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After nearly five years, the Big Peanut statue has returned to Ashburn, Ga. The original roadside attraction went down during Hurricane Michael. The new one is stronger and locally crafted.
Copyright 2023 NPR
After nearly five years, the Big Peanut statue has returned to Ashburn, Ga. The original roadside attraction went down during Hurricane Michael. The new one is stronger and locally crafted.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.knau.org/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane | 2023-07-30T12:57:20 | 1 | https://www.knau.org/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane |
The Texas Rangers agreed to acquire three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer in a blockbuster trade with the New York Mets on Saturday night, an all-in move for the surprise leaders in the AL West, a person with knowledge of the deal said.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the deal hasn’t been announced.
The Rangers will be adding the 39-year-old Scherzer with another former Mets pitcher with Cy Young credentials, two-time winner Jacob deGrom, sidelined by Tommy John elbow surgery, possibly all the way through the end of next season.
According to multiple reports, the deal nets New York one of the top Texas prospects in infielder Luisangel Acuña, the younger brother of Atlanta star Ronald Acuña Jr.
As part of the deal, Scherzer agreed to opt in on the final year of his contract in 2024 at $43 million, according to reports that also said the Mets were paying about $35 million of the remaining $58 million on the right-hander’s contract.
The Mets, one of baseball’s biggest disappointments, unloaded Scherzer two days after sending closer David Robertson to Miami for two minor leaguers.
New York began the season with the highest payroll in baseball at $353 million but started the day 17 games behind Atlanta in the NL East and 6 1/2 games back in the wild-card race.
The next question is what the Mets will do with Justin Verlander, another three-time Cy Young winner signed through next season. There should be plenty of suitors for the 40-year-old right-hander.
Texas has emerged from six consecutive losing seasons to lead the AL West all but one day in three-time World Series champion Bruce Bochy’s first season as manager.
The Rangers made the first notable move of this trading season by getting once-dominant closer Aroldis Chapman from Kansas City in June. Chapman has stayed in a setup role with Will Smith handling most of the closing duties.
Now Texas has bolstered the rotation knowing deGrom might be out until Scherzer’s contract expires at the end of next season.
The trade for Scherzer came on the same day the Rangers said they were again bumping back the next start for All-Star right-hander Nathan Eovaldi. Bochy said Eovaldi had a sore elbow, but the club doesn’t think it’s serious.
The Rangers added deGrom in the offseason on a $185 million, five-year contract, knowing there was risk in signing the oft-injured right-hander.
He lasted just six starts — all Texas wins — before elbow issues sidelined deGrom for a month. It took multiple MRIs to determine the extent of the damage to his elbow, and the Tommy John procedure in June was the second of his career. The other was in rookie ball with the Mets in 2010.
“I think we need to improve as a starting rotation,” Bochy said before the Rangers’ game at San Diego on Saturday night, as reports of the trade were circulating. “I think that’s fair to say.”
Scherzer (9-4) was leading the Mets in victories but had his highest ERA (4.01) since 2011 with Detroit. The eight-time All-Star started Friday at home against Washington, allowing one run in seven innings in a 5-1 New York victory.
With 210 career victories, Scherzer is third among active pitchers behind Verlander and Kansas City’s Zack Greinke.
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AP Sports Writer Bernie Wilson in San Diego contributed to this report.
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.pahomepage.com/sports/ap-sports/ap-rangers-get-scherzer-from-mets-in-all-in-blockbuster-from-surprise-al-west-leaders/ | 2023-07-30T12:57:23 | 1 | https://www.pahomepage.com/sports/ap-sports/ap-rangers-get-scherzer-from-mets-in-all-in-blockbuster-from-surprise-al-west-leaders/ |
The House Republicans who craft the conference’s government funding bills are showing signs of frustration as hard-line conservatives pressure leadership for further cuts to spending that some worry could be too aggressive.
Some of the 12 Appropriations subcommittee chairs — the so-called cardinals — told reporters that they are struggling to see where those additional cuts could come from, as September’s shutdown deadline looms.
“I just don’t see the wisdom in trying to further cut to strengthen our hand. I don’t know how that strengthens our hand,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a House Appropriations subcommittee chairman, said of conservatives’ push to further cut the already-scaled-back spending bills.
“I do think it puts some of our members in a very difficult spot, particularly those in tough districts, because they’re going to be taking some votes that become problematic,” he added.
The House left Washington for a long summer recess Thursday after being forced to punt a bill to fund agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Conservatives are dug in on their demand for steeper spending cuts, to the chagrin of moderates who are wary of slashing funding even more. The chamber has passed just one appropriations bill, funding military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The internal divisions are gripping the party as time is running out: The House has just 12 days in September to move the remaining 11 appropriations measures and hash out their disagreements with the Senate, which is marking up its spending bills at higher levels, setting the scene for a hectic fall that could bring the U.S. to the brink of a shutdown.
Those dynamics are putting GOP appropriators in a bind, leaving them searching for ways to appease conservative requests without gutting their spending bills.
“We’ve done a lot of cuts, a lot of cuts,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas) told The Hill this week. “And so if it’s cuts just for cut’s sake, I don’t agree with it. But if it’s something that we can do without, that’s fine.”
‘Not a lot of wiggle room left’
Republican appropriators in the House announced earlier this year that they would mark up their bills for fiscal 2024 at fiscal 2022 levels, as leaders sought to placate conservatives who thought the debt ceiling deal struck by President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier this year didn’t do enough to curb spending.
The Senate is crafting its bills more in line with the budget caps agreed to in the deal, but House Republicans are already fuming about a bipartisan deal in the upper chamber that would allow for more than $13 billion in additional emergency spending on top of those levels.
House GOP negotiators also said they would pursue clawing back more than $100 billion in old funding that was allocated for Democratic priorities without GOP support in the previous Congress.
While that move drew support from hard-line conservatives, the right flank was far from pleased when it heard appropriators planned to repurpose that old funding — known as rescissions — to plus-up the spending bills.
In a letter to McCarthy earlier this month, a group of hard-line conservatives called for all 12 appropriations bills to be in line with fiscal 2022 spending levels “without the use of reallocated rescissions to increase discretionary spending above that top-line.”
Otherwise, the 21 lawmakers threatened, they would vote against the measures. But that request could prove difficult for GOP appropriators to fulfill.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), chairman of the panel that proposes funding for the Department of State and foreign operations, said that appropriators are already “dramatically reducing spending,” suggesting that there are not too many remaining areas to trim from.
“My bill is below the 2016 levels,” he said, later adding, “When you’re below the 2016 level — and we’re still confronting China — I think there’s not a lot of wiggle room left.”
“It’s a challenge, but I think we’ll get through it. I really do,” he added.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who heads the subcommittee that oversees funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, scoffed at the idea of even steeper cuts to his bill.
“Then you just drop it on the floor and stomp on it. What else do you do with it?” he told reporters. “You can’t make logical cuts in there.”
Republicans appropriators are voicing optimism that the conference will be able to sort out its differences on spending, but some also hope their levels will stick — even though they include rescissions.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) — whose panel handles funding for the Department of Energy, which is proposing offsetting billions of dollars in spending with clawbacks — said it would be “extremely difficult” to craft his bill without the rescinded funds.
“And given our priorities in my bill, national defense with the nuclear weapons portfolio, nuclear cleanup, Army Corps including, all the community-directed fundings, I feel good about my bill, and I hope my numbers hold,” he said.
“Because it’s gonna have to be in negotiations with the Senate and the White House as well,” he added.
Womack — whose subcommittee crafts funding for the IRS and the Treasury Department — said he doesn’t think “moving the goalposts on these numbers is helpful in strengthening our ability to negotiate with the Senate.”
August preparations for a busy September
Frustrations among appropriators are bubbling up as Congress inches closer to the fall, when lawmakers are facing a Sept. 30 deadline to approve funding or risk a government shutdown.
With time running out, some House lawmakers say conversations may continue over the long August recess to try to hash out remaining differences.
“We’ll have to see,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said when asked about potential plans for talks between leaders and House Freedom Caucus members over the break. “I mean, we got a lot of work to do.”
“I think a lot of work [has] got to be done behind the scenes,” he said. “If not, you know, here — You gotta beg the question about whether we should be gone for six weeks. We should be getting our job done.”
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) echoed that sentiment, saying “I would think so” when asked if lawmakers will have conversations over the break.
Adding to the August workload, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) suggested earlier this week that bicameral negotiations could take place over the weeks-long recess as lawmakers stare down the shutdown deadline.
Not all Republicans, however, are viewing a shutdown as a risk.
During a House Freedom Caucus press conference this week, Good said “we should not fear a government shutdown,” claiming that “most of what we do up here is bad anyway; most of what we do up here hurts the American people.”
But that perspective does not jive with the view of McCarthy, who declared Thursday: “I don’t want the government to shut down.”
Multiple Republicans are ultimately expecting Congress to eventually pass what’s known as a continuing resolution (CR), or a measure that temporarily allows the government to be funded at the previous fiscal year’s levels, to prevent a lapse at the end of September.
But they also understand the task could be difficult in the GOP-led chamber, where Republicans aren’t happy about the idea of continuing funding at the current levels — which were last set when Democrats held control of Congress.
“I think there’s a very good chance that we’ll see a CR, but I know there’s a lot of work to get a CR done,” Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), another appropriator, said Thursday, noting there are “a lot of members that don’t want CRs that are tired of them.”
But Aderholt suggested a CR could notch sufficient GOP backing if there’s a larger plan in sight that the party can support.
“The Speaker’s been very good about having a plan,” he said, adding, “I think that’s what he’s good at, and I’m optimistic that he can come up with something.”
Emily Brooks contributed. | https://www.wowktv.com/hill-politics/frustration-emerges-among-gop-spending-cardinals-as-conservatives-push-for-cuts/ | 2023-07-30T12:57:29 | 1 | https://www.wowktv.com/hill-politics/frustration-emerges-among-gop-spending-cardinals-as-conservatives-push-for-cuts/ |
LANSING, Mich. — An early morning shooting Sunday in Michigan wounded five people, including two who were listed in critical condition, police said.
Officers responded to reports of a shooting around 1 a.m., the Lansing Police Department said in a statement.
The five victims who were transported to a hospital by the Lansing Fire Department ranged in age from 16 to 26 years old, police said.
There was a large crowd at the scene when officers arrived, prompting Lansing police to ask for assistance from other jurisdictions. Several people were detained, and officers found multiple firearms, police said.
In February, a gunman killed three students and injured five others in a shooting at Michigan State University in neighboring East Lansing. Students sheltered in place for four hours on the campus about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Detroit while hundreds of officers searched for the shooter. Suspect Anthony McRae, 43, killed himself when confronted by police near his home in Lansing.
Advertisement | https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/30/nation/shooting-wounds-5-people-michigan-with-2-victims-critical-condition-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T12:57:29 | 1 | https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/30/nation/shooting-wounds-5-people-michigan-with-2-victims-critical-condition-police-say/ |
Toddler drowns in pool in Anderson Co.
ANDERSON, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - An 18-month-old from Williamston died Saturday morning after he was found in the family pool.
The Anderson County Coroner’s Office identified the victim as Josue Hernandez.
Officials say they responded to the 300 block of McAlister Road around 11 a.m. where they say Hernandez was apparently able to get out of the house from a door that was unintentionally left open by a dog while family members were sleeping and enter an above-ground pool.
The father found Hernandez in the pool and began giving CPR as first responders arrived.
The Coroner’s Office says the investigation indicates Hernandez died from freshwater drowning and there appears to be no indication of foul play.
This investigation remains ongoing by the Anderson County Child Death Investigation Task Force, which is made up of members of several agencies.
Copyright 2023 WHNS. All rights reserved. | https://www.wbtv.com/2023/07/29/toddler-drowns-pool-anderson-co/ | 2023-07-30T12:57:29 | 0 | https://www.wbtv.com/2023/07/29/toddler-drowns-pool-anderson-co/ |
SYDNEY (AP) — Some of the biggest names in soccer have yet to show up at the Women’s World Cup.
That’s literally been the case of Australian star Sam Kerr, who missed the first two games with a calf injury.
Kerr has recovered in time to play for Australia in a crucial final Group B game against Canada on Monday. The Matildas need to beat the Canadians to ensure they advance to the knockout round, and the Chelsea striker’s return to the lineup brings needed energy to the team.
“Mentally, it’s massive. It brings so much to our team and obviously also a lot to the opposition knowing that we have Sam available for this game,” Australia defender Ellie Carpenter said.
Kerr’s injury on the eve of Australia’s opening game against Ireland set the tone for a tournament that hasn’t been kind to some of its biggest stars. She was the face of co-host Australia’s preparations for the tournament, which is also being staged in New Zealand.
She dominated the covers of magazines across newsstands, while the autobiography she released late last year chronicled her rise to become arguably the best player in the women’s game right now. Kerr’s popularity transcends women’s soccer and she is considered a national icon.
