VENTURA, Calif.—Before the carnival lights come on and the fairgrounds fill with people, local artists are putting the finishing touches on their work.

For Monica Graves, the sky is her canvas.

“I’m a sunset chaser,” Graves said.

The Ventura resident recently picked up photography as a new hobby. This year, she submitted six photographs to the Ventura County Fair — all taken using only her cellphone.

Graves said the changing sky inspires her to slow down and pay attention to the world around her.

“It's a changing canvas every single day,” Graves said. “We're so blessed that the sun comes up every day and it goes down, and it's in such a beautiful way that it goes down.”

Her submissions include photographs of mop heads and images documenting the aftermath of the Camarillo fires.

“I'm like, ‘I have got to see this through,’” Graves said. “I did not want to be defeated.”

For other families, entering artwork at the fair has become a tradition.

Sindy Madrano of Oxnard was at the fairgrounds submitting artwork created by her nieces, Tatiana and Maria.

“They had some watercolor paintings. They had a clay art,” Madrano said.

The artwork will be judged alongside pieces submitted by artists from across Ventura County.

Fair organizers say the entries include plenty of pet-themed artwork.

“A lot of pets. Lot of pets,” one organizer said while sorting through submissions.

There may be a ribbon at the end, but for many artists, the reward is simply putting their creativity on display.

The Ventura County Fair runs from July 29 through August 9.

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By Laura Sharman and Christina Asencio

(CNN) — US President Donald Trump said the Qatari-donated jet that has served as Air Force One will be sent for upgrades, as concerns mount over the plane’s security features.

Stepping off the plane on his return from the FIFA World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday, Trump was asked about the newly renovated plane’s missile-defense capabilities.

“It has a lot of capability but, as I understand it, in about a month or so they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews.

“They’re going to be sending it, and they’ll have it be maxed out. It’ll take about a month,” he added.

As CNN has reported, concerns about the new, $400 million Qatari-gifted jet have come into focus since earlier this month when Trump unexpectedly ditched the jet during his return from a NATO summit in Turkey and said he was sending the new plane ahead to Mildenhall air base in England.

Trump said the change in planes was simply to give US service members stationed at the base “a chance to tour the Aircraft.”

As CNN also reported, two US officials said security personnel felt more comfortable with the president aboard an older plane –– which was built from scratch with the commander-in-chief’s safety in mind — rather than the plane that had recently been retrofitted after it was donated by Qatar.

Two sources familiar with the matter said the newer plane did not possess the same capabilities to ensure its safety in international settings, though a third said it was equipped with many of the same features as the older plane.

Security concerns surrounding the plane were previously reported by the New York Times.

As CNN reported, a major White House investigation was launched to identify who in the government leaked information about these security deficiencies, with some officials being asked to turn over their phones to investigators on White House grounds, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. It came as Trump had fumed over the disclosures, sources said.

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CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Holmes Lybrand and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.

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By Chelsea Bailey, CNN

(CNN) — When Patrick Clancy left his Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023, he had no way of knowing a quick errand to grab takeout and medicine for his daughter would forever change his life.

When he returned to the colonial on Summer Street he shared with his wife, Lindsay, and their three children, he found the house unusually quiet, he would later tell police.

Searching for his family, Patrick tried his bedroom, but the door was locked, he would say. When he finally got in, he saw blood in the room and the second-story window open.

He ran outside, where he found Lindsay lying on the ground beneath the window. She had injuries on her wrists and neck.

Frantic, he dialed 911.

“What did you do?” Patrick asked his wife, a Plymouth County assistant district attorney would later recount the recorded call.

Tried to kill herself, Lindsay told him.

“Where are the kids?” Patrick asked.

“In the basement,” she responded.

Moments later, Patrick Clancy could “be heard screaming in agony and shock as he found his children,” the prosecutor, Jennifer Sprague, would say.

Officers found Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan unconscious. It was obvious each had been strangled, the officers later testified in sworn affidavits.

The children were taken to area hospitals, where they were all eventually pronounced dead.

Lindsay Clancy, who was paralyzed by the injuries from her suicide attempt, was charged with three counts of murder and strangulation in her children’s deaths.

Her trial is set to begin Monday.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at a nationally recognized hospital in Boston, has pleaded not guilty. She is being held at the public Tewksbury Hospital in Massachusetts.

While she did kill her children, she shouldn’t be found criminally responsible for murder, her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has said in court proceedings as recently as June.

And while there is precedent for such an argument, experts tell CNN Clancy’s defense could be facing an uphill battle.

911 call and expert testimony could be key

Clancy, 35, had long struggled with depression, even going so far as to voluntarily commit herself to a local psychiatric hospital less than a month before her children’s deaths, Reddington has said. Clancy’s doctors took her on and off medications to treat the depression, which her attorney has said worsened her symptoms.

