Payless ShoeSource has released a new list of stores that could close pending the results of ongoing bankruptcy negotiations, and six of them are in Connecticut.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced it would close nearly 400 underperforming stores back in April. Five of those stores were in Connecticut.

On May 24, the company released a list of additional stores that would be closing, as well as a list of stores are at risk for closing depending on how negotiations go. Six of the stores under negotiation are located in Connecticut: 

• 194 Buckland Hills Drive, Manchester
• 35 Talcottville Road, Vernon/Rockville
• 38 Kane St., West Hartford
• 495 Union St., Waterbury
• 950 Wolcott St., Waterbury
• 220 Route 12 Unit 4, Groton

The company said that while it released the list, it remains hopeful that negotiations will allow them to keep the locations open.

To view the whole list of stores up for negotiation, click here. 

To view the list of stores confirmed to be closing, click here for April's list and here for May's list.

Aetna has been a mainstay in Hartford for over 160 years. But rumors are swirling that the company may be looking to get out of Connecticut.

Aetna has not commented on the rumors, but multiple sources have told NBC Connecticut that the company is looking into moving their headquarters.

The latest report is coming from blogger Kevin Rennie, a former legislator turned columnist for the Hartford Courant. Rennie said the company is considering moving its headquarters to Manhattan. 

And just last week, a columnist for the Boston Globe wrote an open letter to Aetna executives talking about why Boston is the best place for the company’s headquarters.

Aetna employs more than 6,000 people in Connecticut.

Some legislators are speaking out about the rumors, expressing hope that the reports are unfounded, especially considering how General Electric left Fairfield for Boston just last year.

An armed man was arrested inside the Trump International Hotel early Wednesday after D.C. police and the Secret Service received a tip that he potentially posed a threat. 

Bryan Moles, 43, of Edinboro, Pennsylvania, was arrested after police found he had an assault rifle, a handgun and 90 rounds of ammunition at the hotel in Northwest D.C. 

"The officers and our federal partners, and in particular the tipster coming forward, averted a potential disaster in our nation's capital," said D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham.

Moles was charged with carrying a pistol without a license and possession of unregistered ammunition inside the hotel shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday, police said. Newsham said police did not have information to charge Moles with having made threats. 

D.C. Police and the U.S. Secret Service acted on a tip that Moles had made threatening remarks. It's not immediately clear toward whom any threats were directed or what were Moles intentions.

According to a charging document, police learned Moles was traveling to Washington, D.C. with the weapons and ammunition. 

D.C. police and the U.S. Secret Service "almost simultaneously" received information about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday from Pennsylvania State Police that a man was traveling to D.C., possibly to Trump International Hotel, armed with weapons, Newsham said at a news conference Wednesday morning. 

Pennsylvania police received the information via a tip and shared it quickly, Newsham said.

D.C. police and the Secret Service responded and contacted hotel security, who found the suspect's vehicle in the parking garage. Police found one of the guns in plain view inside the suspect's car; the other was found in the glove compartment. 

Moles had checked himself in to the hotel about 1 a.m., Newsham said. Authorities found Moles inside the hotel and arrested him.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called the incident "disturbing" but said it was resolved "quickly and peacefully."

It wasn't immediately clear if Moles had an attorney.

"Today's incident is an important reminder that when you see something, it is important to say something to an official," Bowser said.

A NASA spacecraft will aim straight for the sun next year.

The space agency announced the red-hot mission Wednesday during a ceremony honoring astrophysicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. The mission, originally called Solar Probe Plus, was renamed after Parker during the event — the first time a spacecraft has been named after a living scientist. 

"I’m greatly honored to be named after such an important mission," Parker said as he was presented with a model of the mission's spacecraft.

Parker’s discovery of the "solar wind," the corona’s supersonic expansion into interplanetary space, in 1957 "reshaped how scientists think of space and set this entire endeavor in motion," said Eric Isaacs, executive vice president for research, innovation and national laboratories at the University of Chicago. Parker also theorized that the sun's corona was several hundred times hotter than the surface of the sun itself.

And though observational advances accompanied by advances in modeling have helped scientists evolve theories to explain this unconventional phenomenon, NASA says it's time to "touch the sun" and solve "many of the largest mysteries about our star."

