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(NEW YORK) — With Election Day around the corner, American parents may be considering paying for childcare to ease the voting process. But in some states, heading to the polls while your child is being cared for can be free of charge.

In swing state North Carolina, 11-time Olympic track and field medalist Allyson Felix paired up with the nonprofit Chamber of Mothers to offer up to two hours of paid child care through Politisit.

In Western North Carolina, which was devastated by the impacts of Hurricane Helene, Politsit is offering parents reimbursement for up to a full day’s worth of childcare.

“You should never have to choose between your profession, your passions, and motherhood,” Felix said in a statement. “I’m honored to partner with Chamber of Mothers to tell moms that this election, you don’t have to choose between voting and motherhood. This election, you can do both.”

A Knight Foundation study released in 2020, which surveyed 12,000 non-voters, found that more than 60% of the most disconnected non-voters are women, and within that figure, many were single women with children.

For reimbursement, eligible parents can fill out this Politsit form and indicate how much the childcare will cost.

In California, the company Bumo, which offers education-based child care for children six months to six years of age, has donated $20,000 in free childcare services that are being offered in Los Angeles and San Francisco on Election Day.

Similarly, Los Angeles-based child care center Brella is offering up to a full day of free child care for kids three months to six years of age.

New York-based Vivvi child care centers are offering caregivers in New York City and Westchester who are headed to the polls a full day of free services.

Politisit and partner organizations are also offering free care opportunities in California, Houston, Texas, Chicago, Illinois, New York City and Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

“Childcare is expensive and shouldn’t be a barrier to voting,” the organization said on its website, adding, “We believe that parents shouldn’t have to choose between voting and care for their children.”

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(FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo.) — An Army specialist has been charged with the murder of a fellow soldier whose body was found on an Army base last week.

Spc. Wooster Rancy, 21, is accused in the murder of Sarah Roque, a 23-year-old sergeant, officials said Thursday.

Last week, Roque was found dead in a dumpster at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

Rancy also faces obstruction of justice charges, officials said. He is currently in pretrial confinement ahead of a preliminary hearing.

A combat engineer, Rancy is originally from Miami and joined the Army in 2022, officials said.

It is not yet clear what led to Rancy’s arrest or the motive in the killing.

Roque, of Ligonier, Indiana, was reported missing after she failed to report for duty last week.

In a press conference after her body was found, Maj. Gen. Christopher Beck said her death was being investigated as a homicide.

“As a commander and a leader, this is a tragedy,” Beck said. “This is something that we never want to happen, we never want for the family to have to endure, or for the unit to have to endure.”

Roque served as a mine dog handler, officials said. Since she enlisted in 2020, she was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

“Sarah not only served our country bravely and honorably as a soldier, she was also a daughter, a sister and a friend to many,” Beck said.

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(Delphi, IND.) — Delphi, Indiana, murder suspect Richard Allen allegedly confessed to the crime in multiple jail phone calls to his wife, which were played for the jury on Thursday.

In one call, Allen told his wife, Kathy, “I did it. I killed Abby and Libby.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. Allen replied, “Yes, I did.”

“Why would you say that?” Kathy said. “I know you didn’t. There’s something wrong.”

In another call, Allen told his wife, “I think maybe I’ve lost my mind. … I need you to know I did this.”

She replied, “No, you haven’t. You’re unwell.”

Allen is accused of killing Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams 13, on a hiking trail in February 2017. He’s pleaded not guilty to murder.

In a separate call, Allen said to his wife, “If I get the electric chair or the death penalty, will you be there for me? I killed Abby and Libby.”

In another call, Allen said, “I did it, Kathy. I did it. Do you still love me?”

She replied, “Yes, I do. But you didn’t do it.”

“I don’t want to upset you. I’m sorry,” Allen told his wife. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’ve lost my mind.”

“I feel like I’m already in hell,” he told her later in the call. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Allen also allegedly confessed to corrections officers and a prison psychologist, according to their testimonies. But Allen’s mental state while in custody has come into question.

A psychologist testified this week that Allen could be classified as having serious mental illness. Allen was in solitary confinement for 13 months, which she said can be detrimental to a person’s mental health.

The psychologist said she believed Allen suffered from “situational psychosis” in jail. She said Allen would have episodes of psychosis and then it would go into remission.

Allen’s strange behavior in custody included hitting his head on the wall, washing his face in the toilet, refusing food, eating paper, smearing feces in his cell and putting feces on his face for two hours, according to testimony from corrections officers.

On the day of the murders, Libby and Abby saw a man behind them on the bridge, and Libby started recording on her phone, prosecutors said. The man — known as “bridge guy,” from the video of his voice released to the public — pulled out a gun and ordered the girls to go “down the hill,” prosecutors said.

Indiana State Police trooper Brian Harshman, who said he listened to 700 of Allen’s calls and monitored his texts and video chats, testified Thursday that after listening to the calls, he believes Allen is the voice on Libby’s “bridge guy” video.

The psychologist testified that Allen told her he ordered the girls “down the hill” and intended to rape them, but then he saw something — either a person or a van — and was startled.

Harshman told the jurors he believed Allen was startled by a van belonging to resident Brad Weber. Weber, who lives near the crime scene, owns a 2000 Ford Econoline van. Harshman said the time it would’ve taken Weber to drive home from work fits with the timing of the murders.

Defense attorney Brad Rozzi said police never investigated how many vans were registered in the county at the time of the murders. Rozzi also noted that numerous people were suspected of being the man in the “bridge guy” video, including Weber.

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(WASHINGTON) — A “zombie star” could possibly rise from the dead on Halloween night, according to space experts.

T Coronae Borealis, also known as the “Blaze Star,” is expected to explode violently in the near future, illuminating a long-dead binary star system for the first time in 80 years, according to NASA.

The Blaze Star has become a white dwarf, which happens when stars have exhausted their nuclear fuels.

“It’s basically a dead star,” NASA astrophysicist Padi Boyd told ABC News. “It’s not burning anything.”

The dead star has a comparable mass to Earth’s sun, according to NASA. By contrast, Earth’s sun is constantly burning elements such as hydrogen and helium, Boyd said.

The Blaze Star is part of a binary system; it has a companion star — a red giant star — that it “gobbles” material from, Boyd said. Material such as hydrogen is transferred by a strong gravitational pull, according to NASA.

“Like a vampire,” the white dwarf sucks material from its companion star, Boyd said. The material sits on the surface of the white dwarf until there is enough material to ignite a thermonuclear runaway explosion — a buildup of pressure and heat. This allows the “dead” star to become “very, very bright,” she added.

Every eight decades, when the Blaze Star system bursts into a bright light, it becomes visible to the naked eye, Boyd said.

“It’ll become as bright as some of the stars we see on the constellations at night,” she said.

The first recorded sighting of the Blaze Star was in the autumn of 1217, when a German priest and chronicler named Burchard of Ursperg observed “a faint star that for a time shone with great light,” according to NASA.

It was last seen from Earth in 1946, according to the space research agency.

It is difficult to predict when a nova — a process in which a star shows a sudden large increase in brightness — will occur, Boyd said.

“This explosion, it could happen tonight; it could happen a year from now or six months or a couple of weeks,” Boyd said. “We know it’s coming soon.”

The Northern Crown is a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation, according to NASA. In the Northern Hemisphere, it can be identified by finding the two brightest stars — Arcturus and Vega — and tracking a straight line from one to the other, leading stargazers to Hercules and the Corona Borealis.

The outburst is expected to be brief. The nova, when a star shows a sudden large increase in brightness, will only be visible to the naked eye for less than a week, according to NASA.

To astronomy enthusiasts, it will appear as if a new star appeared in the sky, Boyd said.

“It’ll look like the jewel in the crown of the corona,” she said.

Scientists are hoping to study the nova to discover what happens when the material is blasted from the white dwarf and distributed into neighboring galaxies, Boyd said.

The material includes elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and neon. Other stars will gather this material as they are forming their own solar systems, Boyd added.

“This is where that material in our own solar system — in our planet, in the oceans, in our bones, in our blood — those materials come from stellar explosions,” Boyd said.

The excitement surrounding the event is expected to “fuel the next generation of scientists,” Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement earlier this year.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” Hounsell said.

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