“Our society fails miserably in treating women with postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis,” Reddington said at a 2023 arraignment hearing. “This is a situation that clearly was a product of mental illness.”

Throughout pretrial hearings, Reddington has signaled he plans to argue Clancy should not be held “criminally responsible” for the deaths of her children because she was suffering from extreme mental health distress.

Reddington and the commonwealth’s prosecutors sparred in June over what expert evidence would be admissible if he were to pursue that defense, commonly called an “insanity plea.”

Jurors should “hear why Patrick Clancy and his wife Lindsay would go to consult with doctors because of depression, because of the life that she was living, which was one of horrific misery because of medications,” Reddington argued during a June hearing.

Prosecutors pushed back and suggested they may be prepared to offer their own experts to testify to the question of criminal responsibility.

Ahead of the trial, the commonwealth also filed a motion to admit audio recordings of the 911 call Patrick Clancy made after returning home and discovering his family. Prosecutors claim Clancy’s descriptions of how he found his children and the meth

By Holly Yan, CNN

(CNN) — As Nolan Wells’ family prepares to lay the 18-year-old to rest on Monday, they will do so without knowing why his young life was cut so tragically short.

It’s been 16 days since Wells and his friends went on a Fourth of July boat trip to Horn Island — a popular destination for holiday revelers off the Mississippi coast with no shelters, no facilities and no communications.

His friends made it back home. Wells, a student and wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, did not. His body was found two days later, on July 6, facedown in the water off the shoreline of Horn Island by a National Park Service agent.

While his loved ones mourn, some of Wells’ friends who were on the trip have received death threats. Photos from the excursion show Wells hanging out with what seem to be all-White friends, leading some to evoke harsh feelings about Mississippi’s fraught racial history and speculate about whether race played a role in his death.

Others say the currents near Horn Island can be notoriously rough, with the local coroner saying his office has received numerous drowning victims from Mississippi’s barrier islands in recent years.

Here’s what we know and don’t know about the case that has spurred national attention:

What was the cause of death?

Two concurrent autopsy investigations are underway to determine Wells’ cause and manner of death.

The Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office is conducting the official autopsy investigation, Jackson County Coroner Bruce Lynd said.

There were no immediate, obvious signs of foul play or trauma on Wells’ body, Lynd told CNN. But due to the uncertain circumstances, “we asked for an autopsy (at) the state medical examiner’s office so that they could do the full autopsy and be able to tell if there was any foul play or trauma,” he said.

The state medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy on July 7 and has been waiting for results from toxicology tests, Lynd said. It can take weeks to receive results from toxicology tests, which are standard in death investigations.

Separately, Wells’ parents sent their son’s body out of state for an independent autopsy, family attorney Ben Crump said.

“We had his body flown from Mississippi to Washington, DC, because his family wanted to make sure that they had a doctor who had no ties to Mississippi law enforcement to do an independent examination of their son’s body,” Crump said.

Results from the independent autopsy are still pending, Crump said.

What was Wells doing when a friend last saw him?

Tracestin Shepherd, who was on the trip, described Wells as one of his best friends. He told ABC’s “Good Morning America” he took a boat back from Horn Island in the late afternoon of July 4, but Wells stayed behind with a girl he had met.

“They met that day, and it was kind of – it’s kind of one of those things. … he really did like her, but that was the only time they ever hung out was at Horn Island on July 4,” Shepherd told GMA.

Shepherd said he has spoken to investigators and Wells’ friends from the trip have been cooperating with authorities.

But Jayvon Williams, another friend who also saw Wells on July 4, said it’s not like Wells to separate from the group he came with.

“I don’t think that Nolan would say, ‘Bro, I’m staying with this girl on the island. Y’all go ahead and go back,’” Williams told CNN’s Laura Coates.

“I’ve never known Nolan to stay back, watch friends leave. He’s always been a guy where, if he rode with you, he’s gonna come back with you,” Williams said.

Williams was supposed to be on the same boat as We

VENTURA, Calif. (KEYT) An artists who lives a board a boat in Ventura' West Marina is being celebrated.

Her friends and neighbors put on a art show of her work.

Chris Hammersley paints in water colors, acrylics, charcoal and pen and ink .

She is special to area and her friends in the harbor and at The Grape live music venue said she has some upcoming surgeries and they want to help.

"Our friend chris is 81 years old and had never shown her art in her life three months ago we went into her storage unit she has carried this art around from storage unit to storage unit from London, France to the u.s it has been in storage we took three weeks going through inventory and came up with over 850 pieces," said Jill Creager who also lives in the harbor.

More than 100 works of art went on display today at Ventura Portside.

They are not for sale just yet.

Money raised in the future will help the artist with health care.

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