So the disappointment was palpable when news broke about an hour before the opening match that Kerr was going to be sidelined at least two games in this tournament.
Kerr’s absence was felt in the 3-2 loss to Nigeria in Australia’s second game, a loss that put the Matildas in danger of elimination. It is not known what her role will be against Canada, but Australia needs Kerr to deliver in the final game of group play.
“I’m definitely going to be available, but how we decide to use that is not to be given to the opposition,” said Kerr.
The World Cup is supposed to be a showcase for the finest talent and biggest names, but injuries have always robbed the tournament of some its star players.
Norway forward Ada Hegerberg has had her playing time curtailed. Often referred to as “the Lionel Messi of women’s soccer,” Hederberg was part of a Norway’s 1-0 upset loss to New Zealand in the opening game of the World Cup.
It got worse for the 2018 Ballon d’Or winner when she suffered a groin injury in the warm-up ahead of Norway’s game against Switzerland, and she’s been ruled out of the final Group A game against the Philippines.
Keira Walsh of England suffered a knee injury against Denmark that will sidenline her for the Lionesses’ final Group D game against China. Described as irreplaceable, it is not known how much she will be able to play.
Even for some stars who have seen plenty of playing time, it has been difficult to make an impact.
American icon Alex Morgan has underwhelmed so far at her fourth World Cup, where she is hoping to help the United States to an unprecedented third consecutive title.
Morgan, the co-leading scorer at the last World Cup, has yet to score at this year’s event and missed a penalty in the 3-0 win against Vietnam. U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski said Morgan was adapting to playing in a forward line with Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman.
“I think it’s not hard to realize that Alex’s role is slightly different than the Alex that we’re used to maybe in the past,” Andonovski said. “She does set up the other two forwards a lot more. It’s not that she’s not capable of scoring goals or getting behind crosses, but we can also see her playing balls to Trinity and Soph, but also getting crosses for them as well.”
Morgan, at 34, is now one of the older players at the tournament.
Christine Sinclair of Canada is also searching for first goal of the tournament. Sinclair is highest scorer in international soccer — men or women — with 190 goals.
Like Morgan, she also missed a penalty, in a 0-0 draw with Nigeria that could still prove costly. She was benched for Canada’s second game against Ireland before coming in as a substitute at halftime as the gold medalist from the Tokyo Olympics logged a come-from-behind 2-1 win.
At 40 years old, Sinclair is having to accept a more limited role for Canada.
Brazil great Marta, at 37, has also been used sparingly in her sixth World Cup.
Her teammate, Debinha, who is also an iconic figure to Brazil fans, has been one of the standout players for her country so far. But she wasn’t able to stop a 2-1 loss to France on Saturday despite scoring in that match.
The gap appears to be closing in the women’s game, with underdogs proving more of a test for the more established nations. That’s one reason some of the big name stars have yet to impress in tournament.
One of the few standouts who has not disappointed so far has been Alexandra Popp, who scored twice in Germany’s 6-0 rout of Morocco.
Major tournaments are traditionally a mix of rising talents coming to the surface, while established stars have the chance to confirm their status among the greats.
Linda Caicedo of Colombia, Lauren James of England and Melchie Dumornay of Haiti have proven their worth as some of the brightest prospects in the game. But as the second round of games nears its completion, it feels like the tournament is still waiting for many of its big hitters to make an impact.
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James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
___
More AP Women’s World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup | https://www.pahomepage.com/sports/ap-sports/ap-some-of-soccers-biggest-stars-are-struggling-to-make-an-impact-at-the-womens-world-cup/ | 2023-07-30T12:57:31 | 0 | https://www.pahomepage.com/sports/ap-sports/ap-some-of-soccers-biggest-stars-are-struggling-to-make-an-impact-at-the-womens-world-cup/ |
Braves vs. Brewers: Betting Trends, Odds, Records Against the Run Line, Home/Road Splits
Austin Riley and the Atlanta Braves will look to out-hit William Contreras and the Milwaukee Brewers at Truist Park on Sunday at 1:35 PM ET.
The Braves are the favorite in this one, at -210, while the underdog Brewers have +170 odds to win. The over/under is 11.5 runs for the matchup (with -110 odds to go over and -110 odds on the under).
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Braves vs. Brewers Odds & Info
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 1:35 PM ET
- TV: MLB Network
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Venue: Truist Park
- Live Stream: Watch on Fubo!
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Braves Recent Betting Performance
- In 10 games as the favorite over the last 10 matchups, the Braves have a record of 5-5.
- When it comes to hitting the over, the Braves and their opponents are 5-5-0 in their last 10 games with a total.
- Bookmakers have not set a spread for any of the Braves' last 10 games.
Discover More About This Game
Braves Betting Records & Stats
- The Braves have been the moneyline favorite 89 total times this season. They've gone 58-31 in those games.
- Atlanta has gone 20-8 (winning 71.4% of its games) when it has played as moneyline favorites of -210 or shorter.
- The implied moneyline probablility in this matchup gives the Braves a 67.7% chance to win.
- Atlanta has combined with opponents to hit the over on the total 54 times this season for a 54-45-3 record against the over/under.
- The Braves have an 8-8-0 record against the spread this season.
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Braves Splits
Not all offers available in all states, please visit BetMGM for the latest promotions for your area. Must be 21+ to gamble, please wager responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, contact 1-800-GAMBLER.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.wbrc.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/braves-vs-brewers-mlb-betting-trends-stats/ | 2023-07-30T12:57:58 | 0 | https://www.wbrc.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/braves-vs-brewers-mlb-betting-trends-stats/ |
Braves vs. Brewers: Odds, spread, over/under - July 30
Ronald Acuna Jr. and the Atlanta Braves (66-36), who are going for a series sweep, will host Christian Yelich and the Milwaukee Brewers (57-48) at Truist Park on Sunday, July 30. The game will begin at 1:35 PM ET.
The favored Braves have -210 moneyline odds against the underdog Brewers, who are listed at +170. The over/under for the matchup is set at 11.5 runs.
Braves vs. Brewers Time and TV Channel
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 1:35 PM ET
- TV: MLB Network
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Venue: Truist Park
- Probable Pitchers: AJ Smith-Shawver - ATL (0-0, 0.00 ERA) vs Colin Rea - MIL (5-4, 4.53 ERA)
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Braves vs. Brewers Betting Odds, Run Line and Total
Here's a look at the odds, run line and over/under for this matchup available at individual sportsbooks.
Have the desire to wager on the Braves' matchup against the Brewers but aren't quite sure where to begin? We're here to assist you. Betting the moneyline, run line, and total are a few of the most common ways to make bets. A moneyline bet means that you think one of the teams -- for instance, the Braves (-210) -- will win the contest. Pretty simple. If you bet $10 on the Braves to take down the Brewers with those odds, and the Braves emerge with the victory, you'd get back $14.76.
Plus, there are lots of other ways to bet, like player props (will Matt Olson hit a home run?), parlays (combining picks from multiple games to multiply your winnings), and more. For more details on the many ways you can play, check out the BetMGM website and app.
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Read More About This Game
Braves vs. Brewers Betting Trends and Insights
- The Braves have been favorites in 89 games this season and won 58 (65.2%) of those contests.
- The Braves have a record of 20-8 when playing as moneyline favorites with odds of -210 or shorter (71.4% winning percentage).
- The bookmakers' moneyline implies a 67.7% chance of a victory for Atlanta.
- The Braves have a 5-5 record over the 10 games they were a moneyline favorite in their last 10 matchups.
- In its last 10 matchups (all 10 of them had set totals), Atlanta and its opponents combined to hit the over five times.
- The Brewers have come away with 25 wins in the 51 contests they have been listed as the underdogs in this season.
- The Brewers have played as an underdog of +170 or more just one time this year and came away with a loss in that game.
- The Brewers have played as underdogs in six of their past 10 games and won two of those contests.
- In the last 10 games with a total, Milwaukee and its opponents are 3-7-0 when it comes to hitting the over.
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Braves Futures Odds
Think the Braves can win it all? Check out the latest futures odds for Atlanta and place your bets with BetMGM Sportsbook! Be sure to use our link and enter the bonus code "GNPLAY" for special offers.
Not all offers available in all states, please visit sportsbook websites for the latest promotions for your area. Must be 21+ to gamble, please wager responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, contact 1-800-GAMBLER.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.wbrc.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/braves-vs-brewers-mlb-odds-over-under/ | 2023-07-30T12:58:04 | 1 | https://www.wbrc.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/braves-vs-brewers-mlb-odds-over-under/ |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with children's book author Matt de la Peña about summer reading recommendations for kids of all ages when they complain, "I'm bored!"
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with children's book author Matt de la Peña about summer reading recommendations for kids of all ages when they complain, "I'm bored!"
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/a-childrens-book-author-recommends-books-to-keep-your-kids-busy-this-summer | 2023-07-30T12:58:24 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/a-childrens-book-author-recommends-books-to-keep-your-kids-busy-this-summer |
Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast. | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/d-smith-on-her-new-documentary-kokomo-city | 2023-07-30T12:58:31 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/d-smith-on-her-new-documentary-kokomo-city |
Consumer demand for speed and convenience drives labor unrest among workers in Hollywood and at UPS
NEW YORK (AP) — Six straight days of 12-hour driving. Single-digit paychecks. The complaints come from workers in vastly different industries: UPS delivery drivers and Hollywood actors and writers.
But they point to an underlying factor driving a surge of labor unrest: The cost to workers whose jobs have changed drastically as companies scramble to meet customer expectations for speed and convenience in industries transformed by technology.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated those changes, pushing retailers to shift online and intensifying the streaming competition among entertainment companies. Now, from the picket lines, workers are trying to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a show that can be binged any time or get dog food delivered to their doorstep with a phone swipe.
Overworked and underpaid employees is an enduring complaint across industries — from delivery drivers to Starbucks baristas and airline pilots — where surges in consumer demand have collided with persistent labor shortages. Workers are pushing back against forced overtime, punishing schedules or company reliance on lower-paid, part-time or contract forces.
At issue for Hollywood screenwriters and actors staging their first simultaneous strikes in 40 years is the way streaming has upended entertainment economics, slashing pay and forcing showrunners to produce content faster with smaller teams.
“This seems to happen to many places when the tech companies come in. Who are we crushing? It doesn’t matter,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a screenwriter and showrunner on the negotiating team for the Writers Guild of America, whose members have been on strike since May. Earlier this month, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the writers’ union on the picket line.
Actors and writers have long relied on residuals, or long-term payments, for reruns and other airings of films and television shows. But reruns aren’t a thing on streaming services, where series and films simply land and stay with no easy way, such as box office returns or ratings, to determine their popularity.
Consequently, whatever residuals streaming companies do pay often amount to a pittance, and screenwriters have been sharing tales of receiving single-digit checks.
Adam Shapiro, an actor known for the Netflix hit “Never Have I Ever,” said many actors were initially content to accept lower pay for the plethora of roles that streaming suddenly offered. But the need for a more sustainable compensation model gained urgency when it became clear streaming is not a sideshow, but rather the future of the business, he said.
“Over the past 10 years, we realized: ‘Oh, that’s now how Hollywood works. Everything is streaming,’” Shapiro said during a recent union event.
Shapiro, who has been acting for 25 years, said he agreed to a contract offering 20% of his normal rate for “Never Have I Ever” because it seemed like “a great opportunity, and it’s going to be all over the world. And it was. It really was. Unfortunately, we’re all starting to realize that if we keep doing this we’re not going to be able to pay our bills.”
Then there’s the rising use of “mini rooms,” in which a handful of writers are hired to work only during pre-production, sometimes for a series that may take a year to be greenlit, or never get picked up at all.
Sanchez-Witzel, co-creator of the recently released Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest,” said television shows traditionally hire robust writing teams for the duration of production. But Netflix refused to allow her to keep her team of five writers past pre-production, forcing round-the-clock work on rewrites with just one other writer.
“It’s not sustainable and I’ll never do that again,” she said.
Sanchez-Witzel said she was struck by the similarities between her experience and those of UPS drivers, some of whom joined the WGA for protests as they threatened their own potentially crippling strike. UPS and the Teamsters last week reached a tentative contract staving off the strike.
Jeffrey Palmerino, a full-time UPS driver near Albany, New York, said forced overtime emerged as a top issue during the pandemic as drivers coped with a crush of orders on par with the holiday season. Drivers never knew what time they would get home or if they could count on two days off each week, while 14-hour days in trucks without air conditioning became the norm.
“It was basically like Christmas on steroids for two straight years. A lot of us were forced to work six days a week, and that is not any way to live your life,” said Palmerino, a Teamsters shop steward.
Along with pay raises and air conditioning, the Teamsters won concessions that Palmerino hopes will ease overwork. UPS agreed to end forced overtime on days off and eliminate a lower-paid category of drivers who work shifts that include weekends, converting them to full-time drivers. Union members have yet to ratify the deal.
The Teamsters and labor activists hailed the tentative deal as a game-changer that would pressure other companies facing labor unrest to raise their standards. But similar outcomes are far from certain in industries lacking the sheer economic indispensability of UPS or the clout of its 340,000-member union.
