Your weekend must reads📰

Well, it was another wild week in the news. Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, wild weather brought the threat of tornadoes in the South and heavy snow in California ... and a giant prehistoric bug was found at an Arkansas Walmart.

Good morning, friends of The Short List weekend edition.✨ I'm John Riley, and now that I've got your attention, here are the week's must reads.🔥

🔵 Missing children's age matters: Police don't always rush to find missing children. In some cities, anyone over age 10 is on their own.

Law enforcement agencies across the country operate under a patchwork of rules that govern how intensely they search for missing kids. The degree of effort often depends entirely on a child's age or an officer’s discretion. As a result, kids the same age can disappear under similar circumstances and receive vastly different responses.

Previous USA TODAY stories on missing kids detailed how effective Amber Alerts are in finding missing kids and why a lack of diversity in DNA databases hinders investigations into missing Black children.

⚕️ Where did COVID come from?: The COVID-19 pandemic "most likely" started after a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News. Wray's admission marked the second government agency to publicly back the lab leak theory: A week earlier, the Department of Energy backed the assessment but labeled it "low confidence." 

The Department of Energy's investigation was carried out by the "Z Division," a team of scientists originally established by the department to determine the significance of Soviet nuclear weapons tests. USA TODAY's Michael Collins and Josh Meyer explain how the team's mission changed dramatically after 9/11 to include biological weapons and ultimately the origins of COVID-19.

🌊 Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Done: The Splash Mountain ride closed at Disney World in January and is expected to close later this year at Disneyland. Some fans have had a tough time letting go – even going so far as "trying to sell the water. But others are more than ready for its retheming as Tiana's Bayou Adventure, noting the old ride's roots come from the problematic 1946 film "Song of the South."

There are more great reads below.👇 Thanks for reading! We'll see you next week.