharted territory of how NIL gets interpreted. And it seems like every single week we have a new court case trying to interpret. but ultimately it comes down to the fact that you know from here on out since those laws have been passed that athletes past or present should be entitled to the monetary benefits of their their name image and likeness being sold by the university well professor you you kind of touched on it but how frequent or how many more times do we think this might actually come up now is there a precedent going to be set here with what jaden daniels and his legal team wants to do This very well could start a precedent, right? I mean, if you think about a Caitlin Clark jersey, if you think about, you know, just pick your favorite athlete from any institution. Are they going to have some sort of rights to be able to go back to that institution and maybe get financial reparations in the past or discontinue using numbers? And we think about it, right? Numbers are finite. I mean, if we retire every single number, what are LSU players going to be wearing on the field? Shapes? Right.

LSU responding to all this. That's a great question. So I can imagine right now that they are probably not too thrilled, probably not returning a lot of phone calls to the representatives. But again, I think that like most institutions, they're going to be very conservative with this and probably take a look at what they may have promised the athlete coming in to wear that number. Hey, Professor, one more thing before we let you go. We have about 30 seconds left. Is this more about, and I know. You might not know the specifics none of us do right now. But is this more about the agents and the attorneys going to the player and saying, you should do this? Or is this about the player going, hey. I really should be profiting off this. They're making money and I should be making the money. This appears to be the aforementioned lawyers probably taking a hold of this because certainly with training camp going on, this is probably the last distraction that Jadenials wants is, you know, commander's camp has started. So I imagine that, you know, teams are being very protective of not only, you know, anything that's associated with that particular athlete, but are trying to find ways to be able to do best by their client to monetize anything associated with. them. Jim, appreciate your insight. Thanks so much. Of course. Thank you. Ohio University professor of sports management, Jim Strode. A jury of six men and ten women have been selected to hear the case of an ex-gang leader accused of orchestrating Tupac Shakur's killing nearly 30 years ago. Opening statements that the murder trial in Las Vegas are expected to begin Monday. Now, authorities three years ago charged Duane Davis with murder. They described him as the shot caller who orchestrated that killing. Davis is pleaded not guilty. He could be sentenced to life in prison if he's convicted. Well, a man who federal prosecutors say along with accomplices stole more than a million dollars by robbing letter carriers is going to prison for 17 years. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland says 30-year-old DeAngelo Lewis also got three years of supervised release. Now, the charges include armed robbery of postal carriers, bank fraud, and then using a gun. Lewis was convicted of robbing seven mail carriers back in... 2020 that happened in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.

Several of the accomplices, along with Lewis, were accused of altering checks, cashing them at several different banks and stealing almost a million dollars. A lawsuit has been filed against the D.C. Police Department regarding reward money for information that led to two convictions. Details from W. T.O.P.'s Luke, Luke. An advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 8, Tom Donahue, turned over video evidence from his home in two different cases. They hit and run homicide and serial armed robbery. I provided crucial surveillance video, despite public... advertisements promising up to $25,000. That reward was cut to $5,000 and he received no payout for the robbery case. Donahue said this put him in a financial struggle. I actually went to the victim of that murder and told them I would purchase the tombstone for their family. He also made several FOIA requests for internal documents about how these payments. are determined in claims that there are no written guidelines or rubrics to determine payouts, and the Crime Stoppers Committee works without any transparency. We'll trust this program and learn that the program isn't standing up to what it's supposed to. We lose trust in it. Looker WTOP News. Sports on WTOP, brought to you by a mentum, delivering advanced solutions for space and defense. Rob's back with us talking about the nationals. Yeah, we had a no-hitter brewing for both pitchers, but the nationals put a stop to that in the bottom of the fourth inning. Swing and a line drive, left center field. That's going to get down and go to the fence. Halfman Crom, Armstrong, Chase, half a little trouble picking it up, so Ortiz waved around 30s coming home, and Swanson's relay will be too late. It's a double of a gap for Dylan Cruz scoring Abimeleck Ortiz all the way from first base. And the nationals do break to seal two hits in a row and get on the scoreboard. Yes, Charlie slows on 1,500 a.m. with a call and the Nats just broke it open in the fifth inning as Andrew Pinckney hit an RBI sack fly before Abamelik Ortiz, belted a three-run homer. So it's a five-nothing lead now over the cup, still two outs in the bottom of the fifth. Not to jinx it here. But Cade Cavali, five innings into a no-hitter. He's tossed six strikeouts. He's allowed no base runners. I'm not saying, but I'm just saying. The Wizards announced their schedule for the upcoming season, which begins October 21st against the Milwaukee Bucks in the first of two straight home games to begin the season. The additions of Trey Young, Anthony Davis, and number one overall pick, AJ DeBonsamina, higher profile. So the Wiz have six nationally televised games. Only one of those is at home, though. Rob Woodfork, WTOP Sports.