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BEIJING (AP) — Typhoon Doksuri made landfall in China after bringing deadly landslides to the Philippines.
The storm plowed into the eastern province of Fujian on Friday morning after bringing heavy rains and gale-force winds to parts of Taiwan, especially the Penghu island group, also known as the Pescadores.
In the Philippines, a week of stormy weather across the main island of Luzon caused 39 deaths, including 26 killed in the capsizing of a passenger ship. At least 13 people were reported killed earlier due to Doksuri’s onslaught, mostly due to landslides, flooding and toppled trees, and thousands were displaced, disaster response officials said. More than 20 others remained missing, including four coast guard personnel whose boat overturned while on a rescue mission in hard-hit Cagayan province, disaster response officials said Friday.
The storm caused widespread power outages and agricultural damage in the archipelagic country and prompted the suspension of work, classes and sea travel at the height of the onslaught, officials said, adding they were monitoring another approaching storm.
China has upped its typhoon preparedness through text messaging and notices on social media. In Fujian, more than 400,000 people had been moved to safety, hundreds of ships returned to ports and transportation suspended. Businesses and summer school classes were also ordered suspended and the public was urged to stay indoors. In the city of Quanzhou, the roof of a sports stadium was partially torn off, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
After hitting the coast, most typhoons tend to lose strength while moving into the mountainous interior of southeastern China, although they sometimes linger over areas, dropping heavy rain.
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AP reporter Jim Gomez contributed from Manila, Philippines. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-typhoon-doksuri-makes-landfall-in-china-after-bringing-deadly-landslides-to-philippines/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:28 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-typhoon-doksuri-makes-landfall-in-china-after-bringing-deadly-landslides-to-philippines/ |
A University of Notre Dame professor has filed a defamation lawsuit against a student-run publication over news coverage of her abortion-rights work. The case is raising questions about press freedom and academic freedom at one of the nation’s preeminent Catholic universities.
Tamara Kay’s suit, filed in May, alleges falsehoods in two articles published by The Irish Rover in the past academic year. The Rover defended its reporting as true in a motion filed earlier this month to dismiss the case, under a law meant to protect people from frivolous lawsuits over matters of public concern.
Kay, a professor of global affairs and sociology, asks for unspecified punitive damages after she “has been harassed, threatened, and experienced damage to her residential property” and “continues to experience mental anguish” because of the two articles.
Published in October and March after public events in which Kay participated, the articles cover her remarks about her support for abortion rights. The lawsuit alleges that the articles contained “false and defamatory” information, arguing that they misinterpreted a sign on her door about helping students access healthcare and denying two quotes about academic freedom and her work at a Catholic institution.
“The note on my door referenced sexual assault, and the inadequate resources and support for student survivors at Notre Dame,” Kay told The Associated Press via email.
She added that she had asked the Rover’s faculty advisors to retract or correct the story, and that Notre Dame officials refused to intervene on her behalf.
“All of this is utterly devastating,” Kay said. She said her public writing and public speech “are all fair game for reporting and critique, as long as that reporting is accurate. It has not been.”
Notre Dame’s Office of Media Relations didn’t answer repeated requests for comment from the AP. Neither did Kay’s attorney in the lawsuit.
In the motion filed under Indiana’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) law, the Irish Rover argued that – as an “independent, non-profit, student publication ‘devoted to preserving the Catholic identity of Notre Dame’” – its coverage of a Notre Dame professor’s public statements and actions about abortion qualify under the law’s public interest and free speech criteria.
The motion added that the stories were “at least substantially true” and “did not contain defamatory imputation.” Exhibits include a transcript of the March event and since-deleted tweets by Kay last fall referring Notre Dame colleagues to websites with information on where to find abortion providers and how to procure abortion pills.
That “targeted advocacy” — just as Indiana’s abortion ban first went briefly into effect — motivated Notre Dame student W. Joseph DeReuil, 21, to seek comments from Kay and write a news story, he told the AP.
DeReuil, the Rover’s editor-in-chief during the last academic year, said he is a practicing Catholic and believes the Church’s teaching that life starts at conception and thus abortion is intentional killing.
“I do wish at times that, I guess, Notre Dame would take, as an institution, a stronger stance in favor of the Catholic position on some of these issues,” he said.
He added that he condemned harassment of abortion rights advocates and specifically the threats mentioned in the lawsuit by Kay.
DeReuil said he was confident his reporting was factually correct and hoped the suit would be dismissed, instead of consuming his senior year.
“You’ll face pushback, but you can still be a normal, cheerful, happy student,” he said. “It’s not going to affect you negatively in the long term if you’re standing up for what you believe is true.”
The Rover’s attorney, James Bopp, Jr., said lawsuits like this can create a chilling effect.
“If we fail, it will send the message that if you speak out about the abortion issue, then you risk punishment through the legal system, and particularly if you speak out on the pro-life side,” said Bopp, who has worked on major national cases on behalf of anti-abortion and free speech causes.
While the Church’s position on abortion is unwavering, not all Catholics agree with it. Some oppose it based on their sense of Catholic teachings about individual conscience or social justice, said professor Samira Mehta, an expert on gender and religion at the University of Colorado.
It’s rare to have faculty sue students for libel over an issue broaching “diametrically opposed worldviews,” said Jonathan Gaston-Falk, an attorney with the Student Press Law Center. The organization defends press freedom rights for high school and college journalists and their advisors; it is not involved in this litigation.
“Libel can be boiled down to a false statement of fact that harms somebody’s reputation” – and is published with knowledge of that falsity and malice if the person is a public figure, Gaston-Falk added.
According to Indiana law, courts have six months to rule on an anti-SLAPP motion.
Indiana was the first state to enact sweeping abortion restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-a-notre-dame-professor-sues-a-student-publication-over-its-coverage-of-her-abortion-rights-work/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:34 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-a-notre-dame-professor-sues-a-student-publication-over-its-coverage-of-her-abortion-rights-work/ |
Time flies when you're keeping up with Khloe Kardashian.
In fact, it's already been a year since the Kardashians star welcomed her son Tatum Thompson via surrogate with ex Tristan Thompson.
And to celebrate the momentous occasion, Khloe took to Instagram on her baby boy's first birthday and shared rare family photos as proof that he's maturing fast. One picture showed Khloe holding a newborn Tatum in her arms next to 5-year-old daughter True Thompson—who she also shares with Tristan—and nieces Penelope Disick, 11, and North West, 10. In another image, the infant looked noticeably more grown dressed in a tiger costume for Halloween.
Other pictures Khloe posted included one of Tatum in a firefighter's helmet at cousin Psalm West's fourth birthday party in May, as well as an adorable pic of him playing with his big sister True during bath time.
"Happy birthday, my sweet son!" Khloe wrote in the caption. "I am a firm believer in that God gives you what you need and I needed you. God knew my heart needed you. I needed your sweet and precious Smile. I needed your angelic spirit. I needed a love only you could give me. I needed my son."
The Good American co-founder went on to share how "proud" she is of Tatum's "beautiful, gentle, loving, infectious spirit.
"Tatum, You have changed mine and True's lives forever," she added. "We both needed you. I knew she would be a fantastic, loving older sister, but I don't think I ever could've imagined the love and bond you guys already have."
Tatum's aunt Kim Kardashian also couldn't help but to gush about the baby boy, noting that he can totally pass off as his uncle Rob Kardashian's "twin."
"OMGGGG you are such a smoosh, the happiest baby boy of all time," Kim wrote on Instagram July 28. "I can't even tell you how loved you are and how special you are!"
To keep up with Tatum, keep reading to see photos from his first year. | https://www.eonline.com/news/1381666/khloe-kardashian-proves-son-tatum-is-growing-up-fast-in-new-photos?cmpid=rss-syndicate-genericrss-us-top_stories | 2023-07-29T00:37:39 | 0 | https://www.eonline.com/news/1381666/khloe-kardashian-proves-son-tatum-is-growing-up-fast-in-new-photos?cmpid=rss-syndicate-genericrss-us-top_stories |
Authorities identify man killed in South Dakota worksite incident
WATERTOWN, S.D. (KVRR/KFGO) — Authorities identify a man killed in a worksite accident Tuesday morning just outside Watertown, South Dakota.
47-year-old Quinton Kramer was hit by a bucket of an excavator while working in a gravel pit.
Medical personnel tried life-saving measures on scene before Kramer was taken to Prairie Lakes Hospital where he died.
OSHA is investigating the circumstances that led to his death.
Funeral services for Kramer is next week in Watertown.
He will be buried in Dickey, North Dakota at a later date. | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/authorities-identify-man-killed-in-south-dakota-worksite-incident/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:40 | 1 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/authorities-identify-man-killed-in-south-dakota-worksite-incident/ |
HAVRE, Mont. (AP) — When Alicia Navarro disappeared in 2019 from her home in a Phoenix suburb days before her 15th birthday, she left a signed note for her family promising she would return.
“I will be back, I swear,” the note read. “I’m sorry.”
Believing she would keep her promise, Jessica Nunez never stopped searching for her daughter.
She paid for a billboard ad in Mexico that featured a photo of her daughter for a year. She bought 10 more ads in Las Vegas. She spoke at events and gave media interviews to raise awareness. She left flyers all around Glendale — at salons, truck stops, parks.
Nunez’s yearslong search came to an end Sunday when her daughter, now 18, walked into a small-town Montana police station near the Canadian border and identified herself as the missing teenager.
Police said Navarro told them she hadn’t been harmed, wasn’t being held, and could come and go as she pleased. She does not face any criminal charges, they added.
Investigators are now trying to determine what happened to Navarro after she disappeared and how she ended up in Havre, Montana, more than 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) from her home.
A spokesperson for the Glendale police said Friday that no one has been taken into custody in Navarro’s disappearance. Officer Gina Winn declined to say whether investigators know how long Navarro was in Montana.
Glendale police Lt. Scott Waite said at a news conference Wednesday they were looking into all the possible scenarios that could have led to Navarro’s disappearance, including kidnapping.
Over the years, Nunez had raised concerns that Navarro, who was diagnosed with autism, may have been lured away by someone she met online.
In Havre — a town of about 9,200 people surrounded by farmland and north of the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation — Navarro’s story had residents buzzing even though most had never seen or heard of her. It also piqued interest when a team of heavily armed law enforcement officers entered an apartment and took a man into custody just a few blocks from the Havre police station Wednesday night, witnesses told The Associated Press.
As many as 10 uniformed and undercover officers showed up at about 8 p.m. and took him away in handcuffs. The man had been living in the apartment, said Rick Lieberg, who lives across the street.
A young woman later emerged from the apartment — one of six units in an aging building in a residential neighborhood — who Lieberg said he had not previously seen. The woman resembled a photograph of Navarro that was released by police, he said.
Jonathan Michaelson, who lives next door, said he was questioned Wednesday night by a plainclothes police officer from Arizona who asked whether he had ever seen a girl at the apartment next door. He said he had not.
“If she was in that apartment, I’m surprised I never saw her,” Michaelson said.
A person who works at the Dollar Tree in Havre, Jeff Hummert, said he saw a young woman resembling a photograph of Navarro last year in a city park just up the street from the apartment raided by police Wednesday. She was walking alone and carrying a plastic Walmart bag, Hummert said.
Theories about how Navarro came to be in Montana topped the conversation Friday among the regulars at a coffee shop inside Gary & Leo’s IGA, a grocery store in downtown Havre. With scant details from authorities, most of the talk — about Navarro’s possible destination and whether she was being coerced — was conjecture, said former county Coroner Steve Sapp, who joined the discussion.
“When you’re in law enforcement, all these different stories about what happened make it hard to tell which story is really true,” Sapp said. “I would really like to know more.”
Nunez declined an interview request. But for years, she had documented her efforts to find her daughter on a Facebook page titled “Finding Alicia” and an audio podcast. In an emotional video viewed more than 200,000 times since it was posted Wednesday, Nunez told her tens of thousands of followers: “For everyone who has missing loved ones, I want you to use this case as an example. Miracles do exist. Never lose hope and always fight.”
Nunez had amassed a loyal following on social media throughout the years while sharing inspirational quotes, photos of Navarro as a young child and posts addressed directly to her daughter.
“Alicia I know you will fulfill what you promised,” Nunez wrote in one post. “You will be back.”
People across the U.S. reached out to the Arizona mother to ask how they could help, creating an informal network of volunteers. They shared photos and information through the Facebook page.
Glendale police said this week that they received thousands of tips over the years.
In a short video clip that Glendale police said was taken shortly after Navarro arrived at the Montana police station, she can be heard telling authorities, “No one hurt me.” In another short video, Navarro thanked the police.
“Thank you for offering help to me,” she said.
___
Yamat reported from Las Vegas. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-arizona-mom-never-stopped-looking-for-her-missing-daughter-she-showed-up-4-years-later-in-montana/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:41 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-arizona-mom-never-stopped-looking-for-her-missing-daughter-she-showed-up-4-years-later-in-montana/ |
LIVE: Fargo BluesFest Begins
Live in studio with Chicago's Wayne Baker Brooks.
FARGO – The sounds of BluesFest are reverberating over the metro this weekend.
The annual two-day music festival kicked off Friday afternoon at Newman Outdoor field on the city’s north side.
Its runs Friday and all day Saturday.
But Emily and Adam got a sneak preview from one of the performers on the Morning Show.
Chicago-based bluesman Wayne Baker Brooks thrilled the crew with his original song, “Tell Me You Love Me, Don’t Tell Me No Lies,” co-written with Fargo’s Jonny Lang.
Brooks talked about what keeps him going and motivates him as a musician — from its deep roots in American music, to his own heritage as the son of a longtime blues legend and rock and roll hitmaker, and to developing his own voice and legacy through the art form.
There are continuous performances throughout the festival, with a side stage as well as a main stage.
Children under 8 are free with a paid adult ticket.
For more information and for Brooks’ full bio:
https://fargoblues.com/ | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/live-fargo-bluesfest-begins/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:47 | 0 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/live-fargo-bluesfest-begins/ |
HAVRE, Mont. (AP) — An Arizona teenager who disappeared days before her 15th birthday nearly four years ago is safe after walking into a small-town police station in Montana this week, authorities announced Wednesday.
Police in Havre, Montana, said Alicia Navarro, now 18, showed up alone Sunday morning in the town of about 9,200 people near the Canadian border and identified herself as a missing teenager from the Phoenix suburb of Glendale.
Navarro’s disappearance on Sept. 15, 2019, sparked a massive search that included the FBI. Glendale police spokesperson Jose Santiago said over the years, police had received thousands of tips.
Investigators are now trying to determine what happened to Navarro after vanishing at age 14 and how she ended up in Montana, more than 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) away from her hometown.
When she disappeared, Navarro left a signed note that read: “I ran away. I will be back, I swear. I’m sorry.”
But her mother, Jessica Nunez, raised concerns that Navarro, who was diagnosed as on the autism spectrum, may have been lured away by someone she met online.
Law enforcement officers took a man into custody at an apartment just a few blocks from the Havre police station on Wednesday night, according to several witnesses interviewed by The Associated Press.
As many as 10 heavily-armed uniformed and undercover officers showed up about 8 p.m. and took away in handcuffs the man who had been living in the apartment, said Rick Lieberg, who lives across the street.
A young woman later emerged from the apartment who Lieberg said he had not previously seen. He said the woman resembled a photograph of Navarro that has been released by police.
“She came out, talked to the officers, then two ladies pulled up and then she got into a car with them and they left,” Lieberg said.
Officers remained on the scene for several hours, taking pictures and doing other work inside the apartment, Lieberg said. He said the young woman returned to the apartment building with the two women on Thursday, but he did not see her go into the apartment.
A second witness, Jonathan Michaelson, who lives next door, said he was questioned at the scene by a plainclothes police officer who said he was from Arizona and asked if Michaelson had ever seen a girl at the apartment. He said he had not.
“If she was in that apartment, I’m surprised I never saw her,” Michaelson said.
Glendale police Lt. Scott Waite, the lead investigator, said they were looking into all the possible scenarios that could have led to Navarro’s disappearance, including kidnapping.
“As much as we’d like to say this is the end,” Waite said, “we know this is only the beginning of where this investigation will go.”
Police said Navarro told them after her arrival at the station she hadn’t been harmed, wasn’t being held and could come and go as she pleased. She does not face any criminal charges, they added.
In a short video clip that police said was taken shortly after Navarro arrived at the police station this week, she can be heard telling authorities, “No one hurt me.”
In another short video, Navarro thanked the police.
“Thank you for offering help to me,” she said.
Authorities in both Montana and Arizona haven’t said how long Navarro had been in Havre before walking into the police station. Havre is surrounded by farmland and is north of the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation.
Waite described Navarro’s reunion this week with her mother as “emotionally overwhelming” and that Navarro said she was sorry for “what she has put her mother through.”
In an emotional video posted Wednesday to a Facebook account titled “Finding Alicia,” Nunez told her tens of thousands of followers, “I want to give glory to God for answering prayers and for this miracle.”
Nunez had been documenting her efforts to find her daughter on the Facebook page throughout the years. The account features hundreds of posts with photos of Navarro as a young child and pictures of Nunez holding up signs that read, “Children don’t just disappear!”
“For everyone who has missing loved ones, I want you to use this case as an example,” Nunez said in the video, which had been viewed more than 200,000 times. “Miracles do exist. Never lose hope and always fight.”
___
Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press writers Robert Jablon in Los Angeles and Amy Hanson in Helena, Montana, contributed. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-arizona-teen-alicia-navarro-missing-since-2019-shows-up-safe-at-montana-police-station/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:48 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-arizona-teen-alicia-navarro-missing-since-2019-shows-up-safe-at-montana-police-station/ |
Local kids host lemonade stand supporting Fargo Police
FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – Following the tragic events in Fargo, people of all ages are coming together to show their support for Fargo Police.
From decals to shirts, the community is doing things to show the Fargo Police and their families that Fargo is better together.
Sometimes kids don’t completely understand what is going on when bad things happen but it’s important to learn how to talk to your children about these things.
“Well there’s been plenty of things happening in the community lately the past couple of weeks in the wake of everything that’s been happening. But a lot of it is adult based and it was really fun for me the other day when we were driving in our neighborhood and my girls spotted a lemonade stand that was for the Fargo PD. I said well, I have a bit of a platform here maybe i can help you advertise this a bit.” said Zero, from Y94.
These local kids came up with the idea to host a lemonade stand to raise money.
All of that money will be going to the Fargo Police department to show their love and support.
“Our idea was like to make a lemonade stand for the police officers and to give the money to the police.” said the girls who thought of the idea.
Proud parents watched as their children took charge. Getting excited when customers came, filling up their cups, and thanking them for their donations.
“A lot of times when you hear your kids want to do something like a lemonade stand it’s because they want whatever new toy, right? They’re saving up for a new bicycle whatever the case might be. But when your kids say they want to give that all away and they understand the importance of the cause they’re giving it to, that’s kind of your proud parent moment.” said Zero.
Not even the rain could stop these girls from showing their support.
“Our idea was like to make a lemonade stand for the police officers and to give the money to the police.” says the girls.
The lemonade stand raised over one-thousand dollars.
If you missed the lemonade stand there are plenty of opportunities to give back and show your support for the Fargo Police Department and their families. | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/local-kids-have-lemonade-stand-to-support-fargo-police/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:53 | 0 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/local-kids-have-lemonade-stand-to-support-fargo-police/ |
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Immigration advocates said Thursday that an online appointment system to seek asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico is out of reach for many migrants, in the latest legal challenge to the Biden administration’s immigration agenda.
The lawsuit says the administration, often working with Mexican authorities, has physically blocked migrants from claiming asylum at land crossings with Mexico unless they have an appointment through the CBP One app. It says the app is “impossible” for those with inferior internet access, language difficulties or lack of technical know-how. Appointments are capped at 1,450 a day.
“CBP One essentially creates an electronic waitlist that restricts access to the U.S. asylum process to a limited number of privileged migrants,” according to the lawsuit by advocacy groups Al Otro Lado and the Haitian Bridge Alliance and would-be asylum-seekers from Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua and Russia who say they couldn’t get appointments while waiting in Mexico.
More than 38,000 people were processed for entry using CBP One in June and more than 170,000 got appointments during the first six months of the year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said last week.
CBP said late Thursday that use of the app has increased processing at land crossings to “historic levels,” significantly expanding access to asylum and humanitarian protections. At the same time, the agency said it continues to serve people “who walk up to a port of entry without an appointment.”
The lawsuit is the latest legal threat to the Biden administration’s carrot-and-stick approach to the border that combines new avenues for legal entry, like CBP One, and shuts down routes to asylum for those who enter the country without government permission.
Officials say the approach is working, noting a sharp drop in illegal crossings since a rule took effect on May 11 that allows authorities to deny asylum to migrants who arrive at the border without applying on CBP One or seeking protection in another country they passed through. In June, authorities stopped migrants nearly 145,000 times, the lowest level since February 2021 and down 43% from December’s peak.
But the lawsuits complicate President Joe Biden’s efforts to introduce new policies.
“Litigation is, to a certain extent, dictating immigration policy along the border, also in the interior,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, said.
A look at some of the other legal challenges and where they stand:
The government is appealing a federal judge’s decision to block the new asylum rule. U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar delayed his ruling from taking effect for two weeks. It may fall to an appeals court to decide whether to keep the rule in place during what may be a lengthy challenge.
Some legal observers don’t expect a final resolution until 2025, probably in the Supreme Court.
Another closely watched case challenges the administration’s policy to grant parole for two years to up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport. Texas is leading 21 states to argue that Biden overreached his authority, saying it “amounts to the creation of a new visa program that allows hundreds of thousands of aliens to enter the United States who otherwise have no basis for doing so.”
A trial is scheduled Aug. 24 in Victoria, Texas, before U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton. Legal observers anticipate a decision in the fall.
Mexico says the policy was critical to it agreeing to take back people from those four countries who enter the U.S. illegally and are denied asylum.
An appeals court could rule soon on the Biden administration’s use of what is known as humanitarian parole, in which asylum-seekers are released in the U.S. while they pursue cases in immigration court.
U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II said in a March ruling prohibiting the practice that the administration “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand.”
The Border Patrol paroled 572,575 migrants last year, including a record-high 130,563 in December. The practice sharply subsided even before the administration lost a lawsuit by the state of Florida, but it wants the option in case Border Patrol stations become too overcrowded.
Texas sued the administration in May to block Biden’s policies, particularly the use of CBP One. “The Biden Administration’s attempt to manage the southern border by app does not meet even the lowest expectation of competency and runs afoul of the laws Congress passed to regulate immigration,” the lawsuit states.
Indiana and 17 other states sued the administration on similar grounds, saying in its federal lawsuit filed in North Dakota that new policies “will further degrade our nation’s border security and make it even easier to illegally immigrate into the United States.”
Neither case appears headed toward swift resolution. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-as-illegal-crossings-drop-the-legal-challenges-over-bidens-us-mexico-border-policies-grow/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:55 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-as-illegal-crossings-drop-the-legal-challenges-over-bidens-us-mexico-border-policies-grow/ |
Man facing aggravated assault charges after video shows him punching man outside Fargo bar
FARGO (KVRR/KFGO) – A man who was working as a bouncer for a Fargo bar is facing aggravated assault charges after a video of him punching a man was posted to social media.
In the video, Jeremy Dalton of West Fargo can be seen talking to the victim who was visibly upset outside the Old Broadway downtown. After several seconds, when the victim turned his attention to Dalton’s co-worker, Dalton punched the man – knocking him to the ground.
Dalton’s co-worker is then seen kicking the man in the face.
According to court documents, Dalton was working at closing time Sunday morning, when he said a co-worker radioed for help outside with someone who was ‘acting out.’ Dalton said his co-worker was in a verbal confrontation with the victim, so he stepped in to ‘diffuse’ the situation.
Dalton said the victim was verbally aggressive and claimed to have “killed a guy right here with my bare hands.” At one point, Dalton said the victim was reaching around like he had a weapon. That’s when Dalton punched the victim, claiming he didn’t know what the man might do.
According to investigators, the victim told them he confronted Dalton’s co-worker for allegedly touching his girlfriend. The victim claims two bouncers were following them around the bar, and that Dalton’s co-worker was hitting on the woman, grabbing her skirt, and touching her inappropriately. That is when they left the bar and the victim confronted Dalton’s co-worker outside.
Dalton was arrested after meeting with police to discuss the incident.
According to court records, the victim suffered a broken jaw, nose, and eye socket during the incident.
Dalton and his co-worker have been fired from the Old Broadway.
Dalton made his first court appearance Friday. | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/man-facing-aggravated-assault-charges-after-video-shows-him-punching-man-outside-fargo-bar/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:58 | 1 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/man-facing-aggravated-assault-charges-after-video-shows-him-punching-man-outside-fargo-bar/ |
Mankato man sentenced to life in prison for murder of 2-year-old
MANKATO, Minn. (KVRR/KFGO) — A Mankato man is sentenced to life in prison for the sexual assault and murder of a 2-year-old.
Police responded to an apartment in April 2021 for a medical incident where they found a child unresponsive.
Officers took him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The autopsy found injuries consistent with sexual assault and a beating.
In June, a jury found 19-year-old Lee Young Jr., who was 16 years old at the time of the murder, guilty of 20 felony charges of murder and sexual assault in the first degree. | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/mankato-man-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-murder-of-2-year-old/ | 2023-07-29T00:37:59 | 0 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/mankato-man-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-murder-of-2-year-old/ |
Moorhead man arrested for arson following apartment fire
MOORHEAD, Minn. (KVRR) – Police say a Moorhead man has been arrested on arson charges.
Moorhead firefighters were called at around 7:10 p.m. Thursday to a fire in an apartment building in the 1300 block of 27th Ave. South.
Crews arrived to find smoke in the building and were able to locate the origin of the smoke in one apartment.
Police Capt. Deric Swenson says 43-year-old Terrance Gehrig rented the apartment where the fire broke out. Swenson says the fire was located in multiple locations within Gehrig’s apartment.
Gehrig is being held on first-degree arson charges.
No injuries were reported. Tenants were allowed to return to their apartments later in the evening. | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/moorhead-man-arrested-for-arson-following-apartment-fire/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:00 | 0 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/moorhead-man-arrested-for-arson-following-apartment-fire/ |
ATLANTA (AP) — Authorities in Alabama said Friday they filed criminal charges against a woman who confessed to fabricating a story that she was kidnapped after stopping to check on a toddler she saw walking on the side of an interstate highway.
Carlee Russell was charged with false reporting to law enforcement and falsely reporting an incident, both misdemeanors that carry up to a year in jail, Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said. Russell turned herself in to jail Friday and was released on bond, he said.
“Her decisions that night created panic and alarm for citizens of our city and even across the nation as concern grew that a kidnapper was on the loose using a small child as bait,” he said. “Numerous law enforcement agencies, both local and federal, began working tirelessly not only to bring Carlee home to her family but locate a kidnapper that we know now never existed. Many private citizens volunteered their time and energy in looking for a potential kidnapping victim that we know now was never in any danger.”
Derzis said he was frustrated that Russell was only being charged with two misdemeanors despite the panic and disruption she caused, but he said the law did not allow for enhanced charges.
Russell, 25, disappeared after calling 911 on July 13 to report a toddler wandering beside a stretch of interstate. She returned home two days later and told police she had been abducted and forced into a vehicle.
Her disappearance became a national news story. Images of the missing woman were shared broadly on social media.
“We don’t see this as a victimless crime,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said at a Friday news conference. “There are significant hours spent, resources expended as a result of this investigation.”
Marshall’s office was asked to handle the prosecution because of the attention the case received, Derzis said. Marshall said he intends to “fully prosecute” Russell and said his office will take into account the police investigation to see whether additional charges are warranted.
Russell, through her attorney, Emory Anthony, acknowledged earlier that she made the story up.
In a statement read by police on Monday, Anthony said Russell was not kidnapped, did not see a baby on the side of the road, did not leave the city and acted alone. He said Russell apologized and he asked for prayers and forgiveness as she “addresses her issues and attempts to move forward, understanding that she made a mistake in this matter.”
A message left Friday at Anthony’s office was not immediately returned.
Russell told detectives she was taken by a man who came out of the trees when she stopped to check on the child, put in a car and an 18-wheel truck, was blindfolded and was held at a home where a woman fed her cheese crackers, authorities said at a news conference last week. At some point, Russell said she was put in a vehicle again but managed to escape and run through the woods to her neighborhood.
“This story opened wounds for families whose loved ones really were victims of kidnappings,” Derzis said.
He said police have not determined where Russell went during the 49 hours she was missing. They plan to talk to the attorney general’s office about recovering some of the money spent on the investigation. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-authorities-charge-alabama-woman-who-acknowledged-fabricating-story-about-kidnapping-toddler/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:02 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-authorities-charge-alabama-woman-who-acknowledged-fabricating-story-about-kidnapping-toddler/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday for the first time publicly acknowledged his seventh grandchild, a four-year-old girl fathered by his son Hunter with an Arkansas woman, Lunden Roberts, in 2018.
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement. It was his first acknowledgement of the child.
“This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” he said. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
Hunter Biden’s paternity was established by DNA testing after Roberts sued for child support, and the two parties recently resolved outstanding child support issues. The president’s son wrote about his encounter with Roberts in his 2021 memoir, saying it came while he was deep in addiction to alcohol and drugs, including crack cocaine.
“I had no recollection of our encounter,” he wrote. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”
An attorney for Roberts did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president, who has made a commitment to family central to his public persona, has faced increasing criticism from political rivals and pundits for failing to acknowledge the granddaughter. According to a person familiar with the matter, he was taking the cue from his son while the legal proceedings played out. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.
Hunter Biden has four other children, including a son, Beau, born by his wife Melissa Cohen in 2020. He was named after the president’s late son who died of cancer in 2015, leaving behind two children.
Biden’s grandchildren have played a distinctive role in his presidency, often accompanying the president or first lady on trips and making regular visits to the White House. The president has also credited his grandchildren with persuading him to challenge then-President Donald Trump for the White House in 2020.
Biden’s statement was first reported by People Magazine. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-biden-openly-acknowledges-7th-grandchild-the-daughter-of-son-hunter-and-an-arkansas-woman/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:10 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-biden-openly-acknowledges-7th-grandchild-the-daughter-of-son-hunter-and-an-arkansas-woman/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday giving decisions on the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders.
The order formally implements legislation passed by Congress in 2022 aimed at strengthening protections for service members, who were often at the mercy of their commanders to decide whether to take their assault claims seriously.