Efforts to organize at Starbucks and Amazon stalled as both companies aggressively fought against unionization.
Still, labor protests will likely gain momentum following the UPS contract, said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, which released a report this year that found the number of labor strikes rose 52% in 2022.
“The whole idea that consumer convenience is above everything broke down during the pandemic. We started to think, ‘I’m at home ordering, but there is actually a worker who has to go the grocery store, who has to cook this for me so that I can be comfortable,’” Campos-Medina said.
___
Associated Press video journalist Leslie Ambriz contributed from Los Angeles.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/2023/07/30/consumer-demand-speed-convenience-drives-labor-unrest-among-workers-hollywood-ups/ | 2023-07-30T12:58:34 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/2023/07/30/consumer-demand-speed-convenience-drives-labor-unrest-among-workers-hollywood-ups/ |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to a patron of the party, musician George Brown of the band Kool & The Gang, about his new book, new record, and the "Celebration" of a long and funky career.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to a patron of the party, musician George Brown of the band Kool & The Gang, about his new book, new record, and the "Celebration" of a long and funky career.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/george-brown-of-kool-the-gang-on-celebrating-the-bands-long-career | 2023-07-30T12:58:37 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/george-brown-of-kool-the-gang-on-celebrating-the-bands-long-career |
On-air challenge: I'm going to give you some words. For each one, think of something that starts with the first letter of my word ... and that fits in the category named by the rest of my word.
Example: Factor — (Morgan) Freeman, (Henry) Fonda, (Harrison) Ford [actor starting with F]1. Scar
2. Aisle
3. Crank
4. Broom
5. Thorn
6. Bride
7. Swine
8. Cape
9. Trapper
Last week's challenge: Name a classic TV show in two words, in which the respective words rhyme with the first and last names of a famous writer - four letters in the first name, five letter in the last name. Who is it?
Challenge answer: "Get Smart" --> Bret Harte
Winner: Mary Butler from Columbus, Nebraska
This week's challenge: This challenge comes from listener Jim Vespe, of Mamaroneck, N.Y. Name a well-known U.S. city in nine letters. Change the third and fifth letters to get the name of a beverage. What is it?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, August 3rd at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/sunday-puzzle-let-the-categories-guide-you | 2023-07-30T12:58:44 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/sunday-puzzle-let-the-categories-guide-you |
Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast. | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/the-irs-will-no-longer-knock-on-doors-unannounced | 2023-07-30T12:58:50 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/2023-07-30/the-irs-will-no-longer-knock-on-doors-unannounced |
The new charges against former Pres. Trump in the classified documents case are in a different legal league and there are hints he is also not politically immune from them either.
Copyright 2023 NPR
The new charges against former Pres. Trump in the classified documents case are in a different legal league and there are hints he is also not politically immune from them either.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/national-politics/national-politics/2023-07-30/politics-chat-trump-could-face-political-blowback-from-new-charges-after-all | 2023-07-30T12:58:57 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/national-politics/national-politics/2023-07-30/politics-chat-trump-could-face-political-blowback-from-new-charges-after-all |
The first time Nicola Veitch went to a soccer game, she danced on the field in a white lab coat alongside a colleague inside a giant tsetse fly costume. Most of the fans applauded. Some were baffled.
Neither was auditioning to be the new team mascot.
Rather, Veitch, who's a lecturer in parasitology at the University of Glasgow, put on this somewhat weird performance as a pilot for sleeping sickness street theater — using a theatrical event to teach people about a disease that affects about 1,000 people each year in Africa.
In Malawi's two endemic districts where the disease is spread by local tsetse flies, the number of people falling ill from sleeping sickness has declined in recent years, but cases still persist. Last year, there were only 40 cases across the country. But Veitch points out the disease is "often unpredictable," which means that the possibility of resurgence remains a persistent threat.
More than a year after that Scottish match, the group brought the theatrical event to soccer games in Malawi where people cheered while learning about how to protect themselves from this tiny killer. Veitch calls it an innovative intervention in remote, hard-to-reach communities with few smartphones.
At the time of the performance, she says a clinical trial was underway for a new drug that "seems to be very promising in terms of treating sleeping sickness." If successful, people with the disease could take the medicine at home instead of relying on the current method of treatment for late-stage sleeping sickness — the intravenous administration of a toxic drug that often leads to complications and is occasionally fatal itself. The new drug would represent "a massive change," she says. But in the meantime, knowledge is one of the best ways to fight the disease, and the performance seemed to offer the spectators important information.
idea that
Sleeping sickness is found in communities in Malawi that border nature or game reserves. Those areas were where the performances were held. "So we are targeting the people that are really affected," says Janelisa Musaya, a parasitologist involved in the project and the associate director of the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Clinical Research Programme, instead of "just throwing the message all over the country." In other words, she says, it's a way of allocating resources wisely.
Targeting a 'hypnotic' parasite
Sleeping sickness, also called African trypanosomiasis, is caused by a parasite. "It almost looks like a worm," says Veitch. But it's not a worm. It's a single-celled protozoan of the genus Trypanosoma.
The parasite relies on the tsetse fly to shuttle it around. When an infected fly bites someone, the parasite can slip into their bloodstream. It causes a little trouble there, says Musaya, "but when it crosses the blood-brain barrier and goes to the central nervous system, it can affect your sleeping cycle. That's why it's called the sleeping sickness." (The disease is often confused with malaria since the symptoms of fever and lethargy are similar.)
When Veitch looks down the microscope at the parasite that causes sleeping sickness, she says, "it's very hypnotic the way it moves and quite beautiful. I think that only a parasitologist can say that."
That beauty was what got her thinking several years back about alternative ways to inform people about the disease — which many people in Malawi are still not aware of, Veitch says. She has a family member who works for SURGE, a Scottish art, theater and circus organization that runs an annual performance festival that brings cutting edge work to the streets and spaces of Glasgow. The sketches tend to be short, sharp, and interactive, she says.
One year, Veitch was drawn to an outside act that had repurposed an ambulance to teach people how to respond to someone having a cardiac arrest through engaging movement and comical water balloon antics. "And I thought to myself, we could be using street theater to engage people with parasitology," she says. So she approached SURGE and said, "We could maybe work together on something to do with parasites. I think we could create something really cool."
Veitch isn't alone in her thinking. A few years back, the World Health Organization published a report on the role that the arts — including theater — can play in improving our physical, social, and psychological health and well-being, a particular concern in under-resourced countries.
Arts activities facilitate social interaction, says Nisha Sajnani, the co-director of the Jameel Arts and Health Lab at New York University, who wasn't involved in the sleeping sickness project. She adds that performance is just the right platform and artform to "increase a sense of self-efficacy — a feeling of being able to do something about a problem."
Veitch's conversation with SURGE kickstarted a multiyear effort for her and her colleagues in Scotland and Malawi, including an arts and theater group called Voices Malawi that educates people about various illnesses, including COVID-19 and malaria and that uses street theater as a teaching mode.
First, the team had to dream up a way to depict sleeping sickness through street theater. Musaya was excited to get involved. After studying sleeping sickness for 15 years, there was still a missing link for her — "how do we educate the community not to get infected?" She hoped this theatrical foray might provide an answer.
Bwanalori Mwamlima, senior health promotion officer in the Rumphi district of Malawi, says that developing the performance was an act of co-creation among scientists, health workers, performing artists and individuals who'd survived the disease. He explains that the messages they wanted to communicate were, "How is it transmitted? What are the [symptoms]? How can it be prevented? And what are the current interventions?"
Tsetse fly theater has its Malawi premiere
When the show rolled out in Malawi in the fall of 2022, here's what it looked like.
Communities were told that local football and netball teams would descend upon a particular field to play. Then, the day of the event, the performers (a team of nurses, clinicians, students and researchers) drove through town in a truck with music blaring. That got people to leave their homes and follow the truck to the edge of a soccer field. "We wanted to gather a crowd," says Veitch.
Before the soccer game, they offered their theatrical vision of sleeping sickness — mainly visual with some narration. They gave red t-shirts to the audience and asked them to put them on to simulate the human bloodstream. The performers who were dressed as scientists in white lab coats waded into the crowd, each one carrying a giant net. "They were supposed to be scientists looking for infection," says Veitch.
Once the crowd was sufficiently warmed up, the person dressed as the tsetse fly emerged. (The fly costume was made in Scotland by the costume designer regularly employed by SURGE. She'd made outfits for "all sorts of weird and wonderful performances," says Veitch, but this was her first tsetse fly — which had massive wings and limited vision for the person inside the fly's head, so you "need someone to be at your side when moving around.")
The fly threw beach balls into the crowd, representing the infectious parasite, which audience members batted around.
The beach balls were different colors, a metaphor for the way in which the parasite changes its outer protein coat to evade the human immune system. "It's very difficult to create a vaccine to something that undergoes this variation," says Veitch.
The people dressed as scientists ran around to catch the balls of infection in their nets. And finally, they brought out a large net, enveloping the giant fly, escorting it offstage and bringing the performance to a close. In reality, this net is highly effective at attracting tsetse flies because of its blue color and the bottle of urine-smelling liquid placed beside it. "It's just a simple bit of material that has insecticide" in it, Veitch says.
But sometimes people in nearby villages take down the nets stationed in game reserves because they don't know what they are or why they're there. Therefore, "one of the ideas behind the performance," says Veitch, "was to get people to really consider they're very effective at catching tsetse. And if you leave them up, it's beneficial to everybody and that will prevent disease." In addition, by showing researchers helping to capture the parasites, the performers hoped to demonstrate to the public that scientists and their work can be trusted.
Afterward, spectators received additional guidance during a question and answer session. They asked what differentiates a tsetse fly from a housefly (its size, color, and resting wing position), how long it takes for symptoms to appear (typically 2 to 4 weeks) and perhaps most important, how to prevent getting bitten in the first place (avoid nature reserves; don't wear blue or black, which attracts the flies; wear long sleeves; apply insect repellent).
Musaya hopes the audiences walked away with an improved understanding of the disease and how they would contract it. "Many people who attended the performance said they didn't know about the disease," Veitch says. "They had heard of tsetse, but didn't know of the disease it carried, and didn't know of the symptoms to look out for."
"There's something about the dramatizing of the concept that increases the understanding," she explains.
Mwamlima, who dressed up as the tsetse fly for one of the performances in Malawi, was surprised by the success of the theatrical approach, "considering that this is the first time to bring theater performances to teach science," he says. "So I wasn't sure whether it would work," but he's glad that it seemed to. Evaluations showed the audiences were engaged and felt confident asking questions. But long-term, Veitch says they'll know if the performance was successful "if more tsetse nets are left in place and if more people come forward for diagnosis and treatment."
In addition, the medical professionals and researchers, many of whom had never done anything like this before, found this to be a meaningful way to connect with communities. "It really improved people's confidence in terms of thinking about public engagement," Veitch says, "and they would do it again."
"It's a great example of how participatory theater offers a compelling, energizing, pleasurable way of bringing people together to clarify community concerns, feel empowered to make a difference, problem solve," says NYU's Sajnani.
"I think it's a remarkable approach," agrees Kartik Sharma, the founder of the organization Public Arts Health & Us, which translates health and environment research into film and art, including theater pieces. He wasn't associated with the sleeping sickness project. Sharma argues that a performance "converts research into something which people can see and feel in a more personalized way." The result, he says, is that "you can actually use it the next day in your life. So I think it's a very powerful strategy."
For those who missed the show, Veitch says that video recordings will be used as part of Malawi's mobile cinema program, which ranges from big televisions on the back of land rovers to large screens set up next to marketplaces and other public gatherings. It's a common way to publicize health messages in Malawi. The goal, says Veitch, is to "extend the legacy of what we've been doing."
However, despite all the fanfare and promise of the program, Veitch, who says she wasn't into soccer when this program began, admits that she's still not a football fan.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/a-man-dressed-as-a-tsetse-fly-came-to-a-soccer-game-and-he-definitely-had-a-goal | 2023-07-30T12:59:03 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/a-man-dressed-as-a-tsetse-fly-came-to-a-soccer-game-and-he-definitely-had-a-goal |
Persian-American Chef Nasim Alikhani has published her first cookbook, based on her highly acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn. She brought the feast to Los Angeles for a recent series of pop up dinners.
