Amazon’s third annual Prime Day started off with more of a crash than a bang.

Many customers who logged on at 3 p.m. Monday hoping to find deals instead encountered an error message. The problem occurred on and off for the first two hours of the 36-hour sale.

In a statement on Twitter, Amazon said, “Some customers are having difficulty shopping, and we’re working to resolve this issue quickly. Many are shopping successfully – in the first hour of Prime Day in the U.S., customers have ordered more items compared to the first hour last year. There are hundreds of thousands of deals to come and more than 34 hours to shop Prime Day.”

Amazon said it has more than 100 million Prime members. Subscribers pay either $119 a year or $12.99 a month for the membership, which includes free two-day shipping, unlimited video streaming and exclusive savings at Whole Foods.

And on Prime Day, members get access to specials deals across the site.

Consumer electronics reviewer Lon Seidman says Amazon’s own products will be front and center. But shoppers who are willing to invest a little time can find some hidden gems.

He compares it to digging through a bargain bin at a brick-and-mortar retailer.

“There are a lot of deals, but not all of them are all that attractive, number one, or all that interesting from the standpoint of the products being offered,” he said.

Seidman said some the best savings can be found on items that are only available for a limited time.

“So you have to jump in frequently and look and see what’s on sale right now,” he said.

“Many times, it’s almost like winning a contest for the right to buy that item at the lower price.”

Seidman suggested shopping around, especially on big ticket items like TVs. Many other retailers are also offering deals to compete with Prime Day, without the membership requirement.

Data from Adobe showed that large retailers saw a 35 percent increase in sales during last year’s Prime Day.

As for whether Prime is worth the membership fee, Seidman said that depends on your shopping habits. If you are a frequent shopper, the money you save on shipping will add up.

Although the Prime Day savings are only available to members, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. Just remember to cancel it before the trial period ends, so you do not get billed.

Seidman said Amazon’s cancellation process is one of the easiest he’s seen.

Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Joe Kennedy are pushing a bill that would end the use of so-called “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses in federal court, NBC News reported.  

The legislation, titled Gay and Trans Panic Defense Prohibition Act of 2018, states that those defenses “seek to partially or completely excuse crimes such as murder and assault on the grounds that the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim is provocation enough for the violent reaction of the defendant.”

The rare defense tactic has already been banned in California and Illinois but is still theoretically usable in federal court. Markey and Kennedy, two Democrats from Massachusetts, aim to change that with the legislation.

“Gay and trans panic legal defenses reflect an irrational fear and bigotry toward the LGBTQ community and corrode the legitimacy of federal prosecutions,” Markey said in a statement. “These defenses must be prohibited to ensure that all Americans are treated with dignity and humanity in our justice system.”

Investigators in Texas are searching for a man described as a possible serial killer, NBC News reported. 

Jose Gilberto Rodriguez, 46, is wanted in connection with three killings over three days in Harris County and Houston beginning Friday, authorities said. He was also described as a "person of strong interest" in two other crimes: a July 9 home invasion committed by an armed suspect and the shooting of a bus driver on Monday morning. 

"This individual is to be considered armed and dangerous," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference Monday. "The sooner we can get him into custody the sooner we can breathe a little easier."

Acevedo also said Gilberto Rodriguez had been on parole for unspecified crimes when he cut his ankle monitor a few days ago. He added that it wasn’t clear if the slayings were the work of a serial killer.

Interstate 84 in Waterbury has reopened after a disabled tractor-trailer in a construction zone closed the westbound side of the highway on Tuesday.

All lanes of the westbound side of the highway were closed between exits 20 and 18 around 4:40 a.m., according to the Department of Transportation.

The entire highway reopened a few hours later.

Two women are in the hospital with serious injuries after a crash in Wolcott late Monday night.

Police said a Jeep was heading north on Todd Road when it collided with a tree near 405 Todd Road around 11 p.m.

Two women and three children under the age of 8 were in the car at the time of the accident, according to police. Officers believe the women are in their 20s.

When first responders arrived, the two women were unconscious and they were not wearing seatbelts, officers said. They were both sent to the hospital to be treated for serious injuries.

The children in the car were not in booster seats and had minor to no injuries, police said.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

A man was arrested after using a fire escape to break into multiple apartments in downtown Boston, police said.