Members of Congress, frustrated with the growing number of sexual assaults in the military, fought with defense leaders for several years over the issue. They argued that commanders at times were willing to ignore charges or incidents in their units to protect those accused of offenses and that using independent lawyers would beef up prosecutions. Military leaders balked, saying it could erode commanders’ authority.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York spent about a decade in an uphill battle to reform how the military handles sexual assaults and get the legislative changes passed that were codified through Biden’s order.
“While it will take time to see the results of these changes, these measures will instill more trust, professionalism, and confidence in the system,” Gillibrand said.
The change was among more than two dozen recommendations made in 2021 by an independent review commission on sexual assault in the military that was set up by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. And it was included in the annual defense bill last year. But since it requires a change to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it needed formal presidential action.
In a call with reporters previewing the order, senior Biden administration officials said it was the most sweeping change to the military legal code since it was created in 1950.
The Pentagon had already been moving forward with the change. A year ago, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force set up the new special trial counsel offices, which will assume authority over prosecution decisions by the end of this year. Beginning Jan. 1, 2025, that prosecution authority will expand to include sexual harassment cases.
The changes come as the military grapples with rising numbers of reported sexual assaults in its ranks.
While the services have made inroads in making it easier and safer for troops to come forward, they have had far less success reducing the number of assaults, which have increased nearly every year since 2006. Overall, there were more than 8,942 reports of sexual assaults involving service members during the 2022 fiscal year, a slight increase over 8,866 the year before.
Defense officials have long argued that an increase in reported assaults is a positive trend because so many people are reluctant to report them, both in the military and in society as a whole. Greater reporting, they say, shows there is more confidence in the reporting system, greater comfort with the support for victims, and a growing number of offenders who are being held accountable.
___
Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-biden-orders-changes-to-the-military-code-of-justice-for-sexual-assault-victims/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:12 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-biden-orders-changes-to-the-military-code-of-justice-for-sexual-assault-victims/ |
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- If you're looking for a new job or a career change, a local school district is hiring to prepare for the new school year.
Right now, there are more than a dozen job opportunities to work for the Central Unified School District.
That includes teachers, custodians, instructional aides, cooks and much more.
Some of the jobs listed require experience and qualifications.
For more information on the available jobs, click here. | https://abc30.com/central-unified-school-district-new-positions-job-openings/13565346/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:14 | 0 | https://abc30.com/central-unified-school-district-new-positions-job-openings/13565346/ |
Tesla is ramping up efforts to open showrooms on tribal lands where it can sell directly to consumers, circumventing laws in states that bar vehicle manufacturers from also being retailers in favor of the dealership model.
The news comes after another new Tesla showroom was announced in June, set to open in 2025 on lands of the Oneida Indian Nation in upstate New York.
“I think it was a move that made complete sense,” said Lori Brown, executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, which has lobbied for years to change Connecticut’s law.
“It is just surprising that it took this long, because Tesla had really tried, along with Lucid and Rivian,” she said, referring to two other electric carmakers. “Anything that puts more electric vehicles on the road is a good thing for the public.”
Brown noted that lawmakers with car dealerships that are active in their districts, no matter their political affiliation, have traditionally opposed bills allowing direct-to-consumer sales.
The Connecticut Automotive Retail Association, which has opposed such bills for years, says there needs to be a balance between respecting tribal sovereignty and “maintaining a level playing field” for all car dealerships in the state.
“We respect the Mohegan Tribe’s sovereignty and the unique circumstance in which they operate their businesses on Tribal land but we strongly believe that this does not change the discussion about Tesla and other EV manufacturers with direct-to-consumer sales, and we continue to oppose that model,” Hayden Reynolds, the association’s chairperson, said in a statement. “Connecticut’s dealer franchise laws benefit consumers and provide a competitive marketplace.”
Over the years in numerous states, Tesla has sought and been denied dealership licenses, pushed for law changes and challenged decisions in courts. The company scored a victory earlier this year when Delaware’s Supreme Court overturned a ruling upholding a decision by state officials to prohibit Tesla from selling its cars to directly customers.
At least 16 states have effectively changed their laws to allow Tesla and other direct-to-consumer manufacturers to sell there, said Jeff Aiosa, executive director of the Connecticut dealers association. He doesn’t foresee Connecticut changing its law, noting that 32 “original equipment manufacturers,” a list that includes major car companies like Toyota and Ford, currently abide by it.
“It’s not fair to have an unlevel playing field when all the other manufacturers abide by the state franchise laws and Tesla wants this exception to go around the law,” he said. “I would suggest their pivoting to the sovereign nation is representative of them not wanting to abide by the law.”
Tesla opened its first store as well as a repair shop on Native American land in 2021 in New Mexico. The facility, built in Nambé Pueblo, north of Santa Fe, marked the first time the company partnered with a tribe to get around state laws, though the idea had been in the works for years.
Brian Dear, president of the Tesla Owners Club of New Mexico, predicted at the time that states that are home to tribal nations and also have laws banning direct car sales by manufacturers would likely follow New Mexico’s lead.
“I don’t believe at all that this will be the last,” he said.
Tesla’s facility at Mohegan Sun, dubbed the Tesla Sales & Delivery Center, will be located at a shopping and dining pavilion within the sprawling casino complex. Customers will be able to test drive models around the resort. and gamblers will be able to use their loyalty rewards toward Tesla purchases.
Tesla also plans to exhibit its solar and storage products at the location. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/28/tesla-cars-tribal-sovereignty/c9c32d38-2d9a-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:14 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/28/tesla-cars-tribal-sovereignty/c9c32d38-2d9a-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
Elyria crash into utility pole kills 38-year-old driver, police say
ELYRIA, Ohio (WOIO) - A car crash into a utility pole in the overnight hours of July 27 claimed the life of the driver, Elyria Police confirmed, and his identity has been released.
Elyria Police identified the driver as 38-year-old Jeffrey Cannon Jr., who was a resident of the city.
The preliminary investigation indicates that Cannon Jr. was driving a red 2016 Jeep Cherokee northbound on West River Road at approximately 3:44 a.m.
Lantz said as the Jeep approached David Drive, it veered off the east side of the roadway and collided with a utility pole.
Elyria Police officers immediately went to the scene along with Lifecare and Elyria Fire Department personnel, according to Lantz.
Cannon Jr. suffered fatal injuries as a result of the impact of the crash, stated Lantz.
Officers notified Cannon Jr.’s next of kin of his passing after the crash.
No one else was in the Jeep at the time of the crash, Lantz confirmed.
The collision with the utility pole caused a temporary power outage in the immediate area, according to Lantz.
“The members of the Elyria Police Department extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Jeffrey Cannon Jr. during this incredibly difficult time,” Lt. Lantz stated.
Copyright 2023 WOIO. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/29/elyria-crash-into-utility-pole-kills-38-year-old-driver-police-say/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:14 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/29/elyria-crash-into-utility-pole-kills-38-year-old-driver-police-say/ |
REEDLEY, Calif. (KFSN) -- A Reedley family is facing a difficult battle after learning their 5-year-old child has cancer.
Maddix Anderson was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a type of cancer that starts in the early forms of nerve cells, on Wednesday.
"He is a wonderful kid. He is very outgoing. He is very fun. He can make anyone laugh, and he is the biggest sweetheart, just the sweetest child," said Paige Holt, Maddix's mother.
In the last two weeks, Maddix has spent his time inside hospital walls.
He was at Valley Children's Hospital for a few days and is now at UCSF.
His mother says it was late June when she noticed her son limping.
She and Madix's father took him to a chiropractor for answers.
"We really just thought we were looking at sore bones but it turned into, he had a broken hip and we immediately went to Valley Children's," explained Paige.
She says it's hard to wrap her head around what's happened since then, but she remains optimistic Maddix will get through this.
"There are going to be good days and bad days and we're just going to take it day by day and not look too forward," said Paige.
Holt appreciates the village standing by her family's side during this challenging time and says even former bulldog and current NFL quarterback Derek Carr took a moment to send Maddix words of encouragement.
"Keep fighting. Keep going. You have people in your corner," Carr said in a video.
Paige says she hopes to see her son full of energy once again.
She encourages other parents to be aware of any unusual symptoms in their own children that can help lead to an early diagnosis.
If you would like to support the family, click here.
For news updates, follow Elisa Navarro on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. | https://abc30.com/childhood-cancer-reedley-boy-maddix-anderson-derek-carr/13565474/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:15 | 1 | https://abc30.com/childhood-cancer-reedley-boy-maddix-anderson-derek-carr/13565474/ |
SAN FRANCISCO — The city of San Francisco has opened a complaint and launched an investigation into a giant “X” sign that was installed Friday on top of the downtown building formerly known as Twitter headquarters as owner Elon Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.
The X appeared after San Francisco police stopped workers on Monday from removing the brand’s iconic bird and logo from the side of the building, saying they hadn’t taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.
Any replacement letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure “consistency with the historic nature of the building” and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said earlier this week.
Erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit, Hannan said Friday.
“Planning review and approval is also necessary for the installation of this sign. The city is opening a complaint and initiating an investigation,” he said in an email.
Musk unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he remakes the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter X and had already renamed Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. One of his children is called “X.” The child’s actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.
On Friday afternoon, a worker on a lift machine made adjustments to the sign and then left. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/28/twitter-san-francisco-building-x-elon-musk/9bf8c55c-2da4-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:15 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/28/twitter-san-francisco-building-x-elon-musk/9bf8c55c-2da4-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Fla., July 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Icahn Enterprises L.P. (Nasdaq:IEP) announced today that it will discuss its second quarter 2023 results on a webcast on Friday, August 4, 2023 - 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. To access the webcast, viewers should go to this link (webcast). We encourage viewers to access the webcast 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled start time. A replay of the webcast will also be available for at least twelve months at Icahn events and presentations.
Icahn Enterprises L.P., a master limited partnership, is a diversified holding company engaged in seven primary business segments: Investment, Energy, Automotive, Food Packaging, Real Estate, Home Fashion and Pharma.
Investor Contact:
Ted Papapostolou, Chief Financial Officer
IR@ielp.com
(800) 255-2737
View original content:
SOURCE Icahn Enterprises L.P. | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2023/07/28/icahn-enterprises-lp-announces-q2-2023-earnings-conference-call/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:16 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2023/07/28/icahn-enterprises-lp-announces-q2-2023-earnings-conference-call/ |
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Since her elementary days, Abby Burges has been cheerleading.
"A lot of people don't think cheer is very hard," she said.
It's a sport the Sanger West senior takes very seriously.
"I'm a backspot," she said. "A backspot is basically someone - there's a flyer in the middle two bases on the side and then someone in the back. I'm the person in the back, and I help push them up."
But during her 5th-grade year, Abby started noticing a problem.
"(She) started having some breathing issues, and it was very confusing," says Abby's mom, Kaycee Dommer.
"I thought it was just anxiety," Abby said. "I didn't know what it was."
To find out, Abby's mom would take her to see a doctor.
"They told me that I could possibly have mold in my lungs," Abby said.
Abby was suffering from Aspergillus niger, an infectious black mold that had built up in her lungs.
"That was really scary for me," she said. "I was confused."
"We started seeing a doctor, getting it under control and making sure she's still able to do the sport that she loves," Kaycee said.
To keep her everyday passion alive, Abby would undergo multiple procedures to scrape and flush out her lungs.
"When I did have to go into the procedure, it was extremely scary for me," she said. "I did not want to do it."
After many worried nights in the hospital and an inhaler on hand, Abby's been able to keep the issue at bay, turning her experience into strength.
"I'm just a lot stronger mentally, knowing that I can push myself to that limit and knowing I've gone past that as a person," she said.
This season is pushing herself to a new limit.
She was named an All-American by the Universal Cheerleaders Association for the first time ever.
"I tried out last year - I didn't get it, so I just worked 10 times harder this year," she said. "I tried to put myself out there, volunteer, use my voice and that got me really far."
She's going even further, joining a group of other All-Americans to perform in Hawaii's 82nd annual Pearl Harbor Parade last December.
She even got a once-in-a-lifetime experience to tour the USS Arizona along the way, with mom right by her side.
"I don't know if I would've believed it," Kaycee said. "We learn, we've dealt with it, we've lived with it now. It's part of our life, it's not anything we can change."
With college on the horizon, Abby is hoping to one day call herself a cheerleader for the Oregon Ducks but isn't ruling out her hometown school.
"If anything, I could cheer for Fresno State or some type of college here in Fresno," she said.
For sports updates, follow Alec Nolan on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. | https://abc30.com/good-sports-sanger-west-abby-burges-senior-cheerleader/13564174/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 1 | https://abc30.com/good-sports-sanger-west-abby-burges-senior-cheerleader/13564174/ |
HELENA, Mont. — A federal judge in Montana on Friday temporarily blocked a new law that restricts drag performances just days before thousands of people are expected to attend Montana Pride’s 30th anniversary celebration in Helena.
The law seeks to ban minors from attending what it calls “sexually oriented” performances, and bans such performances in public places where minors might be present. However, it does not adequately define many of the terms used in the law, causing people to self-censor out of fear of prosecution, plaintiff’s attorney Constance Van Kley with Upper Seven Law argued Wednesday.
“Plaintiffs, along with the approximately 15,000 Montanans who wish to attend the (Montana Pride) events, cannot avoid chilled speech or exposure to potential civil or criminal liability,” without the temporary restraining order, Morris wrote.
The ruling will allow Montana Pride to advertise and hold some of its events in public places, said Kevin Hamm, president of Montana Pride. The annual LGBTQ+ celebration — which includes a parade, street dance and drag brunch — begins on Sunday and runs through Aug. 6.
“The language used in the (temporary restraining order) is both impressive and should serve as a warning to discriminatory actions by legislators in the future,” Hamm said.
A lawsuit filed on July 6 challenges its constitutionality, and seeks a preliminary injunction to block it. The complaint was later amended to add the city of Helena as a defendant and Montana Pride as a plaintiff in order to request the more urgent move for a temporary restraining order. Montana Pride worked with the city to get permits to hold its public events.
The city of Helena supported the restraining order, saying the law put the city in the position of infringing on Montana Pride’s constitutional rights of free expression by denying the permit, or subjecting city employees to civil and criminal liability included in the law if it granted the permit. The lawsuit allows a minor who attends a drag performance that violates the law to file a civil lawsuit against organizers or participants at any time over the following 10 years.
The complaint — whose initial plaintiffs include a transgender woman, two small theaters and a bookstore that holds drag queen reading events — calls the Montana law “a breathtakingly ambiguous and overbroad bill, motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ animus.”
Judge Morris found that the law did not adequately define actions that might be illegal and appears likely to “encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”
Montana’s law is flawed — like similar laws in Florida and Tennessee that have been blocked by courts — because it regulates speech based on its content and viewpoint, without taking into account its potential literary, artistic, political or scientific value, Morris found.
“Drag is definitionally political and artistic speech,” said Diana Bourgeois, president of the Imperial Sovereign Court of the State of Montana, an organization that puts on drag reading events and one of the plaintiffs. “The court’s order today protects our right to be commentators and artists and to create a safe, joyful and welcoming environment through our expression.”
Like many Republican-led states, Montana’s conservative lawmakers have passed other laws targeting transgender people. The state is among those to ban gender-affirming care for minors — which is also being challenged in court. It also passed a bill to define sex as only “male” or “female" in state law.
The law also made Montana the first state to specifically ban drag kings and drag queens — which it defined as performers who adopt a flamboyant or parodic male or female persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup — from reading books to children in public schools or libraries, even though the performances do not have a sexual element.
The judge said the law does not define “flamboyant,” “parodic” or “glamorous,” among other terms.
Morris has scheduled an Aug. 26 hearing on the lawsuit’s request for a preliminary injunction, which could continue to block the law while the case moves through the courts.
“We look forward to presenting our written response and full argument at the upcoming preliminary injunction hearing to defend the law and protect minors from sexually oriented performances,” Emily Flower, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said in a statement.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Braxton Mitchell, has said that to him and his constituents, “keeping hyper sexualized events out of taxpayer funded schools and libraries” does not violate the First Amendment. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2023/07/28/drag-performance-ban-montana-pride/91352b50-2d9b-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2023/07/28/drag-performance-ban-montana-pride/91352b50-2d9b-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A non-profit is taking action to support local Latinas.
Friday was the return of the Latina Empowerment Day in downtown Fresno.
The event is hosted by Hispanas Organized for Political Equality - also known as HOPE.
The organization hosts eight of these conferences throughout the state.
This one was held at the Double Tree by Hilton Hotel Fresno Convention Center.
Women talked about issues tied to financial wellness, community leadership and advocacy strategies.
''It really allows Latinas to come into a safe space to really talk about issue that are affecting in our community, specifically Latinas & really create good solutions," HOPE director of community engagement Belinda Barragan said.
To learn about upcoming conferences, you can head to latinas.org.
You can register online for Latina History Day and Latina Action Day. | https://abc30.com/latina-empowerment-day-event-downtown-fresno/13565479/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 1 | https://abc30.com/latina-empowerment-day-event-downtown-fresno/13565479/ |
Got a summer cold? Sure it’s not COVID-19?
(CNN) — It’s time to stock up on tissues, bingeable TV options and COVID-19 tests.
Yes, many signs are pointing to a COVID-19 summer surge – although one that’s far less intense than what emerged the past few summers.
Experts say they do not expect that cases will be severe or that the uptick will be prolonged, and there are early signs from wastewater data that this wavelet may already be leveling out.
But data posted this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that many COVID-19 indicators, including hospital admissions, emergency department visits and test positivity, are once again on the rise.
Independent commercial laboratories are also noting the increase.
“When we look at our data, we have noticed that since late June to the beginning of July and probably through now, there has been a mild uptick in cases and these are based on samples sourced from pharmacy-based testing and also from health system-based testing,” said Shishi Luo, associate director of bioinformatics at Helix, a gene sequencing company which has been assisting the CDC with tracking the gene changes of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Based on the mix of samples Helix receives, Luo says, it has seen a 30% to 40% increase in cases since June. But because cases were already at such a low level when they started to rise, Luo says that even with this upturn, we are still in pretty low-level territory compared with some previous spikes.
“I do see some early signs that we are heading into another wave. Of course, we don’t know what lies ahead, so it may yet peter out,” said Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Rivers notes that the tea leaves are particularly hard to read this time around because laboratory testing and other data collection have been dramatically scaled back since the United States ended its public health emergency for COVID-19 in May. She notes that the last time we had so little information on how the virus was spreading was in 2020.
“It doesn’t seem to be driven by a new variant, which I find encouraging,” Rivers said.
Viral levels plateau in wastewater
As testing data has become more limited, wastewater surveillance can offer a more consistent view of transmission trends over time. Data from Biobot Analytics, a biotechnology firm that has partnered with the CDC, shows that the concentration of coronavirus particles in sewage samples is about a third of what it was at this time last year.
And the amount of virus found in wastewater is growing at a much slower pace than it was a few weeks ago, suggesting a plateau in transmission, said Newsha Ghaeli, president and co-founder of Biobot.
“I wouldn’t say that in every instance a plateau has immediately led to a downturn. But we do typically see decreases once we hit a plateau,” she said, and that has been the trend in prior summers.
Covid-19 isn’t the only possible cold culprit this summer, either. CDC data suggests that a number of other pathogens that can cause flu-like symptoms or stomach bugs – including adenovirus, norovirus and rotavirus – are circulating at much higher levels this summer than they were last year.
The CDC is also tracking a slew of co-circulating COVID-19 variants, and all of them seem to be second- or third-generation offshoots of the recombinant variant XBB, each one carrying slight genetic tweaks that make them slightly fitter and more contagious.
But these gradual tweaks to the virus have been expected. There hasn’t been the kind of out-of-the-blue evolutionary leap that produced the Omicron wave, though many experts think there’s a decent possibility that we could see another game-changing variant like that one within the next couple of years.
Human behavior drives the increase
Instead, this increase seems to be driven by human behavior. More people are traveling this summer, sending them outside their normal social circles, which helps viruses find new hosts when vacationers return home with unintended souvenirs.
Then there’s the record-breaking heat, which is probably sending more people to congregate indoors for prolonged periods in search of air conditioning.
Finally, immunity has waned. U.S. vaccination numbers suggest that it has been a while since most Americans have had a COVID-19 booster, and with cases apparently so low, antibody protection from previous infections has probably waned, too.
“Waning immunity clearly is going to play a role in all of this, and we’ve seen this over and over again, is the further out you get, even while there still is some protection against death and serious illness, waning immunity could be important in terms of the number of people who get sufficiently ill to require hospitalization,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
This is the fourth summer that COVID-19 cases have risen in the United States, and Rivers says she’s pretty convinced that this may just be what living with the virus looks like from now on.
“I’m feeling like summer and winter will be what we expect going forward,” she said.
Advice for managing a summer wave
Rivers said she’s not wearing a mask out in public because cases are still so low, but if the numbers tick up, she would.
“But if I’m traveling on an airplane or I’m getting on the metro, I would definitely want my mask on,” she said.
Rapid testing continues to be a good idea, too. Experts say that testing when you feel unwell or before you go to a crowded indoor event can help protect those who may be most vulnerable in your life, the elderly and immunocompromised.
If you’re one of the many Americans who still haven’t gotten a bivalent booster, it might feel tempting to get one now.
Osterholm thinks it might be a good idea to wait until the new boosters targeting the XBB variant come out in September.
“I want to get the new booster,” he said. “I think the evidence is that the protection of the previous bivalent booster has been reduced over time. So that if you get it now, though, that’ll hold you back timewise from getting the new booster that hopefully will be out in the next 60 to 80 days.
“I could get infected in that time period. But I really think that that vaccine is going to be a much better vaccine in terms of long-term protection, so I want to get it as soon as it comes out,” Osterholm said. | https://www.wishtv.com/news/coronavirus/got-a-summer-cold-sure-its-not-covid-19/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 0 | https://www.wishtv.com/news/coronavirus/got-a-summer-cold-sure-its-not-covid-19/ |
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Racing will resume at Churchill Downs in September, with no changes being made after a review of surfaces and safety protocols in the wake of 12 horse deaths, including seven in the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby in May.
Training continued at Churchill Downs during the track’s investigation.
Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen called the deaths “a series of unfortunate circumstances” and said the review “didn’t find anything fundamentally wrong or different about our track from previous years.”
“That, in a sense, can sometimes be unsatisfying,” he said. “But that’s business, and that’s sports.”
Two of the horse deaths occurred in undercard races on Derby day. Another five died later.
“The takeaway is, the track is very safe,” Carstanjen said Thursday on an earnings call with CDI investors.
“What we needed to do was spend some of this time in the interim, while we ran the rest of the (spring) meet at Ellis to just go soup to nuts through every single thing we do at the racetrack. There was nothing that jumped out as an apparent cause of the injuries, of the breakdowns; and, as we went through and rebuilt our processes from the ground up to check everything that we do to make extra sure, we didn’t find anything material.”
The track’s fall meet begins Sept. 14 and runs through Oct. 1.
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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/07/28/churchill-downs-horse-deaths/5ec3a24e-2da7-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/07/28/churchill-downs-horse-deaths/5ec3a24e-2da7-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
An attorney with more than a decade of experience in advocacy at the local, state and federal levels was named the chief lobbyist of the University of Nebraska system on Friday.
Kristen Hassebrook, an associate at Mueller Robak, will replace Heath Mello as NU's lead advocate at the Capitol. She was also named associate vice president for government relations.
NU President Ted Carter said Hassebrook "will be a fantastic addition to our team."
"As a native Nebraskan and Husker alum, she knows our state and university well, and she has spent her career building strong and trusted relationships with leaders in government, agriculture, business and education," Carter said.
"Kristen is exactly the right person to share stories of the university’s work and impact with elected leaders and other officials, both in Nebraska and Washington, whose partnership is so vital to our success," he added.
With Hassebrook's hiring comes a shuffle in Carter's administrative cabinet.
Mello, in addition to being NU's chief lobbyist, was also a vice president of the university system. That position has been eliminated, and Hassebrook will report directly to Carter.
Her salary will be $240,000, according to an NU spokeswoman.
A native of Laurel, Hassebrook graduated with bachelor's and law degrees from UNL and was admitted to the Nebraska bar in 2011.
She was previously the executive vice president for legislation and policy at the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and has served as vice president for legal and regulatory affairs for the Nebraska Cattlemen and as executive director of the Alliance for the Future of Agriculture in Nebraska.
Hassebrook is also a former development director for the University of Nebraska Foundation, where her fundraising efforts focused on the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
In addition to advocacy, Hassebrook has lectured at UNL in agriculture and natural resources ethics.
"The University of Nebraska is a symbol of leadership in education, research and economic advancement for the entire state," Hassebrook said in a statement. "The chance to help chart the path forward for my alma mater, which has done so much for me and my family, is the opportunity of a lifetime."
Hassebrook lives in Raymond and raises livestock with her husband and two daughters. | https://journalstar.com/news/state-regional/education/university-of-nebraska-names-hassebrook-chief-lobbyist/article_b43bba34-2d63-11ee-8358-bf89bf764ae1.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 0 | https://journalstar.com/news/state-regional/education/university-of-nebraska-names-hassebrook-chief-lobbyist/article_b43bba34-2d63-11ee-8358-bf89bf764ae1.html |
LIMERICK, Ireland, July 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- NAC Aviation 29 Designated Activity Company (the "Company") today announced amendments to (i) its previously announced offer to purchase an amount up to the Tender Cap (as defined below) of its 4.75% Senior Secured Notes due June 30, 2026 (the "Notes") at a purchase price per $1,000 principal amount of Notes for cash (the "Notes Offer") as set forth in the Company's amended Offer to Purchase and dated July 28, 2023 (as amended hereby, the "Amended Offer to Purchase") and (ii) the concurrent purchase by way of assignment from lenders (the "TLB Lenders"), of loans (the "TLB Loans") under its term loan B credit agreement dated as of June 1, 2022 between, among others, the Company as a borrower, the financial institutions named therein as original lenders and Wilmington Trust (London) Limited as agent for the lenders (as amended from time to time, the "Term Loan B Credit Agreement" and, together with the Notes, the "NAC 29 Debt"), on substantially the same economic terms as the Notes Offer (the "TLB Offer" and, together with the Notes Offer, the "Debt Purchase Transactions"). The maximum aggregate amount (at face value) of NAC 29 Debt to be purchased by the Company pursuant to the Debt Purchase Transactions is $80,000,000 (the "Tender Cap").
The Company is hereby amending the Amended Offer to Purchase to (1) amend the Early Tender Premium component of the Total Consideration (both as defined in the Amended Offer to Purchase) from $30.00 to $10.00 per $1,000 principal amount for each $1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase by the Company, plus accrued and unpaid interest to, but excluding the settlement date; (2) extend the Early Tender Time and the Withdrawal Deadline (both as defined in the Amended Offer to Purchase) from 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on August 7, 2023 to 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on August 10, 2023; and (3) a clarificatory change to the table on the second page of the Amended Offer to Purchase. These amendments apply to both the Notes Offer and the TLB Offer.
The change in the Early Tender Premium has been made to ensure compliance with the requirements as set out in Clause 4.3 of side letter no. 2 to the intercreditor agreement that was entered into by, among others, the Company on 18 July 2023.
No further action is required to be taken by holders who have already validly tendered and not validly withdrawn their NAC 29 Debt in order to receive the Total Consideration, including the amended Early Tender Premium. Except as described herein, other terms of the previously announced Debt Purchase Transactions remain unchanged.
The complete terms and conditions of the Notes Offer are described in the Amended Offer to Purchase, dated July 28, 2023, a copy of which may be obtained from Global Bondholder Services Corporation, the tender agent and information agent (the "Tender and Information Agent") for the Notes Offer, by telephone at +1 (855) 654-2014 (U.S. toll free) and +1 (212) 430-3774 (collect), in writing at 65 Broadway – Suite 404, New York, New York 10006, Attention: Corporate Actions.
The complete terms of the TLB Offer are described in the Amended Auction Notice dated July 28, 2023, a copy of which may be obtained from Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. as purchase agent (the "Purchase Agent") for the TLB Offer by telephone at +1 (855) 287-1922 (toll-free) or +1 (212) 250-7527 (collect), or in writing at One Columbus Circle, New York, New York 10019, Attention: Liability Management Group.
The Company has engaged Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. to act as the dealer manager (the "Dealer Manager") in connection with the Notes Offer and as Purchase Agent in connection with the TLB Offer. Questions regarding the terms of the Debt Purchase Transactions may be directed to the Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. by telephone at +1 (855) 287-1922 (toll-free) and +1 (212) 250-7527 (collect).
Cautionary Statement
None of the Company, the Dealer Manager, the Purchase Agent, the Tender and Information Agent or the trustee for the Notes, or any of their respective affiliates, is making any recommendation as to whether holders and/or lenders should or should not tender any NAC 29 Debt in response to the Debt Purchase Transactions or expressing any opinion as to whether the terms of the Debt Purchase Transactions are fair to any holder or lender. Holders and/or lenders must make their own decision as to whether to tender any of their NAC 29 Debt and, if so, the principal amount of NAC 29 Debt to tender and the bid price at which to tender. Holders of Notes should refer to the Amended Offer to Purchase for a description of the offer terms, conditions, disclaimers and other information applicable to the Notes Offer, and TLB Lenders should refer to the TLB Auction Notice for a description of the offer terms, conditions, disclaimers and other information applicable to the TLB Offer.
This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase or the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. The Notes Offer is being made solely by means of the Amended Offer to Purchase. The Debt Purchase Transactions are not being made to holders of securities in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities, blue sky or other laws of such jurisdiction. In those jurisdictions where the securities, blue sky or other laws require any Debt Purchase Transactions to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Debt Purchase Transactions will be deemed to be made on behalf of the Company by the Dealer Manager or Purchase Agent (as applicable) or one or more registered brokers or dealers licensed under the laws of such jurisdiction.
About Nordic Aviation Capital
NAC is a global leader in regional aircraft leasing and is expanding into larger narrowbody aircraft leveraging its world-class asset management platform. The firm is based in Ireland and currently has offices also in Singapore, Denmark, Toronto and Beijing.
Forward Looking Information Disclaimer
Some of the statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements include statements regarding the Company's intent and belief or current expectations and may be identified by the use of words like "anticipate", "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "will," "should," "seek," the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include, without limitation, the Company's ability to consummate the Debt Purchase Transactions, as well as matters beyond the Company's control. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, results or events.