Copyright 2023 NPR
Persian-American Chef Nasim Alikhani has published her first cookbook, based on her highly acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn. She brought the feast to Los Angeles for a recent series of pop up dinners.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook | 2023-07-30T12:59:04 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook |
NPR Breaking News An archeological dig in Turkey has uncovered artifacts dating back 1,000 years By Peter Kenyon Published July 30, 2023 at 8:02 AM EDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email In Turkey, what started out as an exploration of a Roman garrison has uncovered artifacts dating back to the time of the Assyrian empire. Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/an-archeological-dig-in-turkey-has-uncovered-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years | 2023-07-30T12:59:10 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/an-archeological-dig-in-turkey-has-uncovered-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Professor Amit Bhasin of the University of Texas at Austin about constructing roads and railways that can withstand extreme heat.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Professor Amit Bhasin of the University of Texas at Austin about constructing roads and railways that can withstand extreme heat.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-we-need-better-infrastructure-too | 2023-07-30T12:59:17 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-we-need-better-infrastructure-too |
Consumer demand for speed and convenience drives labor unrest among workers in Hollywood and at UPS
NEW YORK (AP) — Six straight days of 12-hour driving. Single-digit paychecks. The complaints come from workers in vastly different industries: UPS delivery drivers and Hollywood actors and writers.
But they point to an underlying factor driving a surge of labor unrest: The cost to workers whose jobs have changed drastically as companies scramble to meet customer expectations for speed and convenience in industries transformed by technology.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated those changes, pushing retailers to shift online and intensifying the streaming competition among entertainment companies. Now, from the picket lines, workers are trying to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a show that can be binged any time or get dog food delivered to their doorstep with a phone swipe.
Overworked and underpaid employees is an enduring complaint across industries — from delivery drivers to Starbucks baristas and airline pilots — where surges in consumer demand have collided with persistent labor shortages. Workers are pushing back against forced overtime, punishing schedules or company reliance on lower-paid, part-time or contract forces.
At issue for Hollywood screenwriters and actors staging their first simultaneous strikes in 40 years is the way streaming has upended entertainment economics, slashing pay and forcing showrunners to produce content faster with smaller teams.
“This seems to happen to many places when the tech companies come in. Who are we crushing? It doesn’t matter,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a screenwriter and showrunner on the negotiating team for the Writers Guild of America, whose members have been on strike since May. Earlier this month, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the writers’ union on the picket line.
Actors and writers have long relied on residuals, or long-term payments, for reruns and other airings of films and television shows. But reruns aren’t a thing on streaming services, where series and films simply land and stay with no easy way, such as box office returns or ratings, to determine their popularity.
Consequently, whatever residuals streaming companies do pay often amount to a pittance, and screenwriters have been sharing tales of receiving single-digit checks.
Adam Shapiro, an actor known for the Netflix hit “Never Have I Ever,” said many actors were initially content to accept lower pay for the plethora of roles that streaming suddenly offered. But the need for a more sustainable compensation model gained urgency when it became clear streaming is not a sideshow, but rather the future of the business, he said.
“Over the past 10 years, we realized: ‘Oh, that’s now how Hollywood works. Everything is streaming,’” Shapiro said during a recent union event.
Shapiro, who has been acting for 25 years, said he agreed to a contract offering 20% of his normal rate for “Never Have I Ever” because it seemed like “a great opportunity, and it’s going to be all over the world. And it was. It really was. Unfortunately, we’re all starting to realize that if we keep doing this we’re not going to be able to pay our bills.”
Then there’s the rising use of “mini rooms,” in which a handful of writers are hired to work only during pre-production, sometimes for a series that may take a year to be greenlit, or never get picked up at all.
Sanchez-Witzel, co-creator of the recently released Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest,” said television shows traditionally hire robust writing teams for the duration of production. But Netflix refused to allow her to keep her team of five writers past pre-production, forcing round-the-clock work on rewrites with just one other writer.
“It’s not sustainable and I’ll never do that again,” she said.
Sanchez-Witzel said she was struck by the similarities between her experience and those of UPS drivers, some of whom joined the WGA for protests as they threatened their own potentially crippling strike. UPS and the Teamsters last week reached a tentative contract staving off the strike.
Jeffrey Palmerino, a full-time UPS driver near Albany, New York, said forced overtime emerged as a top issue during the pandemic as drivers coped with a crush of orders on par with the holiday season. Drivers never knew what time they would get home or if they could count on two days off each week, while 14-hour days in trucks without air conditioning became the norm.
“It was basically like Christmas on steroids for two straight years. A lot of us were forced to work six days a week, and that is not any way to live your life,” said Palmerino, a Teamsters shop steward.
Along with pay raises and air conditioning, the Teamsters won concessions that Palmerino hopes will ease overwork. UPS agreed to end forced overtime on days off and eliminate a lower-paid category of drivers who work shifts that include weekends, converting them to full-time drivers. Union members have yet to ratify the deal.
The Teamsters and labor activists hailed the tentative deal as a game-changer that would pressure other companies facing labor unrest to raise their standards. But similar outcomes are far from certain in industries lacking the sheer economic indispensability of UPS or the clout of its 340,000-member union.
Efforts to organize at Starbucks and Amazon stalled as both companies aggressively fought against unionization.
Still, labor protests will likely gain momentum following the UPS contract, said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, which released a report this year that found the number of labor strikes rose 52% in 2022.
“The whole idea that consumer convenience is above everything broke down during the pandemic. We started to think, ‘I’m at home ordering, but there is actually a worker who has to go the grocery store, who has to cook this for me so that I can be comfortable,’” Campos-Medina said.
___
Associated Press video journalist Leslie Ambriz contributed from Los Angeles.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kold.com/2023/07/30/consumer-demand-speed-convenience-drives-labor-unrest-among-workers-hollywood-ups/ | 2023-07-30T12:59:17 | 0 | https://www.kold.com/2023/07/30/consumer-demand-speed-convenience-drives-labor-unrest-among-workers-hollywood-ups/ |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Morristown Medical Center sports cardiologist Matthew Martinez about why some young athletes suffer from sudden cardiac-related medical emergencies.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Morristown Medical Center sports cardiologist Matthew Martinez about why some young athletes suffer from sudden cardiac-related medical emergencies.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/cardiac-issues-among-young-athletes-are-rare-but-there-are-precautions-to-take | 2023-07-30T12:59:23 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/cardiac-issues-among-young-athletes-are-rare-but-there-are-precautions-to-take |
Mercury vs. Sky: Odds, spread, over/under and other Vegas lines - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 5:36 AM MST|Updated: 23 minutes ago
The Phoenix Mercury (6-17) will visit the Chicago Sky (9-15) after dropping eight consecutive road games. The matchup starts at 4:00 PM ET on Sunday, July 30, 2023.
In this article, you will find odds and spreads for the Mercury vs. Sky matchup across multiple sportsbooks.
Click on our link to sign up for a free trial of Fubo, and start watching live sports without cable today!
Mercury vs. Sky Game Info
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 4:00 PM ET
- TV Channel: ESPN3 and AZFamily
- Location: Chicago, Illinois
- Arena: Wintrust Arena
Mercury vs. Sky Odds, Spread, Over/Under
Here's a look at the odds, spread and over/under for this WNBA matchup on individual sportsbooks.
Mercury vs. Sky Betting Trends
- The Sky have covered 11 times in 23 games with a spread this season.
- The Mercury have compiled a 7-15-0 ATS record so far this season.
- Phoenix has covered the spread twice this season (2-5 ATS) when playing as at least 7.5-point underdogs.
- In the Sky's 23 games this season, the combined scoring has gone over the point total 10 times.
- In the Mercury's 22 chances this season, the combined scoring has gone over the point total nine times.
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© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.kold.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/mercury-sky-wnba-odds-spread-over-under/ | 2023-07-30T12:59:23 | 1 | https://www.kold.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/mercury-sky-wnba-odds-spread-over-under/ |
Is recent news about the economy so good that the U.S. can say it is coming in for a "soft landing," where inflation gets tamed without a recession?
Copyright 2023 NPR
Is recent news about the economy so good that the U.S. can say it is coming in for a "soft landing," where inflation gets tamed without a recession?
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy | 2023-07-30T12:59:24 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy |
Mercury vs. Sky Injury Report, Betting Odds - July 30
The Phoenix Mercury's (6-17) injury report has two players listed ahead of their Sunday, July 30 matchup with the Chicago Sky (9-15) at Wintrust Arena. The game tips at 4:00 PM ET.
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The Mercury's last game was a 78-65 loss to the Dream on Tuesday.
Rep your team with officially licensed Mercury gear! Head to Fanatics to find jerseys, shirts, and much more.
Phoenix Mercury Injury Report Today
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Chicago Sky Injury Report Today
Mercury vs. Sky Game Info
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 4:00 PM ET
- TV Channel: ESPN3 and AZFamily
- Location: Chicago, Illinois
- Arena: Wintrust Arena
Use our link to sign up for a free trial of Fubo, and start watching live sports without cable today!
Mercury Player Leaders
- Brittney Griner is posting team highs in points (18.2 per game) and assists (2). And she is contributing 6.7 rebounds, making 57.5% of her shots from the field (second in WNBA).
- Sug Sutton is No. 1 on the Mercury in assists (4.8 per game), and puts up 8.4 points and 2.6 rebounds. She also delivers 0.7 steals and 0.1 blocked shots.
- The Mercury receive 9.7 points, 4.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game from Michaela Onyenwere.
- The Mercury receive 9 points, 1.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game from Moriah Jefferson.
Mercury vs. Sky Betting Info
Check out the latest odds and place your bets on the Sky or Mercury with BetMGM Sportsbook. Use our link for the best new user offer, no promo code required!
Not all offers available in all states, please visit BetMGM for the latest promotions for your area. Must be 21+ to gamble, please wager responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, contact 1-800-GAMBLER.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.kold.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/mercury-vs-sky-wnba-injury-report/ | 2023-07-30T12:59:30 | 0 | https://www.kold.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/mercury-vs-sky-wnba-injury-report/ |
Members of the mid-Columbia River tribes set off on an annual intertribal canoe journey after a three-year hiatus due to COVID. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 28, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR
Members of the mid-Columbia River tribes set off on an annual intertribal canoe journey after a three-year hiatus due to COVID. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 28, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/intertribal-canoe-trip-from-oregon-to-seattle-will-set-out-for-first-time-since-covid | 2023-07-30T12:59:30 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/intertribal-canoe-trip-from-oregon-to-seattle-will-set-out-for-first-time-since-covid |
Scott Fitzgerald describes the Minnesota State Fair as “one of the most magnificent in America” in his 1928 short story “A Night at the Fair,” the featured story in the program Fitzgerald in St. Paul: The St. Paul Stories, hosted by poet/chef Danny Klecko, presented by Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug, 3, at Subtext Bookstore, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul.
Published in the Saturday Evening Post magazine, “A Night at the Fair” is one of Fitzgerald’s popular stories featuring Basil Duke Lee, a young man growing up in the Midwest, as did Fitzgerald. Born in St. Paul in 1896, he lived here from 1908 to 1911 and 1919 to 1922, so it’s safe to assume he attended the Fair.
Those of us for whom the Great Minnesota Get-Together is an icon will recognize the atmosphere at the Fair experienced by Basil and his friends. Although the Fair no longer ends with a bang-up re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg, it is so timeless that much of Basil’s story could take place at this year’s get-together, which begins Aug. 24. One important scene in the story is set at Ye Old Mill, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2015, making it the oldest attraction at the Fair.
Basil and his friends attend the Fair looking for girls, as young men do. Basil is feeling self-conscious and childish because his friends are wearing long pants that signal they are grown up, while he’s still wearing short pants. At the Fair, three couples ride the Old Mill’s wooden boats and take a spin on the Ferris wheel. Basil also runs into his nemesis.
Klecko, whose bombastic style keeps audiences enthusiastic, will be joined by special guests poet Michael Kleber-Diggs and Bill Pettersen, host of St. Paul’s True Crime Book Club. Pettersen is the character Billy Bama in Klecko’s books “The Dead Fitzgeralds” and “Zelda’s Bed.”
“I’m good at finding interesting, unknown people in the city and plugging them in,” says Klecko, who will never be accused of shyness. “But I get my hands on somebody like Pettersen and until the day he dies he’s known as Billy Bama.” | https://www.twincities.com/2023/07/30/literary-pick-for-july-30/ | 2023-07-30T12:59:31 | 1 | https://www.twincities.com/2023/07/30/literary-pick-for-july-30/ |
More than 1,100 people have already been charged for their actions around Jan. 6 and many of them invoked Former President Donald Trump, who may also be indicted.
Copyright 2023 NPR
More than 1,100 people have already been charged for their actions around Jan. 6 and many of them invoked Former President Donald Trump, who may also be indicted.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements | 2023-07-30T12:59:37 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements |
NIAMEY, Niger — Thousands of supporters of the junta that took over Niger in a coup earlier this week marched through the streets of the capital, Niamey, on Sunday waving Russian flags, chanting the name of the Russian president and forcefully denouncing former colonial power France.
Russian mercenary group Wagner is already operating in neighboring Mali, and Russian President Vladimir Putin would like to expand his country's influence in the region, but it is unclear yet whether the new junta leaders are going to move toward Moscow or stick with Niger's Western partners.
Days after after mutinous soldiers ousted Niger's democratically elected president, uncertainty is mounting about the country's future and some are calling out the junta's reasons for seizing control.
The mutineers said they overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum, who was elected two years ago in Niger's first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from France, because he wasn't able to secure the nation from growing jihadi violence. But some analysts and Nigeriens say that's just a pretext for a takeover that is more about internal power struggles than securing the nation.
