ATLANTA (AP) — The Atlanta Falcons said Sunday that defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son was responsible for a prank call made to NFL draft pick Shedeur Sanders.

The Falcons released a statement saying 21-year-old Jax Ulbrich “unintentionally came across the draft contact phone number for Shedeur Sanders off an open iPad while visiting his parent’s home and wrote the number down to later conduct a prank call.”

Though Jax Ulbrich provided the number, he was sitting beside an unidentified friend who actually made the call to Sanders.

The Falcons said Jeff Ulbrich was unaware of the data exposure or the prank until after the fact. They offered “sincere apologies to Shedeur Sanders and his family” in their statement, and Jax Ulbrich also posted a public apology on social media.

Sanders, a standout quarterback from Colorado, is the son of Buffaloes coach and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, who began his NFL career with the Falcons.

Shedeur Sanders was perhaps the draft’s biggest story as he had to wait until the fifth round on Saturday before being drafted by the Cleveland Browns. He received a prank call on Friday night, the second day of the draft, while waiting.

In the call, Jax Ulbrich’s friend identified himself as New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis and told Sanders he had been drafted by the Saints before ending the call.

“It didn’t really have no impact on me because it was just like, OK. I don’t feed into negativity or I don’t feed into that stuff,” Sanders said Saturday after being drafted. “… This is what it is. I think, of course, it’s childish, of course I feel like it was a childish act, but everybody do childish things here and there.”

Jax Ulbrich apologized to Sanders on Sunday for what he called “a tremendous mistake.”

“Shedeur, what I did was completely inexcusable, embarrassing and shameful,” he wrote on social media. “I’m so sorry I took away from your moment, it was selfish and childish. I could never imagine getting ready to celebrate one of the greatest moments of your life and I made a terrible mistake and messed with that moment. Thank you for accepting my call earlier today, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

The Falcons also apologized to Sanders and his family, saying they “do not condone this behavior.”

“We are thoroughly reviewing all protocols, and updating if necessary, to help prevent an incident like this from happening again,” the Falcons said.

The Falcons said they have been in contact with the NFL “and will continue to cooperate fully with any inquiries we may receive from the NFL league office.”

Jeff Ulbrich celebrated the Falcons’ emphasis on defense in the NFL draft. The Falcons selected two edge rushers, Georgia’s Jalon Walker and Tennessee’s James Pearce Jr., in the first round. Their first four draft picks were defensive players.

Ulbrich was 3-9 as interim coach of the New York Jets last season before being hired to return to Atlanta, where he previously worked as an assistant.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Whooping cough cases are rising, and doctors are bracing for yet another tough year.

There have been 8,485 cases reported in 2025, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s twice as many cases as this time last year, based on the CDC’s final tally.

Rates of whooping cough, or pertussis, soared last year, which experts said wasn’t unexpected. The number of cases fell during COVID-19 because of masking and social distancing. Plus, experts said, the illness peaks every two to five years.

But experts say the outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses, like measles and whooping cough, could be indicative of changing attitudes toward vaccines. U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates fell last year, and the number of children with vaccine exemptions hit an all-time high.

“There’s unfortunately been increasing anti-vaccine sentiment in the United States,” said Dr. Ericka Hayes at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Our recovery is not nearly as quick as we expected it to be and we needed it to be. And again, when you fall below 95% for vaccinations, you lose that herd immunity protection.”

Whooping cough tends to peak around this time of year and in the fall. It’s usually spread through respiratory droplets in the air, when people with pertussis cough, sneeze or breathe close to others. The symptoms are similar to a cold but the cough becomes increasingly severe with a distinctive sound — a “whoop” as the person tries to take in air. It is treated with antibiotics.

In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana and a 5-year-old in Washington state have died from whooping cough.

The pertussis vaccine, which also protects against diphtheria and tetanus, is given at two months, four months and six months. The CDC recommends adults get follow-up doses every 10 years.

The illness is most dangerous for infants, especially before they receive their first round of vaccinations. That’s why the vaccine is also recommended for expecting mothers — it can protect newborns. But not enough people are getting the vaccine during pregnancy, said Hayes, who is the hospital’s senior medical director of infection prevention and control.

“The uptake of the vaccine for pregnant mothers is not where we need to be at all,” she said.

Pennsylvania, one of the states hit hardest by the illness last year, has recorded 207 whooping cough cases in 2025.

Neil Ruhland, a state health department spokesman, said the biggest increases are in populated areas like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in middle and high schools and colleges. He said 94.6% of the state’s kindergarteners are vaccinated.

Michigan is on track for a similar pertussis season to last year’s, said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the state’s chief medical executive. The state has recorded 516 cases thus far, mostly among children aged 5 to 17, and saw a total of 2,081 cases in 2024.