Contacts:
Nordic Aviation Capital:
Media contact: marketing@nac.dk
Global Bondholder Services Corporation:
65 Broadway – Suite 404
New York, NY 10006
United States
Attn: Corporate Actions
Banks and Brokers call: +1 (212) 430-3774
Toll free +1 (855) 654-2014
Email: contact@gbsc-usa.com
View original content:
SOURCE NAC Aviation 29 Designated Activity Company | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2023/07/28/nac-aviation-29-designated-activity-company-announces-amendment-partial-notes-tender-offer-term-loan-b-offer/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:17 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2023/07/28/nac-aviation-29-designated-activity-company-announces-amendment-partial-notes-tender-offer-term-loan-b-offer/ |
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The city of Fresno is one step closer to finishing its work to create safer streets for cyclists in Central Fresno.
You may have noticed crews out this week, preparing Palm Avenue from Dakota Avenue to H Street for a protected bikeway.
Crews are re-striping the street with a new traffic pattern, reducing the lanes on Palm Avenue to one-way, each way.
That work is expected to be completed tonight, July 28.
A bikeway will also be added to portions of Belmont Avenue.
That painting is scheduled to start on Tuesday.
The city says the bikeway should be finished by mid-October. | https://abc30.com/new-traffic-pattern-palm-avenue-central-fresno-bike-lane/13565445/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:18 | 0 | https://abc30.com/new-traffic-pattern-palm-avenue-central-fresno-bike-lane/13565445/ |
LOS ANGELES — As Bronny James continues to recover after going into cardiac arrest, his Southern California teammates have been at practice to prepare for a 10-day exhibition tour of Greece and Croatia that begins next week.
James was discharged from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Thursday and is resting at home, according to a statement from the hospital. His father, Lakers superstar LeBron James, also posted on social media that his family is “safe and healthy.”
Bronny James will continue to undergo tests to determine the cause of his cardiac arrest, which occurred Monday morning during a workout at USC’s Galen Center.
Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart abruptly stops beating, because of a problem with its electrical activity. While uncommon in young people, sudden cardiac arrest is the leading medical cause of death in young athletes. Some studies have estimated one sudden cardiac death in 50,000 to 80,000 young athletes each year.
No information has been made public about what may have caused Bronny James’ cardiac arrest. But one of the most common causes in young athletes is an underlying problem with the heart’s structure, such as a genetic condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that leads to a thickened heart muscle more prone to irregular electrical activity. A more rare cause is commotio cordis, which occurs when someone receives a sharp blow to the chest during a specific part of the heartbeat’s cycle — what happened to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin earlier this year.
James was the second high-profile USC basketball recruit to go into cardiac arrest in the last year. Vincent Iwuchuwku also was stricken during a workout last July, but the 7-foot-1 center returned to the court six months later and appeared in 14 games.
It’s too soon to know how James’ playing career could be affected, especially without a lot of information being made public. Various experts point to James’ quick move out of intensive care and being released three days later as encouraging.
The upcoming trip is important for the Trojans as James recovers. USC had the nation’s fourth-ranked recruiting class, including the top-rated player in guard Isaiah Collier.
James committed to the Trojans in May after the 6-foot-3 18-year-old became one of the nation’s top prospects as a two-way point guard for Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, California.
He is the sixth McDonald’s All-American to come to USC since Andy Enfield became coach in 2013.
With his family fame and huge social media following, Bronny James also has the top name, image and likeness valuation in sports at $6.3 million, as estimated by On3.com. He is the oldest of LeBron and Savannah James’ three children.
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AP Sports Writer Greg Beacham and AP Health & Science Writer Lauran Neergard contributed to this report.
___
AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/lebron-james | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/2023/07/28/bronny-james-cardiac-arrest-lebron-usc/f54633f0-2d9b-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:18 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/2023/07/28/bronny-james-cardiac-arrest-lebron-usc/f54633f0-2d9b-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
Peggy Coppom hasn’t quite seen it all with the Colorado Buffaloes, but she’s seen much more than most, so believe her when she says Thursday was a good day to be a fan.
The 98-year-old has been attending football games since her family moved from the high plains of eastern Colorado to Boulder in 1939 to escape the Dust Bowl, and she’s missed only a couple home games since buying season tickets in 1966.
The excitement in her voice was obvious during a phone call minutes after university regents approved the school’s return to the Big 12 in 2024.
“I’m so happy to get back to the Big 12 — or the Big 15 or whatever it ends up being,” she said, laughing. “It seems like that’s where we belong. We don’t belong with the West Coast people.”
Of course, the Big 12 isn’t the same league it was when the Buffs left for the Pac-12 in 2012. Nebraska and Missouri are gone, and Oklahoma and Texas will be, too. BYU could become a rival, but the Buffs have little in common with Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida.
“I wish some of those old schools were there, but we’ll make the best of it,” Coppom said.
The conference change, plus the hiring of Deion Sanders, has her eagerly anticipating watching the Buffs from her seats near the 40-yard line on the west side of Folsom Field — “God willing, I always have to add,” she said.
Coppom, carrying a gold pom-pom, was escorted onto the field by Sanders and performed a ceremonial kickoff during the spring game in April. Coppom said Sanders and the return to the Big 12 has created the most buzz about the team since it won a share of the national championship in 1990.
Former CU fullback Jim Kelleher, who was second in the Big Eight with 15 rushing touchdowns in 1976, said he’s in wait-and-see mode about the move.
“I originally wasn’t that excited about it, but at the same time, the Pac-12 had let things get to such a point where you had to do something,” he said. “The Big 12 signed a good media rights agreement. It’s just sad the Pac-12 hasn’t been able to get a TV contract.”
Kelleher said that while Colorado will get exposure across three time zones, which is a positive, he’s sad to see how traditions and geographic rivalries have been sacrificed with realignment in general.
Specific to Colorado, he said, the Buffs seemed to be a good fit in the Pac-12. He said his sentimental attachment to the Big 12 won’t be there without Nebraska and other teams he played against in the old Big Eight.
“Whether it’s the school or the individual athletes — with TV and NIL — it’s all money, money, money,” he said. “I understand their decision. Hey, I’m part of the Colorado team, so I’m for my team and hope it works out.”
Tom Osborne, the College Football Hall of Fame coach at Nebraska and its former athletic director, shepherded the Cornhuskers’ move from the Big 12 to Big Ten in 2011. He said he’s able to view past, present and future realignment from the perspective of both a fan and administrator.
“You’re talking about lost traditions,” Osborne said. “I can share the feelings of the fans in that I miss those drives to Manhattan, Kansas; Lawrence, Kansas; Ames, Iowa, and some of those relationships.”
Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten had as much or more to do with finding stability as it did with finances, Osborne said. In the summer of 2011, Osborne said, Big 12 South teams were negotiating with the Pac-12, Missouri wanted to go to the SEC and Texas A&M also was looking to leave.
“Finances are driving this thing more than anything, and my guess is that the uncertainty about where the Pac-12 stands right now appears to make the Big 12 better for Colorado — even though the Big 12 has not been a paragon of stability.”
___
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/ap_top25 Sign up for the AP Top 25 newsletter here: https://link.apnews.com/join/6nr/morning-wire-newsletter-footer-internal-ads | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-big-12-not-quite-the-same-but-it-feels-like-home-to-a-98-year-old-colorado-fan/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:20 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-big-12-not-quite-the-same-but-it-feels-like-home-to-a-98-year-old-colorado-fan/ |
Scheels annual hunting expo is back for 21st year
FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — The 21st annual hunting expo and dog dock diving competition is back in the Scheels Parking lot on 45th Street.
With something for everyone, there were multiple local vendors, adoptable puppies from Turtle Mountain Animal Rescue and even $3,500 in prizes to be given away.
This annual show hosts people from all over to show off their hunting gear and get people ready for hunting season which is right around the corner.
“So, hunting season is right around the corner and fall is coming. The Dock Dogs, dog jumping competition is just a ton of fun. We have all of our local vendors around here. Just more or less embracing all of the local vendors and then enjoying the competition,” says Matt Schneider, who works with event marketing at Scheels.
The fan favorite dock dogs compete again tomorrow at the Scheels parking lot so you could get in on the fun if you missed it. | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/scheels-annual-hunting-expo-is-back-for-21st-year/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:21 | 1 | https://www.kvrr.com/2023/07/28/scheels-annual-hunting-expo-is-back-for-21st-year/ |
Tim McGraw bringing 2024 ‘Standing Room Only’ tour to Indianapolis
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Country music megastar Tim McGraw will bring his “Standing Room Only” tour to Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on April 18, 2024.
McGraw will be joined by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Carly Pearce.
All tickets will go on sale Friday, Aug. 4 at 10 a.m. local time. VIP packages and experiences — from an exclusive gift item to meeting the Grammy-winning country superstar — will also be available.
“I always want to deliver the best possible concert I can for the fans,” McGraw said in a release. “We’ve got some really special plans to make this the biggest and the best tour we’ve ever done.”
McGraw says fans can expect a high-energy performance featuring his biggest hits as well as songs from his forthcoming studio album, “Standing Room Only.” He will release his new album on Aug. 25; its title track is already climbing the country music charts.
Fans are encouraged to visit www.timmcgraw.com and become part of MCGRAWONE to learn more about the upcoming album and tour. | https://www.wishtv.com/news/entertainment-news/tim-mcgraw-bringing-2024-standing-room-only-tour-to-indianapolis/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:23 | 1 | https://www.wishtv.com/news/entertainment-news/tim-mcgraw-bringing-2024-standing-room-only-tour-to-indianapolis/ |
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The new prosecutor in Oklahoma’s biggest county announced Friday she’s dropping criminal charges against seven police officers in three separate fatal shootings from 2020, including one in which five officers were charged with killing a 15-year-old boy outside a convenience store.
District Attorney Vicki Behenna’s predecessor and fellow Democrat, David Prater, had filed criminal charges against the police officers before leaving office. Behenna said she hired a use-of-force expert to examine the evidence, and her office spent hundreds of hours reviewing the three cases.
“Under Oklahoma law, these shootings were justified,” Behenna said at a news conference.
“This was not just a quick, spur-of-the-moment decision. This was a very difficult, very fact-intensive decision and review,” she said.
The charges were dismissed with prejudice, which means they are permanently dismissed and can’t be refiled, she said.
A former federal prosecutor and defense attorney from the suburb of Edmond, Behenna is the first woman elected top prosecutor in the state’s most populous county. She defeated conservative Republican Kevin Calvey last year to win a four-year term.
The most high-profile case dismissed Friday involved five Oklahoma City officers charged with first-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of Stavian Rodriguez. The teen was shot on Nov. 23, 2020, by officers responding to reports of an attempted armed robbery at a convenience store.
TV news reports of the shooting showed video of the boy dropping a gun then reaching toward his waist before being shot.
Willard Paige, the investigator for the previous district attorney, said the officers fired live rounds “unnecessarily,” and that an autopsy determined Rodriguez suffered 13 gunshot wounds.
Initially charged in the shooting were officers Bethany Sears, Jared Barton, Corey Adams, John Skuta and Brad Pemberton. All five have been on paid administrative leave since the shooting.
The teen’s mother, Cameo Holland, said in a statement that she intends to work to change the law to make it easier for police to be criminally charged.
“When the district attorney of Oklahoma County apologizes to your face for the justice system failing you, it’s clear we need changes in the law,” Holland said.
Behenna said Friday that she does not take these decisions lightly.
“These families are grieving,” she said. “No matter what this office does or says, these families are forever changed.”
Holland has a pending civil rights excessive force lawsuit against Oklahoma City and the five officers in federal court.
In another Oklahoma City case, Sgt. Clifford Holman was charged with first-degree manslaughter in the shooting death of 60-year-old Bennie Edward.
Holman, who is white, had responded to a call of a Black man harassing customers at a business in north Oklahoma City, according to a police affidavit by homicide detective Bryn Carter. When he arrived at the scene, Holman encountered Edwards, who was holding a knife and refusing officers’ commands to drop it, the affidavit states.
The shooting sparked days of protests and demonstrations by Black Lives Matter groups and other activists.
The third case involved The Village officer Chance Avery, who was charged with second-degree murder in the July 2020 shooting death of Christopher Pool.
Avery was called to the home by Pool’s wife, who was retrieving personal belongings, when Pool ran inside carrying a bat and was shot by Avery after refusing to drop it, police said.
Gary James, an attorney for Avery and Adams, one of the officers charged in the Rodriguez shooting, said he was “ecstatic” about Behenna’s decision.
“We’ve got seven police officers who were just doing their duty, and were placed in a position by all three of the deceased that they had to use deadly force,” James said.
Although criminal charges against police officers are not common, previous district attorney Prater — himself an ex-cop who served 16 years as the county’s top prosecutor — had secured criminal convictions against officers before.
In 2013, Del City police Capt. Randy Harrison was sentenced to four years in prison for second-degree manslaughter after shooting an unarmed teenager in the back as he ran away following a scuffle.
In 2019, another Oklahoma City police sergeant, Keith Sweeney, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in the shooting death of an unarmed, suicidal man.
Behenna said that in future cases involving police shootings, she will present evidence to a multi-county grand jury to make a decision on whether to file criminal charges, rather than making that decision herself.
Oklahoma City Police Chief Wade Gourley said the department has implemented “significant changes” since the fatal shootings, such as creating a training unit that has worked with every officer on de-escalation strategies. The chief’s statement Friday said officers are also provided with additional less-lethal equipment, like stun guns and weapons that deploy bean bags, as well as crisis-intervention training. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-charges-dropped-against-7-oklahoma-police-officers-in-3-separate-fatal-shootings/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:26 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-charges-dropped-against-7-oklahoma-police-officers-in-3-separate-fatal-shootings/ |
Health Spotlight: New drug therapies outsmart cancer, doctor says
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Doctors treating certain types of leukemia are moving away from chemotherapy.
A new treatment is proving to be more effective.
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a slow-growing cancer that attacks certain proteins on white blood cells. Doctors now have discovered an alternative to traditional chemotherapy for battling this disease.
Barry Taylor is a retired magician who has chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Dr. Ralph Boccia, a clinical associate professor of medicine at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., said, “Your spleen and liver can enlarge. Your bone marrow can become packed up with the leukemic cells.”
Instead of staying on traditional chemo, Taylor’s doctors are using new therapies to treat his cancer.
Boccia said, “We went from fairly fixed duration therapies, to now, take it until your disease gets worse again. So, we call that ‘treat to progression,’ progression to cancer. Now, we have kind of come full circle, where we’re realizing we could put some of these combinations together, and can give them limited therapy, therapy that might last only a year or two.”
The drugs are critical for outsmarting the cancer, Boccia says. “He’s on a targeted drug called acalabrutinib, a monoclonal antibody called obinutuzumab, and another targeted drug called venclexta.”
Taylor said, “I was in the ICU (intensive care unit) and all, and things were getting bad, but when I got on this venclexta, boy, it was a lifesaver.”
Barry is in remission but still takes the drug therapies to keep his cancer at bay.
Side effects are possible from any drugs, so Boccia recommends discussing treatment options with a hematologist.
With these innovative therapies, doctors feel that they may be getting close to a cure.
This story was created from a script aired on WISH-TV. Health Spotlight is presented by Community Health Network. | https://www.wishtv.com/news/medical/health-spotlight-new-drug-therapies-outsmart-cancer-doctor-says/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:29 | 0 | https://www.wishtv.com/news/medical/health-spotlight-new-drug-therapies-outsmart-cancer-doctor-says/ |
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Ballots from Spaniards living abroad were counted Friday, and they gave a new twist to the inconclusive results from the general election.
The conservative Popular Party gained an additional seat from Madrid’s constituency late in the day at the expense of the Socialist Workers’ Party. That change gives the right-wing coalition of the PP and the far-right Vox party 172 seats in the lower house of parliament and drops left-wing forces to 171.
Forming a stable governing coalition will require one of the blocks to have the support of 176 lawmakers in the 350-seat body, and it’s not clear that either side will be able to obtain enough backing from smaller parties.
The country’s main political parties had been waiting for the count in the hope they might win seats from opponents and recompose the final picture. Results coming in from different constituencies during the day showed no changes across Spain — until Madrid added the last-gasp surprise.
The switch likely will make it even tougher to cobble together a government.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is considered the only leader with a chance to form a coalition, since the Popular Party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo is being shunned by other parties for allying with Vox.
But Sánchez does not have it easy. He needs help from secessionist parties in the Basque Country and Catalonia, and it could be politically risky to bid for support from the Catalan party Junts, which is headed by Carles Puigdemont, a leader of 2017’s failed secession bid in Catalonia.
His party has seven seats, but its goal of forcing Spain to allow a secession referendum is Catalonia is highly unpopular, including in Sánchez’s party.
The new parliament is to convene Aug. 17 and it will have three months to vote in a new prime minister. Otherwise, new elections would be called. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-count-of-ballots-from-spaniards-abroad-gives-edge-to-right-wing-block-and-deepens-the-stalemate/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:32 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-count-of-ballots-from-spaniards-abroad-gives-edge-to-right-wing-block-and-deepens-the-stalemate/ |
Astroworld tragedy report: Houston police release 1,266-page document, say investigation is complete
HOUSTON - The Houston Police Department has released their 1,266-page report into the Astroworld tragedy that resulted in the deaths of 10 people in 2021.
In a statement Friday, HPD said their investigation into the deadly incident on Nov. 5, 2021, is complete.
SUGGESTED: Grand jury declines criminal charges for Travis Scott in Astroworld tragedy
"Following the conclusion of grand jury proceedings regarding the Travis Scott Astroworld Concert, the Houston Police Department pledged to publicly release the investigative report detailing HPD’s investigation into the incident," HPD stated.
HOUSTON, TEXAS - NOVEMBER 05: Travis Scott performs during 2021 Astroworld Festival at NRG Park on November 05, 2021 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Erika Goldring/WireImage)
The document includes interviews with witnesses, answers to questionnaires, and investigators’ notes. Police say some information – like dates of birth, social security numbers and addresses – have been redacted in accordance with applicable law and privacy concerns.
"We continue to pray for the victims and families affected by the Astroworld tragedy," HPD said in the statement.
*Click here to read the full report.
Last month, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said that a grand jury had issued six no-bills in the case, meaning no criminal charges would be filed in the incident. The grand jury declined to indict six people, including Travis Scott. | https://www.fox29.com/news/astroworld-tragedy-report-houston-police-release-1266-page-document-say-investigation-is-complete | 2023-07-29T00:38:33 | 0 | https://www.fox29.com/news/astroworld-tragedy-report-houston-police-release-1266-page-document-say-investigation-is-complete |
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska tight ends coach Bob Wager resigned Friday after being cited for suspicion of drunken driving.
“Earlier this week I received a citation for a driving offense that I regret immensely,” Wager said in a statement released by the university. “I am grateful for the opportunity extended to me, and sincerely sorry for any negativity my poor decision has brought to my family, our team, our staff, and all those that I have disappointed.”
First-year coach Matt Rhule elevated Josh Martin from special teams analyst to full-time tight ends coach. Martin previously coached tight ends at SMU and Arizona State.
The 53-year-old Wager arrived at Nebraska after being a Texas high school coach for 26 years. He was coach at Arlington Martin High for 17 years and led the school to the state playoffs each of his 17 seasons.
___
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/ap_top25 Sign up for the AP Top 25 newsletter here: https://link.apnews.com/join/6nr/morning-wire-newsletter-footer-internal-ads | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/2023/07/28/nebraska-huskers-bob-wager-resigns/49da71be-2da2-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:34 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/2023/07/28/nebraska-huskers-bob-wager-resigns/49da71be-2da2-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
LOS ANGELES -- K-pop boy band sensation, TOMORROW X TOGETHER (TXT) took the world by storm in 2022 with their first world tour and as the headlining act at Lollapalooza. All their hard work on the road and how they got there is showcased in their new documentary, "TOMORROW X TOGETHER: Our Lost Summer."
The band talked to On The Red Carpet about their fans, or as they're called, MOAs, an acronym short for "Moments of Alwaysness" and how much their support drives them.
Member Taehyun said, "I think all of us will say in unison that MOAs are our driver for growth and the reason why we go forward, and I think the documentary was very important in that aspect, because during the pandemic, we didn't get a lot of chances to meet with our fans in person."
With one Lollapalooza headlining performance under their belt, member Beomgyu noted that for future performances, "If it's a really big stage like Lollapalooza, you never get used to it. You're always nervous going up on stage, but because we've been there once, I hope that I am more excited than nervous."
TXT traveled through eight cities, including Seoul, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But the band didn't play favorites when it came to their favorite stop.
"I think all the cities have their own personalities and their own vibes," Hueningkai said. "Food for sure. We deliver a lot of different food and we also try to go to some of the hottest restaurants there."
Most recently, TXT collaborated with pop band, the Jonas Brothers, recently releasing the hit "Do It Like That."
"I was just starstruck," said Taehyun.
"They worked really hard together with us. For example, they would find TikTok references and ask us if we should do this. And they really worked hard on the music video as well. They were being very nice and gentle with us, so I was very happy to have the chance to work with them," said Soobin.
"TOMORROW X TOGETHER: Our Lost Summer" is streaming now on Disney+.
The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of Disney+ and this ABC station. | https://abc30.com/tomorrow-x-together-k-pop-documentary-boy-band/13565444/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:34 | 1 | https://abc30.com/tomorrow-x-together-k-pop-documentary-boy-band/13565444/ |
Driver in deadly Tempe Uber crash pleads guilty to endangerment
TEMPE, Ariz. - The backup Uber driver for a self-driving vehicle that killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in 2018 pleaded guilty Friday to endangerment in the first fatal collision involving a fully autonomous car.
The crash happened in Tempe back in March 2018. Elaine Herzberg was struck and killed as she walked a bicycle outside the lines of a crosswalk.
Court records show Vasquez told investigators the victim came out of nowhere, and she didn't see Herzberg before the crash.
She had been charged with negligent homicide, but reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. The judge who accepted the plea sentenced Vasquez, 49, to three years of supervised probation.
Prosecutors say Vasquez was streaming a TV show on her phone, and video shows her looking down just before the collision.
Vasquez’s attorneys said their client was looking at a messaging activity used by Uber employees on a work cellphone that sat on her right knee. "The Voice" was playing on Vasquez’s personal cellphone, which was sitting on the passenger seat, they said.
Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against Uber in Herzberg’s death after the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the main cause of the crash was Vasquez’s failure to monitor the road.
The crash in Arizona wasn’t the first involving an Uber autonomous test vehicle. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe. No serious injuries were reported, and the driver of the other car was cited for a violation. Herzberg’s trial will be held in Phoenix.
Herzberg’s death was the first involving an autonomous test vehicle but not the first in a car with some self-driving features. The driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in 2016 when his car, operating on its autopilot system, crashed into a tractor-trailer in Florida.
In Herzberg’s death, the contributing factors cited by the NTSB board included Uber’s inadequate safety procedures and ineffective oversight of its drivers, Herzberg’s decision to cross the street outside of a crosswalk and the Arizona Department of Transportation’s insufficient oversight of autonomous vehicle testing.
The board also concluded Uber’s deactivation of its automatic emergency braking system increased the risks associated with testing automated vehicles on public roads. Instead of the system, Uber relied on the human backup driver to intervene.
The Uber system detected Herzberg 5.6 seconds before the crash. But it failed to determine whether she was a bicyclist, pedestrian or unknown object, or that she was headed into the vehicle’s path, the board said.
The backup driver was there to take over the vehicle if systems failed.
The death reverberated throughout the auto industry and Silicon Valley and forced other companies to slow what had been a fast march toward autonomous ride-hailing services. Uber pulled its self-driving cars out of Arizona, and then-Gov. Doug Ducey prohibited the company from continuing its tests of self-driving cars.
Vasquez had previously spent more than four years in prison for two felony convictions — making false statements when obtaining unemployment benefits and attempted armed robbery — before starting work as an Uber driver, according to court records.
The Associatd Press contributed to this report. | https://www.fox29.com/news/driver-in-deadly-tempe-uber-crash-in-court-settlement-possible | 2023-07-29T00:38:35 | 1 | https://www.fox29.com/news/driver-in-deadly-tempe-uber-crash-in-court-settlement-possible |
Weather Alert: Severe storms roll into Delaware Valley ahead of hot, stormy Saturday
PHILADELPHIA - The Delaware Valley is experiencing extreme heat as a heatwave envelopes the area into Saturday.
The National Weather Service issued several heat advisories and warnings for the Delaware Valley through Saturday evening as dangerous heat sits over the region.
For Friday night, there is a chance for an isolated pop-up thunderstorm to develop, but the region should expect the heat to continue, with temps dropping into the upper 70s as Saturday morning approaches. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning has been issued for New Castle County, Salem County and Chester and Delaware counties until 8:45 p.m. The main threat from these storms is damaging wind gusts up to 60 mph and penny-sized hail.
>> Shade Stations offering vulnerable Philadelphia communities relief from extreme heat
The City of Philadelphia has issued a Heat Health Emergency in effect until Saturday at 8 p.m. This activates the city's emergency heat programs, which include cooling centers, home visits by field teams and enhanced daytime outreach for those in homeless situations.
>> Philadelphia declares citywide heat emergency as residents struggle to stay cool
The PCA Heatline will be open between 8:30 a.m. and midnight both Friday and Saturday for anyone experiencing issues. The number is 215-765-9040.
Tips to beat the heat
- Slow down
- If using a fan for relief, open the windows
- Stay in air conditioning when possible
- Wear lightweight clothing
- Close curtains and blinds
- Drink plenty of water
- Take care of the elderly, small children and pets
>> Get the FOX 29 Weather Authority App for weather alerts in your area
Looking ahead, temperatures Saturday should top out in the mid-90s before a cold front approaches, bringing storms that could dump heavy rain, leading to flash flooding, damaging winds and some storms could contain hail.
On the back end of that front, temperatures across the region will cool off, seeing highs Sunday in the low to mid 80s. Monday and Tuesday should also be pleasant.
_____
SEVEN-DAY FORECAST
FRIDAY NIGHT: Isolated storms. Low: 74
SATURDAY: Hot, scattered storms. High: 92, Low: 72
SUNDAY: Less humid. High: 84, Low: 67
MONDAY: Stays nice. High: 83, Low: 66
TUESDAY: Nice start to August. High: 83, Low: 64
WEDNESDAY: Sunny, pleasant. High: 83, Low: 66
THURSDAY: Partly sunny. High: 84, Low: 72 | https://www.fox29.com/weather/weather-alert-extreme-heat-remains-ahead-of-stormy-saturday | 2023-07-29T00:38:38 | 1 | https://www.fox29.com/weather/weather-alert-extreme-heat-remains-ahead-of-stormy-saturday |
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A federal trial for the man who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue approached its conclusion Friday as the defense, trying to persuade a jury to spare his life, pressed its case that mental illness spurred the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack.
Robert Bowers, a 50 year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, was convicted in June on 63 criminal counts for the 2018 massacre at Tree of Life synagogue. The jury has been hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the trial and will decide whether Bowers will receive the death penalty or life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors have presented evidence that Bowers was motivated by his hatred of Jewish people when he opened fire at the synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, killing members of three congregations gathered for Sabbath worship and study. The defense argues Bowers has schizophrenia and acted out of a delusional belief that Jews were participating in a genocide of white people.
On Friday, a defense psychiatrist who met with Bowers 10 times for nearly 40 hours said Bowers saw himself as a soldier of God in a war in which Satan was trying to use Jewish people to bring about the end of the world. Dr. George Corvin, of Raleigh, N.C., said it was a delusion brought on by psychosis.
Corvin said Bowers continues to express delusional beliefs about Jews — “disgustingly so” — and that he is incapable of remorse. He said Bowers should be on anti-psychotic medication.
Bowers “has a belief that we’re at the end of a war that’s been going on for thousands of years,” Corvin testified. “He still envisions what he did as an unfortunate act of violence at the direction of God — that it will save lives. He believes he’s a tool for God. I know it sounds absurd. It’s psychotic.”
Corvin continued: “This is the result of a mental illness.”
Corvin was one of several defense experts who diagnosed Bowers with schizophrenia, a serious brain disorder whose symptoms include delusions and hallucinations. A neurologist testifying for the prosecution disputed that Bowers has schizophrenia, saying Bowers has a personality disorder but is not delusional, and that mental illness did not appear to play a role in the attack. Prosecutors have noted Bowers spent six months planning the shooting.
Also testifying Friday were Bowers’ aunt and uncle.
The uncle, Clyde Munger, said he visited with Bowers in prison because “he is my nephew and I love him.” He said he prays for Bowers every morning.
The aunt, Patricia Fine, was expected to the final defense witness. She said Bowers had a difficult childhood from infancy, describing the house where he lived as unsafe. She said he was a sad child and that she “was convinced” he would take his own life. A defense expert previously described Bowers’ early life as deeply unstable and said he attempted suicide several times in his teens.
Fine’s testimony was scheduled to resume Monday, with closing arguments and jury deliberations expected to follow. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-defense-presses-case-that-mental-illness-spurred-pittsburgh-synagogue-massacre/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:39 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-defense-presses-case-that-mental-illness-spurred-pittsburgh-synagogue-massacre/ |
MERCED, Calif. (KFSN) -- The summer heat can impact some people more than others.
In the Central Valley, triple-digit temperatures aren't a huge surprise.
Some get acclimated to the heat, but according to Dr. Sandie Ha, it doesn't make it less dangerous.
"Our human body is 97-98 degrees, right? Anything above that is at a range where it's creating stress for the human body," she said.
Ha is an assistant professor at UC Merced, and she teaches public health and epidemiology. Her research focuses on understanding environmental risk factors for perinatal health.
Ha took a look at 70 studies, and in her recent review, she found preterm births increase by 16% during a heatwave. She also found that the risk for a stillbirth is 46% higher in dangerous heat.
"We know pregnant people are very vulnerable to environmental threat because of the physiologic changes that they're going through just because of pregnancy itself," she said.
The heat causes inflammation, decreasing blood and nutrient flow to the fetus.
Ha's review also states that the risk for preterm or stillbirth increases by 5% with just a one-degree temperature increase.
"I think it's a range where we need to be concerned about and take action," said Ha.
While it can be a challenge to avoid the outdoor heat in the Valley, Ha encourages pregnant people to stay indoors, hydrate and avoid strenuous activity.
Overall, Ha hopes the environmental threat of heat gets addressed.
"Trying to address it from the root," Ha said. "Hopefully, we can do something to reverse this. Every year it gets worse."
For news updates, follow Amanda Aguilar on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. | https://abc30.com/uc-merced-new-review-health-study-pregnancy-complications/13564066/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:40 | 0 | https://abc30.com/uc-merced-new-review-health-study-pregnancy-complications/13564066/ |
TORONTO — Left-hander Hyun Jin Ryu is set to return to the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday against Baltimore, manager John Schneider said Friday.
Ryu was an All-Star with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2019, when he led the major leagues with a 2.32 ERA. He’s 75-45 with a 3.27 ERA in 175 games over nine seasons since moving from the Korean League in 2013.