"Everybody is wondering why this coup? That's because no one was expecting it. We couldn't expect a coup in Niger because there's no social, political or security situation that would justify that the military take the power," Prof. Amad Hassane Boubacar, who teaches at the University of Niamey, told The Associated Press.
He said Bazoum wanted to replace the head of the presidential guard, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, who also goes by Omar and is now in charge of the country. Tchiani was loyal to Bazoum's predecessor and that sparked the problems, Boubacar said. The AP cannot independently verify his assessment.
While Niger's security situation is dire, it's not as bad as neighboring Burkina Faso or Mali, which have also have been battling an Islamic insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Last year Niger was the only one of the three to see a decline in violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
Niger until now has been seen as the last reliable partner for the West in efforts to battle the jihadists 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.
Some taking part in Sunday's rally also warned regional bodies who have denounced the coup to stay away. "I would like also to say to the European Union, African Union and ECOWAS, please please stay out of our business," said Oumar Barou Moussa who was at the demonstration.
"It's time for us to take our lives, to work for ourselves. It's time for us to talk about our freedom and liberty. We need to stay together, we need to work together, we need to have our true independence," he said.
Conflict experts say out of all the countries in the region, Niger has the most at stake if it turns away from the West, given the millions of dollars of military assistance the international community has poured in. On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the continued security and economic arrangements that Niger has with the U.S. hinged on the release of Bazoum — who remains under house arrest — and "the immediate restoration of the democratic order in Niger."
France on Saturday suspended all development aid and other financial aid for Niger, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "France demands an immediate return to constitutional order under President Mohamed Bazoum, who was elected by the Nigeriens," it said.
The African Union has issued a 15-day ultimatum to the junta in Niger to reinstall the country's democratically elected government. On Sunday, the West African regional bloc, known as ECOWAS, is holding an emergency summit in Abuja, Nigeria.
However, in a televised address Saturday, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Toumba, one of the soldiers who ousted Bazoum, accused the meeting of making a "plan of aggression" against Niger and said it would defend itself.
Niger experts say it's too soon to know how things will play out.
"Tensions with the military are still ongoing. There could be another coup after this one, or a stronger intervention from ECOWAS, potentially military force, even if it is difficult to foresee how specifically that may happen and what form that may take," said Tatiana Smirnova, a researcher at the Centre FrancoPaix in conflict resolution and peace missions.
"Many actors are also trying to negotiate, but the outcome is unclear," she said.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/supporters-of-nigers-coup-march-waving-russian-flags-and-denouncing-france | 2023-07-30T12:59:43 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/supporters-of-nigers-coup-march-waving-russian-flags-and-denouncing-france |
She's one of India's biggest Barbie fans. When Vichitra Rajasingh was growing up, family and friends helped her build her collection of Barbie dolls until she had almost 80 of them. She once owned a Barbie camper, a speedboat, supermarket and post office. The mermaid Barbie and scuba-diving Barbie were her favorites.
Since her family ran a hotel, they put the dolls on display in the lobby in the late '90s. On Rajasingh's 14th birthday, her parents painted her room bright pink and hired artists to draw her favorite Barbie dolls on the walls.
All her Barbies were blond. She says she didn't like the Indian ethnic ones that came on the local market.
Living the pink life
"My love for the color pink began with my childhood passion for Barbie," she says. "And now it's become my identity." For her, the color represents love, joy, femininity and playfulness, everything she once associated with Barbie, she says.
Today Rajasingh lives in the southern Indian city of Madurai, where she drives a pink mini-Cooper and runs a bakery and lives in an apartment that are dominated by that color.
When the Barbie movie released in India on July 21, she gathered a bunch of friends, "everyone dressed to the nines in pink," and watched it on the day of its release. "I loved the movie. It was fun to watch and brought back many joyful childhood memories," she says.
While she no longer has her huge doll collection — having long since given it away to family and friends — Rajasingh is still a Barbie lover. She bakes six or seven Barbie-themed cakes a week, with an actual doll at the center of a cake that serves as her frothy dress, constructed around her in a swirl of sugar and cream.
Rajasingh saw Barbie as an aspirational figure — and grew up admiring the doll's freedom, confidence, globe-trotting lifestyle and even her arched feet in sassy stilettos.
But for others in India, Barbie has a far more complicated legacy.
The pressures Barbie can bring
Shweta Sharan, a writer who lives in Mumbai, admits to being conflicted about whether or not to watch the movie with her 13-year-old daughter, Laasya, who until a year ago ardently loved Barbie but then outgrew playing with dolls.
"I am aware that these dolls have many complicated associations," Sharan says. "Watching my daughter love a doll that looked nothing like her — with blond hair, blue eyes, perfect breasts — I worried if she would always strive to be someone else and feel inadequate."
These worries are valid in the opinion of ElsaMarie DSilva, a social entrepreneur from India and an Aspen fellow. "While Barbie is almost universally loved among girls of all ages, many do aspire to look like her, unconsciously pressurizing young girls to conform to unrealistic body shapes and expectations," she says — a common criticism aimed at Barbie.
Indian Barbie is not a rousing success
Mattel did make an effort to adapt the doll for an Indian market. When Mattel launched Barbie in India in 1991, it was the familiar Western-looking blond-haired blue-eyed Barbie. Then in 1996, they rolled out Indian Barbie, with brown skin. She came either wearing a bright sari or a salwar kameez — a knee-length tunic over fitted trousers.
But the Indian Barbie was not popular. "Indian kids gravitated toward the white-skinned Barbie instead of the brown-skinned one because light-skinned women were considered more beautiful in India and an automatic choice," DSilva says.
She points out how even in Indian clothes, Barbie still had a body that did not represent real women in India or anywhere else — she was way too tall and way too thin.
Priti Nemani, an Indian American attorney living in Chicago, analyzed why Barbie failed so spectacularly in the Indian market in a research paper published in 2011. In addition to the unrealistic, impossibly thin appearance of the doll, she points out how other cultural factors were at play.
"We weren't seeing Indian features on Barbie," she says. "We were seeing white Barbies dipped in brown. And even those brown Barbies didn't last long on the shelves. The latest versions of the Indian Barbie have much lighter skin tone.
Meanwhile, even though blond Barbies sold well, Ken tanked in India. "Indian parents who wouldn't want their daughters in romantic relationships at such an early age weren't going to buy the boyfriend," Nemani says.
In spite of her initial misgivings, Sharan enjoyed the Barbie movie with her daughter, now 13, who especially liked the feminist overtones. Laasya loved the beginning, when they were told "Barbie has a great day everyday. Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him."
Barbie inspires a poem
There are other issues about Barbie in India. For many kids, the doll is too expensive.
Ankita Apurva, 26, a writer who grew up in a farming family in Ranchi, a city in the Eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, recalls a childhood bereft of Barbies.
Her parents, who struggled to pay for a good education that they hoped would be her armor against bullying and discrimination, could not afford to buy their daughter a Barbie.
"They weren't in a position to splurge on fancy dolls like a Barbie," she says. She recalls feeling inferior for not owning one of these expensive dolls that would help her connect with other Barbie owners in her circle. It was especially hard for her at lunch when girls would boast about how many dolls they owned.
"I believe that even if children from marginalized communities manage to enter [private] institutions [for the privileged], there are certain social, cultural and economic symbols which are consciously and subconsciously deployed to mark them out, and Barbie, as loved as it is, is definitely one of them," she says.
Over the years, Apurva's family has grown stronger financially. When she saw the global resurgence of interest in Barbie now, she didn't feel angry or alienated, but it did bring back memories of desperately wanting to fit in – and not just because she didn't have a Barbie.
"Growing up, I rarely felt represented in literature or media. If pens or cameras turned toward us, they inadvertently counted us as data: dead bodies of farmers or survivors of violence of umpteen kinds."
As a girl from a farming family in Jharkhand, Apurva felt invisible. And so, she decided to express those emotions. She wrote a poem that she posted on Instagram, not to shame anyone who is privileged enough to own a Barbie but to comfort those who, like her, may have felt left out.
Here are some excerpts:
"Here's to the girls who do not get the Barbie craze,
...
girls who had parents who could not
or did not or choose not
to get them Barbie dolls
...
it's okay,
to not relate to any of it
...
what is not okay are friends ...
who intentionally make you
feel low by asking how many Barbies
you owned as a kid even as they
know you weren't privileged enough
to have them.
...
you are also not "too much" ...
if you feel
that Barbie is a colonial icon
legitimizing racial supremacy
while being a 'white feminist' trope
...
and once again
remember,
you are everything,
they are just Ken
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science, and development, and her work has been published in the New York Times, The British Medical Journal, BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on twitter @kamal_t
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake | 2023-07-30T12:59:44 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake |
Russian authorities say three Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow in the early hours on Sunday, injuring one person and prompting a temporary closure for traffic of one of four airports around the Russian capital.
It was the fourth such attempt at a strike on the capital region this month and the third this week, fueling concerns about Moscow's vulnerability to attacks as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.
The Russian Defense Ministry referred to the incident as an "attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime" and said three drones targeted the city. One was shot down in the surrounding Moscow region by air defense systems and two others were jammed. Those two crashed into the Moscow City business district in the capital.
Photos from the site of the crash showed the facade of a skyscraper damaged on one floor. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the attack "insignificantly damaged" the outsides of two buildings in the Moscow City district. A security guard was injured, Russia's state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials.
No flights went into or out of the Vnukovo airport on the southern outskirts of the city for about an hour, according to Tass, and the air space over Moscow and the outlying regions was temporarily closed for any aircraft. Those restrictions have since been lifted.
Moscow authorities have also closed a street for traffic near the site of the crash in the Moscow City area.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who rarely if ever take responsibility for attacks on Russian soil.
Russia's Defense Ministry reported shooting down a Ukrainian drone outside Moscow on Friday. Two more drones struck the Russian capital on Monday, one of them falling in the center of the city near the Defense Ministry's headquarters along the Moscow River about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Kremlin. The other drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting several upper floors.
In another attack on July 4, the Russian military said four drones were downed by air defenses on the outskirts of Moscow and a fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/a-drone-attack-on-moscow-briefly-shut-one-of-its-airports-and-injured-one | 2023-07-30T12:59:51 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/a-drone-attack-on-moscow-briefly-shut-one-of-its-airports-and-injured-one |
The U.S. auto industry is experiencing unanticipated stumbles and challenges as it pivots to producing more electric vehicles, even as it makes large profits.
Copyright 2023 NPR
The U.S. auto industry is experiencing unanticipated stumbles and challenges as it pivots to producing more electric vehicles, even as it makes large profits.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs | 2023-07-30T12:59:57 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs |
After nearly five years, the Big Peanut statue has returned to Ashburn, Ga. The original roadside attraction went down during Hurricane Michael. The new one is stronger and locally crafted.
Copyright 2023 NPR
After nearly five years, the Big Peanut statue has returned to Ashburn, Ga. The original roadside attraction went down during Hurricane Michael. The new one is stronger and locally crafted.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane | 2023-07-30T13:00:03 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with University of California, Berkeley, digital forensics expert Hany Farid about a recent political ad that used an AI-cloned vocal clip.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with University of California, Berkeley, digital forensics expert Hany Farid about a recent political ad that used an AI-cloned vocal clip.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/how-real-is-the-threat-of-ai-deepfakes-in-the-2024-election | 2023-07-30T13:00:04 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/how-real-is-the-threat-of-ai-deepfakes-in-the-2024-election |
People have asked me what I've learned so far through this series. Have I gotten any clarity on what makes up my own spiritual identity? And the answer is, not really. I'm still in the research phase of this project. I'm still collecting experiences and perspectives and I imagine I'll keep doing that forever, but it's too early to draw any definitive conclusions — except for one.
I believe each and every one of us is capable of making our own meaning. Some of us do that by living according to a set of religious principles. Or by feeling the beauty and sanctity of nature. Or by choosing to see spiritual connections in what others might call mere coincidence.
I don't need anyone to validate those experiences for them to be meaningful to me. But according to Lisa Miller, a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, having a spiritual life is good for your mental health.
Miller is a psychologist and has dedicated most of her career to the study of neuroscience and spirituality. Her newest book is called The Awakened Brain, and in it she makes some really bold claims about how holding spiritual beliefs can decrease our rates of anxiety and depression and generally make us most likely to lead happier lives. I can hear your skepticism already! I get it. I'm a spiritually inclined kind of person but it's still hard for me to understand how, scientifically speaking, believing in something bigger than yourself can make you healthier and happier.
I needed to understand how Miller came to these conclusions. But before she got to the actual science, she told me a story.
