MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama teen who narrowly survived a fierce shark attack last year said she hopes a proposed alert system before state lawmakers can help keep others safe in the water.

Lulu Gribbin, now 16, was one of three people bitten by a shark on June 7, 2024, during a string of attacks off the Florida Panhandle. She lost her left hand and a portion of her leg. On Wednesday, she asked Alabama lawmakers to support a proposed shark attack alert system.

The bill by Republican Rep. David Faulkner would establish an alert system, similar to the Amber Alert system, that would issue a notice to the public when there’s been an unprovoked shark attack in the vicinity.

“Ninety minutes before me, there was another shark attack a couple miles down the coast,” Gribbin said. Had she known about that attack, she and her friend would not have ventured into the water that day, she said. “This bill will help prevent future attacks and accidents.”

The Alabama House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee advanced the bill Wednesday. It now moves to the full Alabama House of Representatives. The first of it’s kind system

Gribbin and her friend had been diving for sand dollars before the attack. They were riding the waves back to the beach when her friend screamed, “shark!”

“I saw a big shadow, but we all just started swimming for our lives,” She recalled. She said she tried to remain calm, remembering that sharks were supposed to be attracted to frantic motion. Then the shark attacked her and her friend.

“My hand was bitten first. I remember just lifting it out of the water, and I was stunned because there was no hand there. I couldn’t feel it because of all the shock I was in. Then the shark latched onto my leg,” she recalled.

A man she describes as a hero ran to pull her from the water. She blacked out and came to on the shore where a doctor and other medical workers, who were on the beach that day, rushed to save her. “I remember being focused just to keep my eyes open and to breathe, to just be able to make it to the hospital,” she said.

Her lengthy recovery has been documented on social media. As she visited the Alabama Statehouse, people frequently stopped to ask for photographs and to tell her that her story has been an inspiration.

While sharks are commonly found in the waters off Alabama and Florida, shark attacks are rare, said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark research program. He said there are between 50 and 90 unprovoked bites around the world each year. And a trio of bites in a single day in close proximity is extremely rare, he said.

He said, generally speaking, the data shows that one shark bite does not increase the likelihood of another happening soon. However, Naylor said weather conditions that day likely brought an abundance of small fish closer to shore.

“The bait fish were very close into shore along that same beach and sharks were following them. But on any day in Alabama, you can see 20 or 30 bull sharks 400 meters offshore, but they just don’t interact with the public because they are much farther away,” Naylor said.

Naylor noted that rip currents kill far more people than sharks each year. Four people were killed worldwide in shark attacks last year. The U.S. Lifesaving Association estimated there are about 100 deaths each year in the U.S. from rip currents.

While the proposal would only impact the Alabama coast, Faulkner hopes other states will pursue similar systems or that federal legislation would expand its use.

“There had been a shark attack just down the beach, and yet she had no notice. And I felt like in this day and age, that’s something we shouldn’t let happen,” Faulkner said.

The bill, which would name the alert system for Gribbin, was changed to issue an alert only when an unprovoked attack occurred off the coast.

An earlier version would have allowed an alert for an “imminent danger” from sharks. There were concerns from beach communities that language was too vague and could lead to an excessive alerts, causing panic and potentially hurting the tourism industry.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday urged lawmakers to approve the legislation, saying it will be an “added tool” to keep people safe, calling the teen “an inspiration and an awesome example of courage.”

MOSCOW (AP) — NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and two Russian crewmates arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday on board a Russian spacecraft.

A Soyuz booster rocket lifted off as scheduled from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan to put the Soyuz MS-27 carrying the trio in orbit. They docked at the station just over three hours later.

Kim and Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky are scheduled to spend about eight months at the space outpost.

NASA said Kim will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare the crew for future space missions and provide benefits to people on Earth. A native of Los Angeles, Kim is a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon.

Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky are joining NASA astronauts Don Pettit, Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Kirill Peskov on the space outpost.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Mega Millions players will get slightly better odds and should start seeing more billion-dollar jackpots, but at a cost — literally — with tickets for the multistate lottery jumping in price to $5.