After six seasons with the Dodgers, Ryu signed a four-year, $80-million contract with Toronto in December 2019. He went 5-2 with a 2.69 ERA in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, finishing third in AL Cy Young voting.
___ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/2023/07/28/hyun-jin-ryu-blue-jays/63fe0784-2d9f-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:40 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/2023/07/28/hyun-jin-ryu-blue-jays/63fe0784-2d9f-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A Fresno family is calling for justice for 18-year-old Zoe Salinas.
Police say she was shot to death by her 19-year-old boyfriend, Jose Contreras.
On Friday, Zoe's loved ones honored her in court as they faced her accused killer but they left the hearing disappointed.
Contreras has yet to enter a plea for the shooting death of his girlfriend Zoe Salinas.
Police say Contreras killed her May 30th at Tyler and Bond - then ran into a Central Fresno neighborhood, but was later arrested.
His arraignment on Friday inside a Fresno County courtroom was continued.
Salinas was killed a week before she was supposed to graduate from Duncan Polytechnical High School.
Her big sister and best friend, Savannah Badillo, accepted Zoe's diploma.
She says family members, who wore blue ribbons to honor Zoe in court, were disappointed by the delay.
"They're just kind of trying to stall just to show he wasn't in the wrong but he was. He had no mercy for my sister. He didn't show any empathy or anything. My little sister would have done anything for him and she showed that to us every day," said Badillo.
Badillo says Zoe enjoyed taking family trips.
Her last one was to Cabo San Lucas.
Loved ones are struggling to understand why she was killed because Badillo says they all treated Contreras like family..
"I mean, she would stop talking to us when we made a joke towards him when he didn't like it or she didn't like it. My sister loved him. I don't even know why he would take my sister from me," Badillo explained.
Contreras faces one count of homicide with a gun enhancement.
Bail has been set at $1.5 million.
The defense attorney will ask for a bail reduction during the August 9th arraignment.
If convicted on all charges, Jose Contreras faces 50 years to life in prison.
For news updates, follow Dale Yurong on Facebook and Twitter. | https://abc30.com/zoe-salinas-teen-killed-boyfriend-arrested-arraignment-continued/13565342/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:46 | 0 | https://abc30.com/zoe-salinas-teen-killed-boyfriend-arrested-arraignment-continued/13565342/ |
TORONTO — Shohei Ohtani homered on the first pitch he faced in Friday night’s game between the Los Angeles Angels and Toronto Blue Jays, going deep in three straight at-bats over two games.
Ohtani streak of homers ended when he struck out swinging on a 2-2 pitch from Gausman in the third inning.
Ohtani homered twice in the second game of a doubleheader at Detroit on Thursday before leaving with cramps. He threw a one-hitter in the opener for his first career MLB shutout.
The two-way superstar became the first player to throw a shutout in one game of a doubleheader and hit one homer — much less two — in the other.
Thursday’s performance against the Tigers came hours after the team confirmed Ohtani will stay with the Angels for the rest of the season before he becomes a free agent.
___ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/2023/07/28/shohei-ohtani-angels-mlb/1fcff41e-2da4-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:46 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/2023/07/28/shohei-ohtani-angels-mlb/1fcff41e-2da4-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
PHOENIX (AP) — Homeless in America’s hottest big metro, Stefon James Dewitt Livengood was laid out for days inside his makeshift dwelling, struggling to breath, nauseous and vomiting.
Every day this month, temperatures have soared past 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius).
Livengood said he stopped briefly at a free clinic that took his blood pressure and declared it acceptable. But he received no other medical help for his apparent heat exhaustion, or for the peeling skin on his arms he believes was caused by sun exposure. He is careful when he walks through the sprawling tent city, cognizant that if he falls, the simmering black asphalt could seriously burn his skin.
“If you’re going outside, let somebody know where you’re going so you can be tracked so you don’t pass out out there,” he said. “If you fall out in the heat, you don’t want a third degree burn from the ground.”
The 38-year-old sleeps in a structure cobbled together with a frame of scavenged wood and metal covered by blue vinyl tarp. The space inside is large enough to stand up and walk around in and features an old recliner and a bicycle Livengood uses less now that he spends more time inside with the sides of his dwelling open.
“Some of the friends that I’ve made down here, they come check on me if they don’t see me moving around,” he said.
Homeless people are among those most likely to die in the extreme heat in metro Phoenix. The city is seeing its longest run of consecutive days of 110 Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) ever recorded, clocking 28 in a row as of Thursday, even as the first monsoon storm of the season brought some overnight relief.
“It has been a scary situation this year and it’s especially scary for our homeless population,” said Dr. Geoff Comp, an emergency room physician for Valleywise Health in central Phoenix. “They have a more constant exposure to the heat than most of us.”
People living outside are also vulnerable to surface burns from contact with hot metal, concrete or asphalt.
Surgeons at the Arizona Burn Center–Valleywise Health recently warned about burns caused by walking, sitting or falling on outside surfaces reaching up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82.2 degrees Celsius). The burn center last year saw 85 people admitted with heat-related surface burns for the months of June through August. Seven died.
Record high overnight temperatures persisted above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius) for 16 days straight after finally slipping to 89 Fahrenheit (31.6 Celsius) on Thursday after a storm Wednesday evening kicked up dust, high winds and a bit of rainfall.
If temperatures don’t drop sufficiently after the sun sets, it’s hard for people’s bodies to cool down, health professionals say, especially those who live in flimsy structures without air conditioning or fans.
“People really need a lot of water and a cooling system to recover overnight,” Comp said.
There is no air conditioner, fan or even electricity in Livengood’s home, just a little, flat piece of plastic he uses as a hand fan.
Unhoused people accounted for about 40% of the 425 heat-associated deaths tallied last year in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, during its hottest summer on record. More than half of the 425 deaths occurred in July and 80% occurred outdoors.
Maricopa County reported Wednesday that as of July 22, there were 25 heat-associated deaths confirmed this year going back to April 11. Another 249 deaths remain under investigation.
Livengood’s shack stands among some 800 people living in tents and other makeshift dwellings outside Arizona’s largest temporary shelter. The tents stand close together on concrete sidewalks, and seem to increase the stifling heat from the encampment called “The Zone.”
But the location is convenient. Nearby agencies provide social services, food and life-saving water, including the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA and St. Mary’s Food Bank.
Livengood can get breakfast and lunch with faith-based groups in the area before taking a nap in his recliner.
On some hot days, the local transportation agency Valley Metro send over a couple of empty buses so people can sit for hours in the air conditioning. On other days, Livengood and a few friends walk to a nearby city park and sit in the grass under shade trees outside a public swimming pool.
“It’s a definite part of what keeps everybody safe down here in the ‘The Zone,’” Livengood said, ticking off the things people distribute: hygiene items, sunscreen, lip balm, hats and cooling rags. “A lot of love is given out here.”
Livengood tells of a childhood of trauma and neglect. Born in Phoenix and originally named Jesse James Acosta Jr., Livengood spent much of his early years in public housing in a low-income, largely African American neighborhood of south Phoenix. Both of his parents spent time in prison. His mother struggled with addiction, giving birth to a daughter behind bars, and later slipped into homelessness.
“My childhood has been filled with a lot of memories of being bounced around, never really having anything stable,” Livengood said.
Livengood was adopted at age 12 by a woman named Denise who legally changed his name to the current one. He and the rest of his adoptive family moved to Alaska, where his adoptive mother died in a traffic accident.
Livengood struggled in school and met the mother of his son. He later left behind the woman and their child to return to Phoenix, a decision he regrets.
Back in the desert, Livengood said he is well aware of the dangers from extreme heat from the pamphlets volunteers pass out with bottles of icy water.
“Yeah, it gets really hot out here, guys,” he said. “Stay hydrated, drink plenty of water even when you think you’ve had a lot of water. And drink more.”
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-homeless-struggle-to-stay-safe-from-record-high-temperatures-in-blistering-phoenix/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:46 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-homeless-struggle-to-stay-safe-from-record-high-temperatures-in-blistering-phoenix/ |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department needs your help solving a series of thefts at a truck dealership near Sugar Creek Park.
Three freightliner trucks were driven off the Excel Truck Group lot off I-85.
The surveillance video shows three suspects driving up to the dealership around 4:30 a.m. on June 10. One of them crawls under the metal gate that blocks the parking lot and uses a metal cutter to pry open the entrance. He then drives off with a $200,000 rig.
The next morning, three suspects appear again around 5:30 and drive off with two more vehicles, each worth the same amount of money as the first truck.
Excel Truck Group said they’re still investigating how the thieves made off with the trucks; they’re unsure if the rigs were hotwired or the keys were left inside. They told Queen City News the trucks were new to the dealership.
CMPD CrimeStoppers Detective Rick Smith says it’s clear from the video that the suspects knew how to drive a truck.
“We see that these guys are successful in backing these rigs out with little to no effort here, so we’re thinking they have some type of experience driving these rigs,” he said. “We just ask if you have any insight into these lost vehicles, that you give us a call.”
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CrimeStoppers is offering up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest. Tips can be made anonymously by calling (704) 334-1600, submitting a tip online via this link, or through the P3 Tips app. | https://www.qcnews.com/crime-and-public-safety/caught-on-camera-3-freightliner-trucks-stolen-from-charlotte-dealership/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:49 | 0 | https://www.qcnews.com/crime-and-public-safety/caught-on-camera-3-freightliner-trucks-stolen-from-charlotte-dealership/ |
SAN DIEGO — The AL West-leading Texas Rangers placed All-Star catcher Jonah Heim on the 10-day injured list Friday with a strained tendon in his left wrist.
Heim has started 80 of 103 games this season. The switch-hitter leads big league catchers in RBIs (66), hits (89), doubles (23), and runs (tied, 47). His .413 average with runners in scoring position is third-highest among qualifiers.
Mitch Garver started at catcher in the opener of a three-game series against the San Diego Padres.
The Rangers also recalled outfielder Bubba Thompson from Triple-A Round Rock, optioned right-hander Owen White to Round Rock and activated right-hander Josh Sborz from the 15-day injured list.
Sborz went 4-4 with a 4.54 ERA in 29 relief appearances before being placed on the 15-day IL on July 15 with right biceps tendinitis.
___ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/2023/07/28/texas-rangers-jonah-heim-injured-wrist/3b92ab74-2da4-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:53 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/2023/07/28/texas-rangers-jonah-heim-injured-wrist/3b92ab74-2da4-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
ROLLING FORK, Miss. (AP) — Many were not just killed at home. They were killed by their homes.
Angela Eason had visited Brenda Odoms’ tidy mobile home before. It was a place where Odoms, who had many tragedies in her life, felt safe.
In March, a tornado ripped through this small Mississippi town and people in mobile or manufactured homes were hit the hardest. Inside a mobile morgue, Eason, the county coroner, examined Odoms’ gaping fatal head wound. Odoms was found just outside of her collapsed mobile home that was tossed around by a tornado. Blunt force trauma killed her.
“The one place she felt safe she was not,” Eason said. Fourteen people died in that Rolling Fork tornado, nine of them, including Odoms, were in uprooted manufactured or mobile homes.
Tornadoes in the United States are disproportionately killing more people in mobile or manufactured homes, especially in the South, often victimizing some of the most socially and economically vulnerable residents. Since 1996, tornadoes have killed 815 people in mobile or manufactured homes, representing 53% of all the people killed at home during a tornado, according to an Associated Press data analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tornado deaths. Meanwhile, less than 6% of America’s housing units are manufactured homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While the dangers of tornadoes to mobile homes have long been known, and there are ways to mitigate the risk, the percentage of total tornado deaths that happen in mobile homes has been increasing. Part of the problem is that federal housing rules that call for tougher manufactured home standards, including anchoring, only apply in hurricane zones, which is most of Florida and then several counties along the coast. Those are not the areas where tornadoes usually hit.
Auburn University engineering professor David Roueche called manufactured homes in non-coastal places “death traps compared to most permanent homes” when it comes to tornadoes.
A DEADLY YEAR
The first tornado deaths this year were in Alabama in January, killing seven people, all in mobile homes. All but one were thrown at least 1,000 feet from their homes, with the seventh person thrown at least 500 feet, said Ernie Baggett, the former emergency management chief for Autauga County, Alabama. Less than 100 yards from where four of those people died was a permanent home that had little more than shingle damage, he said.
When the wind hits the mobile homes, “it’s like a house of cards. They just crumble,” Baggett said.
So far this year, at least 45 of the 74 people killed in the U.S. by tornadoes were in some form of manufactured housing when they died, according to NOAA data. Nine others died in site homes and the rest were killed in other places, such as in vehicles.
The manufactured housing industry — which disputes that there’s any disproportionate danger — insists on calling the structures manufactured homes if they are built after hurricane-based federal standards in 1976 and mobile homes if they are built before, saying age of the home matters. Federal housing officials use the term manufactured housing. Other people, including many researchers and residents, use the terms interchangeably.
More than 70% of the 8 million manufactured homes in America were built after 1976. Because a big chunk were built in the 1980s and early 1990s, 60% of all those homes were installed before increased federal standards were adopted in 1994, the industry’s trade group, Manufactured Housing Institute said.
TORNADOES DON’T HAVE TO BE DEADLY
Tornado experts say most tornadoes should be survivable.
“You just have to be in some structure that’s attached to the ground. And then no matter what the tornado throws at you, you have really good odds,” said NOAA social scientist Kim Klockow-McClain.
But in manufactured homes, even the weakest tornadoes are killing people in large numbers when they shouldn’t be, more than a dozen experts in meteorology, disasters and engineering told The AP.
More than 240 people in mobile homes in the past 28 years have died in tornadoes with winds of 135 mph or less, the three weakest of the six categories of twisters, the AP analysis found. That’s 79% of the deaths at home in the weaker tornadoes. It’s only in storms with winds higher than 165 mph where most of the at home deaths are in more permanent structures.
Auburn’s Roueche not only studies what happens in mobile homes during tornadoes, he grew up in one. What he sees over and over are mobile homes that fail from the bottom up because they are not secured enough to the ground, like permanent homes are.
WHAT HAPPENS IN A TORNADO
“The whole structure is rolling or flying through air. You’ve got dressers falling on top of you. You’ve got the entire structure that’s trying to crush you,” said Roueche.
That March evening in Rolling Fork, when the tornado roared through Ida Cartlidge remembered the air blowing so powerfully that she couldn’t breathe, the sounds of windows shattering and then utter mayhem.
“The only thing that’s holding a mobile home down are the little straps in the ground,” Cartlidge said. “It picked up the home one time, set it down. It picked it up again, set it down. It picked it up a third time, and we were in the air.”
The tornado hit Mildred Joyner’s mobile home so hard she felt the mobile home shake, heard the cracking sound of what she figured was her home coming apart and then she woke up in the hospital and her mother who was in the mobile home with her ended up paralyzed from the waist down.
The problem is worsening in the South because tornadoes have been moving more from the Great Plains to the mid-South in recent decades and will likely to continue to do so with climate change a possible factor, studies show. Alabama has the most tornado deaths by far.
Unlike the rest of the country, which usually has most manufactured housing in parks, the South has mobile homes scattered about the countryside in ones and twos, making central tornado shelters less effective and likely to be built, said Villanova University tornado expert Stephen Strader and Northern Illinois meteorology professor Walker Ashley.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ANCHORING
One thing scientists, emergency managers and the manufactured housing industry agree on is that anchoring mobile homes to the ground is key.
That requires expensive concrete or expensive tie down systems, said former Alabama emergency official Jonathan Gaddy, now a professor at Idaho State University.
“Why does that matter? Well, it explains why we haven’t fixed the problem with anchoring because nobody can fix the problem and still make money. That’s the bottom line,” Gaddy said.
“Anchoring matters and has been shown to be the difference between life or death,” Villanova’s Strader said in an email. “However, the MH industry seems disinterested in addressing this because it would make their homes more expensive.”
Manufactured Home Institute Chief Executive Officer Lesli Gooch said the industry is “very clear” about the importance of anchoring. “We also talk about making sure that a professional checks your anchoring systems on your manufactured home, especially on mobile homes built prior to (19)76,” she said.
“We’re very focused on making sure that there are minimum installation standards in the states,” Gooch said.
Northern Illinois’ Ashley said lack of state regulations and inspections, especially in much of the South, is a big problem.
Improvements in federal codes that went into effect in 1976, 1994 and 2008 make a big difference, Gooch said, arguing that the NOAA data the AP analyzed and that scientists use lump different ages of manufactured homes together and tar them with the problems of the oldest ones.
“I wouldn’t want your readers to misinterpret your data to suggest that living in a manufactured home is somehow more deadly than living in a site-built home because I would tell you that I don’t think that the data bears that out,” Gooch said.
Gooch pointed to manufactured homes in Florida, where tighter federal Housing and Urban Development safety rules apply because it is a hurricane wind zone. “Homes in Florida that are manufactured homes are performing better than what you see in the site-built world,” she said.
IT’S NOT GETTING BETTER
Several scientists and engineers said data, and history, show the situation has not improved.
“This is more of the handwaving- and misdirection-type statements that has come to represent the manufactured housing industry’s take on tornado and manufactured home safety,” Villanova’s Strader said in an email, with Northern Illinois’ Ashley agreeing.
“Our study of the Lee County Alabama EF4 tornado found that 19 of the 23 deaths were in manufactured homes (all built after 1994),” Strader said. “All of those deaths were due to a lack of anchoring or a floor-to-wall connection. There have been many prior studies that have illustrated that these homes are failing at lower wind loads than permanent homes.”
If Gooch were right, the percentage of tornado deaths in mobile homes would be going down with time and they are not, NOAA National Severe Storms Lab tornado scientist Harold Brooks said, presenting data that goes back to 1975. His data showed mobile home deaths between 1975 and 1984 were 43.6% of all at-home tornado deaths and the same figure was 63.2% for the past ten years through the end of May.
A contributing factor, Strader, Ashley and Roueche said, is that federal rules for anchoring only apply in hurricane zones, mostly in Florida. Those are not the areas where tornadoes usually hit. Instead, they hit inland where the weakest federal standards are, they said. Most of tornado-prone areas, including almost all of Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Mississippi are in “Zone 1,” where safety and anchoring of mobile homes have the most lax standards.
“People are dying in new and old Zone 1 manufactured homes,” Roueche said in response to Gooch’s comments. Tornado homes throughout the country would be much safer if the coastal federal requirements applied everywhere, he said.
HURTING POOR PEOPLE MORE
One of the issues with mobile homes and tornadoes is that it is an intersection of risk and “different social vulnerability factors like poverty, even some issues pertaining to race, ethnicity, age,” NOAA’s Klockow said.
And it makes it harder for people to leave their mobile homes and head for a permanent shelter.
“I always think about the single mother who’s living in a manufactured home. It’s the middle of the night. She has three kids. Her car’s not starting correctly and all of a sudden here comes a tornado,” Strader said in an interview.
Officials tell her “to get to a storm shelter because our manufactured home isn’t safe,” Strader said. “Well, the problem there is that there’s all these factors up against them.”
Tornadoes pop down rapidly, which doesn’t allow meteorologists to give much warning, maybe 10 to 15 minutes. In many cases, the National Weather Service warns days in advance that the conditions are ripe for tornadoes, but that isn’t the same as warning that one has touched down.
University of Oklahoma social scientist Justin Sharpe, who studies disaster warnings, said with poor and disabled residents the key is to avoid warnings that simply say “get out now” and nothing else.
Instead, a couple hours before a tornado is possible, meteorologists should warn people to be packed up and ready to go at a moment’s notice later, Sharpe and Klockow-McClain said.
FINDING SAFER PLACES
A relatively new law in Alabama could help provide more shelters and be a model for other states. The law gives liability protection to buildings like churches and stores that open up in an emergency as a shelter if specifically-built shelters aren’t available.
When this year’s first deadly tornado struck just outside Montgomery, Alabama, Autauga County had about 30 minutes warning but no “safer places” to send people, the then-emergency chief, Baggett said. Seven people in mobile homes died.
The tornado continued into neighboring Elmore County, which had already set off its 30 warning sirens, used a mass notification system to make 16,772 calls to phones in the danger area and opened up 16 churches and other safer places.
People went into the temporary shelters. Homes were destroyed, but no one died.
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Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert and video journalist Stephen Smith contributed to this report. Borenstein reported from Washington and Fassett from Seattle.
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Follow Seth Borenstein, Camille Fasset and Michael Goldberg on Twitter at @borenbears, @camfassett and @mikergoldberg.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-how-living-in-a-mobile-home-makes-you-more-likely-to-die-in-a-tornado/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:53 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-how-living-in-a-mobile-home-makes-you-more-likely-to-die-in-a-tornado/ |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (CHARLOTTE SPORTS LIVE) — The Charlotte Hornets announced their 2023-24 preseason schedule Friday.
The Hornets, which have had plenty of off-season news, open the four-game slate with a pair of road contests at Miami and Washington before concluding with two games at Spectrum Center against Oklahoma City and Boston.
The team resigned forward Miles Bridges after a suspension, have the No. 2 overall pick in Brandon Miller and a new ownership group. Here is the full schedule with times and TV information:
Oct. 10 – at Miami Heat, 7:30 p.m.; Bally Sports Southeast
Oct. 12 – at Washington Wizards, 7 p.m.; radio only
Oct. 15 – vs. Oklahoma City Thunder, 5 p.m.; Bally Sports Southeast
Oct. 19 – vs. Boston Celtics, 7 p.m.; Bally Sports Southeast
Tickets for the Hornets’ two home preseason games will go on sale at a later date.
Bally Sports Southeast will broadcast three of the Hornets’ preseason contests. The games will be televised on Bally Sports Southeast and streamed live on BallySports.com and the Bally Sports app. All four Hornets preseason games will be broadcast on WFNZ (92.7 FM), the team’s flagship radio station.
The 2023-24 regular-season schedule will be announced at a later date. | https://www.qcnews.com/nba/hornets-announce-preseason-schedule-with-games-against-miami-and-boston/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:55 | 0 | https://www.qcnews.com/nba/hornets-announce-preseason-schedule-with-games-against-miami-and-boston/ |
PITTSFORD, N.Y. — The Buffalo Bills are continuing their offseason trend of stockpiling speedy receivers by signing Andy Isabella on Friday.
He closed last season appearing in two games with the Ravens after being waived by the Arizona Cardinals.
At 5-foot-9, Isabella was selected by Arizona in the second round of the 2019 draft following a senior season at UMass in which he led the nation with 141.5 yards receiving per game and ranked second with 102 catches. The 2015 Ohio high school track champion struggled at the NFL level, combining for 33 catches for 447 yards and three touchdowns in 41 career games.
Isabella now joins a crowded Stefon Diggs-headed receiver room that includes the offseason free-agent additions of speedsters Deonte Harty and Trent Sherfield. He will also be given an opportunity to fill Buffalo’s returner’s job, which is open after Nyheim Hines sustained a season-ending knee injury during a recent jet ski accident.
The Bills are placing a premium on adding speed to an offense that had difficulty stretching opposing defenses in the second half of last season.
Second-year offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey also noted he’s placing an emphasis on improving his unit’s yards-after-catch production. Though the Bills ranked second in the NFL in yards offense last year, they finished 13th in YAC, according to Statmuse.com.
The Bills, who return to practice on Sunday, opened a roster spot for Isabella by releasing receiver Jalen Wayne.
In a separate move on Friday, Buffalo signed cornerback Kyron Brown and designated cornerback Cam Dantzler as waived/injured, without disclosing the nature of his injury. Dantzler had 26 starts in 35 games over the previous three seasons with Minnesota before signing with the Bills last month.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/2023/07/28/isabella-bills-signing-dantzler/3769ec28-2da0-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:38:59 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/2023/07/28/isabella-bills-signing-dantzler/3769ec28-2da0-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
TOKYO (AP) — The Japanese government stepped up its alarm over Chinese assertiveness, warning in a report issued Friday that the country faces its worst security threats since World War II as it plans to implement a new strategy that calls for a major military buildup.
The 2023 defense white paper, approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet, is the first since the government adopted a controversial new National Security Strategy in December, seen as a break from Japan’s postwar policy limiting the use of force to self-defense.
China, Russia and North Korea contribute to “the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II,” according to the 510-page report. It says China’s external stance and military activities have become a “serious concern for Japan and the international community and present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge.”
On Thursday, Russian and Chinese delegates joined North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in North Korea’s capital for a military parade that showed off the country’s latest drones and long-range nuclear-capable missiles.
Russia and China have also stepped up strategic ties, the white paper said, noting five joint bomber flights since 2019, and several joint navigations of Chinese and Russian warships that it said were “clearly intended for demonstration of force against Japan and of grave concern” to both Japan and the region.
The report predicted that China will possess 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035 and increase its military superiority over Taiwan, in what Japan views as a security threat, especially to its southwestern islands including Okinawa.
While Okinawan Gov. Denny Tamaki has called for U.S. bases there to be reduced and for greater efforts in diplomacy and dialogue with Beijing, the central government has been reinforcing the defenses of the remote southwestern islands, including Ishigaki and Yonaguni, where new bases for missile defense have been installed.
Many residents of Okinawa have bitter memories of the Battle of Okinawa, in which Japan’s wartime military essentially sacrificed the local population in an attempt to delay a U.S. landing on the main Japanese islands. Many Okinawans worry they would be the first to suffer in the event of a Taiwan emergency.
Earlier this week, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno visited Ishigaki and acknowledged the challenges of evacuating residents from remote islands, and pledged to give firm support. Ishigaki Mayor Yoshitaka Nakayama asked for airport and port facilities to be reinforced and for underground shelters to be built as preparation for a possible Taiwan emergency.
China claims self-governing Taiwan as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who in 2017 set a goal of building a “world-class military” by the mid-21st century, may move the target forward, the report said, noting his call for a rapid advancement of the People’s Liberation Army in his speech at the Communist Party congress in October.
North Korea is rapidly progressing in its nuclear and missile development and poses “a graver, more imminent threat to Japan than ever before,” the report said. North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles since the start of 2022, including ICBMs, and the report noted it is now believed to have an ability to conduct nuclear attacks on Japan and the continental United States.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the Japanese defense paper interfered in China’s internal affairs and “deliberately played up the so-called Chinese threat and created tensions in the region.” She said Japan’s own military buildup has drawn concern from its Asian neighbors and the international community, and urged Tokyo to “stop finding excuses for its military expansion.”
She said China’s military policy is defensive, and “military cooperation such as joint patrols with relevant countries is in line with international law and practice.”
South Korea, despite the rapid improvement of its ties with Japan this year due to shared concern over China’s threat, slammed Japan’s claim in the defense report to a South Korean-controlled contested island, calling it “unjust.”
The report comes seven months after Kishida’s government adopted new national security and defense strategies that called for doubling the defense budget to 43 trillion yen ($310 billion) by 2027.
Questions have been raised about whether the ambitious expansion of military capability and funding for it is feasible in a country that has a rapidly aging and shrinking population.
A government-commissioned panel recently adopted a package of recommendations for Japan’s military to maintain troop numbers despite population concerns, including scholarships, extension of the retirement age, hiring retirees, improving the workplace environment and tackling harassment.
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Associated Press writers Joe McDonald in Beijing and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-japan-raises-alarm-over-chinas-military-russia-ties-and-taiwan-tensions-in-new-defense-paper/ | 2023-07-29T00:38:59 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-japan-raises-alarm-over-chinas-military-russia-ties-and-taiwan-tensions-in-new-defense-paper/ |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Grab your black cowboy hats, Queen City — Tim McGraw is coming to town next spring.
The country music star will take the Spectrum Center stage May 17, 2024, as part of the Standing Room Only Tour. The opening act will be singer Carly Pearce.
Tickets will go on sale at 10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 4.
The “Something Like That” singer last performed in Charlotte in May 2022 at the PNC Music Pavilion.
Spectrum Center offered the following tips when purchasing tickets:
- Arrive 10 minutes early
- Sign into your account in advance to speed up your purchase later.
- Check that your payment info is current so you can breeze through checkout.
- Check for important details like ticket limits before the sale. | https://www.qcnews.com/news/country-star-tim-mcgraw-to-perform-in-charlotte-next-spring/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:01 | 1 | https://www.qcnews.com/news/country-star-tim-mcgraw-to-perform-in-charlotte-next-spring/ |
MEXICO CITY — The U.S. government announced Friday it will take referrals of Haitian, Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan citizens from Mexico for possible resettlement as refugees in the United States.
When the U.S. government began requiring asylum seekers to apply on line or from their home countries, many of them had already begun the journey to the U.S. border and wound up up stuck in Mexico. The Mexican center is meant to serve those people.
“We are announcing our full support for an international multipurpose space that the Government of Mexico plans to establish in southern Mexico to offer new refugee and labor options for the most vulnerable people who are currently in Mexico,” said
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States is supporting Mexico’s new center and will “accept refugee resettlement referrals from qualified individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who are already in Mexico.”
He gave no details on how the referrals would work or how many would be accepted.
The U.S. has a new policy to grant parole for two years to up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at an airport. It was not clear whether referrals accepted from Mexico would have to have a financial sponsor.
On Wednesday, Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said in a statement that the new center “would provide refugee services, and at the same employment options, to connect migrants with the big projects being built in the south southeast.”
Mexico is building a tourist train line, a string of industrial parks, an oil refinery and other projects in the area.
Mexico also has been pressing Washington to help finance two Mexican programs that it is seeking to expand to Central America. One pays farmers to plant and care for trees and the other is a system of youth job training and apprenticeships.
Mexico said Wednesday the U.S. has agreed to contribute $40 million to that effort in El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Cuba and Ecuador.
The U.S. government has physically blocked migrants from claiming asylum at land crossings with Mexico unless they have an appointment through the CBP One app. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/28/mexico-migration-center-venezuela-cuba-haiti-nicaragua/4800bd98-2d9e-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:39:05 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/28/mexico-migration-center-venezuela-cuba-haiti-nicaragua/4800bd98-2d9e-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
NEW YORK (AP) — Three men convicted in a post-9/11 terrorism sting have been ordered freed from prison by a judge who deemed their lengthy sentences “unduly harsh and unjust” and decried the FBI’s role in radicalizing them in a plot to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down National Guard planes.
Onta Williams, David Williams and Laguerre Payen — three of the men known as the “Newburgh Four” — were “hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals” caught up more than a decade ago in a scheme driven by overzealous FBI agents and a dodgy informant, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon said in her ruling Thursday.
“The real lead conspirator was the United States,” McMahon wrote in granting the men’s request for compassionate release, effective in three months.
She said that it was “heinous” of the men to agree to participate in what she called the government’s “made for TV movie.” But, the judge added, “the sentence was the product of a fictitious plot to do things that these men had never remotely contemplated, and that were never going to happen.”