"Parker Solar Probe is going to answer questions about solar physics that we’ve puzzled over for more than six decades,” said Parker Solar Probe Project Scientist Nicola Fox, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Scheduled to launch in summer 2018, the Parker Probe Plus will fly within 4 million miles of the sun's surface — right into the solar atmosphere. It will be subjected to brutal heat and radiation like no other man-made structure before.

"It’s very exciting that we’ll finally get a look. One would like to have some more detailed measurements of what’s going on in the solar wind. I’m sure that there will be some surprises. There always are," Parker said.

NASA hopes data collected during the mission will improve forecasting of weather events in space that impact life on Earth, the lives of astronauts in space and satellites, the agency said.

"One recent study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that without advance warning a huge solar event could cause two trillion dollars in damage in the U.S. alone, and the eastern seaboard of the U.S. could be without power for a year," NASA said.

A motorcyclist was seriously injured while trying to avoid a deer that ran in his path in East Haddam on Tuesday night.

Police said 52-year-old Michael Sullivan, of Montville, was on Route 149, near Route 151, around 6:47 p.m. when a large deer crossed his path. Sullivan tried to avoid the deer and he and his passenger were thrown from the Harley Davidson bike, according to state police.

Sullivan was taken to Hartford Hospital to be treated for serious injuries. The passenger, a 52-year-old Salem woman, sustained minor injuries and was taken to Hartford Hospital as well.

Police are asking witnesses to call 860-465-5400, extension 4052.

Central Connecticut State University is now an age-friendly university. 

CCSU administrators said Connecticut is home to the seventh oldest population in the nation and this will be the first university in the state to become an age-friendly university. 

"Often when people think of older adults there's a lot of doom and gloom but that's not the case," Carrie Andreoletti, associate professor of psychological science, said. 

School officials said the age-friendly university qualifications originated at Ireland's Dublin City University and principles including adults in campus activities, including adults in research programs and promoting intergenerational learning set a university apart. 

"It helps break down those stereotypes that older adults have about younger adults and younger adults have about older adults," Andreoletti said. 

CCSU is also offering a gerontology certificate, which Andreoletti said is “designed to meet the growing demand for professionals who understand the opportunities, concerns, and needs associated with aging.”

Administrators said the new certificate program will be available in the fall. 

Dozens of residents banded together Tuesday to try to stop federal immigration agents from arresting an undocumented man accused of burglary, according to reports. 

The neighbors gathered on 112th Street in Richmond Hill, trying to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting 35-year-old Hardat Sampat, a Guyanese national.

Sampat is accused of burglary and re-entering the U.S. illegally, according to the Daily News. He was on his way to Queens Criminal Court Tuesday morning for a scheduled appearance when ICE agents in unmarked cars boxed the vehicle he was in and took him into custody. 

His wife, who was in the driver's seat, refused to move the vehicle, blocking ICE agents from driving away. 

Within minutes, a number of people began gathering in protest of the arrest.

“My sister in law, my mother in law, say he’s innocent,” said one woman, who wasn’t identified. “He didn’t do anything. Why? Why is this? He had a court case today. Let him go. And let the judge make the decision.”

Police eventually convinced Sampat’s wife to move her car, and ICE agents took Sampat in for processing. 

A dog that was shot in Bridgeport early Monday morning has died.

Police officers responded to Federal Street in Bridgeport around 1 a.m. Monday after receiving reports of gunshots and found a male victim and Stogie. Both had been shot and two or three males apparently kidnapped the girlfriend of the man who was shot, according to police.

The woman was later found in Wallingford and police are investigating the shooting and kidnapping. 

Stogie had no connection to the man who was shot or the woman who was kidnapped, according to the dog's owner. 

She said the initial shooting happened down the street, then someone ran over to her driveway and shot Stogie.

The dog went through surgery but did not survive.

Facing a West Wing in near-constant crisis, and with little progress so far on most of his legislative priorities, President Donald Trump is actively seeking advice about a shakeup that could envelop his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, NBC News reported.

Multiple sources close to the administration told NBC News the president has been sounding off about staff changes, although no final decisions have been made. Another administration source flatly denies Priebus is at risk.

But people close to Trump point to two names that have emerged in the conversations: David Urban, who oversaw the Pennsylvania operation for the Trump campaign, and Gary Cohn, the president's top economic adviser and former Goldman Sachs executive.

A crash caused issues on Route 9 in Berlin this morning.

A monster frog making the rounds on social media may not be as gross as it seems.

Photos posted on the South Texas Hunting Association's Facebook show Markcuz Rangel holding what's claimed to be a frog weighing 13 pounds.

