CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Webb Space Telescope has captured pictures of the asteroid that caused a stir earlier this year when it topped Earth’s hit list.

Discovered late last year, the asteroid 2024 YR4 was predicted at one point to have a 3% chance of smacking Earth in 2032. Additional observations prompted scientists to reduce the threat to virtually zero, where it remains. But there’s a slight chance it could hit the moon then. The asteroid swings our way every four years.

NASA and the European Space Agency released the photos — showing the asteroid as a fuzzy dot — on Wednesday. Webb confirm the asteroid is nearly 200 feet (60 meters) across, or about the height of a 15-story building, according to the two space agencies. It’s the smallest object ever observed by the observatory, the biggest and most powerful ever sent into space.

Johns Hopkins University astronomer Andrew Rivkin said the observations by Webb served as “invaluable” practice for other asteroids that may threaten us down the road. Ground telescopes also have tracked this particular space rock over the past few months.

All this “gives us a window to understand what other objects the size of 2024 YR4 are like, including the next one that might be heading our way,” Rivkin, who helped with the observations, said in a statement.

DALLAS (AP) — Hooters is going bust.

The U.S. restaurant chain, known for chicken wings and its skimpy “Hooters Girls” wait-staff outfits, has filed for bankruptcy protection. HOA Restaurant Group filed the motion for Chapter 11 protection Monday in the North Texas Bankruptcy Court in Dallas.

It’s the latest legacy restaurant chain to run into financial trouble amid high food and labor prices, changing customer tastes and growing competition from newer casual chains like Shake Shack.

Red Lobster, TGI Fridays and Buca di Beppo all filed for bankruptcy protection last year, while the Tex-Mex chain On the Border filed for bankruptcy protection last month.

Under the Hooters bankruptcy plan, 100 company-owned U.S. restaurants would be sold to a group of Hooters franchisees. The franchisees, who include Hooters’ founders, currently operate 14 of the 30 highest-volume Hooters restaurants in the U.S., the company said.

“For many years now, the Hooters brand has been owned by private equity firms and other groups with no history or experience with the Hooters brand,” Neil Kiefer, CEO of the franchise group Hooters Inc., said in a statement. “As a result of these transactions, the Hooters brand will once again be in the hands of highly experienced Hooters franchisees and we will be well-positioned to return this iconic brand to its historic success.”

The group of buyers said Tuesday it wouldn’t comment on the deal’s financial terms.

Hooters said franchisees or licensing partners would continue to operate all existing locations, including those outside the U.S. There are approximately 305 Hooters restaurants in 29 states and 17 countries, according to court filings.

Hooters, based in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in Clearwater, Florida, in 1983 by six businessmen with no food service experience who claimed they wanted to run a restaurant they couldn’t get kicked out of.

But its business strategy has faced challenges over the years, including lawsuits over hiring only “Hooters Girls” to serve customers. In 2017, the company tried opening a restaurant that didn’t feature servers in tight tops as a test of a different approach to its original concept.

Last year, Hooters agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a race and color discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to the lawsuit, a Hooters in North Carolina laid off 43 employees during the COVID pandemic, but recalled primarily white employees and Black employees with lighter skin tones once it began rehiring workers.

The company has also been forced to scale back as its financial woes mounted. In 2019, the Hooters hotel-casino off the Las Vegas Strip was sold to an Indian hotel company and rebranded as the OYO Hotel and Casino. Last year, the company closed around 40 underperforming U.S. locations.

Hooters had sponsored the No. 9 NASCAR car driven by Chase Elliott since 2017, but last year, Hendrick Motorsports ended its ties to the longtime sponsor because it was not meeting its financial commitments.

PETERSBURG, Ill. (AP) — Before his famous debates, before the Civil War rent the nation, before he helped end slavery and before his tragic assassination, Abraham Lincoln had New Salem.

The tiny central Illinois village, where Lincoln accidentally spent half-a-dozen years in the 1830s, perhaps did as much to prepare him to be the Union-saving 16th president as any other aspect of his humble yet remarkable life.

Volunteers in period clothing provide historical demonstrations for hundreds of thousands of visitors each year at the site, now part of a state park over 200 miles (330 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. But long-neglected maintenance has taken a toll on the setting, which was re-created by a federal public works program in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

It took a dedicated volunteer and state lawmakers’ advocacy this spring to secure state money to begin rehabbing the site. Work has not yet been scheduled.

What is New Salem’s connection to Lincoln?

Lincoln, a clean-shaven 22-year-old with the barest of formal schooling, had set out in 1831 to haul freight down the Mississippi River to New Orleans when he snagged his flatboat on the Sangamon River dam at New Salem.

“That was destiny,” said Guy Fraker, a Bloomington, Illinois, lawyer and Lincoln biographer, “because if he hadn’t, I really firmly believe we’d be two countries.”

Lincoln freed the boat and continued to New Orleans, but returned to take up residence in the village just northwest of the capitol, Springfield.

In New Salem, Lincoln encountered the religious and the atheist, the learned and the illiterate. It’s where he ran a store into bankruptcy, went off to war, served as postmaster, was offered a job as surveyor and thus taught himself geometry and by association, logic, began practicing law and lost his first political race but came back to win.

“This is where he got all of the education necessary to run for office, so this is probably the most important historic site in the state of Illinois, and certainly one of the most important historic sites in the country,” state Sen. Steve McClure said.

What’s next for New Salem?

But some spots are off-limits. The drive shaft of the rebuilt gristmill fell out of the structure’s floor following a 2016 flood. It’s hard to get to it anyway because a pedestrian walkway over Illinois Route 97 is closed. A hole in the roof of the carding mill, used to straighten wool for spinning, grew this winter to the size of a refrigerator and half of the roof on the replicated Trent brothers’ barn has collapsed.

Gina Gillmore-Wolter, president of the New Salem Lincoln League, roused McClure and another central Illinois Republican, state Rep. Wayne Rosenthal, to introduce legislation to appropriate money for rehabilitation and create a commission to oversee New Salem conservation.

McClure has put the brakes on the legislation because 10 days after Gillmore-Wolter and the lawmakers led a media tour of the village, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which oversees state historic sites, promised $8 million for repairs. It should be enough to stabilize structures and make some headway, but McClure said no one has inventoried problems or priced out remedies.

Natural Resources officials did not respond to emailed questions.

Why were improvements delayed?

New Salem withered shortly after Lincoln’s 1837 departure as residents picked up and moved when many transplanted their structures in the new county seat of Petersburg. Ironically, one of the best-preserved buildings is New Salem’s lone original: the Onstott Cooper Shop. Henry Onstott lent the auger Lincoln used to drain his swamped flatboat and ease it over the dam. The barrel-maker moved his shop to Petersburg in 1840, though it has since returned to its original spot.

By 1906, New Salem was a cow pasture with impressions marking erstwhile foundations. Media mogul and presidential hopeful William Randolph Hearst visited, then bought the property and donated it to the New Salem Chautauqua, an educational group.

It became a state park in 1918 and private donations paid for some reconstructed cabins, with many more added during the 1930s by the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.

Budget shortfalls have hampered maintenance. Financial troubles closed all state parks for five months in the late 2000s. Advocates believe New Salem hasn’t seen major improvements since the 1970s.

“This is Lincoln’s alma mater,” Gillmore-Wolter said. “This should be a priority.”