She excoriated the government for sending “a villain” of an informant “to troll among the poorest and weakest of men for ‘terrorists’ who might prove susceptible to an offer of much-needed cash in exchange for committing a faux crime.”
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the judge’s decision. A message seeking comment was sent to the FBI.
Citing concerns for the men’s health and her own qualms about the case, McMahon cut the 25-year mandatory minimum sentences she imposed on them in 2011 to time served plus 90 days. She said that would allow time for probation officials to prepare and for Payen’s lawyer to line up supportive housing for the man, who has a severe mental illness.
“We are tremendously pleased that our clients are on their way home — even if it’s fourteen years too late,” said Amith R. Gupta, part of a group of lawyers representing Payen and the Willamses, who are not related. Gupta in his statement described the three as destitute men “entrapped for their race, religion, and working-class backgrounds by a government looking to spread fear of Muslims and justify bloated budgets.”
Kathy Manley, who represented Payen, said the prosecution “should never have happened, but now at least the men will soon be out of prison.” Samuel Braverman, who represented Payen at trial, called the ruling “incredibly brave and just.”
The fourth man, James Cromitie, wasn’t part of the compassionate release request and is expected to complete his prison sentence in 2030.
Cromitie’s attorney, Kerry Lawrence, plans to speak with him about pursuing similar action on his behalf.
“I’m confident he would be entitled to relief for the same reasons articulated by Judge McMahon for the other defendants,” Lawrence said.
Payen, Cromitie and the Williamses were arrested in 2009, during a period of heightened public and law enforcement concern about the threat of terror strikes hatched within the U.S. by supporters of foreign extremists.
Officials portrayed Cromitie as the ringleader of a “chilling plot” among “extremely violent men” loyal to a Pakistani terrorist group — though the government later decided not to present any evidence about foreign terrorist organizations at trial. A court complaint described him as a man seething with anti-American and antisemitic sentiment and eager to translate those feelings into bloody action.
Prosecutors said the defendants had spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought were explosives and a surface-to-air missile, aiming to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York, and blow up synagogues in Riverdale, a heavily Jewish part of the Bronx. They were arrested there after allegedly planting bombs that were, in fact, packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI.
From the start, relatives said the four were men who were down on their luck after doing prison time.
The men’s lawyers soon raised questions about entrapment — a legal defense that argues that people were enticed into illegal conduct they wouldn’t have otherwise committed.
The defense lawyers said federal informant Shaheed Hussain tried to stir up the men with rhetoric and went on to choose the targets, offer hefty payment, buy the defendants groceries, and provide the fake bombs and missile. The defense portrayed Hussain as a self-serving manipulator who was trying to please the government after his own, unrelated fraud conviction.
Jurors deliberated for eight days before convicting the men in 2010. Three years later, they lost an appeal.
A possible phone number for Hussain rang unanswered Thursday night.
Hussain also worked with the FBI on other stings, including one that targeted an Albany pizza shop owner and an imam — and involved a loan using money from a fictitious missile sale. Both men, who said they were tricked, were convicted of money laundering and conspiring to aid a terrorist group.
A few years later, Hussain was in the public eye again when a stretch limo crashed in rural Schoharie, New York, killing 20 people. Hussain owned the limo company, operated by his son Nauman Hussain.
After it emerged that the limo had failed a safety inspection a month before the crash and that the slain driver didn’t have a commercial license, Nauman Hussain was charged with criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter. His lawyer blamed a repair shop for the vehicle’s problems and said his client was being treated like a scapegoat.
Nauman Hussain was convicted this May and is serving five to 15 years in prison. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-judge-orders-release-of-3-of-newburgh-four-and-assails-fbis-role-in-a-post-9-11-terror-sting/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:06 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-judge-orders-release-of-3-of-newburgh-four-and-assails-fbis-role-in-a-post-9-11-terror-sting/ |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — A free summer camp in Charlotte is catching the eyes of state leaders.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office is currently hosting a camp that’s the first of its kind in North Carolina, and Gov. Roy Cooper noticed.
Using internal resources and community partnerships, MCSO was able to host the camp for less than $500 for close to 20 kids. Running July 10 to Aug. 4, it was completely free for campers with transportation included.
Rashad Hall is one of nearly 20 kids at the MCSO ESCAPE camp.
“They teach us new stuff every day,” Hall said. “I learned how to shoot a bow and arrow.”
Archery is one of several activities kids learn over the four weeks.
“Kids should come here because they could grow more and more and they should come here because it’s very fun,” Hall said.
The camp is at the site of the former juvenile detention center that the sheriff closed last year because of staffing shortages.
“It is significant that we are here and that they are not incarcerated, not in custody,” Sheriff Garry McFadden said. “We’ve made it our playhouse. They love coming here.”
Cooper visited ESCAPE camp Friday. He says he supports the sheriff’s goal to expand and hopes other law enforcement agencies follow MCSO’s model.
“As we see violence rising in our community and more guns in our community and with it being harder for people, young people, people in the middle class to get ahead I think it’s important for us to send the signal that we want to help and give everybody an opportunity to live a safe, happy life,” Cooper said.
Campers spend their days with detention officers and deputies who double as counselors. Kids even take field trips creating memories that last a lifetime.
“It’s great to be here and I love everything about this place,” Hall said.
McFadden says he wants to open the camp up to more kids next year and he even dreams of making an after-school program. He has been traveling across the country to help other sheriff’s offices create similar programs. | https://www.qcnews.com/news/sheriffs-office-turns-former-detention-center-into-free-camps-playhouse/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:07 | 1 | https://www.qcnews.com/news/sheriffs-office-turns-former-detention-center-into-free-camps-playhouse/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Samuel Alito says Congress lacks the power to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court, making him the first member of the court to take a public stand against proposals in Congress to toughen ethics rules for justices in response to increased scrutiny of their activities beyond the bench.
“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period,” Alito said in an interview he gave to the Wall Street Journal opinion pages. An account of the interview, which the paper said took place in New York in early July, was published Friday.
Democrats last week pushed Supreme Court ethics legislation through a Senate committee, though the bill’s prospects in the full Senate are dim.
All federal judges other than the justices already adhere to an ethics code that was developed by the federal judiciary. But the Supreme Court’s unique status — it’s the only federal court created by the Constitution — puts it outside the reach of those standards that apply to other federal jurists.
Democrats first sought to address that after ProPublica reported earlier this year that Justice Clarence Thomas participated in lavish vacations and a real estate deal with a top Republican donor — and after Chief Justice John Roberts declined to testify before the committee about the ethics of the court.
Since then, ProPublica also revealed that Alito had taken a luxury vacation in Alaska with a Republican donor who had business interests before the court. The Associated Press reported in early July that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade.
The 73-year-old Alito, who joined the court in 2006, has rejected the idea that he should have disclosed the Alaska trip or stepped away from cases involving the donor, hedge fund owner Paul Singer. Alito penned his own Wall Street Journal op-ed, which was published hours before ProPublica posted its story.
Alito said that he is unwilling to leave allegations unanswered, though he acknowledged judges and justices typically don’t respond to their critics.
“And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself,” he said in the newest column.
While no other justice has spoken so definitively about ethics legislation, Roberts has raised questions about Congress’ authority to oversee the high court.
In his year-end report in 2011, Roberts wrote that the justices comply with legislation that requires annual financial disclosures and limits their outside earned income. “The Court has never addressed whether Congress may impose those requirements on the Supreme Court. The Justices nevertheless comply with those provisions,” Roberts wrote.
The justices have so far resisted adopting an ethics code on their own, although Roberts said in May that there is more the court can do to “adhere to the highest standards” of ethical conduct, without providing specifics.
The column is co-written by James Taranto, the paper’s editorial features editor, and David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer. Rivkin represents Leonard Leo, the onetime leader of the conservative legal group The Federalist Society, in his dealings with Senate Democrats who want details of Leo’s dealings with the justices. Leo helped arrange Alito’s trip to Alaska.
Rivkin, in a letter Tuesday to leading Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the request was politically motivated and violates Leo’s constitutional rights. Rivkin also wrote that a congressionally imposed ethics code for the Supreme Court would falter on constitutional grounds. Separately, Rivkin represents a couple whose tax case will be argued before the court in the fall.
Alito talked with the Taranto and Rivkin for four hours in interviews in April and July, they wrote. They published an account of the earlier interview in April. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-justice-alito-says-congress-lacks-the-power-to-impose-an-ethics-code-on-the-supreme-court/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:13 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-justice-alito-says-congress-lacks-the-power-to-impose-an-ethics-code-on-the-supreme-court/ |
(The Hill) – President Biden on Friday made his first public remarks about his 4-year-old grandchild Navy, the daughter of his son Hunter Biden, after silence from the White House over the young girl amid legal disputes between her parents.
Biden said, in a statement exclusively provided to People, that his son and Lunden Roberts, the mother, are working to provide a life for her.
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” the president said. “This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter. Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
The New York Times earlier this month published a piece about the child, writing that she’s never met Hunter Biden or her grandfather. After that was published, the White House dealt with questions in the briefing room from reporters asking whether Biden accepted Hunter Biden’s daughter in Arkansas as his granddaughter.
Roberts, who is in Arkansas, filed a paternity suit against Hunter Biden in May 2019, and the younger Biden appeared in court this May. In June, he reached a settlement in his child support case after he was ordered to sit for a deposition under oath to answer questions about his finances.
An anonymous source told People that the president and first lady Jill Biden have been “giving Hunter and Lunden the space and time to figure things out” and have been “following Hunter’s lead” throughout the legal proceedings involving the young girl.
Hunter Biden’s personal and legal troubles have been increasingly in the spotlight lately. He appeared in a Delaware court Wednesday, where his plea deal on federal tax and gun charges was put on hold by a judge who questioned the scope of the agreement. | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/biden-offers-first-statement-on-hunters-4-year-old-daughter/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:13 | 1 | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/biden-offers-first-statement-on-hunters-4-year-old-daughter/ |
BAGHDAD — Kurdish-led armed groups in Iraq and Syria alleged that Turkish airstrikes killed a total of eight of their fighters Friday.
The drone targeted a vehicle carrying PKK fighters near the village of Rangina, it said.
Also Friday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which controls much of northeast Syria, said in a statement that four of its fighters were killed by a Turkish drone attack on the village of Khirbet Khwei in the Amuda region.
The statement accused Turkey of “aiming at undermining security and stability in the region.”
There was no immediate comment from Turkey on the strikes.
The violence was the latest in a monthslong escalation between Turkey and Turkish-backed groups and Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Turkey has spent years fighting Kurdish militants in its east and large Kurdish communities live in neighboring Iraq and Syria, where they have a degree of self-rule. Turkey considers the main Kurdish militia in northeast Syria an ally of the outlawed PKK. The PKK has for decades waged an insurgency within Turkey.
Turkish strikes in northern Iraq have been a sore point with the Iraqi government, which has condemned them as a violation of its sovereignty.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit Iraq in the near future, where the PKK activities and Turkish strikes in the Kurdish region are likely to be points of discussion.
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Al Abdo reported from Qamishli, Syria. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/28/turkey-syria-iraq-drone-strike-pkk-sdf/eb7a207a-2d9b-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html | 2023-07-29T00:39:14 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/28/turkey-syria-iraq-drone-strike-pkk-sdf/eb7a207a-2d9b-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html |
DELMAR, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Many across social media feel confused about Twitter rebranding its iconic bird logo to a simple “X” symbol. At his Albany, New York-area studio on Thursday, the artist behind the original logo talked about its creation and leaving the brand behind.
Phil Pascuzzo is hard at work in his quiet suburban home in Delmar, mainly designing the inviting covers that tempt you to pick up a good book. You’d never guess he’s the designer of the world-famous Twitter bird icon.
“It’s so interesting. Most people have no idea,” laughed Pascuzzo. “It’s kind of like how Milton Glaser created the ‘I love New York’ logo, but when you see the I ‘heart’ NY, it doesn’t feel like anybody did it. It’s just there.”
Pascuzzo has run Pepco Studio, his independent freelance design studio, for the last 20 years, but he said that his first graphic design job out of college was where he met Biz Stone, one of the three Twitter co-founders. “We were both junior designers, so we were lowest on the rank, but he would just after every subway ride have all these wild ideas and we would just talk about them,” Pascuzzo recollected with NEWS10’s Mikhaela Singleton. “I would do these little doodles on Post-it notes, and he just liked my drawings.”
He said that Stone approached him around 2005 looking for a unique bird-themed design. The iStock image by Simon Oxley that was used when Twitter first launched couldn’t be its official logo, as that would violate iStock’s terms of service.
“I started sketching different birds. We knew we were going with blue, which — it’s great for like, feeling optimistic, feels like the future, blue skies,” Pascuzzo explained. “[Stone] had a rough idea, but he really left it to me to get creative with. He’s got a great sense of humor so he had all these ideas for little things he wanted the bird to be doing.”
Pascuzzo said that first bird design took about 30 minutes and a chat between friends, landing him $500 for the work. “I was in an apartment in Arbor Hill at the time and thought, $500 will make rent so yeah let’s do it,” he said. “Twitter wasn’t some huge thing like it is now that everybody is on.”
For years, he continued creating many marketing items that helped Twitter take flight. Shifting the bird’s design to a silhouette, Pascuzzo then sold the design to the studio outright in 2010, when it took shape in the most recent version used from 2012 to 2023. He added that he did reapproach his friend and the company to renegotiate pay for the logo design when Twitter truly took off.
“When I realized the weight of what this icon had become, I went back with an intellectual property lawyer, and it was extremely cordial,” Pascuzzo said. “It didn’t give me anything close to Elon Musk money, but it was a down payment on a house.”
On the topic of Musk and the many changes since his takeover of the social media giant in October, Pascuzzo said the news to clip the bird’s wings for a simple “X” symbol came as a surprise. “I was like, ‘What?’ What is this white — because it’s just a Unicode symbol,” he said. “It’s not even a logo. Nobody even designed it.”
After 20 years in the business, he said that he’s learned not to get too attached to any creation, so he’s not sad to see the bird go. But he worries that Musk’s future for Twitter leaves behind much of what made the platform unique.
“He seems obsessed with the ‘X.’ I mean you look at his child with Grimes — X Æ A-Xii — he loves X. It’s everywhere. So in his world, it may make sense, but I think, in the Twitter world, it doesn’t really make much sense,” Pascuzzo concluded. “I feel he threw away a lot of brand equity. The name, the color, the language — it’s so ubiquitous. It’s part of our lexicon.” | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/original-designer-behind-twitter-bird-icon-talks-the-x-rebrand/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:19 | 0 | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/original-designer-behind-twitter-bird-icon-talks-the-x-rebrand/ |
Federal investigators renewed their recommendation that major freight railroads equip every locomotive with the kind of autonomous sensors that could have caught the track flaws that caused a fatal 2021 Amtrak derailment in northern Montana.
But installing the sensors on the tens of thousands of locomotives in the fleet could be cost prohibitive, and it’s not entirely clear if one would have caught the combination of rail flaws that the National Transportation Safety Board said caused the crash near Joplin, Montana, that killed three people and injured 49 others. And rail unions caution that no technology should be a substitute for human inspectors.
The NTSB report laid blame in part on BNSF railroad, which owns the tracks, and “a shortcoming in its safety culture.” But it noted that even if track inspections had been more frequent, the severity of the problems may not have been noticed the day of the crash without devices and technology designed to enhance the inspections.
“It is unlikely that the track deviations would have been detected through the current track inspection process,” the board concluded in the report released Thursday. But “autonomous monitoring systems … have the ability to monitor track conditions and provide real-time condition monitoring that could be used for early identification and mitigation of unsafe track conditions.”
BNSF defends its safety record and said it already employs a number of the sensors that the NTSB is recommending, but spokeswoman Lena Kent said the Fort Worth, Texas-based railroad will review the report for any additional lessons and ways to improve safety.
But track problems have long been a safety concern for the NTSB, which can recommend but not mandate changes. In a 2021 report on the Joplin derailment, it attributed 592 U.S. derailments over a decade-long timespan to “track geometry,” which includes the distance between the rails and their horizontal and vertical alignment. Those issues were the second-leading cause of derailment in 2021.
Railroad safety expert Dave Clarke, the former director of University of Tennesse’s Center for Transportation Research, said it is important to remember that the NTSB doesn’t do any kind of cost-benefit analysis on its recommendations.
“If they think something is a good idea for safety they put it out there. In the real world there may be no way to economically or practically do everything NTSB recommends,” Clarke said.
Clarke said it’s also not clear that these sensors would have definitely caught the problems that caused the Montana derailment because none of the individual factors was severe enough to be considered a defect under Federal Railroad Administration rules. The NTSB said it was the combination of all those factors that caused the derailment.
The major freight railroads have more than 23,000 locomotives in their fleets, including thousands that have been put into storage in recent years as the railroads have overhauled their operations to rely more on longer trains that don’t need as many locomotives.
It would require a major investment to add detectors to every locomotive, although the Association of American Railroads trade group couldn’t immediately provide an estimate of how much each sensor costs. BNSF and the five other major U.S. freight railroads already spend roughly $23 billion every year on improving and maintaining their networks and investing in new equipment.
But attorney Jeff Goodman, who represented family members of the three passengers who died in the derailment, said he believes his clients would have lived if trains that had passed through the area before the Amtrak train had been equipped with these sensors.
Tracks will always bend or get out of sync because they’re exposed to the elements, but monitoring allows trains to know when to slow down and prevent accidents, he said.
“If the recommendations that the NTSB issued today were implemented prior to this tragedy, Zach Scheider and Don and Marjorie Varnadoe would all be alive today,” he said, naming the deceased family members of his clients.
Railroads have long resisted new regulations, Although there aren’t any rules requiring these automated inspection sensors or the thousands of trackside detectors they employ, railroads have spent millions developing the technology and installed them voluntarily to improve safety. But regulators are considering drafting rules for them in the wake of recent derailments.
An AAR trade group spokeswoman said that the type of sensors the NTSB singled out measure the force a locomotive exerts on the track and hasn’t proven as useful as other kinds of sensors railroads have developed.
“This technology has been difficult to maintain in real-world operations and lacks a strong correlation to track geometry defects,” Jessica Kahanek said.
Railroads are experimenting with a variety of technologies to find the best way to spot problems.
Another kind of autonomous sensor that can be installed on locomotives as well as the trucks inspectors use to ride along the rails can spot problems like misaligned track and wear on the rails by testing the track continuously.
Vehicle track interaction systems, like the ones the NTSB singled out, must be mounted on locomotives because they measure the force a train puts on the tracks.
Both kinds of sensors can help identify areas of concern for a human inspector to follow up on after computers analyze the data they generate. But the VTI sensors tend to be so sensitive that they flag areas where there aren’t true defects.
Kent said BNSF’s use of both kinds of sensors allows the railroad to check its track network multiple times — more than 450,000 miles (7.2 million kilometers) of track each year — and that the technology has helped the railroad reduce the rate of defects that it finds by 82% over the past five years.
In the past, BNSF and other railroads have even petitioned the Federal Railroad Administration to get a waiver releasing them from some inspection requirements because they believe the track geometry sensors provide enough information that the frequency of human inspections can be safely reduced.
Federal officials approved a waiver allowing BNSF to reduce inspections on a couple of areas of its more than 30,000-mile (48,000-kilometer) network after the railroad successfully tested the devices for several years, but later declined to let the railroad expand that practice, including its tracks that cross Montana. BNSF took the FRA to court over that decision and the dispute is still pending.
Rail unions have opposed the waivers. They argue that while the new technology is helpful, it shouldn’t replace human inspections. Even with an interest in preserving jobs, they say safety is their primary concern.
Already, the unions say the widespread job cuts the major railroads have made — eliminating nearly one-third of all rail jobs over the past six years — have made it difficult for employees to keep up with inspection demands and meet all FRA requirements. The NTSB pointed out that the inspector responsible for the territory where the Montana derailment happened had worked an average of 13 hours a day in the four weeks prior to the crash.
Former NTSB director Bob Chipkevich, who spent years investigating rail crashes, said it often takes multiple derailments to force railroads to implement new safety technology.
One of the biggest recent advances in rail safety came after a commuter train collided head-on with a freight train near Los Angeles in 2008, killing 25 people and injuring more than 100. Congress mandated a $15 billion automatic braking system that stops trains when they’re in danger of colliding, derailing and other situations — but it took 12 years to complete.
“When there are safety issues that have been raised after multiple accidents that occurred again and again, the question is to the industry,” Chipkevich said. “Why haven’t you done it after all these years?”
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Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and Metz reported from Salt Lake City.
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Follow Josh Funk on Twitter at www.twitter.com/funkwrite | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-montana-train-derailment-report-renews-calls-for-automated-systems-to-detect-track-problems/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:19 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-montana-train-derailment-report-renews-calls-for-automated-systems-to-detect-track-problems/ |
(KTLA) – A labor union representing thousands of hotel housekeepers in Southern California is asking Taylor Swift to postpone her upcoming concerts at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood until they are paid “a living wage.”
UNITE HERE Local 11 published an open letter to the pop star in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
“We make beds, clean bathrooms, and take care of every guest need. Your shows make our hotels a lot of money,” the letter reads. “In Los Angeles, hotels are doubling and tripling what they charge because you are coming. They also add junk fees on rooms, just like Ticketmaster does. But we see none of it.”
Hotel workers have been staging labor actions in the Los Angeles area since the start of July as they negotiate for increased pay and benefits. They have also joined striking Hollywood writers and actors on the picket lines.
Experts predict Swift’s 52-night, 20-city tour will become the highest-grossing of all time. It is also having a notable economic impact on each city she visits with the surge of Swifties snatching up hotel rooms at jacked-up rates.
She is slated to perform six straight nights at SoFi Stadium beginning August 3.
Union leaders hope Swift will lend support to their cause.
“She has taken on corporate greed to make sure artists get fairly compensate and that those workers behind the scenes in her own music get the treatment they deserve,” Ada Briceno, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said at a rally on Thursday outside of the Hyatt Regency at LAX.
There is no indication the pop star is considering postponing her Inglewood shows. KTLA’s request for comment on Thursday was not immediately returned. | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/taylor-swift-urged-to-postpone-los-angeles-area-shows/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:25 | 1 | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/taylor-swift-urged-to-postpone-los-angeles-area-shows/ |
FULTON, Mo. (AP) — At the entrance to Missouri prisons, large signs plead for help: “NOW HIRING” … “GREAT PAY & BENEFITS.”
No experience is necessary. Anyone 18 and older can apply. Long hours are guaranteed.
Though the assertion of “great pay” for prison guards would have seemed dubious in the past, a series of state pay raises prompted by widespread vacancies has finally made a difference. The Missouri Department of Corrections set a record for new applicants last month.
“After we got our raise, we started seeing people come out of the woodwork, people that hadn’t worked in a while,” said Maj. Albin Narvaez, chief of custody at the Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center, where new prisoners are housed and evaluated.
Public employers across the U.S. have faced similar struggles to fill jobs, leading to one of the largest surges in state government pay raises in 15 years. Many cities, counties and school districts also are hiking wages to try to retain and attract workers amid aggressive competition from private sector employers.
The wage war comes as governments and taxpayers feel the consequences of empty positions.
In Kansas City, Missouri, a shortage of 911 operators doubled the average hold times for people calling in emergencies. In one Florida county, some schoolchildren frequently arrived late as a lack of bus drivers delayed routes. In Arkansas, abused and neglected kids remained longer in foster care because of a caseworker shortage. In various cities and states, vacancies on road crews meant cracks and potholes took longer to fix than many motorists might like.
“A lot of the jobs we’re talking about are hard jobs,” said Leslie Scott Parker, executive director of the National Association of State Personnel Executives.
Lingering vacancies “eventually affects service to the public or response times to needs,” she added.
Workforce shortages worsened across all sorts of jobs due to a wave of retirements and resignations that began during the pandemic. Many businesses, from restaurants to hospitals, responded nimbly with higher wages and incentives to attract employees. But governments by nature are slower to act, requiring pay raises to go through a legislative process that can take months to complete — and then can take months more to kick in.
Meanwhile, vacancies mounted.
In Georgia, state employee turnover hit a high of 25% in 2022. Thousands of workers left the Department of Corrections, pushing its vacancy rate to around 50%. The state began a series of pay raises. This year, all state employees and teachers got at least a $2,000 raise, with corrections officers getting $4,000 and state troopers $6,000.
The Georgia Department of Corrections used an ad agency to bolster recruitment and held an average of 125 job fairs a month. It’s starting to pay off. In the first week of July, the department received 318 correctional officer applications — nearly double the weekly norm, said department Public Affairs Director Joan Heath.
Almost 1 in 4 positions — more than 2,500 jobs — were empty in the Missouri Department of Corrections late last year, which was twice the pre-pandemic vacancy rate in 2019.
Missouri gave state workers a 7.5% pay raise in 2022. This spring, Gov. Mike Parson signed an emergency spending bill with an additional 8.7% raise, plus an extra $2 an hour for people working evening and night shifts at prisons, mental health facilities and other institutions. The vacancy rate for entry level corrections officers now is declining, and the average number of applications for all state positions is up 18% since the start of last year.
At the Fulton prison, where staff shortages have led to a standard 52-hour work week, newly hired employees can earn around $60,000 annually — an amount roughly equal to the state’s median household income. The prison also is proposing to provide free child care to correctional officers willing to work nights.
If prison staffing is too low, “it can get dangerous” for both inmates and guards, Narvaez said.
Public safety concerns also have arisen in Kansas City, where a country music fan attacked before a concert last month waited four minutes for a 911 call to be answered and an hour for an ambulance to arrive. About one-quarter of 911 call center positions are vacant — “a huge factor” in the longer wait times to answer calls, said Tamara Bazzle, assistant manager of the communications unit for the Kansas City Police Department.
In Biddeford, Maine, a 15-person roster of 911 dispatchers dipped to just eight employees in July as people quit a “pressure cooker job” for less stress or better pay elsewhere, Police Chief JoAnne Fisk said. The city is now offering fully certified dispatchers $41 an hour to help plug the gaps on a part-time basis — $10 an hour more than comparable new workers normally would earn.
This month, Biddeford also launched a $2,000 bonus for city employees who refer others who get jobs. That comes a year after Biddeford adopted a four-day work week with paid lunch periods to try to make jobs more appealing, said City Manager Jim Bennett.
To attract workers, other governments have dropped college degree requirements and spiced up drab job descriptions.
Nationally, the turnover rate in state and local governments is twice the average of the previous two decades, according federal labor statistics.
Uncompetitive wages were the most common reason for leaving cited in exit interviews, according to a survey of 249 state and local government human resource managers conducted by MissionSquare Research Institute, a Washington, D.C. -based nonprofit. The hardest positions to fill included police and corrections officers, doctors, nurses, engineers and jobs requiring commercial driver’s licenses.
Along Florida’s east coast, the Brevard County transit system and school district have been competing for bus drivers. On days when drivers are lacking, the transit system has cut the frequency of bus stops on some routes. The school system, meanwhile, has asked some bus drivers to run a second route after dropping children off at school, often resulting in the second busload arriving late.
Since 2022, the county has twice raised bus driver wages to a current rate of $17.47 an hour. The school board recently countered with a $5 increase to a minimum $20 an hour for the upcoming school year. The goal is to hire enough drivers to regularly get kids to class on time, said school system communications director Russell Bruhn.
In Arkansas, the goal is to get foster kids into permanent homes in less than a year. But during the first three months of this year, the state met that target for just 32% of foster children — well below the national standard of over 40%. More than one-fifth of the roughly 1,400 positions in the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services are vacant.
Many new employees leave in less than two years because of heavy caseloads and the “very difficult, emotionally tolling work,” Mischa Martin, the Department of Human Services’ deputy secretary of youth and families, told lawmakers last month.
“If we had a knowledgeable, experienced workforce,” she said, “they would be able to work cases in a better way to get kids home quicker.” | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-mounting-job-vacancies-push-state-and-local-governments-into-a-wage-war-for-workers/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:26 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-mounting-job-vacancies-push-state-and-local-governments-into-a-wage-war-for-workers/ |
(The Hill) – Carlos De Oliveira was indicted on three criminal charges alongside former President Trump and his longtime aide Walt Nauda in a superseding indictment Thursday, part of the classified document investigation at Trump’s Florida club.
De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago Club’s property manager, allegedly assisted Trump and Nauta in attempting to delete security footage that showed the men moving boxes of classified documents around the property to hide them from federal authorities.
He was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, destroying evidence and lying to the FBI.
De Oliveira, 56, was hired as the Mar-a-Lago manager in January 2022, previously working there as a valet, according to the indictment.
Federal investigators claim De Oliveira helped Nauta move about 30 boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago, and at one point told the club’s head of IT that “the boss” wants security camera footage deleted.
In October of last year, after federal investigators searched the club and found additional classified documents, De Oliveira allegedly drained one of the club’s pools causing flooding in the server room that contained the security camera footage. This happened not long after Trump told De Oliveira he would get him an attorney, the indictment says.
According to investigators, Nauta attempted to judge De Oliveira’s loyalty before that promise came, with De Oliveira telling him that nothing would get in the way of his relationship with Trump.
Trump now faces a total of 40 charges related to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with three of those added this week in the superseding indictment. Nauta faces eight charges.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the classified documents probe, is also investigating Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the Capitol.
Smith met with Trump’s defense on Thursday and sent him a target letter earlier this month, raising speculation that he could be indicted again for that separate investigation soon. | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/who-is-carlos-de-oliveira-trumps-mar-a-lago-resort-manager/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:29 | 0 | https://www.qcnews.com/nexstar-media-wire/who-is-carlos-de-oliveira-trumps-mar-a-lago-resort-manager/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Carlos Reyes sought shade under a tree in the Bronx on a day that felt like it was over 100 degrees (38 degrees Celsius) because of the heat and humidity.
“It’s not like when you were younger, you were playing around,” said the 56-year-old who runs a daycare center. “Now it’s like you got the humidity. It makes you kind of not breathe the same way. So when you walk, you get a little more tired, a little more exhausted.”
Reyes was one of nearly 200 million people in the United States, or 60% of the U.S. population, under a heat advisory or flood warning or watch since Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
Dangerous heat engulfed much of the eastern half of the United States Friday as extreme temperatures spread from the Midwest into the Northeast and mid-Atlantic where some residents saw their hottest temperatures of the year.
Although much of the country does not cool much on normal summer nights, night temperatures are forecast to stay hotter than usual, prompting excessive heat warnings from the Plains to the East Coast.
From Thursday to Friday, the number of people under a heat advisory rose from 180 to 184 million and the number of people under a flood warning or watch dropped from 17 to 10 million.