It was the mid '90s. Miller was in the early stages of her career and working at a residential mental health facility in New York City. After she'd been there a few months, Yom Kippur rolled around — the day of atonement, considered the most significant of the Jewish religious holidays. One of the older male patients with severe bipolar disorder asked if there were any plans to mark the day. The doctor in charge shrugged his shoulders and said, no — there's no service planned. The patient walked out of the room with his shoulders slumped and Lisa, who is Jewish, saw an opportunity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lisa Miller: I approached the unit chief and said, "I'm certainly not a rabbi, but I've been to two-and-a-half decades of Yom Kippur services. I'd be happy to facilitate if that might be OK with you." So I showed up on Yom Kippur and the patients had arrived early to the kitchen, which was to be our sanctuary. The fluorescent lights were quite strong and as we crowded around the linoleum table there was an extraordinary feeling of specialness.
As we started the prayers that we all knew from our childhood, joining together saying in Hebrew the prayers of Yom Kippur, I looked over and noticed that as the gentleman with bipolar was davening, he could not have been further from explosive. He was holding our group in the cadence of the prayers and we were actually following him.
I took a pause and I said, "I feel so grateful to be here today in our Yom Kippur ceremony. Would anyone like to say anything?" We went around the table and the first person to speak was a very otherwise withdrawn woman with recurrent depression. She said, "You know, I always knew on Yom Kippur we could ask for forgiveness. But sitting here now with you all, I'm aware that we can be forgiven. God can forgive us." And she looked liberated.
As I looked around the table at the patients, whatever their symptoms had been yesterday, they were free in that moment. They were free of suffering. They were free of the characteristic patterns that had dragged them down in a way that was equal and opposite to their main symptoms. And so I thought a mental health system minus spirituality made no sense, and that became my life's work, to understand the place of spirituality in renewal, in recovery, in resilience, and to put this in the language of science.
Rachel Martin: What happened when you brought these kinds of questions to your peers, to the other people in your scientific community? Like when you said for the first time, "Hey, I think we need to look at the effect of spirituality on mental health." What did people say to you?
Miller: Well, the vast majority were very respectful, nodded, and didn't pick up the thread. Some of them would say, "That's not psychology, that's not psychiatry." And in fact, I remember early on giving a grand rounds presentation and I opened up saying, "I'm going to speak today about a body of data using nationally representative samples on spirituality and mental health with all the gold standard methods." And about 10 people got up and walked out. It was absolutely not of interest.
Martin: Using the gold standard, what did that mean in terms of the experiments you were running and the studies and the data you were collecting? How did you make sure that it would hold water in the scientific community?
Miller: If I were to characterize the first five years of my investigation, I would say I used the data sets that everyone else knew and trusted. I only asked one new question, which was: "What's the impact of spirituality on the DSM diagnosis of addiction and depression?" The findings were jaw dropping.
The protective benefit of personal spirituality, meaning someone who says their personal spirituality is very important, is 80% against addiction. They have 80% decreased relative risk for the DSM diagnosis of addiction to drugs or alcohol.
Martin: Wait, so someone who self-identifies as having a meaningful spiritual life is 80% less likely to get addicted to drugs or alcohol than someone who says they don't?
Miller: Yes.
Martin: Wow. And how can you prove that it is a spiritual life that is doing that and not some external factor? Because you heard this from other critics, too, some of your peers said you can't attribute that to spirituality, it's gotta be some other social conditioning.
Miller: Well, that's a very important point because in every study we controlled for all of the usual interpretations about this being social support or having resources. So we plugged into our equation every other possible explanation that was generally taken in mental health to explain the road to depression. And nonetheless, it actually turned out that the more high risk we are, the more that there's stress in our lives, the more that we might be genetically at risk for depression, the greater the impact of spirituality as a source of resilience as preventative against major depression.
Martin: What does that look like in the brain?
Miller: One of the most beautiful findings in my 20 years as an investigator was from an MRI study conducted together with our colleagues at Yale Medical School. We looked at people of many different faith traditions and the first finding was that there is one neuro seat of transcendent perception and we share it. Now there's human variability of course, and we can strengthen components.
Martin: How are you actually doing that with people? Are you asking your subjects to pray? What are the spiritual inputs that are going into them so that you can measure it on their brains?
Miller: The very specific prompt was, "Tell us about a time where you felt a deep connection to God, your higher power, the source of life." Everyone had a story like that and as they told their story, we recorded them and it was then played back in their ears while they were inside the scanner.
Martin: Ah, they heard themselves recounting their spiritual experience.
Miller: It was tailor made to their own moment.
Martin: And you saw their brains light up?
Miller: Oh yes. Connecting to these memories, the bonding network comes up online just as when we were held in the arms of our parents or grandparents.
Martin: Wait, when you say the bonding network you mean you can literally see that the brain will respond to spiritual stimuli in the same way that it does to a hug from a family member when you're a baby?
Miller: Precisely.
Martin: Can you tell me how this manifests in the real world? I'm thinking about this anecdote you include in the book about a client of yours. A girl you refer to as Iliana.
Miller: Iliana adored her father, I mean, he was the sun and the moon and the stars to her. They were so close. And one night two men who her father knew, came into his corner store, robbed him and murdered him. And she was devastated. This was a grief that was so deep. She simply could not free herself from the grief that was shackling her heart.
One day, Iliana skips into my office. There's a levity and joy. She plops into the seat and says, "Dr. Miller, you're never gonna believe this. My cousin and my cousin's girlfriend chaperoned me so I could go to a party and I met the most wonderful boy. We talked so long, it must have been 20 minutes. He was so polite and so kind. But here's the best part, his name." Which was the same very usual name as her father.
She said, "Don't you see? My father sent him. My father is looking out after me." And from that day on she was in the world of the living. What changed everything for Iliana was the awareness that her father walked with her. She maintained a deep transcendent relationship with her father, as most people around the world do.
Iliana trusted her deep inner knowing that this was far too probabilistic to have happened by chance. That this very rare name held both by this new boy and her father could possibly mean nothing.
Martin: Can I ask, what are you thinking as you hear this? I mean, are you thinking that is just a crazy coincidence, but if she needs to believe that this is a sign from God, who am I to tell her otherwise? Because it seems to be working.
Miller: Well, at the time, that was certainly the most common interpretive framework amongst psychologists and psychiatrists. But I could see plain as day that this was a tremendously sacred moment. This was a living miracle. This was a gift.
For me to have treated it like some kind of cultural diversity variable or that it's just the meaning she makes would've actually taken all of the energy and spirit out of that transformative awakening moment. I joined her.
Now I did that authentically because it was my view as well that this is far too nonprobabilistic to have happened by chance, that there are very few people by that very same name and that the first boy she met in a year and a half since her father's passing should have the name of the father. It was a synchronicity. There was a deeper meaning being revealed.
Martin: When you're talking to people who aren't scientists, someone who's skeptical, someone who doesn't have faith, who doesn't have what they define as a spiritual life, what do you want them to take away from your research and your message?
Miller: I've given a number of talks to audiences who, prior to seeing the science, would not necessarily consider themselves spiritual people. And, in fact, I oftentimes hear from people who consider themselves skeptics and very left-brained and when they see the peer reviewed science that says we're naturally spiritual beings, that when we cultivate our spirituality we're 80% less likely to be addicted, 82% less likely to take our lives, it speaks to the left side of their brains long enough that it quiets down the skepticism.
In other words, three cheers for the skeptic. Here is published, peer reviewed science for skeptical audiences to begin to explore, to be curious about our spiritual nature. You know, at the inner table of human knowing we all have an empiricist, a logician, an intuitive, a mystic, and a skeptic. And the skeptic is very welcome, but the skeptic is not the bouncer at the door.
It is not scientific to put a skeptic as a bouncer at the door. It is not more rigorous to toss out an idea before being examined in every way. We are wired to be able to investigate. So I simply say to the biggest skeptic of all, you are most welcome to your own inner table of inquiry, but be sure to invite everyone else.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health | 2023-07-30T13:00:11 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health |
Washington became the first state to start deducting money from workers' paychecks to fund long-term care benefits. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 25, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR
Washington became the first state to start deducting money from workers' paychecks to fund long-term care benefits. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 25, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/washingtons-new-tax-could-be-a-solution-to-fund-long-term-care | 2023-07-30T13:00:17 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-07-30/washingtons-new-tax-could-be-a-solution-to-fund-long-term-care |
Brewers vs. Braves Predictions & Picks: Odds, Moneyline, Spread - July 30
Sunday's contest that pits the Atlanta Braves (66-36) against the Milwaukee Brewers (57-48) at Truist Park has a projected final score of 6-4 (based on our computer prediction) in favor of the Braves, who is slightly favored in this matchup according to our model. Game time is at 1:35 PM on July 30.
This contest's pitching matchup is set, as the Braves will send AJ Smith-Shawver to the mound, while Colin Rea (5-4) will take the ball for the Brewers.
Brewers vs. Braves Game Info & Odds
- When: Sunday, July 30, 2023 at 1:35 PM ET
- Where: Truist Park in Atlanta, Georgia
- How to Watch on TV: MLB Network
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
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Brewers vs. Braves Score Prediction
Our prediction for this contest is Braves 6, Brewers 4.
Total Prediction for Brewers vs. Braves
- Total Prediction: Under 11.5 runs
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Brewers Performance Insights
- The Brewers have played as the underdog in six of their past 10 games and have gone 2-4 in those contests.
- In its previous 10 games with a total, Milwaukee and its opponents have combined to exceed the over/under on three occasions.
- The past 10 Brewers matchups have not had a spread set by oddsmakers.
- The Brewers have been underdogs in 51 games this season and have come away with the win 25 times (49%) in those contests.
- Milwaukee has played as an underdog of +170 or more just one time this year and came away with a loss in that game.
- The Brewers have an implied victory probability of 37% according to the moneyline set by oddsmakers for this matchup.
- Milwaukee scores the 25th-most runs in baseball (435 total, 4.1 per game).
- The Brewers have the 11th-ranked ERA (4.03) in the majors this season.
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Brewers Schedule
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Brewers vs. Braves: Betting Trends, Odds, Records Against the Run Line, Home/Road Splits
Ronald Acuna Jr. and the Atlanta Braves will square off against the Milwaukee Brewers and Carlos Santana on Sunday at 1:35 PM ET, at Truist Park.
The favored Braves have -210 moneyline odds against the underdog Brewers, who are listed at +170. An 11.5-run total has been listed in the matchup.
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Brewers vs. Braves Odds & Info
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 1:35 PM ET
- TV: MLB Network
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Venue: Truist Park
- Live Stream: Watch on Fubo!
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Brewers Recent Betting Performance
- In six games as the underdog over the last 10 matchups, the Brewers have posted a mark of 2-4.
- When it comes to the total, the Brewers and their foes are 3-7-0 in their last 10 contests.
- The last 10 Brewers games have not had a spread set by oddsmakers.
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Brewers Betting Records & Stats
- The Brewers have won in 25, or 49%, of the 51 contests they have been named as odds-on underdogs this year.
- Milwaukee has played as an underdog of +170 or more once this season and lost that game.
- The moneyline set for this matchup implies the Brewers have a 37% chance of walking away with the win.
- Milwaukee's games have gone over the total in 43 of its 105 chances.
- The Brewers have an against the spread mark of 4-6-0 in 10 games with a line this season.
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Brewers Splits
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A boom in apartment construction is helping to curb rents but not all renters will benefit
By ALEX VEIGA
AP Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades. Median rent rose slightly in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years. A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. | https://kion546.com/ap-colorado/2023/07/30/a-boom-in-apartment-construction-is-helping-to-curb-rents-but-not-all-renters-will-benefit/ | 2023-07-30T13:01:39 | 1 | https://kion546.com/ap-colorado/2023/07/30/a-boom-in-apartment-construction-is-helping-to-curb-rents-but-not-all-renters-will-benefit/ |
How to Watch the Brewers vs. Braves Game: Streaming & TV Channel Info for July 30
AJ Smith-Shawver is set to start for the Atlanta Braves on Sunday against William Contreras and the Milwaukee Brewers. First pitch is at 1:35 PM ET at Truist Park.
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Brewers vs. Braves Live Stream, TV Channel and Game Info:
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 1:35 PM ET
- TV Channel: MLB Network
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Venue: Truist Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
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Brewers Batting & Pitching Performance
- The Brewers' 109 home runs rank 22nd in Major League Baseball.
- Milwaukee ranks 28th in the majors with a .377 team slugging percentage.
- The Brewers rank 26th in MLB with a team batting average of just .233.
- Milwaukee ranks 25th in the majors with 435 total runs scored this season.
- The Brewers have an on-base percentage of .312 this season, which ranks 23rd in the league.
- The Brewers rank 24th in strikeouts per game (9.1) among MLB offenses.
- Milwaukee strikes out 8.6 batters per nine innings as a pitching staff, 17th in MLB.
- Milwaukee has pitched to a 4.03 ERA this season, which ranks 11th in baseball.
- Brewers pitchers have a 1.239 WHIP this season, fifth-best in the majors.
Brewers Probable Starting Pitcher
- The Brewers will hand the ball to Colin Rea (5-4) for his 18th start of the season.
- The right-hander's last start was on Tuesday, when he tossed six innings while giving up two earned runs on five hits in a matchup with the Cincinnati Reds.