Twenty-year-old Kevin Dean of Bolton, Connecticut, has been charged with breaking and entering in the nighttime, malicious destruction of property and disturbing the peace in connection withe allegations.

According to Boston police, officers responded to a radio call for a person climbing on a fire escape in the area of 25 Fleet St. at 3:05 a.m. Sunday morning.

While on their way to the location, officers were informed that multiple calls were coming into 911 about a person smashing an apartment window while on a fire escape near 25 Fleet St.

When officers arrived on scene, they were informed by a victim that a suspect had kicked through their apartment window, police said.

When officers entered the victim's apartment, they did not see the suspect, but they heard the sound of glass breaking and made their way out to the alley behind the building adjacent to Moon Street.

According to police, as officers made their way down the alley, they saw glass falling from a fifth-floor apartment.

Officers then climbed the fire escape to the apartment and found the suspect, identified as Dean, asleep in a bed. They announced their presence and woke Dean, police said.

Dean allegedly told officers that he lived in the apartment, but he could not provide proof of residence.

The officers couldn't find mail with the Dean's name on it, and when they asked if he was staying there with a friend, the he allegedly refused to answer.

Dean will be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court. It was not clear if he has an attorney.

A Brooklyn couple experienced firsthand one of New York City’s most disgusting urban legends: a rat came wiggling its way out of their plumbing.

Bari Finkel said a rat crawled out of the sink drain in their Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone Friday night.

“It looked like a zombie coming out of the grave,” she recalled.

Finkel said it was actually her boyfriend who discovered something amiss with the sink -- which had no stopper because of a slow drain -- while using the restroom.

When he looked over at let out a yelp, Finkel went over to the bathroom thinking that he had somehow hurt himself. She said she let out her own horrified scream when she saw the critter for herself.

“I looked over and saw this small creature just emerging from the drain,” she said.

She added, “It was just so insane I couldn’t not laugh.”

Finkel said she went back to the living room to keep her dogs out of the bathroom while her boyfriend tried to handle the situation with a grocery bag. But she said she went back into the bathroom to document what had happened.

“After a couple minutes, (the rat) was making sounds and was clearly also freaked out,” she said. “I said ‘we should probably take a couple of pictures, because this is insane.’”

She said that when she lifted the bag to get pictures, the rat escaped the only way it could: it climbed back down the drain.

“I’m glad we didn’t have to figure out what to do with it, but I did not love the idea of it being in the pipes,” she said.

Finkel said she’d never seen rodents in her apartment building before, and even members of her block association had never heard of anything like that happening.

She told her landlord, whose only response was, “that’s a first.”

They were a little wary of using the bathroom for a few hours after the critter’s visit, Finkel said, but they don’t have any plans to change their routine -- other than replacing their sink stopper.

People were baking bread thousands of years before they developed agriculture — proven by the charred, 14,500-year-old remains of a flatbread found in a stone fireplace in northeastern Jordan, Reuters reported.

It shows that hunter-gatherers were making bread far earlier than previously known, according to the findings published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It is possible that bread may have provided an incentive for people to take up plant cultivation and farming, if it became a desirable or much-sought-after food," said University of Copenhagen researcher Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, the lead author of the research.

The researchers tried recreating the bread they found at the Black Desert archaeological site but Arranz-Otaegui said it is "quite gritty and salty."

A South Florida mother says her 15-year-old daughter died after mistaking a Chips Ahoy cookie with peanut butter for a regular cookie and now her mother is calling for the company to make distinguishable packaging for foods with allergens.

Alexi Ryann Stafford, of Weston, made the fatal mistake when she was at a friend's house and reached into an open package of chewy Reese's Chips Ahoy cookies, thinking it was safe for her to eat because of the familiar red packaging. The top flap was peeled back, hiding the Reese's label on the package. 

"She started feeling tingling in her mouth and came straight home," her mother, Kelli Travers-Stafford, wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. 

Travers-Stafford said they administered two EpiPens while waiting for paramedics to arrive. Stafford quickly went into anaphylactic shock, stopped breathing and went unconscious. 

She died on June 25, within one and a half hours of eating that one cookie.

Her mother, shocked and angry, took to Facebook to warn other parents and demand that companies.

"As a mother who diligently taught her the ropes of what was okay to ingest and what was not, I feel lost and angry because she knew her limits and was aware of familiar packaging, she knew what 'safe' was," Travers-Stafford wrote.

She continued: "A small added indication on the pulled back flap on a familiar red package wasn't enough to call out to her that there was 'peanut product' in the cookies before it was too late."

Chips Ahoy has different color packaging to indicate regular, chewy and chunky. Kelli posted on the social media site side-by-side photos of the regular chewy Chips Ahoy package and the chewy Reese's Chips Ahoy package. Both variations have very similar red packaging. She also posted photos of the almost-identical brown packaging of the regular and peanut butter variations of Chips Ahoy's soft chunky cookies.

The post has garnered over 40,000 likes and 67,000 shares as of Monday night, with many on social media calling for the company to change its packaging so consumers can distinguish the cookies with allergens from the ones without.

"We take allergens very seriously," Chips Ahoy wrote in response to users' demands. "Chewy Chips Ahoy! made w/ Reese's Peanut Butter Cups packaging clearly shows that it contains peanuts through words and visuals. Package color indicates Chewy, Chunky, or Original. Consumers should always read the label for allergy information."

NBC 6 reached out to the Stafford family for comment, but they have requested privacy at this time.

Dr. Adriana Bonansea-Frances, who specializes in allergies and immunology, told NBC 6 it's important for people with allergies to be overly careful.

"If you are in a different house, you have to be more careful and always ask and always look at the labels," she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, peanuts are most common food children in the U.S. are allergic to. While most allergic reactions are not life-threatening, a more severe reaction known as anaphylaxis, where blood pressure drops and airways narrow, making it difficult to breathe, can be deadly, the agency said. Anaphylaxis requires an injection of epinephrine, also known as EpiPens, and the CDC urges people with known allergens to carry the medicine with them at all times. 

NBC 6 received the following statement from Chips Ahoy's parent company, Mondelez:

We were very saddened to hear about this situation, which we first became aware of from social media posts last Friday.

We take allergies very seriously and all of our products are clearly labeled on the information panel of the packaging for the major food allergens in the U.S. (milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans).

Across our Chips Ahoy! portfolio, packaging color is a cue for product texture (i.e., Chewy, Chunky, Original) and is not indicative of the presence of allergens. On packaging for Chips Ahoy! made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, branding and flavor are prominently depicted in both words and visuals on the front and side panels.

We always encourage consumers to read the packaging labeling when purchasing and consuming any of our products for information about product ingredients, including presence of allergens.

A dog attacked another dog in North Canaan last week, causing severe injuries, according to a New Canaan Police Facebook post, and police are asking anyone with information about the dog or the dog’s owners to come forward.

Police said a dog that was not on a leash attacked a dog that was on a leash behind South School, near Crystal Street, around 8:50 p.m. on July 11 and the two people who were with the dog that attacked left without exchanging information.

Anyone who recognizes the person or the dog in the photo that police shared on Facebook is asked to call animal control at New Canaan Animal Control at 203-594-3510.

A Silver Alert has been cancelled after an 84-year-old man who was missing from Torrington was found on Tuesday.

Police believed Lee Martin may have been heading to Brooklyn or Manhattan driving a black 2012 Hyundai Genesis with a Connecticut license plate of Y86NPG.

Officers did not say where Martin was found, but did say that he is safe.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has released a list of compensation for university executives and says UConn president Susan Herbst is the 21st best-paid public university president. 

The publication lists Herbst’s compensation for 2016-2017 at $823,907, which includes a base pay of $627,716.

James Ramsey, of the University of Louisville, is the top-paid public university official, with a compensation of nearly $4.3 million for 2016-2017. See the full list here.

A statement from UConn said $23,191of Herbst’s compensation is the share the state pays for Herbst’s insurance, so it is not paid in cash to her.

Of the 20 schools that have presidents with higher total compensation than Herbst, most have lower U.S. News & World Report rankings than UConn, the university said by email.

U.S. News & World Report lists UConn 56th among national universities, while the University of Louisville is ranked 165th.

The report ranks The University of Florida 42nd and Ohio State 54th. 

Penn State, the Texas university system and the University of North Carolina system are broken up among campuses in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. 

UConn said the university stands out among the others because of the multiple campuses, as well as other entities.

“Many of the schools with higher compensation packages also do not have the added complexities of operating a health center, multiple campuses, medical and dental schools, etc.,” a UConn official said.