The post read, "Wanted to share a monster bull frog we got yesterday afternoon at one of our fishing ponds in South Texas ranch located in Batesville tx 13lb monster frog!!!"

"Everybody from Time Magazine in New York to stations in San Francisco have been jumping (pun intended) on this big frog story," Steve Lightfoot, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman, told NBC DFW.

Lightfoot said the frog pictured is indeed a big bullfrog, though bullfrogs rarely exceed one pound in weight.

Instead, what we have here is an optical illusion. Think of images of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

"Since there is nothing to gain reference with, such as a hand around the frog, there's no way to say for certain how big it is," he said.

Lightfoot said the hunter is welcome to bring it in to be weighed or inspected by a Texas Parks biologist.

Milford police are trying to identify the driver of a pickup spotted doing donuts on Laurel Beach Association property that did thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.

The suspect’s vehicle is a silver two-door Nissan pickup. According to police, around 7 p.m. on May 21 the driver was doing donuts on beach association property on court street.

A resident on a bike tried to approach the driver to stop him, but told police that the driver came at him in the pickup, causing the resident to fall off his bike. The truck then rode over the bicycle.

Witnesses reported that the truck had a possible license plate of 907 or 908 with CV.

Police said the damage to the property is estimated to be thousands of dollars.

Anyone with information or who thinks they recognize the vehicle above is asked to contact Milford police by phone at 203-878-6551 or email Officer Emily Sopchak at esopchak@ci.milford.ct.us.

A postal worker is accused of stealing greeting cards that she suspected contained gift cards or cash while she worked at the post offices in Westbrook and Chester. 

Federal officials said a federal grand jury in New Haven returned an indictment charging Ana Guity, 30, of West Haven, with three counts of theft of mail matter by a U.S. postal employee.

Guity, who is accused of stealing the letters in late 2016 and early 2017 pleaded not guilty and was released on a $25,000 bond.

A New Haven firefighter has been arrested in West Haven and charged with weapons violations, as well as reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. 

Darnell Tucker, 34, of West Haven, was arrested Friday, according to the online court docket and the arrest sheet lists him as a firefighter with the New Haven Fire Department. 

Tucker was charged with illegal discharge of a firearm, illegal carry of a firearm while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, first-degree criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and first-degree reckless endangerment. 

Bond was set at $10,000 and he has been released.

A spokesperson for New Haven Mayor Toni Harp said Tucker has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation into the allegations. 

NBC Connecticut reached out to Tucker’s attorney, but the attorney was in court. 

The medical examiner has ruled the death of a 4-month old baby girl in Norwalk as a sudden unexpected infant death while sleeping prone in a pack ‘n play.

Police said they responded to the daycare at 9 Hunters Lane on the night of Wednesday, Oct. 5 because the little girl was not breathing.

CPR was initiated and the baby was then transported to Norwalk Hospital and later pronounced dead. The manner of death has not been determined.

Fired FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify in public next week after having been "cleared for takeoff," by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a source close to Comey tells NBC News.

The source, a former law enforcement official, declined to say whether Mueller had specifically authorized Comey to discuss his interactions with President Donald Trump, but said it was reasonable to expect that subject to come up.

People close to Comey have said he is eager to testify in public in the wake of his abrupt dismissal, which Comey allies believe was an attempt to thwart the FBI's investigation into Russian election meddling.

A congressional aide tells NBC News that the Senate intelligence committee has long expected that Comey would testify sometime next week and anticipated that he would speak to Mueller in advance to clear what he can and cannot discuss so as not to impede the federal investigation.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday referred all questions about the Russia probe to the president's "outside counsel."

It’s the start of the summer season for amusement parks and that means a new ride to conquer at Six Flags New England.

The seats aren’t on a track. Instead, they’re hanging off the side. They turn over, end over end, from the first drop until you’re back at the starting gate.

The Joker is the newest roller coaster providing thrills at Six Flags New England.

“May is my favorite time of year because that’s when most of the parks open, especially here in New England,” Mike Thompson, of Augusta, Maine, said. “Whenever Six Flags opens a new ride you’ve got to be one of the first to ride it.”

Thompson is part of the American Coaster Enthusiasts, or ACE. They were welcomed to ride the Joker first, before it opened to the public Wednesday afternoon. Members of this group have each ridden hundreds of roller coasters and they said this ride is no joke.

