This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series will bring you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.

The Horse Fire burning in the Bridger-Teton National Forest grew again over the weekend.

It’s now estimated at about 2,300 acres, with 13% contained. It was first reported on June 13 by a forest employee and caused by lightning.

Some 230 people are working from the air and on the ground to suppress the fire about 10 miles west of Merna.

Bridger-Teton National Forest A map shows the Horse Fire’s approximate perimeter as of June 23, 2025.

Erratic winds have been a challenge, requiring more people and time to get the fire under control.

Smoke has also been an issue, though air quality in the area measured “good” Monday afternoon.

Bridger-Teton National Forest A progression map shows the Horse Fire’s growth since it was detected on June 13, 2025.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers safety guidance for protecting yourself from smoke, including how to make an air filter out of a box fan with supplies you can pick up at a hardware store. If you’re noticing irritation or trouble breathing, head inside.

Fire danger on the Bridger-Teton is rated “moderate.” Some roads and trails in the fire area are closed, and drones aren’t allowed near the fire area.

Long, short, curly, straight, with or without gel — the iconic ’80s haircut, known as the mullet, comes in many forms.

This year, over 900 kids between ages 1 and 12 showed off their version of the “business in the front, party in the back” hairdo for the chance to win at the USA Mullet Championship.

Recently, the online competition announced the top 25 for the kids category. There are also contests held for teens, as well as adult men and women.

Voting for the final round ends Friday night. The top three kid finalists will be announced on Wednesday. The first place winner will receive $5,000 as well as a trophy.

All proceeds raised during the contest will go directly to Jared Allen’s Homes for Wounded Warriors, which helps to provide accessible and mortgage-free homes for military veterans.

Here are some of the top kids in the running:

/ USA Mullet Championships / USA Mullet Championships Eli Powell is from Derby, Kansas.

Eli Powell calls his mullet “The Ginger Mane.” It was the first haircut Powell ever got at 9 months old. Nearly three years later, the mullet is still the only haircut he has ever known.

/ USA Mullet Championships / USA Mullet Championships Nash Carroll is from Covington, Louisiana.

Nash Carroll is not only considered a warrior for his mullet — he was born with half of a working heart. Despite his health challenges and an upcoming open heart surgery, the toddler continues to be full of joy and energy.

/ USA Mullet Championships / USA Mullet Championships Dalton Ellis is from Eddyville, Nebraska.

Dalton Ellis’ mullet, which consists of a mohawk, perm and mane-like volume, defies the “business in the front” element of the hairstyle — keeping it the party going 360 degrees, 24/7.

/ USA Mullet Championships / USA Mullet Championships Owen Escoto is from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

It took Owen Escoto about a year and half to grow his mullet. But soon after, his hairstyle because the go-to reference that mullet enthusiasts would show to barbers across his hometown. When asked if he’ll cut it once the contest is over, Escoto said “No! It’s who I am.”

/ USA Mullet Championships / USA Mullet Championships Mason Padilla is from Fremont, Calif.

The first time Mason Padilla tried to grow out a mullet, he quickly cut it off after getting bullied. He later learned to not care what bullies thought of his hairstyle and pursued a mullet again. Last year, Padilla ranked 11th place in the mullet competition.

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AMMAN, Jordan — Roxana, a young shop manager living alone in Tehran, was panicking during the war with Israel. Her family lives outside the Iranian capital. Her boyfriend was on an Iranian base doing compulsory military service; unreachable and potentially in danger. Even her psychotherapist had fled the bombing in Tehran. So she turned to ChatGPT.

“I asked it, can you give me a specific time when this is going to end?” says Roxana, 31, reached by phone in Tehran. She did not want her full name used because she is afraid of being arrested by Iranian security services for speaking to foreign media.

The war that began on June 13 with Israeli attacks against Iranian nuclear sites lasted for 12 days. Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles on Israel. The two countries agreed to a ceasefire Tuesday after the U.S. bombed Iranian sites, prompting an Iranian attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar.

It was the third or fourth day of the war and explosions sounded like they were getting closer when Roxana tried the artificial intelligence app, she says.

“It gave me some information that was new to me, like the Islamic Republic’s attempts to lobby the international community,” she says. “It said it might take 10 or 12 more days.”