Moisture moved into the Southwest, cooling somewhat the southernmost counties of California and parts of southern Arizona, but excessive heat warnings remain for much of the region.
On top of the heat, severe thunderstorms are forecast for multiple regions of the country. There are forecasts with flash flood warnings for Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, west to the Middle Missouri Valley through Saturday morning. There are severe thunderstorm warnings with a chance of quarter-sized hail Friday night for the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
Tornado watches are posted in Wisconsin and New Hampshire, in addition to the heat advisories and potential for severe storms.
The prediction for continued excessive heat comes as the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service declared July 2023 the hottest month on record this week.
Scientists have long warned that climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, by deforestation and by certain agricultural practices, will lead to more and prolonged bouts of extreme weather.
On Thursday, heat and humidity in major cities along the East Coast, including Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City, made it feel above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius). Forecasters expect several records may break Friday with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 to 8 degrees Celsius) above average.
The “dangerous” heat wave, as the National Weather Service called it, may begin to subside on Saturday as thunderstorms and a cold front from Canada progress through the region. It seems the hottest temperatures happened on Friday.
“By Sunday, the high temperature is going to be 86,” he said, “so that’s more typical weather you would expect in July.”
The Salvation Army in the Bronx was one of hundreds of cooling centers open in New York City to give people a respite from the scorching heat.
“It’s very hot every year. This year, it started last week, becoming very hot,” said Robert Ciriaco, a corps officer with The Salvation Army. “(It’s) very dangerous for people. Some people die. So that’s why we open to offer people (a place) to come to be comfortable.”
Philadelphia declared a heat health emergency as temperatures soared into the 90s, and city authorities opened cooling centers.
But some residents took the heat in stride. Alexander Roman, who brought his children to play in the fountain at the city’s iconic Love Park, said he is not worried about heat stroke as long as his family can cool down. “A lot of water with ice and it will be O.K,” he said.
In the Southwest and southern Plains, oppressive temperatures have been a blanket for weeks. One meteorologist based in New Mexico called the prolonged period of temperatures over 100 degrees (37.8 Celsius) unprecedented.
Due to the extreme heat, some of the nation’s large power grids and utilities are under stress, which could affect Americans’ ability to cool off.
In New York City, utility Con Edison sent out a text blast asking residents to be frugal with air conditioning to conserve electricity. Overtaxing an electrical grid can mean blackouts, which are not just an inconvenience, but can lead to equipment failures and major pollution as equipment restarts.
The country’s largest power grid, PJM Interconnection, declared a level one energy emergency alert for its 13-state grid on Wednesday, meaning the company had concerns about ability to provide enough electricity.
“PJM currently has enough generation to meet forecast demand, but operators continue to monitor the grid conditions for any changes,” said spokesperson Jeffrey Shields on Thursday.
PJM isn’t the only electrical grid to issue such an alert. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which mostly covers states in the Midwest and Northern Plains, issued a similar one Thursday.
The California Independent System Operator also issued an energy emergency alert for the evening on Wednesday, in part due to excess heat in Southern California, but that expired the same day. Anne Gonzales, a CAISO spokesperson, said they expect to be able to meet demand the next few days.
A spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which covers most of Texas, said they expect their grid will operate per usual during this latest blast of extreme weather across the country.
The dangerous heat peaks in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and Midwest Friday and Saturday before a cold front is expected to bring some relief Sunday and into next week.
Heat experts and environmental advocates said that these effects of the high temperatures will not be felt equally.
“The impacts of heat are highly inequitable,” said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona who studies heat policy and governance. He explained that people experiencing homelessness feel heat effects more than the housed, and low-income and communities of color are often hotter than more affluent and whiter neighborhoods.
“When we’re talking about how to keep people safe, we not only need to be thinking about the neighborhoods that are disproportionately warmer during these heat waves,” said Jeremy Hoffman, director of climate justice and impact at Groundwork USA, an environmental justice nonprofit. “But (also) the folks that can’t avoid being outside during these heat waves, people that rely on public transportation, people that work outside, and the extremely elderly that may be living in substandard housing without a lot of ventilation and air conditioning.”
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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-nearly-200-million-people-in-us-are-under-heat-flood-advisories/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:32 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-nearly-200-million-people-in-us-are-under-heat-flood-advisories/ |
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (PINPOINT WEATHER) – It was another day with highs in the mid-90s and “feels like” temps 100 or above.
That is before any rain or strong storms moved in. We’ll see more of these storms over the weekend, mainly on Saturday.
After a mostly dry start to Saturday, a line of heavy rain and storms is expected to drop in through the mountains and foothills by late afternoon.
Severe storms are again possible, with damaging wind gusts the main threat. Stay weather aware!
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The storms may weaken when they reach the Charlotte metro in the evening, but some showers or a general storm are still possible. Because more clouds and rain are moving in, highs will only be in the upper 80s to low 90s.
Click here to see our latest Pinpoint Weather forecast! 🌤️🌦️
Sunday is looking drier, brighter, and hotter again! A few spotty storms could still develop with the day’s heating as a front moves in. Behind the front, the heat backs off a bit for next week. Highs will be in the upper 80s with a touch less humidity.
Tonight: Mostly cloudy. Lingering shower/storm possible. Low 75.
Saturday: Partly sunny. High 91. Mainly PM showers and storms possible.
Sunday: More sunshine and heat. 72/95. Small chance PM storm. | https://www.qcnews.com/weather/weather-forecast/heavy-storms-expected-saturday-evening/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:35 | 1 | https://www.qcnews.com/weather/weather-forecast/heavy-storms-expected-saturday-evening/ |
NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Mutinous soldiers who staged a coup in Niger declared their leader the new head of state on Friday, hours after the general asked for national and international support despite rising concerns that the political crisis could hinder the nation’s fight against jihadists and boost Russia’s influence in West Africa.
Spokesman Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said on state television that the constitution was suspended and Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani was in charge.
Various factions of Niger’s military have reportedly wrangled for control since members of the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum, who was elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from France.
Niger is seen as the last reliable partner for the West in efforts to battle jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group in Africa’s Sahel region, where Russia and Western countries have vied for influence in the fight against extremism. France has 1,500 soldiers in the country who conduct joint operations with the Nigeriens, and the United States and other European countries have helped train the nation’s troops.
The coup sparked international condemnation and the West African regional group ECOWAS, which includes Niger and has taken the lead in trying to restore democratic rule in the country, scheduled an emergency summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Sunday.
The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned efforts “to unconstitutionally change the legitimate government.” Its statement, agreed to by all 15 members including the U.S. and Russia, called for “the immediate and unconditional release” of Bazoum and expressed concern over the negative effect of coups in the region, the “increase in terrorist activities and the dire socio—economic situation.”
Extremists in Niger have carried out attacks on civilians and military personnel, but the overall security situation is not as dire as in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso — both of which have ousted the French military. Mali has turned to the Russian private military group Wagner, and it’s believed that the mercenaries will soon be in Burkina Faso.
Now there are concerns that Niger could follow suit. Before the coup, Wagner, which has sent mercenaries around the world in support of Russia’s interests, already had its sights set on Niger, in part because it’s a large producer of uranium.
“We can no longer continue with the same approaches proposed so far, at the risk of witnessing the gradual and inevitable demise of our country,” Tchiani, who also goes by Omar Tchiani, said in his address. “That is why we decided to intervene and take responsibility.”
“I ask the technical and financial partners who are friends of Niger to understand the specific situation of our country in order to provide it with all the support necessary to enable it to meet the challenges,” he said.
If the United States designates the takeover as a coup, Niger stands to lose millions of dollars of military aid and assistance.
The mutinous soldiers, who call themselves the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, accused some prominent dignitaries of collaborating with foreign embassies to “extract” the deposed leaders. They said it could lead to violence and warned against foreign military intervention.
Bazoum has not resigned and he defiantly tweeted from detention on Thursday that democracy would prevail.
It’s not clear who enjoys majority support, but the streets of the capital of Niamey were calm Friday, with a slight celebratory air. Some cars honked in solidarity at security forces as they drove by — but it was not clear if that meant they backed the coup. Elsewhere, people rested after traditional midday prayers and others sold goods at their shops and hoped for calm.
“We should pray to God to help people come together so that peace comes back to the country. We don’t want a lot of protests in the country, because it is not good … I hope this administration does a good job,” said Gerard Sassou, a Niamey shopkeeper.
A day earlier, several hundred people gathered in the city chanting support for Wagner while waving Russian flags. “We’re fed up,” said Omar Issaka, one of the protestors. “We are tired of being targeted by the men in the bush. … We’re going to collaborate with Russia now.”
That’s exactly what many in the West likely fear. Tchiani’s criticism of Bazoum’s approach and of how security partnerships have worked in the past will certainly make the U.S., France, and the EU uneasy, said Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute.
“So that could mark potentially some shifts moving forward in Niger security partnerships,” he said.
Even as Tchiani sought to project control, the situation appeared to be in flux. A delegation from neighboring Nigeria, which holds the ECOWAS presidency and was hoping to mediate, left shortly after arriving, and the president of Benin, nominated as a mediator by ECOWAS, has not arrived.
Earlier, an analyst who had spoken with participants in the talks said the presidential guard was negotiating with the army about who should be in charge. The analyst spoke on condition they not to be named because of the sensitive situation.
A western military official in Niger who was not authorized to speak to the media also said the military factions were believed to be negotiating, but that the situation remained tense and violence could erupt.
Speaking in Papua New Guinea, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the coup as “completely illegitimate and profoundly dangerous for the Nigeriens, Niger and the whole region.”
The coup threatens to starkly reshape the international community’s engagement with the Sahel region.
On Thursday, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said the country’s “substantial cooperation with the Government of Niger is contingent on Niger’s continued commitment to democratic standards.”
The United States in early 2021 said it had provided Niger with more than $500 million in military assistance and training programs since 2012, one of the largest such support programs in sub-Saharan Africa. The European Union earlier this year launched a 27 million-euro ($30 million) military training mission in Niger.
The United States has more than 1,000 service personnel in the country.
Some military leaders who appear to be involved in the coup have worked closely with the United States for years. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the head of Niger’s special forces, has an especially strong relationship with the U.S., the Western military official said.
While Russia has also condemned the coup, it remains unclear what the junta’s position would be on Wagner.
The acting head of the United Nations in Niger said Friday that humanitarian aid deliveries were continuing, even though the military suspended flights carrying aid.
Nicole Kouassi, the acting U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator, told reporters via video from Niamey that 4.3 million people needed humanitarian aid before this week’s military action and 3.3 million faced “acute food insecurity,” the majority of them women and children.
Jean-Noel Gentile, the U.N. World Food Program director in Niger, said “the humanitarian response continues on the ground.” He said the U.N. is providing cash assistance and food to people in accessible areas and that the agency is continuously assessing the situation to ensure security and access.
This is Niger’s fifth coup and marks the fall of one of the last democratically elected governments in the Sahel.
Its army has always been very powerful and civilian-military relations fraught, though tensions had increased recently, especially with the growing jihadist insurgency, said Karim Manuel, an analyst for the Middle East and Africa with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
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Associated Press reporters John Leicester in Paris; Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria; and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations in New York contributed to this report. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-no-clarity-about-whos-in-charge-in-niger-2-days-after-mutinous-soldiers-ousted-the-president/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:39 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-no-clarity-about-whos-in-charge-in-niger-2-days-after-mutinous-soldiers-ousted-the-president/ |
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train was found guilty of reckless endangerment and assault but was acquitted of a third charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter during a trial Friday.
Jordan Steinke was the first of two officers to go to trial over the Sept. 16, 2022, crash that left Yareni Rios-Gonzalez seriously injured.
“There’s no reasonable doubt that placing a handcuffed person in the back of a patrol car, parked on railroad tracks, creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm by the train,” said Judge Timothy Kerns.
But the evidence didn’t convince Kerns that Steinke “knowingly intended to harm Ms. Rios-Gonzalez,” and he added that Stienke had shown “shock and remorse.”
Steinke testified that she did not know that the patrol car of another officer she was helping was parked on the tracks even though they can be seen on her body camera footage along with two railroad crossing signs. Steinke said she was focused on the threat that could come from Rios-Gonzalez and her pickup truck, not the ground.
Steinke said she put Rios-Gonzalez in the other officer’s vehicle because it was the nearest spot to temporarily hold her. She said she didn’t know the train was coming until just before it hit.
The judge found that Steinke observed the tracks, but failed to “appreciate the risk.”
There was no jury in Steinke’s trial, which started Monday. Instead, Kerns listened to the evidence and issued the verdict. Mallory Revel, Steinke’s attorney, didn’t immediately respond to requests by phone and email for comment.
Steinke, who was working for the Fort Lupton Police Department at the time of the crash, was charged with criminal attempt to commit manslaughter, a felony; and reckless endangerment and third-degree assault, both misdemeanors.
The other officer, Pablo Vazquez, who worked for the police department in nearby Platteville, is being prosecuted for misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment and traffic offenses. He hasn’t entered a plea yet. His lawyer, Reid Elkus, didn’t immediately respond to a request by phone for comment.
Vazquez pulled over Rios-Gonzalez on a rural road that intersects U.S. Highway 85 after she was accused of pointing a gun at another driver. Trains pass on tracks that parallel the highway about a dozen times a day, prosecutors said, and the sound of their horns is common in the area north of Denver.
Rios-Gonzalez, who suffered a traumatic brain injury, is suing over her treatment. She later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor menacing, said one of her lawyers, Chris Ponce, who was in court to watch the trial. Rios-Gonzalez did not testify or attend herself.
Steinke said she placed Rios-Gonzalez in the other police car temporarily because it was the nearest place to keep her secure, a move that is standard practice for high-risk traffic stops, said defense expert witness Steve Ijames. He also testified that in dangerous situations officers can become hyperfocused on particular threats and overlook things that turn out to be important in hindsight.
Steinke, who drove at around 100 mph (161 kph) at times on her way to backup Vazquez, testified that she was surprised to see him sitting in his vehicle when she arrived, rather than pointing a gun at Rios-Gonzalez’s truck. She said she quickly parked her patrol vehicle behind his and got out because it was the quickest way “to get a gun in the fight.”
Steinke also said she did not notice the tracks or the ground when she squatted down to arrest a kneeling Rios-Gonzalez along the tracks after the suspect was ordered out of her pickup truck.
When pressed by Deputy District Attorney Christopher Jewkes, Steinke replied, “I am sure I saw the tracks sir, but I did not perceive them.” She said she was focused on the suspect and the potential threat she posed and was “fairly certain” that the traffic stop would end in gunfire.
“I never in a million years thought a train was going to come plowing through my scene,” Steinke said.
The Weld County District Attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request by phone for comment.
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This story has been updated to correct that the officer was acquitted of the charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter, not manslaughter.
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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-officer-who-put-suspect-in-car-hit-by-train-found-guilty-of-reckless-endangerment/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:45 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-officer-who-put-suspect-in-car-hit-by-train-found-guilty-of-reckless-endangerment/ |
JEFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The nation’s top health official implored states to do more to keep lower-income residents enrolled in Medicaid, as the Biden administration released figures Friday confirming that many who had health coverage during the coronavirus pandemic are now losing it.
Though a decline in Medicaid coverage was expected, health officials are raising concerns about the large numbers of people being dropped from the rolls for failing to return forms or follow procedures.
In 18 states that began a post-pandemic review of their Medicaid rolls in April, health coverage was continued for about 1 million recipients and terminated for 715,000. Of those dropped, 4 in 5 were for procedural reasons, according to newly released data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter Friday to all governors encouraging them to bolster efforts to retain people on Medicaid. He particularly encouraged them to use electronic information from other federal programs, such as food stamps, to automatically confirm people’s eligibility for Medicaid. That would avert the need to mail and return documents.
“I am deeply concerned about high rates of procedural terminations due to ‘red tape’ and other paperwork issues,” Becerra told governors.
During the pandemic, states were prohibited from ending people’s Medicaid coverage. As a result, Medicaid enrollment swelled by nearly one-third, from 71 million people in February 2020 to 93 million in February 2023. The prohibition on trimming rolls ended in April, and states now have resumed annual eligibility redeterminations that had been required before the pandemic.
The new federal data captures only the first month of state Medicaid reviews from states that acted the most expeditiously. Since then, additional states also have submitted reports on those renewed and dropped from Medicaid in May and June.
Though the federal government hasn’t released data from the most recent reports, information gathered by The Associated Press and health care advocacy groups show that about 3.7 million people already have lost Medicaid coverage. That includes about 500,000 in Texas, around 400,000 in Florida and 225,000 in California. Of those who lost coverage, 89% were for procedural reasons in California, 81% in Texas and 59% in Florida, according to the AP’s data.
Many of those people may have still been eligible for Medicaid, “but they’re caught in a bureaucratic nightmare of confusing forms, notices sent to wrong addresses and other errors,” said Michelle Levander, founding director of the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California,
Top CMS officials said they have worked with several states to pause Medicaid removals and improve procedures for determining eligibility.
South Carolina, for example, reported renewing Medicaid coverage for about 27,000 people in May while removing 118,000. Of those dropped, 95% were for procedural reasons. In a recent report to the federal government, South Carolina said it removed no one from Medicaid in June because it extended the eligibility renewal deadline from 60 days to 90 days.
Michigan reported renewing more than 103,000 Medicaid recipients in June and removing just 12,000. It told the federal government that the state opted to delay terminations for those who failed to respond to renewal requests while instead making additional outreach attempts. As a result, the state reported more than 100,000 people whose June eligibility cases remained incomplete.
People who are dropped from Medicaid can regain coverage retroactively if they submit information within 90 days proving their eligibility. But some advocacy groups say that still poses a challenge.
“State government is not necessarily nimble,” said Keesa Smith, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. “When individuals are being disenrolled, the biggest concern … is that there is not a fast track to get those individuals back on the rolls.”
Arkansas officials have been at the forefront of defending Medicaid cuts. They contend that many people likely don’t return forms because they no longer need Medicaid.
People are “transitioning off of Medicaid” because “they are working, making more money, and have access to health care through their employers or the federal marketplace,” Arkansas Medicaid Director Janet Mann said earlier this month. “This should be celebrated, not criticized.”
Insurance companies that run Medicaid programs for states said they are trying to reduce procedural terminations and enroll people in new plans.
The Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurer Elevance Health lost 130,000 Medicaid customers during the recently completed second quarter, as Medicaid eligibility redeterminations began. Chief Financial Officer John Gallina said earlier this month that many people lost Medicaid coverage for administrative reasons but are likely to reenroll in the near future.
Leaders of the insurer Molina Healthcare told analysts Thursday that the company lost about 93,000 Medicaid customers in the recently completed second quarter, mostly due to eligibility redeterminations. Molina officials said they are trying to switch people who no longer qualify for Medicaid to one of the individual insurance plans they sell through state-based marketplaces.
Federal data for April indicates that some states did a better job than others at handling a crush of questions from people about their Medicaid coverage.
In 19 states and the District of Columbia, the average Medicaid call center wait time was 1 minute or less in April. But in Idaho, the average caller to the state’s Medicaid help line waited 51 minutes. In Missouri, the average wait was 44 minutes, and in Florida 40 minutes.
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Associated Press writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-paperwork-problems-drive-surge-in-people-losing-medicaid-health-coverage/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:51 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-paperwork-problems-drive-surge-in-people-losing-medicaid-health-coverage/ |
The rapper G Herbo pleaded guilty Friday to his role in a scheme that used stolen credit card information to pay for a lavish lifestyle including private jets, exotic car rentals, a luxury vacation rental and even expensive designer puppies.
Under a deal with prosecutors, the 27-year-old Chicago rapper, whose real name is Herbert Wright III, entered a guilty plea in federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and making false statements. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed several counts of aggravated identity theft.
He also agreed to forfeit nearly $140,000, the amount he benefited from what prosecutors have said was a $1.5 million scheme that involved several other people.
“Mr. Wright used stolen account information as his very own unlimited funding source, using victims’ payment cards to finance an extravagant lifestyle and advance his career,” acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement.
Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 7, and he faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. A voicemail seeking comment was left with his attorney.
From at least March 2017 until November 2018, G Herbo and his promoter, Antonio Strong, used text messages, social media messages and emails to share account information taken from dark websites, authorities said.
On one occasion, the stolen account information was used to pay for a chartered jet to fly the rapper and members of his entourage from Chicago to Austin, Texas, authorities said. On another, a stolen account was used to pay nearly $15,000 for Wright and seven others to stay several days in a six-bedroom Jamaican villa.
In court documents, prosecutors said G Herbo “used the proceeds of these frauds to travel to various concert venues and to advance his career by posting photographs and/or videos of himself on the private jets, in the exotic cars, and at the Jamaican villa.”
G Herbo also helped Strong order two designer Yorkshire terrier puppies from a Michigan pet shop using a stolen credit card and a fake Washington state driver’s license, according to the indictment. The total cost was more than $10,000, prosecutors said.
When the pet shop’s owner asked to confirm the purchase with G Herbo, Strong directed her to do so through an Instagram message, and G Herbo confirmed he was buying the puppies, authorities said.
Because the stolen credit card information was authentic, the transactions went through and it wasn’t until later that the real credit card holders noticed and reported the fraud.
G Herbo was also charged in May 2021 with lying to investigators by denying that he had any ties to Strong when in fact the two had worked together since at least 2016, prosecutors said.
Strong has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
G Herbo’s music is centered on his experiences growing up on the East Side of Chicago in a neighborhood dubbed Terror Town, including gang and gun violence.
He released his debut mix tapes “Welcome to Fazoland” and “Pistol P Project” in 2014, both named for friends who had been killed in the city. His first album was 2017’s “Humble Beast,” and his latest is “Survivor’s Remorse,” released last year.
His 2020 album “PTSD” debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200.
G Herbo also started a program in Chicago called Swervin’ Through Stress, aimed at giving urban youths tools to navigate mental health crises, after publicly acknowledging his own struggle with PTSD. In 2021 he was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 music list. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-rapper-g-herbo-pleads-guilty-in-credit-card-fraud-that-paid-for-private-jets-and-designer-puppies/ | 2023-07-29T00:39:57 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-rapper-g-herbo-pleads-guilty-in-credit-card-fraud-that-paid-for-private-jets-and-designer-puppies/ |
FAA: 'Evasive action' taken to avoid collision near Fort Lauderdale airport
An Allegiant Air flight attendant was injured on Sunday when the plane's pilot "took evasive action" to avoid an in-air collision over South Florida, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
After the Kentucky-bound Flight 485 had taken off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the pilot "received an automated alert about another aircraft at the same altitude," the FAA said.
An air traffic controller in the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center had instructed the plane "to turn eastbound at an altitude of 23,000 feet when it crossed in front of a northbound Gulfstream business jet," the FAA said.
The pilot of the Gulfstream jet also took evasive action after receiving a similar alert, the FAA said.
The Allegiant plane returned to the Fort Lauderdale airport, where the injured flight attendant was treated for injuries, said the FAA, which added it is investigating the incident.
Allegiant declined to comment on the incident.
'We went straight up,' passenger said
One of the Allegiant passengers, Jerrica Thacker, 21, told CNN the plane suddenly "went straight up" in the air.
"It truly felt like a roller coaster," Thacker, who was trying to fly home with family to Kentucky, said. "We went up and down and then leveled out."
"It felt like we were nose-diving, but we later found out that we went straight up. … I was terrified."
Two flight attendants fell backwards when the plane ascended, one of whom stayed on the ground for five minutes before she was helped up and escorted to the rear of the plane, Thacker said.
"The flight crew asked if there were any medically trained individuals on the plane," she added.
About 20 minutes after the maneuver, the pilot told passengers over the intercom that the plane was returning to Fort Lauderdale and that he had to make the abrupt maneuver to avoid a collision, Thacker said.
After the pilot relayed the message, Thacker saw people praying and crying, she said.
"I was looking forward and trying my best to breathe to avoid a panic attack," she said.
Instead of getting back on a plane, Thacker and her family rented a car and drove 15 hours to Kentucky, she said.
"We were all too shook up to fly again," she said.
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Scripps Only Content 2023 | https://www.wflx.com/2023/07/29/faa-evasive-action-taken-avoid-collision-near-fort-lauderdale-airport/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:05 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/2023/07/29/faa-evasive-action-taken-avoid-collision-near-fort-lauderdale-airport/ |
A New York man who stole a badge and radio from a police officer brutally beaten by other rioters during the attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Friday to more than four years in prison.
Thomas Sibick, of Buffalo, pleaded guilty in March for his role in the attack on Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who has described fighting for his life to defend the Capitol as lawmakers inside fled from the angry mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
In a letter to the judge, Sibick, 37, called the trauma Fanone experienced “undeniably sickening” and said he takes full responsibility for his “uncivilized display of reckless behavior.”
“It was an attack on the institutions of our democracy and not as some would make you believe legitimate political discourse. The attack was far from peaceful, my actions played a role that will follow me for the rest of my life,” Sibick wrote.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 50 months in prison during a hearing in Washington’s federal court.
Sibick’s attorney Stephen Brennwald did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following his arrest, Sibick spent eight months behind bars but was released on home confinement in October 2021 after his lawyer pressed the judge to free him while his case played out.
Sibick’s attorney had asked for a sentence of home confinement, writing in court papers that a mental health misdiagnosis resulted in his client taking medication on Jan. 6 that “severely and negatively impacted him.” Sibick’s attorney said, unlike other rioters, his client did not physically assault Fanone, and their interaction was limited to Sibick grabbing Fanone’s radio and badge.
“Mr. Sibick has made a remarkable change in his life since he received his correct mental health diagnosis and has begun cognitive behavioral therapy,” Brennwald wrote. “Because he sees January 6 for what it was, he is not a threat to re-offend in the future.”
Rioters kicked, punched, grabbed and shocked Fanone with a stun gun after pulling him away from other officers who were guarding a tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace. Another rioter threatened to take Fanone’s gun and kill him. Fanone said the attack gave him a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury and ultimately cost him his career.
Fanone’s body camera captured Sibick removing the officer’s badge and radio from his tactical vest, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea.
Others in the crowd escorted Fanone back to the police line. Before FBI agents showed Sibick the body camera video, he initially claimed that he tried in vain to pull the officer away from his attackers.
Sibick said he buried Fanone’s badge in his backyard after returning home to Buffalo. He returned the badge, but Fanone’s $5,500 radio hasn’t been recovered.
Other rioters have been charged with attacking Fanone, who lost consciousness and was taken to an emergency room.
Albuquerque Cosper Head, a Tennessee man who dragged Fanone into the crowd, was sentenced in October 2022 to seven years and six months in prison. Another man, Daniel Rodriguez of California, was sentenced last month to more than 12 years in prison for driving a stun gun into Fanone’s neck as the officer screamed out in pain. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-rioter-who-stole-badge-radio-from-beaten-officer-on-jan-6-gets-more-than-4-years-in-prison/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:04 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-rioter-who-stole-badge-radio-from-beaten-officer-on-jan-6-gets-more-than-4-years-in-prison/ |
‘X’ logo installed atop Twitter building, spurring San Francisco to investigate permit violation
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The city of San Francisco has opened a complaint and launched an investigation into a giant “X” sign that was installed Friday on top of the downtown building formerly known as Twitter headquarters as owner Elon Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.
City officials say replacing letters or symbols on buildings, or erecting a sign on top of one, requires a permit for design and safety reasons.
The “X” appeared after San Francisco police stopped workers on Monday from removing the brand’s iconic bird and logo from the side of the building, saying they hadn’t taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.
Any replacement letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure “consistency with the historic nature of the building” and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said earlier this week.
Erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit, Hannan said Friday.
“Planning review and approval is also necessary for the installation of this sign. The city is opening a complaint and initiating an investigation,” he said in an email.
Musk unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he remakes the platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The “X” started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but as of Friday the bird icon still appears in many places on the app.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter “X " and had already renamed Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. One of his children is called “X.” The child’s actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.
On Friday afternoon, a worker on a lift machine made adjustments to the sign and then left.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2023/07/29/x-logo-installed-atop-twitter-building-spurring-san-francisco-investigate-permit-violation/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:11 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/2023/07/29/x-logo-installed-atop-twitter-building-spurring-san-francisco-investigate-permit-violation/ |
PHOENIX (AP) — By the time Aaliyah Ibarra started second grade, her family had moved five times in four years in search of stable housing. As she was about to start a new school, her mother, Bridget Ibarra, saw how much it was affecting her education.
At 8 years old, her daughter did not know the alphabet.
“She was in second grade and couldn’t tell me any of the letters. I would point them out and she didn’t know,” Bridget Ibarra said. “She would sing the song in order, but as soon as I mixed them up, she had no idea.”
“I just didn’t know what letters were which,” says Aaliyah, now 9. “I know them now.”
The family’s struggles coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic that forced Aaliyah to begin her school experience online. Unfamiliar with a computer, Aaliyah was regularly kicked out of the virtual classroom, her mother said. Teachers complained she was not looking at the screen and took too many breaks.
Zoom school was especially difficult for Aaliyah because she was homeless — and like thousands of students nationally, her school didn’t know.
Homeless students often fell through the cracks during the tumult of the pandemic, when many schools struggled to keep track of families with unstable housing. Not being identified as homeless meant students lost out on eligibility for crucial support such as transportation, free uniforms, laundry services and other help.
Years later, the effects have cascaded. As students nationwide have struggled to make up for missed learning, educators have lost critical time identifying who needs the most help. Schools are offering tutoring and counseling but now have limited time to spend federal pandemic relief money for homeless students, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national homelessness organization.
“There is urgency because of the losses that have occurred over the pandemic — loss in learning, the gaps in attendance and the health crisis,” she said. Many education leaders, Duffield said, don’t even know about federal money earmarked for homeless students — and the programs expire next year.
The number of children identified as homeless by schools nationwide dropped by 21% from the 2018-2019 school year to the 2020-2021 school year, according to federal data. But the decrease, representing more than 288,000 students, likely includes many kids whose homelessness was unknown to schools. Federal counts of homeless people living on the street or in shelters also appeared to decrease in 2021 due to pandemic disruptions, but by 2022, those numbers shot up to the highest in a decade.
In Bridget Ibarra’s case, she chose not to tell the school her kids were homeless — and she says teachers, disconnected from students by a screen, never asked. She was worried if officials knew the family was staying in a shelter, and the school was obliged by law to provide transportation, the family would face pressure to enroll in a different school that was closer.
She knew how hard the disruptions were on her kids.
“I know they didn’t enjoy moving as often as we did. They would say things like, ‘We’re moving again? We just moved!’” Ibarra said.