“I just love the complete unknown because it flips at different intervals and it just constantly keeps you just like the Joker, you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Chuck Wagor, of Cairo, New York, said.

“This ride is especially unique because it’s got the height, it’s got the speed, you spin, it spins you in just about every way possible,” Collin Smith, of North Haven, said.

The Joker marks the 13th roller coaster at the park. Thirteen might be unlucky to some, but the park president said the Joker’s timing couldn’t be better.

“The Joker’s always up to some tricks but, hey 13 leads to bigger numbers 14, and 15,” John Winkler, president of Six Flags New England, said.

“There’s drops, there’s hills, there’s air time, there’s flips. It’s totally unpredictable,” Thompson said.

The ride boasts two beyond-vertical drops and it moves at 40 miles per hour. As you glide off the side of the track in a total free fall, the seats rock and flip, two to eight times depending on the weight of you and the person seated beside you.

The park’s spokesperson said it took a feat of engineering to design this coaster.

“If you actually look at the ride throughout, there is magnetic targets that will actually assist the chair you’re in to flip upside down. It’s unpredictable,” Jennifer McGrath, communications manager for Six Flags New England, said.

Reports of an argument between someone with a gun and another with a knife prompted a large police presence on Saw Mill Road near the West Haven train station Wednesday and two people have been detained.

Police said they received a phone call around noon, evacuated a building and called in the SWAT team. The mayor said people in the area were also asked to shelter-in-place.

Saw Mill Road was closed from Railroad Avenue to Elm Street and police urged people to avoid the area, but the road has reopened.

No one was hurt and two people have been detained.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Noah Webster eliminated many inconsistencies in English spellings in his first dictionary and in blue-backed spelling books published for American classrooms. Fortunately for the survival of spelling bees, his reforms went only so far.

Otherwise English might have been scrubbed of the quirky letter combinations that have bedeviled generations of school children but that also gave rise to this quintessentially American pastime. Spelling bees depend on English's often devilishly different spelling for their appeal.

Webster bestowed his new rules in “A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language,” first published in 1806, and the “The American Speller,” the blue-backed spelling books written for American classrooms.

He dropped the “u” in color and and honor and left off the final “k” in words such as public and music. He substituted the British “c” with an “s” in such words as defense, among other reforms.

“He was the last person who had that kind of authority, who could say, 'okay, ‘We’re going to change the spelling of these words,’” said Ben Zimmer, a language columnist for The Wall Street Journal. “That was the last time that was really possible to do.”

The United States has a long tradition of spelling bees dating to the 19th century, when both children and adults competed. They were in vogue in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century but for the most part, are a particularly American phenomenon, said Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley.

“You have to have a goofy spelling system,” he said. “Most languages spell more or less as they pronounce the words.”

But English’s Anglo-Saxon roots, the influence of Greek, Latin, French and other languages have all contributed to a mishmash of spelling rules and a mismatch between spelling and pronunciation.

“We take a truculent pride in the difficulty of our spelling system,” Nunberg said. “That’s why we don’t reform our spelling for one thing.”

Another reason for the popularity of American spelling bees: the importance of primary education and literacy in the United States in the 19th century, he said.

Merriam-Webster, which has been involved with the bee since 1957, notes that even at the turn of the 20th century spelling bees were considered old-fashioned. The modern-day competition began in 1925, when nine newspapers collaborated to start a national spelling bee that was taken over by Scripps in 1941. It was canceled during World War II from 1943 until 1945, then broadcast live on NBC in 1946, and since 2011, has been seen on ESPN.

The championship round of the 90th Scripps National Spelling Bee begins at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Here are some spelling conventions that might trip up even the best of contestants, Zimmer said.

• Words from foreign languages that follow non-English spelling rules, such as the German pickelhaube or a spiked helmet worn by German soldiers.
• A foreign word whose pronunciation has been Anglicized. The competition’s pronouncer must follow the pronunciation given by The Merriam Webster Unabridged Dictionary.
• The “schwa” sound, the unstressed vowel sound that can be spelled with an a, e, i, o or u.

“You see very often even the top spellers going out on words simply because they’re taking a guess, 'Is that an i, is it an o?" Zimmer said. "Something you can’t necessarily know unless you’ve seen the word.” 

While America’s passion for spelling bees is probably unrivaled, other countries have developed their own competitions. China, inspired by the Scripps National Spelling Bee and worried about the population’s embrace of Latin characters, introduced a television program called the “Chinese Characters Dictation Competition,” USA Today reported in 2013. Contestants write the characters after hearing a word. Two French championships, the Discos d’or in France and the Dictee des Amériques in Quebec, have been discontinued.