Bagdasarian said vaccination rates vary from county to county. Some schools have rates as low as 30%, creating pockets of vulnerable communities to vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis and measles, she said.

“We’re watching pertussis numbers very carefully, but a lot of our resources are going into contact tracing our measles cases right now,” she said. “And public health is doing much more with fewer resources in 2025 than we’ve had to do before.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein ’s #MeToo retrial opened Wednesday, giving a new jury a fresh look at familiar rape and sexual assault allegations — plus a newly added claim from a former model.

For the first time, prosecutors publicly identified Kaja Sokola and detailed her account of what unfolded between her and the Oscar-winning movie producer in the early 2000s. He is criminally charged with forcing oral sex on her in 2006, but she also accused him in a civil lawsuit of groping her against her will four years earlier, when she was 16.

Like the two other accusers in the case, Sokola alleges a complex series of encounters and reactions — being sexually assaulted, yet staying in touch, wary of Weinstein but wanting to remain on good terms with a power broker who dangled the possibility of an acting career.

“Why did the defendant hold this level of power and control in the eyes of these three women? … It’s because Harvey Weinstein defined the field,” prosecutor Shannon Lucey told jurors in an opening statement. “He knew how tempting promises of success were. He produced, he choreographed, he therefore directed, their ultimate silence for years.”

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty, and defense lawyer Arthur Aidala countered by portraying the accusers as willing partners in a showbiz quid pro quo.

“The casting couch is not a crime scene,” Aidala told the majority-female jury. He compared prosecutors’ allegations to the preview of a movie that “falls flat on its face.”

A reversal and a retrial

The 73-year-old Weinstein, seated in the wheelchair he now uses because of health problems, didn’t look at Lucey or the jury during her presentation. But Weinstein watched intently as Aidala outlined his defense.

The retrial is happening because New York’s top court last year threw out Weinstein’s conviction, which in 2020 was a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. The high court found that the previous trial judge allowed prejudicial testimony about allegations separate from the charges.

Weinstein’s retrial is playing out at a different cultural moment than the first. #MeToo, which exploded in 2017 with allegations against Weinstein, has evolved and ebbed.

When Weinstein’s first trial began, chants of “rapist” could be heard from protesters outside. This time, there was none of that.

Sokola’s lawyer, Lindsay Goldbrum, has called Weinstein’s retrial a “signal to other survivors that the system is catching up — and that it’s worth speaking out even when the odds seem insurmountable.”

A teenage model and a movie model

While this jury won’t hear about the allegations that got the first conviction thrown out, the panel is expected to hear from Sokola. After the high court sent the case back for retrial, prosecutors added a criminal sex act charge based on her allegations.

The Polish-born Sokola met Weinstein in 2002 after traveling alone to New York for a modeling trip at age 16, according to prosecutors. She alleges he invited her to lunch to discuss potential acting jobs but detoured to his apartment and demanded she take off her shirt if she wanted to make it in the movie business. Then, Sokola alleges, Weinstein fondled her while making her touch his genitals.

Over the next few years, Sokola stayed in contact with Weinstein, even after telling him off for allegedly groping her in a car around 2004, Lucey told jurors. She said Weinstein arranged for Sokola to be an extra in the 2007 rom-com “The Nanny Diaries,” and she invited him to lunch to impress her visiting sister.

After the lunch, he asked Sokola to check out some scripts in his Manhattan hotel room, ordered her to undress, held her down on a bed, and performed oral sex on her while she tearfully implored him not to do so, Lucey said.

In the weeks after, Sokola was photographed with Weinstein and a third person at an event, and his company wrote her an acting-school recommendation, the prosecutor said. Lucey told jurors that power imbalances often “cause victims to behave in ways that laypersons possibly might not expect.”

After other allegations emerged against Weinstein in 2017, Sokola sued. Prosecutors said she received $3.5 million in compensation.

Two of the original charges remain

Aidala said the accusers were “trying to take advantage of Mr. Weinstein when he was at the top,” then benefited from making allegations amid his downfall.

Outside court, Sokola’s attorney decried Weinstein’s defense as full of “victim blaming” and “rape myths.”

In addition to the charge related to Sokola, Weinstein is being retried on a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcibly performing oral sex on then-production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and a third-degree rape charge for allegedly assaulting then-aspiring actor Jessica Mann in 2013.

Weinstein’s 2020 acquittals on predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape charges still stand.

After the attorneys’ statements, testimony started Wednesday with details of Weinstein’s high-flying workdays around 2006. Witness Stefan Sterns — who was then one of Weinstein’s assistants — expounded on the producer’s reputation as a Hollywood kingmaker, recalled dropping him off to meet Haley in a hotel lobby and remembered seeing her name on a call log.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley, Mann and Sokola have done.