“When I moved, I missed my friends and my teacher,” Aaliyah said.
The stigma and fear associated with homelessness also can lead families not to tell anyone they lack secure housing, Duffield said.
“If we don’t identify children proactively, we can’t ensure that they have everything they need to be successful in school and even go to school,” she said.
Before the pandemic, Ibarra and her two children moved in with her brother in Phoenix because she was having trouble making ends meet. Then her brother died unexpectedly. At the time, Ibarra was pregnant with her third child and couldn’t afford the rent with what she earned working at a fast-food restaurant.
The family spent the next six months at Maggie’s Place, a shelter in North Phoenix that caters to pregnant women. The four of them, including Aaliyah’s infant brother, moved next to Homeward Bound, an apartment-like shelter for families, where they were living when the pandemic hit a few months before Aaliyah started kindergarten.
Aaliyah’s school, David Crockett Elementary, stuck with online learning her entire kindergarten year. Aaliyah and her older brother, joined by several other children, spent most of their school days on computers in a mixed-grade makeshift classroom at the shelter.
“It was like she wasn’t even in school,” Ibarra said.
While the shelter helped the family meet their basic needs, Ibarra said she asked the school repeatedly for extra academic help for her daughter. She blamed the struggles partly on online learning, but she also felt the school was giving all their attention to Aaliyah’s older brother because he already was designated as a special education student with an individualized education program, or IEP.
The principal, Sean Hannafin, said school officials met frequently with the children’s mom. He said they offered the support they had available, but it was hard to determine online which students had needs that required intervention.
“The best thing we could do was take that data and flag them for when we returned in person, because you need a certain amount of time to observe a child in a classroom,” he said. “The online setting is not the place to observe.”
A federal law aimed at ensuring homeless students have equal access to education provides rights and services to children without a “fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.”
Many students aren’t identified as homeless when their parents or guardians enroll them. At school, teachers, cafeteria staff, aides or bus drivers often notice other students whose well-being may need looking into. Students may have unwashed clothes, or many late arrivals or absences.
But with children learning online, teachers and staff often didn’t see those things.
Overall, the drop in the student homelessness count began before the pandemic, but it was much steeper in the first full school year after COVID-19 hit. The percentage of enrolled students identified as homeless in the U.S. dropped from 2.7% in 2018-2019 to 2.2% in 2020-2021.
Over that timeframe, Arizona had one of the biggest drops in the number of students identified as homeless, from about 21,000 to nearly 14,000. But there were signs many families were in distress. KateLynn Dean, who works at Homeward Bound, said the shelter saw huge numbers of families dealing with homelessness for the first time during the pandemic.
Eventually, Bridget Ibarra had to enroll Aaliyah in a different school.
After getting kicked out of low-income housing last year when their property owner sold the building, the family lived with Ibarra’s mother before finding another low-income unit in Chandler, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Phoenix.
Once the family moved, enrolling in school was far from easy. Aaliyah missed the first three weeks of the school year last fall because of delays obtaining transcripts, and Ibarra insisted she not start the year without a plan to address her delays in reading and writing. Aaliyah spent that time playing and sitting around the house.
“Honestly, Aaliyah said she didn’t care how long, because she didn’t want to go to that school anyway,” her mother said. She said Aaliyah missed her friends and was tired of moving.
At Aaliyah’s new school, Frye Elementary, Principal Alexis Cruz Freeman saw for herself how hard it was to keep in touch with families when children were not in classrooms. Several students disappeared altogether. But she said families have started re-engaging with school. The state of Arizona reported more than 22,000 students were identified as homeless in the last school year — twice as many as the year before.
Ibarra said she tried to shield as much discomfort about their living situation from her kids as possible. It worked. Aaliyah doesn’t remember much about the places they’ve stayed except the people that surrounded her family.
Aaliyah has gained ground academically at her new school, Cruz Freeman said. She still has trouble pronouncing and recognizing some words. But by the end of the school year, she was able to read a text and write four sentences based on its meaning. She is also performing at grade level in math.
The principal considers her a success story in part because of her mother’s support.
“She was an advocate for her children, which is all that we can ever ask for,” Cruz Freeman said.
___
Associated Press data journalist Sharon Lurye contributed to this report from New Orleans.
___
The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-schools-lost-track-of-homeless-kids-during-the-pandemic-many-face-a-steep-path-to-recovery/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:11 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-schools-lost-track-of-homeless-kids-during-the-pandemic-many-face-a-steep-path-to-recovery/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruling that upended President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt changed his budget math, modestly lowering the projected deficit for this year, his budget office reported Friday.
The White House expects to pare back $259 billion in spending that otherwise would have gone to erasing student loans. This contributed to lowering expected red ink this year under Biden’s budget plans from $1.569 trillion to $1.543 trillion.
The Office of Management and Budget’s Mid-Session Review represents the administration’s first recalculations of the loan program since the court’s June decision, which will affect millions of borrowers.
The court decision initially was expected to reduce the deficit by $400 billion. But a portion of that money will instead be used to pay for a smaller income-driven loan repayment program that goes into effect this summer, according to the report.
Millions of Americans with student loans will be able to enroll in the new SAVE repayment plan that offers some of the most lenient terms the government has ever offered borrowers.
Looking ahead to 2024, the report projects that inflation will continue to decline and the unemployment rate will average 3.8% for the rest of the year. Unemployment is expected to hit 4.4 % in 2024, then decline over the rest of the 10-year budget window to an annual average of 3.8%.
The new forecast comes as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell earlier this week said staff economists no longer foresee a recession.
“There is clear evidence that the President’s economic plan — Bidenomics — is growing our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down,” said Biden’s budget director Shalanda Young in a statement accompanying the report.
The administration has been pushing “Bidenomics” as an approach that spurs economic growth through promoting domestic supply chains and favoring firms that use those supply chains through tax credits and other measures. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-supreme-courts-student-loan-decision-will-lower-us-deficit-according-to-new-white-house-projection/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:18 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-supreme-courts-student-loan-decision-will-lower-us-deficit-according-to-new-white-house-projection/ |
McQuade Distributing Company donates to fire departments
BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - When Mike Moos woke up this morning, he wasn’t expecting to get a text from the fire dispatch asking him to come to Golden Valley’s fire station to help unload a donation from a beer distributing company.
“We don’t have the bigger funds like the larger towns do, so this donation will be greatly appreciated,” said Moos.
The average fire truck usually holds at least a few hundred gallons of water, but you probably wouldn’t want to drink it, and buying bottled water can strain a smaller fire department’s budget.
Since 2019, the McQuade Distributing Company has partnered with Anheuser-Busch and the National Volunteer Fire Council to deliver clean drinking water to over 960 volunteer fire departments, including Golden Valley’s. The donations are meant to be a sign of appreciation for firefighters’ work in their communities.
“It’s all volunteer work, so any little bit, anybody could help them out...and a little water for them when they’re out in this heat, fighting the fires,” said Trent Larsen, a delivery driver for the program.
McQuade distributes beer to sellers around Bismarck, but occasionally, they’ll pack in cans of water alongside their usual drinks and stop at fire departments outside the city. This delivery included 90 cases of water, and Golden Valley plans to share it.
“We also plan to donate some of it to Zap and Dodge as they are our mutual aid,” Moos said.
The shipment might not have included free beer, but 90 cases of water are just as--if not more--important.
Copyright 2023 KFYR. All rights reserved. | https://www.kfyrtv.com/2023/07/29/mcquade-distributing-company-donates-fire-departments/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:22 | 0 | https://www.kfyrtv.com/2023/07/29/mcquade-distributing-company-donates-fire-departments/ |
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A teenager recalled Friday how she helped save a girl who was severely wounded during a Michigan school shooting in 2021, telling a judge that she moved her to an empty classroom, applied pressure to stop the bleeding and prayed with her.
“I asked her if she knew who God was. She said, ‘Not really,’” Heidi Allen, 17, recalled.
“I think I’m supposed to be here right now,” she said, describing how she felt at the time. “Because there’s no other reason that I’m OK, that I’m in this hallway, completely untouched.”
Heidi testified at a hearing to determine whether Ethan Crumbley, 17, will get a life prison sentence, or a shorter term with an opportunity for parole, for killing four students and wounding seven other people at Oxford High School.
She said she recognized him as soon as he exited a bathroom and brandished a gun.
“It fired,” Heidi recalled. “Everything kind of slowed down for me. It was all slow motion. I had covered my head. I dropped down. … It sounded like a balloon popping or a locker slamming. It was very loud.
“I just prayed and covered my head,” she said. “I didn’t know if those were my last moments.”
Heidi wasn’t shot but others were. She said she took a girl into a classroom, installed a portable lock on the door and applied pressure to the girl’s wounds. The victim survived.
“I just kept reassuring her she was going to be OK. She was crying,” Heidi testified. “I don’t fully remember what she was saying. I was trying to stay calm.”
The shooter, who was 15 at the time, pleaded guilty to murder, terrorism and other crimes. But a life sentence for minors isn’t automatic after a series of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and Michigan’s top court.
Defense attorneys are arguing that he can be rehabilitated in prison and eventually released. They said the shooting followed years of a turbulent family life, grossly negligent parents and untreated mental illness.
A former warden, Ken Romanowski, testified about a variety of programs available in prison, such as mental health therapy, anger management, education and trade skills.
“Honestly, I think everybody has the potential for change. But he has to be the one who makes that choice,” Romanowski said, appearing for the defense.
A psychiatrist, Dr. Fariha Qadir, said Crumbley discussed having depression, hallucinations and hearing voices when they first met after his arrest. She has talked to him more than 100 times while in jail and prescribed medication for depression, mood and sleep.
James and Jennifer Crumbley are separately charged with involuntary manslaughter. They’re accused of buying a gun for their son and ignoring his mental health needs.
Earlier Friday, Judge Kwame Rowe denied a request by the shooter’s lawyers to stop students from testifying. They argued that it’s irrelevant when applying key factors set by the U.S. Supreme Court when determining a sentence for a minor.
“I’m able to discern what’s relevant to the… factors and what’s not relevant,” the judge said.
Prosecutors presented other witnesses Friday. An assistant principal, Kristy Gibson-Marshall, tearfully described how she tried to revive Tate Myre, a student whom she had known since he was 3 years old. He died.
“It was crushing. I had to help him,” Gibson-Marshall testified. “I could feel the entrance wound in the back of his head. … I just kept talking to him, that I love him, that I needed him to hang with me.”
It took “months to get the taste of Tate’s blood out of me,” she said.
Gibson-Marshall also knew the shooter, who passed by but didn’t harm her.
Separately, a 16-year-old boy explained how he hid in a bathroom with another student, Justin Shilling, who was killed by the shooter. Keegan Gregory said he suddenly found an opportunity to run behind the shooter’s back and escape.
“I realized if I stayed I was going to die,” said Keegan, who now wears a tattoo to honor the victims. “I just kept running as fast as I could, making turns so if he chased me I’d lose him.”
The hearing will resume Tuesday.
If the shooter doesn’t get a life sentence, he would be given a minimum prison sentence somewhere from 25 years to 40 years. He would then be eligible for parole, though the parole board has much discretion to keep a prisoner in custody.
There were opportunities to possibly prevent the shooting earlier that day. The boy and his parents met with school staff after a teacher was troubled by drawings that included a gun pointing at the words: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
The teen was allowed to stay in school, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Detroit, though his backpack was not checked for weapons.
___
Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-teen-says-she-just-prayed-while-saving-girl-in-michigan-school-shooting/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:24 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-teen-says-she-just-prayed-while-saving-girl-in-michigan-school-shooting/ |
EVANSTON — Evanston police are investigating after someone vandalized Pride flags with anti-LGBTQ+ messaging.
Small, defaced pride flags were spotted Thursday on Central Street and near the Dempster Metra stop. The words “pride death” were written on each flag, and one of the flags was burned.
Police listed the three locations:
- 1700 block of Central Street
- 2100 block of Central Street
- 600 block of Dempster Street
Police believe the incidents occurred in the early morning of July 27. There is no evidence yet of any specific threats made to members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The suspect(s) responsible and the motive are pending investigation.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Evanston police at (847) 866-5040. | https://wgntv.com/evanston/evanston-police-investigating-suspicious-activity-involving-pride-flags/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:28 | 1 | https://wgntv.com/evanston/evanston-police-investigating-suspicious-activity-involving-pride-flags/ |
A teenager with special needs was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an employee at a small private boarding school in South Carolina, his parents said in a lawsuit as they advocate for more oversight of similar therapeutic facilities.
The teen, who attended Whetstone Academy between October 2018 and January 2020, was “frequently sexually assaulted” and raped beginning when he was 14, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit accuses Singleton Investment Properties, the school’s parent company, of negligence and failure to reasonably protect the teenager. The company denies the allegations.
The parents are identified anonymously in the lawsuit filed in April as Mother Doe and Father Doe and their son as John Doe. The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually abused and is not naming the parents to avoid revealing their son’s identity.
The parents previously sued the school and in January reached a confidential settlement. But they said they hope to bring about broad change and accountability by going after the corporate structure in this subsequent suit.
The judge earlier this month indicated a trial would likely be held next spring, but has ordered the two sides to participate in mediation to see if a settlement can be reached before then.
“We’re really hoping there’s some systematic change, some legislation enacted and real accountability here,” the Does’ attorney, Tyler Bailey, told the AP.
Therapeutic boarding schools like Whetstone should be regulated similarly to state-licensed daycare centers, with complaints tracked and publicly accessible, to the extent possible, Baily said.
“Money is one thing but change so parents and children don’t go through what they have gone through, that’s what they’re seeking to get done by this case,” Bailey said.
John Singleton Jr., who owns Singleton Investment Properties and Whetstone Academy, said in an email, “We specifically deny the allegations.” The company also denied the allegations in a court filing earlier this month.
Once the school learned of the allegations from the South Carolina Department of Social Services, the employee was immediately suspended and the school fully cooperated with an investigation by the state agency. Since the agency took no action and no criminal investigation was undertaken or charges filed, the employee was reinstated and has returned to work at the school, Singleton said.
The employee is not named in the lawsuit.
“Whetstone Academy’s focus was, is, and always will be on ensuring that every student is cared for in a safe and nurturing environment with close supervision and stringent staff oversight,” Singleton wrote. “Students receive individual and family therapy by our licensed clinicians. We provide evidence-based training for our staff who are guided by our policies and procedures.”
The Does, who live in Alabama, said their son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was young. By age 14, he was having several outbursts a day, breaking things and emotionally troubled, the father said in a phone interview. An educational consultant suggested sending him to a therapeutic boarding school for extra care and therapy.
Whetstone Academy, in the remote Mountain Rest community in the northwest corner of South Carolina, takes students in grades five through nine and was one of the schools suggested by the consultant.
The teen initially seemed to be making progress at the school, but after about 10 months his behavior was so difficult that the parents were advised to send him to a different facility for more intensive treatment, the father said. After a summer in that facility, he returned to Whetstone.
“He stayed there for a little while, but he realized that if he acted out, he would get kicked out and he did,” the mother said. “Thank God he did.”
The Does then sent their son to a school in Utah. After about six months there, his parents flew him to a resort in Georgia for a vacation. At dinner one night, John Doe told his parents he had been sexually assaulted numerous times and raped by an employee at Whetstone, his mother said.
The Does called their son’s therapist at the Utah school for advice. Bound by mandatory reporting requirements, the therapist contacted authorities, who interviewed the teenager and said they notified South Carolina authorities to investigate, the father said.
South Carolina’s social services agency doesn’t license therapeutic boarding schools, but spokesperson Connelly-Anne Ragley said in an email that the agency investigates upon receiving reports of sexual abuse involving minors. Any sexual abuse allegation sent to the agency’s intake line would be reported to law enforcement within 24 hours as required by state law, she said.
The Department of Social Services told the AP that information about child abuse investigations is confidential and not releasable under the state’s open records law.
The sheriff’s office in Oconee County, where Whetstone is located, only conducts criminal investigations when an official report is filed and, in most cases, sexual assault prosecutions require the victim’s cooperation, Master Deputy Jimmy Watt said in an email.
He said the agency had no records related to any allegations against the employee accused of sexually abusing John Doe. A State Law Enforcement Division spokesperson said that agency has not been involved.
The Does want to make sure cases like their son’s are referred to law enforcement for thorough investigation and don’t fall through the cracks. They haven’t filed a report with South Carolina law enforcement because they don’t trust authorities in the small, insular community to investigate, their lawyer said.
John Doe, now 18, is still mistrustful at times and it has taken years for his parents to repair their relationship with him, they said. They’ve talked to him about how pursuing this case could result in people finding out what happened to him, his mother said.
“He’s the bravest kid I’ve ever met because he said, ‘I don’t care. This is all about helping others, Mom,’” she said. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-teen-was-sexually-abused-at-therapeutic-boarding-school-lawsuit-says-as-parents-advocate-oversight/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:30 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-teen-was-sexually-abused-at-therapeutic-boarding-school-lawsuit-says-as-parents-advocate-oversight/ |
(KTLA) – A labor union representing thousands of hotel housekeepers in Southern California is asking Taylor Swift to postpone her upcoming concerts at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood until they are paid “a living wage.”
UNITE HERE Local 11 published an open letter to the pop star in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
“We make beds, clean bathrooms, and take care of every guest need. Your shows make our hotels a lot of money,” the letter reads. “In Los Angeles, hotels are doubling and tripling what they charge because you are coming. They also add junk fees on rooms, just like Ticketmaster does. But we see none of it.”
Hotel workers have been staging labor actions in the Los Angeles area since the start of July as they negotiate for increased pay and benefits. They have also joined striking Hollywood writers and actors on the picket lines.
Experts predict Swift’s 52-night, 20-city tour will become the highest-grossing of all time. It is also having a notable economic impact on each city she visits with the surge of Swifties snatching up hotel rooms at jacked-up rates.
She is slated to perform six straight nights at SoFi Stadium beginning August 3.
Union leaders hope Swift will lend support to their cause.
“She has taken on corporate greed to make sure artists get fairly compensate and that those workers behind the scenes in her own music get the treatment they deserve,” Ada Briceno, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said at a rally on Thursday outside of the Hyatt Regency at LAX.
There is no indication the pop star is considering postponing her Inglewood shows. KTLA’s request for comment on Thursday was not immediately returned. | https://wgntv.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/taylor-swift-urged-to-postpone-los-angeles-area-shows/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:34 | 0 | https://wgntv.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/taylor-swift-urged-to-postpone-los-angeles-area-shows/ |
PHOENIX (AP) — The backup Uber driver for a self-driving vehicle that killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in 2018 pleaded guilty Friday to endangerment in the first fatal collision involving a fully autonomous car.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Garbarino, who accepted the plea agreement, sentenced Rafaela Vasquez, 49, to three years of supervised probation for the crash that killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. Vasquez told police that Herzberg “came out of nowhere” and that she didn’t see Herzberg before the March 18, 2018, collision on a darkened Tempe street.
Vasquez had been charged with negligent homicide, a felony. She pleaded guilty to an undesignated felony, meaning it could be reclassified as a misdemeanor if she completes probation.
Authorities say Vasquez was streaming the television show “The Voice” on a phone and looking down in the moments before Uber’s Volvo XC-90 SUV struck Herzberg, who was crossing with her bicycle.
Vasquez’s attorneys said she was was looking at a messaging program used by Uber employees on a work cellphone that was on her right knee. They said the TV show was playing on her personal cellphone, which was on the passenger seat.
Defense attorney Albert Jaynes Morrison told Garbarino that Uber should share some blame for the collision as he asked the judge to sentence Vasquez to six months of unsupervised probation.
“There were steps that Uber failed to take,” he said. By putting Vasquez in the vehicle without a second employee, he said. “It was not a question of if but when it was going to happen.”
Prosecutors previously declined to file criminal charges against Uber, as a corporation. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded Vasquez’s failure to monitor the road was the main cause of the crash.
“The defendant had one job and one job only,” prosecutor Tiffany Brady told the judge. “And that was to keep her eyes in the road.”
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said in a statement after the hearing that her office believes the sentence was appropriate “based on the mitigating and aggravating factors.”
The contributing factors cited by the NTSB included Uber’s inadequate safety procedures and ineffective oversight of its drivers, Herzberg’s decision to cross the street outside of a crosswalk and the Arizona Department of Transportation’s insufficient oversight of autonomous vehicle testing.
The board also concluded Uber’s deactivation of its automatic emergency braking system increased the risks associated with testing automated vehicles on public roads. Instead of the system, Uber relied on the human backup driver to intervene.
It was not the first crash involving an Uber autonomous test vehicle. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe when it collided with another vehicle. No serious injuries were reported, and the driver of the other car was cited for a violation.
Herzberg’s death was the first involving an autonomous test vehicle but not the first in a car with some self-driving features. The driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in 2016 when his car, operating on its Autopilot system, crashed into a semitrailer in Florida.
Nine months after Herzberg’s death, in December 2019, two people were killed in California when a Tesla on Autopilot ran a red light, slammed into another car. That driver was charged in 2022 with vehicular manslaughter in what was believed to be the first felony case against a motorist who was using a partially automated driving system.
In Arizona, the Uber system detected Herzberg 5.6 seconds before the crash. But it failed to determine whether she was a bicyclist, pedestrian or unknown object, or that she was headed into the vehicle’s path, the board said.
The backup driver was there to take over the vehicle if systems failed.
The death reverberated throughout the auto industry and Silicon Valley and forced other companies to slow what had been a fast march toward autonomous ride-hailing services. Uber pulled its self-driving cars out of Arizona, and then-Gov. Doug Ducey prohibited the company from continuing its tests of self-driving cars.
Vasquez had previously spent more than four years in prison for two felony convictions — making false statements when obtaining unemployment benefits and attempted armed robbery — before starting work as an Uber driver, according to court records. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-the-backup-driver-in-the-1st-death-by-a-fully-autonomous-car-pleads-guilty-to-endangerment/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:38 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-the-backup-driver-in-the-1st-death-by-a-fully-autonomous-car-pleads-guilty-to-endangerment/ |
Lottery players will have another shot at a huge Mega Millions jackpot Friday night and a chance to break a stretch of more than three months without a big winner of the game.
The estimated $940 million prize has been building since someone last matched all six numbers and won the jackpot April 18. Since then, there have been 28 straight drawings without a jackpot winner.
The jackpot is now the eighth-largest ever in the U.S. It comes a little over a week after someone in Los Angeles won a $1.08 billion Powerball prize that ranked as the sixth-largest in U.S. history. It’s still a mystery who won that prize.
Lottery jackpots grow so large because the odds of winning are so small. For Mega Millions, the odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 302.6 million.
The $940 million prize would be for a sole winner choosing to be paid through an annuity with annual payments over 30 years. Jackpot winners almost always opt for a lump sum payment, which for Friday night’s drawing would be an estimated $472.5 million.
Winners also would be subject to federal taxes, while many states also tax lottery winnings.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-the-mega-millions-jackpot-is-now-910-million-after-months-without-a-big-winner/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:44 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-the-mega-millions-jackpot-is-now-910-million-after-months-without-a-big-winner/ |
ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina has criticized fellow Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for supporting new standards that require teachers to instruct middle school students that slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
“What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating,” Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate, told reporters on Thursday after a town hall in Ankeny. “So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”
“People have bad days,” Scott added. “Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”
DeSantis has been facing criticism from Florida teachers, civil rights leaders, President Joe Biden’s White House and even Black Republicans on the school standards. Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, traveled to Florida last week to condemn the curriculum.
DeSantis fired back on Friday, saying that “part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left.”
Campaigning in Iowa, he added that he was “defending” Florida “against false accusations and against lies. And we’re going to continue to speak the truth.”
The back-and-forth marked a shift in campaign styles for both DeSantis and Scott, who have not directly critiqued each other and have instead focused much of their antagonism toward President Joe Biden. It also comes as DeSantis’ effort has endured a mid-campaign reset, making staffing cuts to accommodate campaign expenses.
Another Black Republican presidential candidate, former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, has also criticized DeSantis over the curriculum, as have Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida and Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas, two Trump allies who are among a handful of Black Republicans in Congress.
Scott’s comments came as he and DeSantis stumped in Iowa before the state Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner. At that gathering, 13 candidates in the GOP presidential primary field, including front-runner Donald Trump, will be addressing an expected 1,200 activists on Friday. Scott, part of the GOP’s most diverse presidential field ever, was asked for his opinion on the standards hours after DeSantis defended them to reporters.
“At the end of the day, you got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?” DeSantis said, citing Democrats’ criticism of the wording on slavery. “I think it’s very clear that these guys did a good job on those standards. It wasn’t anything that was politically motivated.”
Responding on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to reporters’ posts of Scott’s video, a super PAC supporting DeSantis on Thursday night called the posts “incredibly sloppy or intentionally disingenuous,” reposting video of DeSantis’ defense of the curriculum earlier in the day.
___
Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C., and can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-tim-scott-criticizes-ron-desantis-over-floridas-new-slavery-curriculum/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:51 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-tim-scott-criticizes-ron-desantis-over-floridas-new-slavery-curriculum/ |
ST. LOUIS — A retaliation against a Cubs’ batter on Thursday night has earned a Cardinals pitcher a suspension from Major League Baseball.
On Friday afternoon, the league announced that Cardinals starting pitcher Miles Mikolas has been suspended for five games after intentionally hitting Ian Happ in the Cubs’ 10-3 win over St. Louis at Busch Stadium on Thursday night.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol, who was ejected from the game for arguing on behalf of Mikolas, was suspended one game and will serve it tonight against the Cubs in the second of a four-game series.
Per MLB, Mikolas has appealed his suspension.
The incident happened in the first inning, and started after an accident between two former teammates. In his first at-bat of the game, Happ’s backswing struck catcher Willson Contreras in the head, drawing blood.
After being looked at by athletic trainers and still bleeding, he was pulled from the game. There appeared to be no ill feelings between the two, who were teammates in Chicago from 2017 through 2022, as the hugged before Contreras left to go to the dugout.
But Mikolas felt the need to retaliate, throwing a 94-mile-per-hour fastball near Happ on the next pitch and then hitting him in the hip with the following delivery. After a brief discussion around the mound, the umpires made the decision to throw the starting pitcher out of the game.
Mikolas argued the decision along with Marmol, who was thrown out of the game and earned a suspension of his own.
Meanwhile, the Cubs took advantage of the ejections by scoring three runs with two outs in the first inning and eventually building a 7-0 lead against the Cardinals bullpen. The team would cruise to their sixth-straight win as they reached the .500 mark for the first time since May 12 (51-51). | https://wgntv.com/sports/cubs/cardinals-pitcher-mike-mikolas-disciplined-for-beaning-cubs-ian-happ/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:53 | 0 | https://wgntv.com/sports/cubs/cardinals-pitcher-mike-mikolas-disciplined-for-beaning-cubs-ian-happ/ |
BENSENVILLE, Ill. — A man is unresponsive after being pulled from a pond Friday afternoon in Bensenville.
According to Bensenville police Chief Dan Schulze, the man slipped into the Redmond Pond in the 500 block of John Street.
Police and fire personnel from Bensenville and other agencies responded, found the man, brought him to the surface and took him to a hospital.
His specific condition hasn’t been released.
“Our thoughts are with the individual’s family and loved ones,” Schulze said. | https://wgntv.com/western-suburbs/man-unresponsive-after-being-pulled-from-pond-in-bensenville/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:53 | 0 | https://wgntv.com/western-suburbs/man-unresponsive-after-being-pulled-from-pond-in-bensenville/ |
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Tom Durden, the Georgia district attorney who kick-started the prosecution of Ahmaud Arbery’s killing by calling in state investigators to take over the languishing case, has died at age 66.
The Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, which Durden led for 24 years before stepping down last year, confirmed Durden’s death in a Facebook post Friday. No cause of death was given.
During his career of nearly four decades, Durden served briefly as the second outside prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the February 2020 killing of Arbery. The 25-year-old Black man was fatally shot as he ran from white men in pickup trucks who chased him through their Georgia neighborhood. The shooter said he fired in self-defense.
The case stalled without charges for more than two months before Durden asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to take over from local police. GBI agents rapidly made arrests that led to three murder convictions. Durden stepped aside soon after the arrests, saying the case needed a DA with a larger staff.
“He played a significant role, as we know the others before him did nothing,” said Thea Brooks, one of Arbery’s aunts. “No matter how long he had it on his desk, he did the right thing.”
Following Arbery’s killing outside the port city of Brunswick in 2020, the local district attorney recused herself and the first outside prosecutor assigned, George Barnhill, opposed bringing criminal charges before he stepped aside.
Georgia’s attorney general then appointed Durden, who had the case for roughly a month amid a growing outcry for arrests. Durden asked the GBI to get involved after cellphone video of the killing leaked online May 5, 2020.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael were arrested on murder charges the day after GBI agents arrived in Brunswick. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, was charged soon after.
“The fact that he sent it to the GBI was a positive turn in the case for us, and I think he deserves credit for it,” said the Rev. John Perry, who led Brunswick’s NAACP chapter at the time Arbery was killed.
The job of prosecuting the McMichaels and Bryan was passed to the district attorney for Cobb County in metro Atlanta. All three men were ultimately convicted of murder in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison.
Durden joined the district attorney’s office as an assistant prosecutor in 1984, two years after earning his law degree from Mercer University. He was elected DA after his predecessor retired in 1998.
Durden prosecuted hundreds of criminal cases in the Atlantic Circuit, which covers six southeast Georgia counties outside Savannah.
“Mr. Durden was a true public servant to the State of Georgia for close to 40 years,” Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said in a statement. “My sincerest condolences to Tom’s family.”
In 1998, Durden successfully prosecuted four family members and a friend in the killing of Thurmon Martin, a case that would become known as Georgia’s infamous “tomato patch” murder.
Martin, 64, was shot while sleeping in May 1997 and buried behind his home in rural Ludowici. The case gained notoriety for the tomato plants growing atop Martin’s grave, as well as the defendants’ harrowing courtroom accounts of being abused by the slain man. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-tom-durden-georgia-da-who-ordered-takeover-of-stalled-ahmaud-arbery-investigation-dies-at-66/ | 2023-07-29T00:40:53 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-tom-durden-georgia-da-who-ordered-takeover-of-stalled-ahmaud-arbery-investigation-dies-at-66/ |
Taylor Swift concerts create seismic activity in Seattle
The pop star and her fans shook the ground at Lumen Field twice as much as Seahawks fans did during the “Beast Quake" of 2011.
SEATTLE – Taylor Swift and her fans rocked Lumen Field so much last weekend that they shook the ground enough to register on a nearby seismometer.