Even the American spelling bee has changed form over the decades and today has little to do with literacy and much to do with obscure words such as “cymotrichous” an adjective meaning having wavy hair.

“It’s an extreme sport,” Nunberg said. “You get these kids who have to spend thousands of hours memorizing word lists.”

As far as the origin of that word bee, it is a bit of a language puzzle, according to the Scripps National Spelling Bee website. It first appeared in print in 1875, though was probably used in speech before that, and refers to a gathering in which friends and neighbors join together in an activity. It might seem to have been inspired by the industrious insect, but scholars suggest a different derivation, according to the website. The word bene, in English sometimes rendered as been or bean, referred to help from neighbors to accomplish a task. Bee could be a shortened form of been.

Zimmer and Nunberg both expect the spelling bee’s popularity to continue, spell check and auto correct aside, in part because of the inconsistencies that make English so difficult. Not that people don’t keep trying to reform the language. The English Spelling Society was founded in 1908 to promote literacy and possibly to reform spelling. Its members have even demonstrated outside the spelling bee in past years but with little success.

“It’s possible that people are paying less attention to making sure a word is properly spelled if they know that their device will take care of that for them," Zimmer said. "But at the same time we still have this language with crazy spelling that poses so many challenges.” 

The biggest fans study the competitors' records for hours, analyzing their statistics and looking for some indication of who has what it takes to be the big winner. 

The winner, that is, of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. 

One group of die-hard fans of the spelling bee has created a fantasy sports-style draft to track the young spellers, following the event with the same fervor as sports fans watch their teams.

Another group will watch the competition Wednesday and Thursday using an elaborate point system that recognizes if the winning speller has glasses, braces or a faint mustache.

"It gets you hooked in the same way a really good movie or a big sporting event would," said Katie Twyman. "It's this combination of charming and sweet and surprisingly intense."

She and a group of 12 internet friends who live across the country are keeping a close eye on a shared spreadsheet as they watch the four rounds of the bee, which started in National Harbor, Maryland, Wednesday morning and will conclude live on ESPN in prime time Thursday. 

Last week, Twyman's group used a random list generator to determine the draft order in which they could pick the spellers on their teams. Each person has a team of seven.

The trash-talking can get heated.

"We get really competitive about it," Twyman said from her home in Minneapolis.

To pick her dream team of spellers, Twyman, a 25-year-old college student, studied how the children performed in previous bees and if they have siblings who competed. If a sibling did well, the speller's family may have a good studying method in place, she said.

Then, the scoring awards points for each round a speller passes, and for the number of points each speller earns.

The group has used variations of their draft system for the past five years after they met in a Harry Potter YouTube community in 2009.

As Twyman and friends watch the finals "together" Thursday night via video call, they'll play a drinking game that celebrates spelling bee tropes.

If a speller ignores a joke by official spelling bee pronouncer Dr. Jacques Bailly, drink.

If a speller walks off before hearing the correct spelling of a word, drink.

If a speller dabs, drink.

Bee officials introduced an app called Buzzworthy two years ago to let fans compete with friends. The competition was fierce.

But the app is not available this year. A bee spokeswoman said officials are looking at technology for "competition viewing" next year.

A family outside Washington, D.C. also created a point system for watching the bee. Six members of the Shelton family have guesses in for who will win the bee, plus the length of the winning word, the origin of the winning word, whether the winner will have a "prepubescent moustache" and more.

"It's a really sweet thing to get into," Lindsay Shelton-Gross said. "I love that I'm supporting something that's intellectually based, and the kids are great."

The Shelton family's system awards 25 points for guessing the winner flat out, 10 points for guessing his or her gender and 5 points for guessing whether he or she has braces. 

Shelton-Gross, an Arlington, Virginia resident who works in health care, said members of her family in Arlington; Loudoun County, Virginia and Chicago have tracked their picks for winner of the bee for the past 10 years.

"My brother and I have been obsessed," she said.

In both the Shelton family's game and the internet friends' game, the big prize is bragging rights.

Just like how watching a sport won't guarantee you'll be a better athlete, watching the spelling bee for all these years is not necessarily making these superfans world-class spellers.

"We can usually keep up until the semifinals, but then the words are way over our heads," Twyman said.