The price for playing Mega Millions more than doubled for drawings starting with Tuesday’s, but lottery officials are betting that the swollen jackpots they’re expecting will catch the public’s attention and lead to an accompanying surge in sales

“People really want big jackpots,” said Joshua Johnston, the Washington state lottery director who heads the Mega Millions game. “We expect to see a sales lift on this.”

How is Mega Millions changing?

The biggest change is the ticket price hike from $2 to $5. Lottery officials expect that jump to increase revenue from the twice-weekly game, enabling them to improve the odds of winning the jackpot from 1 in 303 million to 1 in 290 million.

The higher ticket price also means the jackpot can start at $50 million, rather than the previous $20 million, and that the grand prize is expected to grow more quickly. Each time there isn’t a big winner, the jackpot will jump by a larger amount. Officials expect it will more frequently top the $1 billion threshold that draws extra attention — and bigger sales.

Under the new rules, prizes for tickets not matching all six numbers also will increase, with non-jackpot winners now guaranteed at least $10. Each ticket also will include a randomly assigned multiplier that can increase the prize by up to 10 times, a previous add-on feature that cost an extra $1. The multiplier doesn’t apply to a jackpot.

Why is the game changing?

The new rules have two main goals: to address what the industry calls “jackpot fatigue” and to differentiate Mega Millions from Powerball, the other lottery draw game played across the country.

Jackpot fatigue is the phenomenon under which prizes must grow to enormous amounts before most players will take note and buy a few tickets. These days, a $300 million prize that once drew lines at mini-marts barely registers.

With the new rules, officials expect those average winning jackpots to climb from about $450 million to $800 million, Johnston said. And they believe that even lottery fatigue is no match for the more frequent billion-dollar prize.

“When you get to a billion people are like, ‘Whoa, that’s a whole lot of money,’” Johnston said.

Lottery officials said there is a clear correlation between bigger jackpots and higher sales, but not everyone who plays is swayed by the bigger pots.

Sandie Yeaman, of Omaha, Nebraska, expressed puzzlement at the connection.

“I’d be satisfied with $1 million, and so would others,” she said. “One person winning $50 million is ridiculous.”

How rare is a $5 ticket price?

Mega Millions will be the country’s most expensive lottery draw game, where random numbers are selected to determine a winner.

Still, that price is far less than scratch tickets offered by some states. In Texas, for example, some scratch tickets cost $100 each.

Outside the U.S., the El Gordo Christmas lottery in Spain limits the number of tickets sold and charges 20 euros (nearly $22) for a partial ticket and 200 euros (nearly $220) for a full ticket.

The higher Mega Millions price left Saeedith Williams, of East Point, Georgia, unsure if he’ll keep buying several tickets per week. “Maybe I’ll buy one ticket a week now that it’s $5 a ticket,” he said.

What about Powerball?

After the new rules are implemented, the two lottery games that once were remarkably similar now will have some key differences.

The biggest contrast will be the cost, as Powerball will stick with its $2 tickets — $3 in Idaho and Montana where they require a special prize bundle.

With that smaller ticket price will come smaller minimal prizes, starting at $4, or less than half the lowest Mega Millions prize. But Powerball players will still be able to pay an extra dollar for “Power Play,” a random multiplier that, as in Mega Millions, can increase all but the grand prize.

Powerball drawings will continue to be three times a week — Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights — while Mega Millions will hold drawings on Tuesday and Friday.

The changes will bring the two games’ jackpot odds a little closer, with Powerball jackpot odds of 1 in 292.2 million just a bit worse than the new Mega Millions odds.

Remind me, what’s the point of all this?

For players, it’s a chance to spend a little money on a dream of incredible riches while acknowledging the reality that it almost certainly won’t happen.

For the 45 states plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands where Mega Millions is played, the game raises money for a variety of services, such as education scholarships. Local lottery agencies run the game in each jurisdiction and decisions about how the profits are divvied up are written into state law.