- He has started 17 games this season, earning a quality start (6 or more IP, 3 or fewer ER) in four of them.
- Rea has pitched five or more innings in two straight games and will look to extend that streak.
- He has two appearances with no earned runs allowed in 18 chances this season.
Brewers Schedule
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Shooting wounds 5 people in Michigan with 2 victims in critical condition, police say
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Police in Michigan say an early morning shooting wounded five people, including two who were listed in critical condition. The Lansing Police Department says officers responded to reports of a shooting around 1 a.m. Sunday. The five victims transported to a hospital by the Lansing Fire Department ranged in age from 16 to 26 years old. Police say there was a large crowd at the scene when officers arrived, prompting Lansing officers to ask for help from other jurisdictions. Police say several people were detained and officers found multiple firearms. In February, a gunman killed three students and injured five others in a shooting at Michigan State University in neighboring East Lansing. | https://kion546.com/ap-colorado/2023/07/30/shooting-wounds-5-people-in-michigan-with-2-victims-in-critical-condition-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T13:01:45 | 1 | https://kion546.com/ap-colorado/2023/07/30/shooting-wounds-5-people-in-michigan-with-2-victims-in-critical-condition-police-say/ |
Brewers vs. Braves: Odds, spread, over/under - July 30
Ronald Acuna Jr. and the Atlanta Braves (66-36), who are trying to secure a series sweep, will host Christian Yelich and the Milwaukee Brewers (57-48) at Truist Park on Sunday, July 30. The game will start at 1:35 PM ET.
The Brewers are listed as +170 moneyline underdogs in this matchup with the Braves (-210). The over/under for the matchup has been set at 11.5 runs.
Brewers vs. Braves Time and TV Channel
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 1:35 PM ET
- TV: MLB Network
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Venue: Truist Park
- Probable Pitchers: AJ Smith-Shawver - ATL (0-0, 0.00 ERA) vs Colin Rea - MIL (5-4, 4.53 ERA)
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Brewers vs. Braves Betting Odds, Run Line and Total
Check out the odds, run line and over/under for this matchup on several sportsbooks.
Looking to bet on the Brewers versus Braves game but don't know where to start? Consider some of the most common betting types, such as the moneyline, run line, and total. A moneyline bet, such as the Brewers (+170) in this matchup, means that you think the Brewers will win, simple as that! And if they do, and you bet $10, you'd get $27.00 back.
There are tons of other ways to bet, including on player props (will Christian Yelich hit a home run?), parlays (combining picks from multiple games to multiply your winnings) and more. Check out the BetMGM website and app for more details on the multitude of ways you can play.
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Brewers vs. Braves Betting Trends and Insights
- This season, the Braves have won 58 out of the 89 games, or 65.2%, in which they've been favored.
- The Braves have a record of 20-8 when playing as moneyline favorites with odds of -210 or shorter (71.4% winning percentage).
- The bookmakers' moneyline implies a 67.7% chance of a victory for Atlanta.
- The Braves went 5-5 across the 10 games they were favored on the moneyline in their last 10 matchups.
- Over its last 10 outings -- all had a set run total -- Atlanta and its opponents combined to hit the over on the total five times.
- The Brewers have come away with 25 wins in the 51 contests they have been listed as the underdogs in this season.
- The Brewers have played as an underdog of +170 or more just one time this year and came away with a loss in that game.
- In six games as underdogs over the last 10 matchups, the Brewers have a record of 2-4.
- In the last 10 games with a total, Milwaukee and its opponents are 3-7-0 when it comes to hitting the over.
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Brewers Futures Odds
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Who’s in, who’s out: A look at which candidates have qualified for the 1st GOP presidential debate
By MEG KINNARD
Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — In a few weeks, Republicans will hold their first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. So far, seven candidates say they’ve met the qualifications for a spot on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Aug. 23. But that also means that about half the broad GOP field is running short on time to make the cut. To qualify, candidates needed to satisfy polling and donor requirements set by the Republican National Committee. That means reaching at least 1% in three high-quality polls and having a minimum of 40,000 donors. Former President Donald Trump has already indicated he’s likely to skip the debate and hold a competing event. | https://kion546.com/ap-colorado/2023/07/30/whos-in-whos-out-a-look-at-which-candidates-have-qualified-for-the-1st-gop-presidential-debate/ | 2023-07-30T13:01:51 | 1 | https://kion546.com/ap-colorado/2023/07/30/whos-in-whos-out-a-look-at-which-candidates-have-qualified-for-the-1st-gop-presidential-debate/ |
Brewers vs. Braves Probable Starting Pitchers Today - July 30
Marcell Ozuna takes a two-game homer streak into the Atlanta Braves' (66-36) game versus the Milwaukee Brewers (57-48) at 1:35 PM ET on Sunday, at Truist Park.
The probable starters are AJ Smith-Shawver for the Braves and Colin Rea (5-4) for the Brewers.
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Brewers vs. Braves Pitcher Matchup Info
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 1:35 PM ET
- TV: MLB Network
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia
- Venue: Truist Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Probable Pitchers: Smith-Shawver - ATL (0-0, 0.00 ERA) vs Rea - MIL (5-4, 4.53 ERA)
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Brewers Probable Starting Pitcher Tonight: Colin Rea
- Rea (5-4) gets the starting nod for the Brewers in his 18th start of the season. He's put together a 4.53 ERA in 91 1/3 innings pitched, with 75 strikeouts.
- In his last time out on Tuesday against the Cincinnati Reds, the right-hander threw six innings, giving up two earned runs while surrendering five hits.
- Over 18 games this season, the 33-year-old has a 4.53 ERA and 7.4 strikeouts per nine innings, while giving up a batting average of .237 to opposing hitters.
- Rea has four quality starts under his belt this season.
- Rea will try to prolong a three-game streak of going five or more innings (he's averaging 5.1 frames per outing).
- He has had two appearances this season that he held his opponents to zero earned runs.
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Braves Probable Starting Pitcher Tonight: AJ Smith-Shawver
- Smith-Shawver will make his first start of the season for the Braves.
- This will be the first MLB start for the 20-year-old right-hander.
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Opinion: Two big surprises in court
Opinion by Richard Galant, CNN
(CNN) — Writing “to a mouse,” the Scottish poet Robert Burns offered consolation for the little “beasties” eviction from its home by a “cruel” plough that turned up a field. “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men” often go awry, Burns explained.
But some plans aren’t made to be broken. When a plea bargain is hammered out after months of negotiation, the formal acceptance of it in court is usually carefully choreographed — and predictable. So it was remarkable Wednesday when the deal for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for his failure to pay taxes on time fell apart in a federal courtroom after the judge raised questions about it.
That wasn’t the only legal surprise of the week. Special counsel Jack Smith unexpectedly added a major allegation to the indictment charging former President Donald Trump with mishandling classified documents. It came as Trump’s team was bracing instead for possible charges arising out of Smith’s investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In a “superseding indictment,” Smith alleged that Trump wanted employees at Mar-a-Lago to erase subpoenaed security camera footage to stop it from being given to a grand jury. Trump replied to the charge by accusing prosecutors of “election interference” and misconduct. The Trump and Hunter Biden developments underlined how America’s political climate is being shaped by what happens in the courts.
Norman Eisen wrote that while revising the indictment against Trump risks delaying a trial, the move was worth it: “While the Justice Department already had powerful evidence on obstruction, this is a leap forward because it hammers home the extent of the degree to which he and his co-defendants went to conceal potential evidence from a jury. This addition, an alleged surveillance tape conspiracy, almost reads like a spy novel.”
“It features Trump employee and co-defendant Walt Nauta’s surprise clandestine trip to Florida. And it is followed by Nauta and the new co-defendant, De Oliveira, observing and pointing out the surveillance cameras, and then De Oliveria having a conversation about ‘the boss’ wanting the IT server deleted…”
“If the facts bear out as charged, this is slam dunk legal proof that also has a strong human dimension. Like the unflattering nature of the Bedminster tape and the Fox News appearance, a former president allegedly dragging two of his workers into a criminal scheme is an extremely unsympathetic look,” Eisen observed.
To W. James Antle III, it was the Hunter Biden plea deal snafu that brought to the forefront the “powerful split screen that drives” how Republican voters see the emerging 2024 presidential race.
“Republicans have long claimed that President Joe Biden’s son has gotten special treatment from prosecutors looking into his business practices and allegations of tax and gun crimes, even as former President Donald Trump has faced the strictest legal scrutiny for any and all potential offenses. On Wednesday, the GOP position on Hunter Biden received vindication from US District Judge Maryellen Noreika, who rejected an ‘unusual’ plea bargain the Department of Justice had offered him.”
“Noreika had been asked to approve a plea deal that would have spared the president’s son prison,” wrote Antle. “The deal, brokered in June, was presented to her even though IRS whistleblowers last week told Congress they weren’t able to treat Hunter Biden like a typical target of their investigations, couldn’t pursue leads against his family members and recommended far harsher charges than were leveled. (Joe Biden has said he wasn’t involved in his son’s business deals.)”
Health questions
On Wednesday, a routine press conference by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell drew wide attention when the senator froze and was unable to answer a question before he was escorted away. Though he returned minutes later and responded fluently to questions, the 81-year-old senator’s health remained a topic of conversation, as was that of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The 90-year-old California senator needed prodding on Thursday from a colleague before she cast an “aye” vote.
As Julian Zelizer pointed out, “In presidential politics, health has been a major concern too, particularly given the age of the current leading candidates — President Joe Biden, who is 80, and former President Donald Trump, who is 77. And while the age of politicians should not be a determining factor for voters — given that many older officials have proven to still be up to the job and many younger politicians have proven they are not — health is a legitimate issue.”
“Politicians should disclose to voters any major medical issues that could impede their ability to perform their tasks in office, so that voters can account for those issues when casting their ballots.”
“Just think about it: We evaluate candidates and incumbents based on a whole host of qualifications — intelligence, charisma, ethics, political prowess, experience — and more. Why should their health, particularly where it pertains to their ability to perform their jobs, not be included in that list? Moreover, if politicians were more transparent about their health, the public might be less concerned about the question of their age and agility.”
X marks the spot
It’s hard to figure out what Elon Musk’s plan was for Twitter when he paid $44 billion for the social media platform. But he likely didn’t expect the mass abandonment of the site by many advertisers.
Twitter “once was an inviting place, a place of stimulation and information,” wrote Bill Carter. “But lately it had become far less comfortable to hang out there, thanks to an erratic personality, overbearing demands and increasing levels of ugly hate speech. It was barely recognizable anymore.”
“So now, for many, it’s just another… ‘ex.’”
“That even goes for … Musk, who, in what looks like the culmination of a months-long campaign to sabotage his own investment, announced on Sunday he will totally reinvent Twitter, even ditching its corporate name, replacing it with a single capital letter: X.”
“Having overseen — devised, really — the demise of Twitter, Musk has also created a reasonable chance that he could now be in charge of a complete brand blowout, should this daring reboot eventuate in extinction for X.”
It’s a mistake to bet against Musk, whose other ventures include the successful Tesla and SpaceX, and the company says X will be “a breakthrough of incalculable impact, a one-app-serves-all service not just for social interaction but also commerce, banking, video, audio and personal advancement,” Carter noted. That’s the plan, anyway.
Hot
It is “virtually certain” that July will be the planet’s hottest month on record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization. As heat waves continued, wildfires forced the evacuation of tourists and residents from the Greek islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Evia, noted Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London.
“It would be a big mistake to regard these as freak events and to continue holidaying as usual in the years ahead,” McGuire wrote. “The extreme weather conditions across southern Europe this summer are a wake-up call — a reminder that not even our vacations are insulated from the growing consequences of global heating…”
“A straight line can be drawn from the huge volumes of carbon dioxide pumped out as millions fly off on a summer holiday every year, to the heat, fires and other episodes of extreme weather that now endanger both resorts and those who visit them.”
The fires should “give us pause for thought, not only about whether we should any longer be flying on holiday to places that may threaten us and our loved ones — but about the whole point of having a holiday.”
For more:
Mark Wolfe and Cassandra Lovejoy: Staying cool during heat waves is getting more expensive. It’s time for a new strategy
UFOs
On the surface, what David Grusch told a House subcommittee Wednesday is astounding. As Jason Colavito wrote, he testified “that he had heard from other unnamed officials that the US government has a secret program to recover and reverse engineer non-human spacecraft.”
“In a statement after the hearing, the Pentagon disputed Grusch’s testimony and emphasized that it has found no evidence of crashed saucer programs or space aliens. We can’t entirely rule out the possibility that Grusch discovered something real. Certainly, pilots see things in the sky they don’t understand.”
But, Colavito added, “Congress and UFO enthusiasts have been all too willing to accept witness reports at face value when we know eyewitness testimony is unreliable. This problem has been compounded by the fact that much of this testimony comes from seemingly unassailable military pilots who are trained to observe airborne threats. This dynamic has been a problem from the dawn of UFO investigations last century until the present day.”