Narges Keshavarznia, an internet access researcher at Filterwatch, a project of the U.S.-based digital rights organization Miaan Group, said even though ChatGPT is restricted in Iran, Iranians have been able to access it through specific internet proxies.

Iran was in the midst of an internet blackout for hours a day. For some reason, she says, her building had better access than most and ChatGPT was accessible when Google and other search engines were not. When she asked if her building would be targeted or her loved ones killed, it had no good answers. But it tried to give her security advice, she says, including where to shelter in her apartment.

She had consulted the artificial intelligence app so often it knew what her apartment looked like, down to the location of the furniture. When the war started, ChatGPT became her security advisor, telling her where the safest room in her home was, and when she suffered panic attacks, it became her therapist.

“I used to speak a lot to it and it knows me,” she says. “By just telling me that ‘this is only a nervous attack and it will pass,’ it helped me a lot,” she says. “I shared my anxieties with it, my financial concerns and worries.”

As useful and empathetic-seeming as it was to Roxana, AI chat bots and artificially generated images have also been sources of misinformation and influence campaigns, especially during conflict.

Roxana says it was always difficult to get information in Iran — many news sites are blocked and she says Iran’s state media cannot be trusted.

“On their state media, they are trying to show you know, everything is OK and it’s so beautiful and it’s like we live in a garden or something,” she says. “And that makes me even angrier. On Iranian TV it was like ‘the war was over’ and we’d won since the second day.”

The frequent internet blackouts made getting any information even more difficult. Iranian media reported that authorities had temporarily blocked internet access to maintain security during the Israeli attacks.

Roxana says she could hear bombs in the distance when she spoke to her therapist as she was fleeing Tehran. The therapist told her to try not to think of the past or the future and suggested she keep a journal.

In a huge city beloved by most Iranians but little-known in the West, Roxana wrote of missing bookstores and French pastries.

Her day-to-day life before the war would also be surprising to many unfamiliar with Iran.

She describes going to concerts with friends, staying out late and drinking. Although alcohol is banned in the Islamic Republic and public drinking not tolerated, home-brewed alcohol is widely available. Her friends are creatives, and in a country where a cleric is the supreme authority, many of them atheists. She covers her mass of curly hair only when she has to, primarily to access government offices, which enforce mandatory hair covering for women.

Years of U.S. sanctions and the Iranian government’s own policies have left Iran in financial crisis. A World Bank study two years ago found that 40 Iranians were at risk of falling into poverty. The country’s relatively young population — more than 60% are under 30 years old — have been hit particularly hard by high unemployment and underemployment.

Much of Roxana’s life and that of her friends is spent figuring out how to make ends meet.

“I feel like we are the forgotten people,” she says. While the rich in Iran are fine and the destitute have a safety net, she says people like her — the working poor — fall through the cracks.

“We are trying hard to stand on our feet, not to need anyone. But life is getting harder and harder,” she says. “Now when I receive bills I just look at them and I’m like ‘go to hell.’ There’s nothing I can do about them.”

She says the food in her apartment is from friends; vegetables and a big bag of rice her boyfriend bought before he had to report for duty.

Where once, not long ago, Roxana had been studying German with hopes of emigrating and working on improving her skills to produce online content, she says she has abandoned all that.

“There’s a lot of pressure on us to take a political side,” she says. “But people like me just want to have a calm, peaceful life.”

Iran says more than 600 Iranians were killed during the almost two weeks of war. The Israeli government says Iranian airstrikes killed 28 people in Israel.

Roxana says because she can’t sleep, she often stays up all night playing computer games and then sleeps in the day. She has started playing Life is Strange, an adventure game in which the main character can rewind time.

Roxana says she turned to Life is Strange after her The Sims account where she created a virtual life was hacked at the start of the war and she lost access.

“The family I had built there, all the life I had built for these characters, it’s lost,” she says. “I couldn’t save the family that I made there.”

Writing on social media after the ceasefire, she says she and a group of friends gathered in her apartment in the strange silence after the sirens stopped. There was some relief and nervous laughter but mostly sadness about what their lives had become.

She says they hadn’t asked for much.

“A little bit of bread, a little bit of joy, a little bit of dreams, a little bit of rights, a little bit of…” she writes, leaving the thought unfinished.

Sima Ghadirzadeh contributed reporting from Istanbul.

This story was updated Wednesday evening to reflect the sheriffs response and another photographer’s perspective.

The famous grizzly bear 399 was struck and killed Tuesday evening, Oct. 22, by a car in the Snake River Canyon south of Jackson on Highway 26.

At age 28, she was the oldest known reproducing female in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). Photos of the popular mama bear and her cubs circulated the world.

“It’s just really surreal,” said one local photographer, Sue Cedarholm, who captured pictures of grizzly bear 399 for almost 20 years. “She’s an old bear, and we knew her time was coming to an end, but you just hate to have it be with a car accident.”

She urged people to remember grizzly 399’s legacy. She was the first roadside bear in the Tetons, raising her many cubs in and around Grand Teton National Park.

“She raised so much awareness for bears and grizzly bears,” Cedarholm said. “So I think we have to remember how lucky we were to have her in our lives and what a great bear she was.”

399 was the inspiration of a career for Wilson native Syler Peralta-Ramos. Early one morning, before he could drive himself, Peralta-Ramos, 26, convinced his dad to drive him into Grand Teton National Park. They were north of Pilgrim Creek when Peralta-Ramos saw her across the road: 399 with two yearlings.

“She was the first grizzly bear I ever saw. And the first grizzly bears that I ever got to photograph,” Peralta-Ramos said. “The pictures were terrible, but I remember it really distinctly as this being such a special moment to see her and see her with cubs.”

Peralta-Ramos has since served as apprentice of Tom Mangelsen’s, the region’s most famous wildlife photographer, and currently works part-time in Mangelsen’s editing office. Recalling words Mangelsen said years ago in an interview, Peralta-Ramos said 399 had taught humans what it means to coexist with wildlife.

“She’s redefined a species that has traditionally been really vilified,” he said, “and shown us that we have a lot more in common with them than I think a lot of people believe.”

399 will continue to be a symbol of human’s relationship to the natural world, Peralta-Ramos said.

“Even though she is gone, I don’t think that this is the end of her story.”

Authorities confirmed her identity by an ear tag and a microchip. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, her year-old cub was with her but his location is now unknown.

Lincoln County sheriffs responded to a collision with a Subaru, model not reported, around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday evening after the bear entered the driver’s lane of travel, according to an incident report. The driver was reported to be fine and not cited. The speed limit in that section is posted at 55 miles per hour.

Lincoln County Sheriff Captain ​​Brian Andrews said it was “unusual” for a grizzly to be hit in that section. He called it a “freak accident.”

It’s the second grizzly death from a vehicle collision this year. On average, about three die in vehicle crashes annually in the GYE.

Highway 26 where 399 was killed is notorious for wildlife collisions. The state recently applied for funding to build wildlife crossings along that stretch.

Melodie Edwards contributed to this story.

Switzerland has won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Swiss rapper and singer Nemo’s song “The Code” impressed both the jury and the public at the popular annual event, held Saturday in Malmö, Sweden.

“It is the most insane thing that has ever happened to me,” the 24-year-old vocalist said at the post-event press conference.

“The Code” explores the artist’s nonbinary identity in a flamboyant mashup of opera, rap, drum-and-bass and electronic dance music.

Nemo was one one of two nonbinary singers to compete in the Eurovision Grand Finals this year, along with Ireland’s Bambie Thug.

Switzerland narrowly beat pre-competition favorite Croatia — earning 591 votes compared with the runner-up’s 547 — in an event that was not without controversy.

Security was tight for Israel’s entrant, Eden Golan. She received some boos and turned backs during her performance but placed high at the event, coming in 5th with 375 votes.

Thousands of protesters opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza rallied outside the Malmö Arena in the days leading up to the finals, calling for Israel’s disqualification.

Meanwhile, Dutch contestant Joost Klein was disqualified just hours before the finals began over a complaint lodged by a female production team member. Police said they are investigating.

Switzerland took first place at the very first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956. Until now, the country has only won one other time — in 1988. The top entry that year, “Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi,” was performed by a then-little-known (and non-Swiss) singer who would go on to become one of the most successful vocalists of all time: Céline Dion.

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