UConn added that Herbst’s compensation does not “individually or adversely” affect the UConn budget and senior administrative salaries represent the smallest slice of UConn’s personnel budget at 2 percent.

IHOP is back to celebrating the food that made them famous.

In honor of their 60th anniversary, IHOP is offering pancakes for 60 cents!

Guests can get a short stack of pancakes for 60 cents on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The restaurant says the promotion is only available for customers who dine in. It cannot be combined with any other discount or coupon.

There is a limit of one offer per person.

A group of former wrestlers is suing Ohio State University in federal court, claiming its administrators knew about team doctor Richard Strauss sexually abusing athletes more than 20 years ago and did nothing to stop it, NBC News reported.

The class-action lawsuit alleges Strauss subjected male athletes in 14 sports to "excessive and medically unnecessary fondling, touching, and groping" during routine examinations. That claim echoes what several former wrestlers told NBC News in the past month, after Ohio State announced an investigation into the alleged misconduct of the late doctor.

Ohio State coaches and administrators were allegedly repeatedly informed of Strauss's sexual abuse, including in 1978 and in the mid-90s. Strauss was allegedly allowed to "quietly retire" in 1997 after a hearing on allegations against him.

Ohio State did not immediately respond to requests for comment and has not yet filed a formal response to the complaint.

Plainfield police have arrested a man who is accused of breaking into a Moosup home twice in January and stealing guns, jewelry and a safe.

Police said 30-year-old Kenneth Bingell, of North Grosvenordale, broke into a Moosup home on Jan. 17 with two other people and stole two firearms and jewelry.

Bingell and two other people then forced their way went into the same house again on Jan. 24 and stole a safe that held another firearm, jewelry and silver coins, according to police.

Bingell was arraigned on Tuesday and has been charged with three counts of theft of a firearm, burglary in the third degree, three counts of criminal possession of a pistol or revolver, larceny in the third degree and larceny in the fourth degree.

Detectives from the Plainfield Police Department work with Norwich Police Department detectives and recovered two firearms, police said.

Authorities said the case remains under investigation and more arrests are pending.

West Nile Virus has been detected in mosquitos in five Connecticut towns.

The state department of health issued a news release Tuesday saying that the State Mosquito Management Program is urging Connecticut residents to protect themselves from mosquito bites and mosquito-borne diseases in the wake of detecting West Nile Virus in Bridgeport, Easton, New Canaan, Stratford and Waterbury.

“The current indicators suggest a very active season for WNV. Mosquito populations are building and will continue to do so, especially with the persistence of hot-muggy weather,” Dr. Philip Armstrong, Medical Entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, said in a statement. “The surrounding states are also reporting early WNV activity."

A Stratford Public Health Alert says mosquitoes trapped on July 9 at Beacon Point tested positive for West Nile Virus. 

No human or horse cases have been reported with WNV-associated illnesses in Connecticut this season.

Since 2000, 134 human cases of WNV have been diagnosed in Connecticut residents including three fatalities.

To reduce the risk of being bitten by mosquitoes residents should minimize time spent outdoors between dusk and dawn when mosquitoes are most active; be sure door and window screens are tight fitting and in good repair; and wear shoes, socks, long pants and a long-sleeved shirt when outdoors for long periods, or when mosquitoes are most active.

Clothing should be light colored and made of tightly woven materials that keep mosquitoes away from the skin, according to the state department of health.

It also advises using mosquito netting when sleeping outdoors or in an unscreened structure and to protect small babies when outdoors and to consider the use of mosquito repellent when it is necessary to be outdoors.

For information on West Nile virus and how to prevent mosquito bites, visit the Connecticut Mosquito Management Program Web site at www.ct.gov/mosquito.

As the 12 members of the youth soccer team rescued from a cave in northern Thailand recover in the hospital, filmmakers struck by their story are already lining up to make a movie about the group's 18-day ordeal and the mission to save them.

If they want the movie to be a blockbuster, they'll need to get at least one of the people involved to sign away their life rights, experts say. The process can take weeks or months, but it's critical for filmmakers to gain insight and wide-ranging creative control.

Two entertainment attorneys who work on life rights explained that, when they're signed away, they give filmmakers exclusive rights to a person's story and the ability to use their image in promotional materials. The subject of the film gets paid, sometimes a lot of money, but they aren't able to sue if they don't like the way they're portrayed. That was an issue in the dramatization of another major rescue: the Chilean miners trapped by a cave-in.