Western Washington University professor of geology Jackie Caplan-Auerbach discovered this phenomenon when asked by a colleague whether the Taylor Swift concerts on July 22 and 23 made a "Beast Quake."
The Beast Quake was a seismic event that occurred at Lumen Field in 2011 when the Seattle Seahawk's Marshawn Lynch scored a touchdown during a playoff game. The crowd's celebration shook the ground at the stadium enough to register on seismometers. Given Lynch’s nickname of "Beast Mode", the seismic activity was dubbed the "Beast Quake".
GARTH BROOKS CONCERTS REGISTERS AS EARTHQUAKE IN LOUISIANA
Because of Seattle’s history and reputation for its raucous fans, the potentially seismic nature of a concert performed by one of the world's biggest pop stars became a topic of discussion among seismologists, such as Caplan-Auerbach.
She looked at data from a seismometer for the two dates Swift performed at Lumen Field and discovered that the line registering seismic activity for those dates was virtually identical, indicating that the shaking ground that was detected came from the concerts.
"That really tells us that we're looking at a set list," Caplan-Auerbach said. "We're looking at the same patterns of rhythms and songs over and over again."
When asked how much the Swift concerts shook the ground compared to the Beast Quake of 2011, Caplan-Auerbach noted a significant difference.
"It shook the ground twice as strong as the original Beast Quake," she said. "So, that was fun to see, that this event was really, really quite an energetic event from a seismic perspective."
Part of this seismic activity is largely influenced by the type of ground upon which Seattle rests. According to Caplan-Auerbach, the geology of the area is a landfill, describing it as soft and soupy. Because of this, ground shaking, such as those caused by raucous fans at a music concert or football game, is amplified.
She also noted that, despite the ground shaking during the Taylor Swift concert, the event was technically not an earthquake.
"One of the little bits of earth science I hope people get out of that is to recognize that these really big things that humans can do kind of do not touch what the planet can do," she said. "Earthquakes are simply larger than crowd noise."
The Taylor Swift crowd has taken quite an interest in the geological nature of their concert experience. According to Caplan-Auerbach, Swifties have reached out to the professor to share their data, videos and experiences from the concerts, which Caplan-Auderbach is including in her studies.
"I'm just really grateful to this community for their willingness to share their enthusiasm about doing science via Taylor Swift," she said. "So, it's been really, really great." | https://www.foxweather.com/lifestyle/taylor-swift-eras-concert-quake-seattle | 2023-07-29T00:41:13 | 0 | https://www.foxweather.com/lifestyle/taylor-swift-eras-concert-quake-seattle |
BMW Tupac Shakur was shot in is selling for $1.75 million
LAS VEGAS (CNN) - The BMW Tupac Shakur was riding in when he was shot is up for sale.
Shakur was gunned down on Sept. 7, 1996, while he was a passenger in the vehicle after leaving a boxing match at the MGM Grand hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight was driving the leased vehicle at the time of the murder.
Now, Celebrity Cars in Las Vegas is selling the 1996 BMW for $1.75 million.
According to Celebrity Cars General Manager Ryan Hamilton, the vehicle has been fixed since the shooting and sold to the public multiple times, likely without those owners knowing its history.
That was until about four years ago, when a collector realized it was the vehicle Shakur was in after finding a hidden compartment on the side of the door.
The compartment was likely used to store a gun, Hamilton said.
Last week, Las Vegas police served a search warrant at an area home belonging to Duane Davis, the uncle of Orlando Anderson – the man police believe killed the rapper.
Police said they are planning to test firearm cartridges that were seized from the home.
Copyright 2023 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/28/bmw-tupac-shakur-was-shot-is-selling-175-million/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:13 | 0 | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/28/bmw-tupac-shakur-was-shot-is-selling-175-million/ |
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed “I will get the job done” but shied away from attacking former President Donald Trump as the two top rivals for the Republican presidential nomination were making rare appearances at the same Iowa campaign event on Friday night.
Despite Trump being charged a day earlier with additional counts over his retention of classified documents that could shake up the race, DeSantis stuck to his standard campaign speech, mostly targeting President Joe Biden. The Florida governor also repeated his frequent promise to halt the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, an allusion to Trump’s legal troubles, but offered no specific thoughts on the cases against him. That’s despite Trump also bracing to be charged soon in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“The time for excuses is over. We must get the job done,” DeSantis said. “I will get the job done.”
Trump frequently avoids attending multicandidate events in person, questioning why he would share a stage with competitors who are badly trailing him in polls. But with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus less than six months away, the former president joined a dozen other GOP hopefuls in speaking to about 1,200 GOP members and activists at the Lincoln Day Dinner.
He also opened an Iowa campaign office in Urbandale, outside Des Moines, prior to the main event — and wasn’t shy about slamming his competitors around the same time DeSantis was taking the stage at the dinner.
“I understand the other candidates are falling very flat … it’s like death,” Trump said, adding, “There’s no applause, there’s no nothing.”
More than 100 people packed the small office, many wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and shirts. They had waited in 100-degree weather to enter, and the poorly ventilated office quickly became sweltering. Staff handed out water bottles, and people fanned themselves with campaign handouts. Some used paper towels to wipe away sweat.
DeSantis is Trump’s strongest primary competitor but has been trying to reset his stalled campaign for two weeks. He’s increasingly focusing on Iowa in its efforts on trying to derail Trump.
The governor’s stumbles have raised questions about whether another candidate might be able to emerge from the field and catch the former president. Some evangelicals, who can be determinative in the state’s caucuses, have pointed to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s upbeat message and pulpit-style delivery as strengths that could help him rise there.
Scott, who also spoke Friday night and didn’t mention Trump or the cases against him, held a town hall the previous day in Ankeny with Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. Afterward, Scott took a swipe at DeSantis over the Florida governor’s support for new standards that require the state’s teachers to instruct middle school students that slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
The only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, Scott said all Americans should recognize how “devastating” slavery was. “There is no silver lining” to slavery, he added.
DeSantis has also faced criticism from teachers and civil rights leaders, as well as mounting pushback from some of his party’s most prominent Black elected officials. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said he hoped officials might “correct” parts of the curriculum addressing lessons on the developed skills of enslaved people. Texas Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt and Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman now also running in the GOP presidential primary, have also criticized DeSantis.
Still, the governor continued to dig in on the issue, saying at a pre-dinner event in Oskaloosa on Friday, “D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left.” The governor has defended the new school curriculum, saying, “I think it’s very clear that these guys did a good job on those standards.”
John Niemeyer, 52, from Kalona, Iowa, attended DeSantis’ event and was impressed. But, as a high school teacher, he’s not a fan of some of the governor’s positions on education policy.
“I don’t want to make our classrooms a political battlefield,” he said, adding that it would be a “mistake” to make the issue the forefront of his campaign.
Vice President Kamala Harris made her own Iowa stop on Friday, seeking to draw a contrast with the Republicans as she looked to lift President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Harris met in Des Moines with activists and discussed abortion rights, after Reynolds recently signed a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
“I do believe that we are witnessing a national agenda that is about a full-on attack on hard won freedoms and hard won rights,” the vice president said.
Hours later, many Lincoln Day Dinner attendees wore “Trump Country” stickers, including 72-year-old Diane Weaver of Ankeny, Iowa.
“I think he makes America great,” said Weaver, a retiree who plans to caucus for Trump. “I think he did it once and I think he can do it again.”
West Des Moines resident Jane Schrader chose to wear her “Trump Country” sticker on her pants instead of at eye level. “I’m not quite dyed-in-the-wool. I’m a supporter, but not that kind,” said the retired physician, explaining her sticker placement.
Trump did face criticism from some rivals, including former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison, who in his speech declared, “As a party, we need a new direction for America and for the GOP.” The crowd offered only a muted reaction — but refrained from booing, which Trump critics at Republican primary events often face.
DeSantis, meanwhile, ducked chances Friday to criticize Trump over the additional charges he faces even before his speech.
“We have engaged when appropriate,” DeSantis told reporters in Oskaloosa, adding that he’s not interested in “relitigating the latest superseding indictment.”
The governor has pledged to eventually visit all of Iowa’s 99 counties and is in the midst of a two-day state bus tour organized by a super PAC supporting his run. But he faces fresh questions about his strategy and path forward.
After his fundraising reports showed him burning through donations, the governor cut more than a third of his campaign staff.
DeSantis’ cash crunch seems to be driving the campaign to rely even more on the efforts of the super PAC Never Back Down to take up the work typically done by campaign staff. Super PACs can receive unlimited sums from donors but are barred under federal rules from donating to candidates or coordinating with campaigns on how their money is spent.
While presidential campaigns have been supplemented before by the work of super PACs, which frequently use deeper coffers to run expensive television ads, the work Never Back Down has done to promote DeSantis has been more expansive. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-trump-desantis-and-other-2024-gop-candidates-set-to-address-iowa-republicans-at-lincoln-day-dinner/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:13 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-trump-desantis-and-other-2024-gop-candidates-set-to-address-iowa-republicans-at-lincoln-day-dinner/ |
Meteorologists confirm EF-1 tornado touched down in southern New Hampshire on Thursday
The Granite State typically averages two tornadoes per year, according to the NWS. Usually, the twisters are weak and are commonly rated either EF-0 or EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
DUBLIN, N.H. – A National Weather Service survey team that toured communities across southern New Hampshire believes an EF-1 tornado was to blame for some of the storm damage reported around the town of Dublin on Thursday.
Dublin is about a 20-minute drive from Keene, where at least one storm spotter reported seeing the tornado and relayed the information to the NWS.
The NWS office said due to the report and rotation on radar, meteorologists issued a Tornado Warning that alerted residents in the storm’s path that the twister was observed on the ground.
Authorities reported trees fell on cars and power lines. The survey team also found some siding on buildings was damaged, and a small solar farm was impacted by the winds.
HOW ARE TORNADOES RATED? THE ENHANCED FUJITA SCALE EXPLAINED
Based on the damage, the team estimated winds reached 95 mph, which ranks on the lower end of an EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
The scale runs from an EF-0, which is considered to be the weakest of all tornadoes, to an EF-5, which has winds of at least 200 mph and is capable of incredible damage.
There were no reported injuries associated with Thursday’s tornado, and power was restored to the impacted communities within hours.
Tornadic activity is uncommon in New Hampshire
According to the NWS office that covers the entire state of New Hampshire, the Granite State only sees about two tornadoes per year that are typically on the weak side.
In May 2022, an EF-1 knocked down trees around Charlestown. About two months later, a similar strength twister rolled through Chesterfield.
TORNADOES HIT LARGE CITIES: THIS IS WHY
The last significant tornado to impact the state happened on July 24, 2008.
A NOAA database reported the twister was given a rating of an EF-2 and was on the ground for more than an hour. Hundreds of homes were reported to have been damaged or destroyed, and a woman was killed near the town of Deerfield.
The 2008 event was the first reported tornado fatality in New Hampshire since 1946. | https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/new-hampshire-tornado-dublin-new-england | 2023-07-29T00:41:19 | 1 | https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/new-hampshire-tornado-dublin-new-england |
NEA teams tune up for 2023 at Westside Team Camp
JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) - We’re four weeks away from Football Friday Night.
Westside wrapped up team camp earlier this week. The Warriors, Brookland, Paragould, Harrisburg, and Manila were among the NEA squads tuning up for the season.
“We like to get some local schools in, and just try to get some reps,” said Westside head coach Bobby Engle. “We got two schools that have brand new coaches, brand new systems. So they’re trying to implement a lot of new stuff with their guys. This kinda allows them to slow it down, and get their guys coached up.”
One of those new coaches is at Harrisburg. Austin Jarrett spent the last 2 seasons at Mountain Home as offensive line coach. The Harding alum is thrilled for the opportunity to turn around the Hornets.
“I had been there and interviewed previously for the offensive coordinator job,” Jarrett said. So I felt like I knew the people, and when I got the call, I was excited. An opportunity to come out here, live my dream as a head coach. These kids really need something to be proud of, something to be excited about. And I think that’s what we’re doing here. I think the kids have had great energy. We’ve had great attendance throughout the summer. So I’m excited to see what these guys are going to do this season.”
The FFN Preseason Tour kicks off on Monday.
Copyright 2023 KAIT. All rights reserved. | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/29/nea-teams-tune-up-2023-westside-team-camp/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:20 | 0 | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/29/nea-teams-tune-up-2023-westside-team-camp/ |
ROLLING FORK, Miss. (AP) — Streams of air whirled by Ida Cartlidge in every direction, but she couldn’t breathe.
Between the thin walls and above the shaky foundation of a mobile home, Cartlidge, 32, miraculously survived a March tornado that carved a path of destruction through Rolling Fork, Mississippi. Mobile home residents in the path of a twister’s fury often don’t live to recount the experience.
“It sounded like a real loud train coming through,” Cartlidge said. “And I could feel the wind, it was so powerful you couldn’t even breathe while you were in the air.”
Cartlidge and her husband, Charles Jones, 59, had forged a quiet life in Rolling Fork with their three sons. She worked in customer service for an appliance company and Jones for a local auto parts shop. They viewed Rolling Fork as a refuge from city life and an ideal place to raise kids. The family lived in a mobile home park behind Chuck’s Dairy Bar, a diner that had long been a nexus of local life for Rolling Fork residents.
Then the tornado tore through the park, making it a point of misery.
Most of the 14 people who died in Rolling Fork when the March 24 tornado hit the Mississippi Delta lived in the mobile home park, with large families crowding into one or two-bedroom units. Such living arrangements have been a way to offset the financial strain endemic to the Mississippi Delta, where poverty is prevalent and stable jobs are scarce.
Tornadoes in the United States are disproportionately killing more people in mobile or manufactured homes, especially in the South. Since 1996, tornadoes have killed 815 people in mobile or manufactured homes. That’s 53% of all the people killed in their homes during a tornado, according to an Associated Press data analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tornado deaths.
Cramped living arrangements forced mobile home inhabitants to shelter just as they lived: with little space between them.
“The only thing I could tell them to do was get on the floor,” said Charles Jones, Cartlidge’s husband. “And I got on top. I got on top of my family.”
Just seconds before Cartlidge found herself burrowed beneath her husband on the mobile home’s living room floor, her father had called her. He had been watching the news and saw that a tornado had touched down in Rolling Fork.
Cartlidge heard car windows shattering outside. The home’s windows shattered next. She scooped up her 1-year-old son and dove to the floor, with her 11- and 12-year-old sons next to her and Jones atop them. They didn’t know the incoming winds had reached 200 mph (320 kph). The storm’s force was instead measured by the fear it induced.
“The only thing that’s holding a mobile home down are the little straps in the ground,” Cartlidge said. “It picked up the home one time, set it down. It picked it up again, set it down. It picked it up a third time, and we were in the air.”
Her future was suspended in the air alongside her home. “You don’t know what’s happening next, whether you’re going to live it through it or not,” she said.
The next thing Cartlidge remembers is lying with her back on the ground and the baby resting on her chest. He was the only member of the family who made it through the storm unscathed.
Her fear didn’t subside. “All you could hear were people screaming and hollering for help,” she recalled.
Cartlidge propped herself up with a piece of wood and walked to the highway. She could feel her bones shifting with every step.
She suffered a crushed pelvis bone and broken shoulder. One of her sons punctured a lung and had shattered bones in his spine and shoulder blade. Jones injured his ribs and spine.
Since returning from the hospital, the family has been living in a motel room only minutes down the highway from where their mobile home used to be. Rain storms still make Cartlidge and Jones anxious, as they experienced the raw force of twister first-hand.
“The tornado’s going to win every time,” Jones said. “It’s just like when a nail meets a tire.”
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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mikergoldberg.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-we-were-in-the-air-mississippi-family-recounts-surviving-tornado-that-tore-mobile-home-apart/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:20 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-we-were-in-the-air-mississippi-family-recounts-surviving-tornado-that-tore-mobile-home-apart/ |
Kentucky woman dies in flooding after being swept away from home
The victim was Rosa Rowland, a 52-year-old woman who lived in Nicholas County. Her body was discovered Friday morning nearly a mile downstream from her home.
NICHOLAS COUNTY, Ky. – At least one person has died in the floods that struck northeastern Kentucky on Thursday night, according to the Nicholas County Sheriff’s Office.
The victim was Rosa Rowland, a 52-year-old woman who lived on West Headquarters Road in Nicholas County.
On Thursday, Carlisle Police Dispatch received a distress call from Rowland, who was at home at the time. Responders from Nicholas County Sheriff’s Office, Nicholas County Fire Department and Nicholas County Search & Rescue were dispatched to the scene, but their efforts were blocked due to floodwaters and downed power lines.
By the time emergency responders arrived, Rowland's home had been washed off of its foundation, according to the Nicholas County Coroner's Office.
Officials said Rowland was swept away from her home by the floodwater. Her body was discovered Friday morning in a field about three-quarters of a mile downstream from her home.
Located about 40 miles northeast of Lexington, Nicholas County received between 5 and 6 inches of rain Thursday night.
This flooding happened as the state marks the one-year anniversary of another devastating flood in eastern Kentucky that killed nearly 40 people. | https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/one-woman-dead-kentucky-floods | 2023-07-29T00:41:25 | 1 | https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/one-woman-dead-kentucky-floods |
Speed enforcement cameras now legal in Arkansas interstate work zones
JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT/Edited News Release) - Beginning Aug. 1, Arkansas law enforcement officers will have a new tool to help enhance safety by utilizing automated speed enforcement cameras in interstate work zones.
Arkansas Senator Kim Hammer and Representative Lanny Fite introduced the legislation, which was approved by the Arkansas State Legislature and signed by Governor Sarah Sanders earlier this year.
The law allows for the use of automated speed enforcement devices to capture images of speeding vehicles in interstate work zones. Information regarding the speeding vehicle will be transmitted to an officer stationed downstream, who will then have the authority to issue a warning or citation.
“This technology will help save lives,” said Arkansas Department of Transportation Director Lorie Tudor. “I want to thank the Arkansas State Legislature and the Governor for enacting this law in the interest of worker and motorist safety across the State.”
This technology is solely used to assist officers in enforcing speed limits in Interstate work zones. It will not be used to issue tickets by mail. An officer must be present for a warning or ticket to be issued.
Signs will alert drivers when they are entering a work zone that may have automated speed enforcement devices in use. The law stipulates that data captured from these devices shall not be retained except when it is used to issue a warning or citation.
“With the ongoing shortage of law enforcement officers, this technology will help supplement our existing officers’ efforts to keep Arkansas roadways safe,” said Arkansas Highway Police Chief Jeff Holmes. “The automated camera’s presence in the work zone means we can have an officer stationed downstream to safely perform traffic stops outside of the work zone, keeping everyone safer.”
To view the full text of Act 707, click here.
Copyright 2023 KAIT. All rights reserved. | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/29/speed-enforcement-cameras-now-legal-arkansas-interstate-work-zones/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:26 | 0 | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/29/speed-enforcement-cameras-now-legal-arkansas-interstate-work-zones/ |
HOUSTON (AP) — Just moments before rap superstar Travis Scott took the stage at the deadly 2021 Astroworld festival, a contract worker had been so worried about what might happen after seeing people getting crushed that he texted an event organizer saying, “Someone’s going to end up dead,” according to a police report released Friday.
The texts by security contract worker Reece Wheeler were some of many examples in the nearly 1,300-page report in which festival workers highlighted problems and warned of possible deadly consequences. The report includes transcripts of concertgoers’ 911 calls and summaries of police interviews, including one with Scott conducted just days after the event.
The crowd surge at the Nov. 5, 2021, outdoor festival in Houston killed 10 attendees who ranged in age from 9 to 27. The official cause of death was compression asphyxia, which an expert likened to being crushed by a car. About 50,000 people attended the festival.
“Pull tons over the rail unconscious. There’s panic in people eyes. This could get worse quickly,” Reece Wheeler texted Shawna Boardman, one of the private security directors, at 9 p.m. Wheeler then texted, “I know they’ll try to fight through it but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue. Someone’s going to end up dead.”
Scott’s concert began at 9:02 p.m. In their review of video from the concert’s livestream, police investigators said that at 9:13 p.m., they heard the faint sound of someone saying, “Stop the show.” The same request could also be heard at 9:16 p.m. and 9:22 p.m.
In an Aug. 19, 2022, police interview, Boardman’s attorneys told investigators that Boardman “saw things were not as bad as Reece Wheeler stated” and decided not to pass along Wheeler’s concerns to anyone else.
A grand jury declined to indict anyone who was investigated over the event, including Scott, Boardman and four other people.
During a police interview conducted two days after the concert, Scott told investigators that although he did see one person near the stage getting medical attention, overall the crowd seemed to be enjoying the show and he did not see any signs of serious problems.
“We asked if he at any point heard the crowd telling him to stop the show. He stated that if he had heard something like that he would have done something,” police said in their summary of Scott’s interview.
Hip-hop artist Drake, who performed with Scott at the concert, told police that it was difficult to see from the stage what was going on in the crowd and that he didn’t hear concertgoers’ pleas to stop the show.
Drake found out about the tragedy later that night from his manager, while learning more on social media, police said in their summary.
Marty Wallgren, who worked for a security consulting firm hired by the festival, told police that when he went backstage and tried to tell representatives for Scott and Drake that the concert needed to end because people had been hurt and might have died, he was told “Drake still has three more songs,” according to an interview summary.
Daniel Johary, a college student who got trapped in the crush of concertgoers and later used his skills working as an EMT in Israel to help an injured woman, told investigators hundreds of people had chanted for Scott to stop the music and that the chants could be heard “from everywhere.”
“He stated staff members in the area gave thumbs-up and did not care,” according to the police report.
Richard Rickeada, a retired Houston police officer who was working for a private security company at the festival, told investigators that from 8 a.m. the day of the concert, things were “pretty much in chaos,” according to a police summary of his interview. His concerns and questions about whether the concert should be held were “met with a lot of shrugged shoulders,” he said.
About 23 minutes into the concert, cameraman Gregory Hoffman radioed into the show’s production trailer to warn that “people were dying.” Hoffman was operating a large crane that held a television camera before it was overrun with concertgoers who needed medical help, police said.
The production team radioed Hoffman to ask when they could get the crane back in operation.
Salvatore Livia, who was hired to direct the live show, told police that following Hoffman’s dire warning, people in the production trailer understood that something was not right, but “they were disconnected to the reality of (what) was happening out there,” according to a police summary of Livia’s interview.
Concertgoer Christopher Gates, then 22, told police that by the second or third song in Scott’s performance, he came across about five people on the ground who he believed were already dead.
Their bodies were “lifeless, pale, and their lips were blue/purple,” according to the police report. Random people in the crowd – not medics – provided CPR.
The police report was released about a month after the grand jury in Houston declined to indict Scott on any criminal charges in connection with the deadly concert. Police Chief Troy Finner had said the report was being made public so that people could “read the entire investigation” and come to their own conclusions about the case. During a news conference after the grand jury’s decision, Finner declined to say what the overall conclusion of his agency’s investigation was or whether police should have stopped the concert sooner.
The report’s release also came the same day that Scott released his new album, “Utopia.”
More than 500 lawsuits were filed over the deaths and injuries at the concert, including many against concert promoter Live Nation and Scott. Some have since been settled.
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Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.
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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
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Find more AP coverage of the Astroworld festival: https://apnews.com/hub/astroworld-festival-deaths | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-worker-warned-organizer-someones-going-to-end-up-dead-before-crowd-surge-at-21-travis-scott-show/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:27 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-worker-warned-organizer-someones-going-to-end-up-dead-before-crowd-surge-at-21-travis-scott-show/ |
‘X’ logo installed atop Twitter building, spurring San Francisco to investigate permit violation
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The city of San Francisco has opened a complaint and launched an investigation into a giant “X” sign that was installed Friday on top of the downtown building formerly known as Twitter headquarters as owner Elon Musk continues his rebrand of the social media platform.
City officials say replacing letters or symbols on buildings, or erecting a sign on top of one, requires a permit for design and safety reasons.
The “X” appeared after San Francisco police stopped workers on Monday from removing the brand’s iconic bird and logo from the side of the building, saying they hadn’t taped off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.
Any replacement letters or symbols would require a permit to ensure “consistency with the historic nature of the building” and to make sure additions are safely attached to the sign, Patrick Hannan, spokesperson for the Department of Building Inspection said earlier this week.
Erecting a sign on top of a building also requires a permit, Hannan said Friday.
“Planning review and approval is also necessary for the installation of this sign. The city is opening a complaint and initiating an investigation,” he said in an email.
Musk unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he remakes the platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The “X” started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but as of Friday the bird icon still appears in many places on the app.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter “X " and had already renamed Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp. after he bought it in October. One of his children is called “X.” The child’s actual name is a collection of letters and symbols.
On Friday afternoon, a worker on a lift machine made adjustments to the sign and then left.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/29/x-logo-installed-atop-twitter-building-spurring-san-francisco-investigate-permit-violation/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:32 | 0 | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/29/x-logo-installed-atop-twitter-building-spurring-san-francisco-investigate-permit-violation/ |
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday the United States stands with countries fighting Chinese “bullying behavior” as he launched bilateral talks in Australia aimed at countering Beijing’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Austin and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Australian city of Brisbane late Thursday ahead of annual bilateral meetings on Friday and Saturday that will focus on a deal to provide Australia, a defense treaty partner, with a fleet of submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology.
Ahead of a meeting with Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, Austin said both countries share concerns about China’s break from international laws and norms that resolve disputes peacefully and without coercion.
“We’ve seen troubling P.R.C. coercion from the East China Sea, to the South China Sea, to right here in the Southwest Pacific,” Austin told reporters, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
“We’ll continue to support our allies and partners as they defend themselves from bullying behavior,” he added.
China has imposed a series of official and unofficial trade barriers in recent years against Australian exports including coal, wine, barley, beef, seafood and wood. The barriers are widely seen as a punitive reaction to Australian government policy that has cost Australian exporters as much as $15 billion a year.
Australia’s icy relationship with Beijing was thawing since a change of Australian government at elections last year. Meanwhile, the sharing of U.S. nuclear secrets with Australia takes that bilateral relationship to a new level.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is planning state visits to both the United States and China before the end of the year.
Under the AUKUS partnership — an acronym for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the United States and build five of a new AUKUS-class submarine in cooperation with Britain.
Australian media have focused on a letter signed by more than 20 Republican lawmakers to President Joe Biden that warned the deal would “unacceptably weaken the U.S. fleet” without a plan to boost U.S. submarine production.
Albanese said he remained “very confident” that the United States would deliver the three submarines.
The prime minister said he’d been reassured by discussions he had with Republicans and Democrats earlier in July at a NATO summit in Lithuania.
“What struck me was their unanimous support for AUKUS, their unanimous support for the relationship between the Australia and United States,” Albanese said.
Marles agreed the AUKUS program was on track.
“Congress can be a complicated place as legislation makes its way through it, but actually we’re encouraged by how quickly it is going through it and we are expecting that there will be lots of discussions on the way through,” Marles said.
“Fundamentally, we have reached an agreement with the Biden administration about how Australia acquires the nuclear-powered submarine capability and we’re proceeding along that path with pace,” he added.
Australia understood there was “pressure on the American industrial base” and would contribute to submarine production, Marles said. The AUKUS deal is forecast to cost Australia up to 368 billion Australian dollars ($246 billion) over 30 years.
Albanese publicly welcomed Austin and Blinken at a media event before the three began a meeting with Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy and Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister.
“The relationship between Australia and the United States has never been stronger,” Albanese told the two visitors. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/your-local-election-hq/ap-australian-prime-minister-is-confident-the-us-will-deliver-nuclear-powered-submarines/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:33 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/your-local-election-hq/ap-australian-prime-minister-is-confident-the-us-will-deliver-nuclear-powered-submarines/ |
The Wire Mill Bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge reopened Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks.
The Wire Mill bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
A pedestrian walks in front of the closed Wire Mill Bridge on Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
Ducks swim under the Wire Mill Bridge on Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
The Wire Mill bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
The Wire Mill bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
Cars drive on Martin Luther King Boulevard in front of the closed Wire Mill Bridge on Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
The Wire Mill bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
Ducks swim under the Wire Mill Bridge on Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
The Wire Mill bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call)
The Wire Mill bridge is shown Monday, July 24, 2023, in Allentown. After more than a year out of commission, the newly rebuilt Wire Mill Bridge will open Thursday, with four lanes of traffic, two lanes in each direction, along with the addition of sidewalks. (Rebecca Villagracia/The Morning Call) | https://www.mcall.com/2023/07/28/allentowns-wire-mill-bridge-reopens-photos/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:38 | 1 | https://www.mcall.com/2023/07/28/allentowns-wire-mill-bridge-reopens-photos/ |
Lars Nootbaar Player Prop Bets: Cardinals vs. Cubs - July 28
Published: Jul. 28, 2023 at 6:33 PM CDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Lars Nootbaar and his .476 on-base percentage over his past 10 games (100 points higher than his season-long percentage), will be in action for the St. Louis Cardinals versus the Chicago Cubs and Hayden Wesneski on July 28 at 8:15 PM ET.
In his most recent game, he racked up three hits (going 3-for-4 with a home run and two RBI) against the Diamondbacks.
Lars Nootbaar Game Info & Props vs. the Cubs
- Game Day: Friday, July 28, 2023
- Game Time: 8:15 PM ET
- Stadium: Busch Stadium
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Cubs Starter: Hayden Wesneski
- TV Channel: BSMW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 1.5 hits (Over odds: +195)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +500)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +195)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: -133)
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Read More About This Game
Lars Nootbaar At The Plate
- Nootbaar has 13 doubles, eight home runs and 47 walks while hitting .268.
- Nootbaar has had a hit in 46 of 72 games this year (63.9%), including multiple hits 17 times (23.6%).
- He has gone deep in 11.1% of his games in 2023 (eight of 72), and 2.5% of his trips to the dish.
- In 34.7% of his games this year, Nootbaar has had at least one RBI. He's picked up more than one in 8.3%.
- He has scored at least once 36 times this season (50.0%), including nine games with multiple runs (12.5%).
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Lars Nootbaar Home/Away Batting Splits
Cubs Pitching Rankings
- The Cubs pitching staff ranks 21st in the league with a collective 8.4 strikeouts per nine innings.
- The Cubs have the 14th-ranked team ERA across all league pitching staffs (4.13).
- Cubs pitchers combine to surrender 109 home runs (1.1 per game), the sixth-fewest in the league.
- Wesneski will make his first start of the season for the Cubs.
- The 25-year-old righty makes his season debut and his first appearance in more than a year.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.kait8.com/sports/betting/2023/07/28/lars-nootbaar-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-29T00:41:38 | 0 | https://www.kait8.com/sports/betting/2023/07/28/lars-nootbaar-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |