By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN

(CNN) — Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe on Tuesday signed into law a bill banning state judges from delaying divorce proceedings because a spouse is pregnant.

The measure, HB 1908, which passed unanimously in both the state House and Senate, will modify a state measure enacted in the 1970s requiring couples to disclose “whether the wife is pregnant” — a fact that often led judges in the state to prevent a divorce from being finalized.

Missouri state Rep. Cecelie Williams, a Republican who sponsored the bill, told CNN affiliate KOMU the original measure aimed to simplify matters like child support and custody agreements but also put spouses in dangerous situations if they were in abusive relationships.

HB 1908 states “pregnancy status shall not prevent the court from entering a judgment of dissolution of marriage or legal separation.”

Williams, who has publicly shared how she tried to finalize her divorce from an abusive spouse while pregnant about two decades ago, said at the signing ceremony that changing the state measure was a priority for her since the day she decided to run for office.

“I feel incredibly thankful that people listened to my story and understood the effects that this barrier has on women who are trying to escape their abusive relationships,” Williams told CNN earlier on Tuesday.

The Republican governor first learned about how the original measure had impacted Williams’ life when they met last year and said he almost started crying at the time.

“It hit home with me,” said Kehoe, explaining his mother and siblings experienced domestic violence and his father left the family after the governor was born.

Abuse – both verbal and physical – often worsens in pregnancy, according to infant and maternal health nonprofit March of Dimes.

Before HB 1908 was signed into law, Missouri was among a handful of states, including Texas, where divorce proceedings are frequently paused by judges during a spouse’s pregnancy.

Kehoe signed two other bills Tuesday concerning the state’s juvenile criminal system and criminal penalties for child sex trafficking.

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By Andrew Freedman, CNN

(CNN) — Get ready to hear a lot more about El Niño during the next several months — and maybe even longer — as the infamous climate cycle returns again, developing and intensifying in the Pacific Ocean near the equator. If it forms as expected, this El Niño will redraw global weather maps, sparking flooding for some and drought and wildfires for others — all while simultaneously speeding up the pace of global warming.

There are increasing indications that an El Niño is not only imminent — setting in by late summer or early fall — but that it could be a significant one, too.

In fact, this might even qualify as a “Super El Niño,” which would significantly increase impacts felt around the world. Such extremely intense El Niños are rare.

To declare an El Niño, in general, ocean temperatures in a particular region of the tropical Pacific must clear 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. A Super El Niño, in contrast, happens when temperatures are more than 2 degrees C above the average. Some typically reliable computer models, like the European modeling suite, are projecting just such an outcome for this go-around.

The baddest kids in town

El Niño and La Niña, names that translate to “the Boy” and “the Girl”, are recurring climate cycles in the tropical Pacific Ocean that happen every few years and can have profound effects on global weather patterns. In the case of El Niño, the cycle can bring both flooding and drought to different parts of Africa, help pummel the U.S. West Coast with winter storms and lead to more heat extremes globally.

El Niño is characterized by unusually warm waters along the equatorial tropical Pacific Ocean, and a related series of shifts in winds and precipitation patterns in the atmosphere. It is a so-called coupled phenomenon, meaning that to get an El Niño, both the ocean and the atmosphere must be responding to one another in characteristic ways.

The atmosphere tends to react to the warmer waters by shifting areas of heavy precipitation closer to that hot region of the ocean. The trade winds that typically blow from east to west near the equator can slacken and then reverse direction as well. Those shifts are significant enough to affect weather around the world, like a series of dominoes toppling over.

Right now, huge volumes of unusually warm water are spreading under the ocean surface from the Western to the Eastern tropical Pacific, where that water slowly rises to the surface in a clear precursor to El Niño. Periodic areas of wind blowing from the west to the east have helped transport this water, in what are appropriately known as westerly wind bursts.

While El Niño and La Niña, El Niño’s cooler sibling, are fascinating from a meteorological perspective, we care about them because of the ways in which they can affect extreme weather events around the world. In fact, they can cause billions of dollars in damages, and a stronger El Niño would likely make the usual impacts more severe.

Spotting an El Niño in formation and predicting its evolution “gives us an early heads up on changing risks for many weather-related phenomena, including floods, droughts, heatwaves, hurricanes and severe thunderstorms,” said Nat Johnson, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. “These weather and climate impacts modify crop yields, disease spread, coral bleaching, fisheries and many other parts of the earth system that affect our daily lives.”

There’s still a lot of uncertainty around the upcoming El Niño, including a range of forecast outcomes, especially when it comes to intensity, Johnson said. To cloud matters a bit furthe

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KEYT) – A woman had minor injuries after a single-vehicle rollover south of Betteravia Road, east of Santa Maria Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, crews were dispatched to the 2800 block of Betteravia Road just after noon and found a vehicle had traveled about 50 feet down an embankment and into a ditch.

The image below shows the approximate location of the response south of Betteravia Road Tuesday, courtesy of the county fire department.

Four people were inside of the vehicle at the time of the rollover and while three were uninjured and able to exit the vehicle, the fourth person suffered minor injuries and needed the help of first responders to get out of the damaged vehicle detailed the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

The injured woman was transported in an ambulance from the scene to a local hospital for further evaluation added the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

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By Lauren Mascarenhas, Danya Gainor, Taylor Galgano, CNN

(CNN) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot a man, who was then taken to a hospital, after they conducted a targeted traffic stop in California’s Central Valley, the agency said Tuesday.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in a statement the ICE officers fired defensive shots after the person they stopped attempted to run an agent over.

The shooting happened near Interstate 5 in Patterson, about 90 miles south of Sacramento.

The Department of Homeland Security statement identified the target of the vehicle stop as Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant and “18th Street Gang member wanted in El Salvador for questioning in connection to a murder.”

“As officers approached the car, the wanted gang member weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run an officer over. Following their training, our officers fired defensive shots to protect themselves, their fellow agents, and the public,” the statement continued.

CNN is working to determine whether Mendoza Hernandez has an attorney.

Two dashcam videos obtained by CNN captured the incident, as a car is seen crossing over the highway lane divider after being surrounded by agents, while one agent runs out of the way of the car. It’s not clear exactly when agents fired at the vehicle because the footage does not have sound.

DHS says its agents have been the target of increasing violence, citing more than 180 vehicle attacks since Trump’s second term started. But the administration’s initial accounts of shootings involving federal agents have, in some cases, changed over time – or been proven wrong altogether.

“As is established practice, we expect our federal law enforcement partners to appropriately collaborate with state and local law enforcement as this matter is investigated,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X.

The FBI is conducting an investigation, Acting Special Agent in Charge Eugene Wu said. The Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office told CNN it’s assisting, and it confirmed no local law enforcement was involved with the incident.

“If you have any videos or information that will help our investigation, we welcome your information,” Wu said in a plea to the public at a brief news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Dashcam footage captures incident

At least three law enforcement agents are seen surrounding a black vehicle on a road near Interstate 5, video obtained by CNN shows. The black vehicle then backs up and its passenger-side door hits another car on the road.

Agents then point their guns at the vehicle as it stops for about two seconds. The car then turns left and crosses over the highway lane divider, while an agent runs out of the way of the car.

It’s not clear when exactly agents fired at the vehicle.

Christina Valencia, whose Tesla captured one of the videos obtained by CNN, said she noticed the flashing lights from her car.

“All of a sudden I heard like a shot fired… and then maybe like 10 seconds later, I heard about five or six more go off,” she said. She believes that an agent first fired after the car reversed, but before it started to drive over the lane divider.