"You're giving up your right of publicity," said Domenic Romano, a New York-based entertainment attorney. "You're giving up your privacy right, and you're also basically giving up your right to sue for being misrepresented or defamed in some way."

Still, in exchange for life rights, subjects can receive millions of dollars, depending on demand and competition, Romano said. Signing the contract also brings an understanding that the subject will consult with producers, give access to photos and other related documents and participate in an interview.

The contract usually gives producers a "wide magnitude of creative interpretation," Romano added.

Movie producers can still make a movie about the Thai cave rescue based on media reports and descriptions without any of the subjects' rights, since those reports are in the public realm. But without life rights, they can't use anyone in promotional materials or get access to photos or background information, the attorneys said.

It's not hard to see why filmmakers would scramble to make a movie about the Thai Cave resuce.

The story riveted the world once the boys were found alive after more than a week stuck in the flooded cave in Chiang Rai. It took a massive, international effort to free them through the long, narrow passage, with one diver losing his life in the effort. And divers involved have said that the operation was far riskier than they let on at the time.

"I don't care who directs it, stars in it, scores it, produces it, or key grips it... I'm 100% buying tickets to the Thai soccer team stuck in a cave movie," the country band Brothers Osborne tweeted as the boys were being freed.

One of the filmmakers who is vying to bring the events to the big screen is Michael Scott, co-founder of Pure Flix Entertainment. The "God's Not Dead" producer told NBC he has started speaking to the rescue divers for his prospective movie and will talk to some of the students "at an appropriate time."

Scott said that the acquisition of the boys' or coach's life rights will depend on whether they want their stories to be told and want their experiences to be made into a movie. Scott told The Associated Press that he and producer Adam Smith are talking with the participants about their life rights.

"Step Up 2" director Jon Chu is also planning a film, according to Variety.

When negotiating life rights, contracts with subjects are negotiated early in the process, the attorneys said, so that companies can use them as a fundraising tool — with exclusive access to a person's story, a producer may be able to get more funding to have it made. But if filmmakers are unable to raise enough money to make the film, the subject who signed the contract may be able to pursue a deal with another filmmaker.

Los Angeles-based entertainment attorney Lisa Callif said negotiations "drag on" because of monetary demands and subjects' desire to have more control over the way they're being portrayed. 

The soccer players are between 11 and 16 years old, so their parents would be the ones who sign a movie contract, Callif said. She added it's unlikely a single filmmaker acquires the life rights of all 12 soccer players and the coach.

The process of acquiring life rights "takes longer than people want it to take and it costs more than people want to pay," Callif said. "You're talking to somebody about making a picture about their life. It doesn't get more personal than that."

A filmmaker only needs to acquire one person's life rights in order to tell the story of the coach and whole team. The story would be told based on that person's first-hand accounts, and the selected person would be the only one allowed to appear in promos. 

The Thai team's ordeal has been compared to the group of 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for two months in 2010 when their mine caved in, an incident that was dramatized in the 2015 film, "The 33."

After signing life rights contracts, some of the miners believed they were scammed out by attorneys, according to The Guardian. The debate centered on royalties, who held the long-term rights to the miners' diary and other information about the first few weeks the miners were trapped.

The legal skirmishing went on for months, but ultimately didn't delay filming, The Guardian reported.

Though Scott's film doesn't yet have a budget, production can take between 18 and 24 months, he told NBC last week. He and Smith have just started the process of looking for a screenwriter.

Scott lives in Thailand for a few months each year and said his wife was friends with the Thai Navy SEAL who was killed in the rescue.

"If the 12 kids and the coach come out [from watching the film] and feel satisfied, that would make Michael and I quite content," Smith said. "Various countries around the world contributed. That makes it such a global story."

A spokeswoman for Chu said he isn't doing interviews about his own plans for a film about the rescue.

A Manchester town employee was struck by a vehicle Tuesday and knocked to the ground. 

Police said the town employee was outside his vehicle, marking the road on Maple Street when he was hit in the head and knocked to the ground.

The man who was hit was transported to St. Francis Hospital. His injuries are not life-threatening, according to police. 

Police are investigating the crash. Anyone with information is asked to call 860-533-8651.