Taking on inequality
The dramatic increase in wealth inequality “is a threat to our economy and democracy,” wrote Rep. Barbara Lee and Disney heir Abigail E. Disney. “We need a tax specifically aimed at constraining it.”
“America’s 735 billionaires now hold more wealth than the entire bottom half of the country. Over the course of the pandemic, America’s billionaires increased their combined wealth to nearly $4.7 trillion.”
But taxing that wealth may not be straightforward. “The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case, Moore v. United States, which will decide the constitutionality of a little-known tax known as the mandatory repatriation tax,” Lee and Disney noted. “Although it’s not receiving much attention, the potential effects of the case cannot be understated. Should the court rule in favor of the plaintiffs, the case may essentially quash other proposals to tax extreme wealth and, in so doing, impede the ability of Congress to fight inequality.”
Odesa
For Michael Bociurkiw, the Black Sea resort of Odesa is a jewel. “With its seemingly endless seaside promenade, joyful outdoor gyms, Miami-like flair and New York chutzpah, Odesa has made me its number one fan,” the Canadian writer observed. But now the port is the target of Russian cruise missiles as President Vladimir Putin’s invading forces try to hold their own against a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“In the past, friends in Kyiv often talked of the zombie state they’d experience after relentless nightly waves of Russian bombings,” Bociurkiw wrote. “That’s now commonplace in Odesa: You can see it on the worn faces of residents taking their pet dogs out on their morning constitutional.”
“As daylight broke on Sunday, after the double strike on the Transfiguration Cathedral and the historic district, it seemed that moms were hugging their kids tighter, that faces became more stern.”
“Handshakes seemed more firm, as if they could be the last for a while.”
Netanyahu
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, scored what may be a pyrrhic victory last week, one that threatens his legacy. Frida Ghitis wrote that “it is likely that history will remember Netanyahu as the man who served the interests of Israel’s enemies by tearing the country into bitterly opposed camps. Instead of seeking common ground and trying to bring the people together, he pushed ahead with a plan that undermined the country’s democratic foundations.”
“On Monday, as if history were trying to highlight the fragility of his power, Netanyahu was released from hospital after an emergency intervention to implant a pacemaker in time for a key vote in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.”
“The opposition boycotted the vote, but the Knesset approved a key element of the proposed judicial overhaul aimed at curtailing the power of the courts and strengthening that of the parliament, the Cabinet and the prime minister — all under Netanyahu’s control. The bill, approved 64-0, abolishes the so-called reasonableness clause, weakening the Supreme Court’s ability to review Cabinet decisions it views as unreasonable.”
History
Florida’s Board of Education drew fire for issuing a new set of standards for teaching Black history. As Peniel E. Joseph wrote, they “require middle school students to learn about how slavery helped slaves develop skills that could benefit them. High school students must learn about some of American history’s most egregious race massacres under the guise of ‘violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.’”
“These are perversions and lies; they are what Vice President Kamala Harris has called them: an attempt at ‘gaslighting.’ In truth, the peculiar Institution of racial slavery was foundational to America’s rise and depended entirely on classifying Black people as commodities that were both highly valued and sought after and simultaneously debased and exploited by a system of profit that denied their humanity.”
“Conditions for enslaved persons once in North America varied by circumstance, but it was a horrific existence: many were beaten, raped, sold away from their family members or subjected to other kinds of violence and psychological abuse. Inhumane living and working conditions produced a litany of painful and often fatal health outcomes, for adults and for children.”
For more:
Sophia A. Nelson: Diversity programs were once celebrated. Now an uproar over DEI has cost a college president her job
Nicole Hemmer: Call Alabama’s defiance what it really is
Patrick T. Brown: Conservatives are right to object to intellectual conformity on campus
David J. Skorton and Frank R. Trinity: An ill-advised Supreme Court decision could impact health care in underserved communities
Barbie and the right
Another dashed plan was the campaign by some conservatives against a movie based on a doll, Dean Obeidallah wrote. “Voices on the right have been calling for a boycott of the new ‘Barbie’ film because to them it’s everything from being ‘woke’ to somehow ‘brainwashing’ young girls with ‘Chinese propaganda,’ as GOP Sen. Ted Cruz put it. But they just learned they are no match for the Mattel doll. Barbie — metaphorically speaking — drove her pink Dreamcamper right over these critics, breaking box-office records.”
“Director Greta Gerwig’s movie — starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling — saw a stunning $155 million opening weekend,” Obeidallah noted. (The film is distributed by Warner Bros., which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.)
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift has such a hold on her fans that they will buy her albums twice. That was demonstrated this month when Billboard magazine named “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” the best-selling album of the week. Swift now holds the record among female artists for the most No. 1 albums, eclipsing Barbra Streisand.
Margaret H. Willison wrote that “This chart dominance is clearly an impressive achievement. But what makes it stand out even more is that three of those 12 are rereleases of earlier No. 1 albums deliberately engineered to sound as much like the original versions as possible. While each reissue has contained six previously unreleased songs, the primary motive behind recording and releasing what Swift has labeled ‘Taylor’s Version’ of these albums has not been to share new songs but to reclaim full ownership of her old ones.”
“That’s because the master recordings of her first six albums belong not to Swift, but to her former label, Big Machine.”
Sinéad O’Connor
The music of Sinéad O’Connor, who died this week at 56, spoke powerfully to trauma victims, wrote psychologist Sarah Gundle. “If Taylor Swift’s music speaks to people who need to express their pain and anxiety, but want to ‘shake it off,’ then Sinead O’Connor’s music spoke to those who are not so lucky. While Swift’s songs will make you feel less alone (and she’ll do it wearing sequins, with a toss of her long, flowing blond mane), O’Connor’s music registers for those who feel they must be alone with their grief.”
“There was an authenticity and anger in O’Connor’s life and work that deeply resonated with people, especially trauma victims, precisely because it was so honest.”
Don’t miss
Lawrence S. Honig: Alzheimer’s drug is ‘not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning’
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Jill Filipovic: There’s nothing ‘lazy’ about this work-life trend
Jeff Pearlman: He’s a White former coach who worked with young Black men. You wouldn’t know it to hear Tuberville today
AND…
Seine swimming
Swimming has been banned in Paris’ Seine River for 100 years, but as David A. Andelman noted, “the 2024 Paris Olympics organizers want to make this fabled river the centerpiece of the lavish opening ceremony a year from now and for the entire 17 days of the games.
“In short, they want to clean up the Seine for swimming events. Good luck.”
“I wouldn’t swim in that water at gunpoint,” said Mort Rosenblum, former editor of the International Herald Tribune, who’s owned a houseboat barge on the Seine for more than 40 years.
“But, he admitted to me, his pet cat’s fallen in the river a dozen times and survived. Of course, he’s never dived in to fish her out.”
City authorities have invested $1.55 billion in a cleanup and, Andelman noted, “water samples from June showed ‘excellent results’ in complying with European regulation, according to city hall.”
“Disinfection units at wastewater treatment plants and a rainwater storage basin are en route.”
We’ll soon find out if this “best laid scheme” will work.
The-CNN-Wire
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Sky vs. Mercury: Odds, spread, over/under and other Vegas lines - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 7:36 AM CDT|Updated: 25 minutes ago
The Chicago Sky (9-15) will host the Phoenix Mercury (6-17) after losing five home games in a row. The matchup starts at 4:00 PM ET on Sunday, July 30, 2023.
In this article, you can see the spread and odds across multiple sportsbooks for the Sky vs. Mercury matchup.
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Sky vs. Mercury Game Info
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 4:00 PM ET
- TV Channel: ESPN3 and AZFamily
- Location: Chicago, Illinois
- Arena: Wintrust Arena
Sky vs. Mercury Odds, Spread, Over/Under
Take a look at the odds, spread and over/under for this WNBA matchup at individual sportsbooks.
Sky vs. Mercury Betting Trends
- The Sky have won 11 games against the spread this season, while failing to cover 12 times.
- The Mercury have put together a 7-15-0 record against the spread this year.
- Phoenix has covered the spread twice when an underdog by 7.5 points or more this season (in seven opportunities).
- A total of 10 out of the Sky's 23 games this season have hit the over.
- The Mercury and their opponents have combined to go over the point total nine out of 22 times this season.
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The case for a soft landing is slowly but surely building
Analysis by Krystal Hur, CNN
(CNN) — After months of uncertainty about the economy’s health and whether bank stresses from this past spring would weigh too heavily on credit conditions, the possibility of the Federal Reserve pulling off a soft landing is looking brighter.
The Fed last Wednesday raised interest rates by a quarter point, in line with expectations, and maintained that it will remain data dependent in deciding whether to pause or raise rates in September.
But Chair Jerome Powell offered an important update regarding the Fed’s economic projections.
“The staff now has a noticeable slowdown in growth starting later this year in the forecast, but given the resilience of the economy recently, they are no longer forecasting a recession,” Powell said.
It’s unclear what the difference is between a “noticeable slowdown in growth” versus a recession, and some market signals indicate a recession is still possible. But the Fed’s revision in its recession forecast suggests that at least for now, officials aren’t incredibly worried about what recent data has revealed about the economy.
It’s not difficult to see why – economic data released this past week points to a cooling but still strong economy. The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 3% for the 12 months ended in June, according to fresh data from the Commerce Department. That marks the second straight month of declines.
The core PCE index, which strips out energy and food prices, rose 4.1% in June from the prior year. While that’s more than double the Fed’s 2% target, it’s below economists’ expectations of a 4.2% annual increase, and lower than a yearly increase of 4.6% in May.
“If inflation metrics continue to cool, investors should expect the Fed to pause at their next meeting in September,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial.
Other economic measures also brought good news. US gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, grew faster than expected in the April-through-June period.
Meanwhile, US wage gains cooled in the second quarter, showing some easing of inflationary pressures, according to the latest Employment Cost Index data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Still, it’s far too soon to assume that a soft landing is in the bag. The Fed hinted last week that it could hike rates once again this year.
Plus, it could take at least a year for the effect of rate hikes to make its way through the real economy, according to some research, and it’s already been more than a year since the Fed began lifting rates in March 2022.
There’s more economic data slated for release this coming week, and the US labor market is in focus. On deck are the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for June and ADP National Employment Report for July.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs report is due Friday. Economists expect a gain of 200,000 jobs in July, a slight decrease from 209,000 added in the prior month. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 3.6%.
The June report saw the lowest monthly gain since a decline in December 2020. But last month’s job growth still outpaced the pre-pandemic average of about 183,000 net jobs gained per month.
WhatsApp unveils new video messaging feature
From CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke
WhatsApp will now let you record and send video clips directly in the messaging app, the Meta-owned platform announced this week.
The instant video messages can be up to 60 seconds long, and are similarly protected with the app’s end-to-end encryption service.
“We think these will be a fun way to share moments with all the emotion that comes from video, whether it’s wishing someone a happy birthday, laughing at a joke, or bringing good news,” the company said Thursday in a blog post.
The new feature will be similar to sending a voice message on the platform, the company added, and there will also be a way to record the video hands-free.
The company said the new update has begun rolling out on the app and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.
Up Next
Monday: Earnings from Community Bank.
Tuesday: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for June. Earnings from Caterpillar, Pfizer, Uber, Marriott, Starbucks and Altria.
Wednesday: ADP National Employment Report for July. Earnings from PayPal, CVS, Kraft Heinz, Yum! Brands and DoorDash.
Thursday: Mortgage rates. Earnings from Apple, Amazon, Airbnb, ConocoPhillips, Booking Holdings, Warner Bros. Discovery, Coinbase and Kellogg.
Friday: Jobs report for July.
The-CNN-Wire
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Sky vs. Mercury Injury Report, Betting Odds - July 30
The Chicago Sky's (9-15) injury report has two players listed as they ready for a Sunday, July 30 matchup with the Phoenix Mercury (6-17) at Wintrust Arena. It begins at 4:00 PM ET.
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The Sky are coming off of an 83-74 loss to the Storm in their most recent outing on Friday.
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Chicago Sky Injury Report Today
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Phoenix Mercury Injury Report Today
Sky vs. Mercury Game Info
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 4:00 PM ET
- TV Channel: ESPN3 and AZFamily
- Location: Chicago, Illinois
- Arena: Wintrust Arena
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Sky Player Leaders
- Courtney Williams puts up a team-best 6.0 assists per contest. She is also putting up 9.2 points and 6.1 rebounds, shooting 39.5% from the field and 40.0% from downtown (ninth in league) with 1.1 made 3-pointers per contest.
- Kahleah Copper is tops on the Sky at 18.6 points per game, while also putting up 1.9 assists and 4.7 rebounds. She is 10th in the WNBA in scoring.
- Alanna Smith paces her squad in rebounds per game (6.9), and also averages 9.5 points and 1.8 assists. At the other end, she averages 1.4 steals (10th in the league) and 1.6 blocked shots (fifth in the league).
- Elizabeth Williams posts 9.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game, shooting 50.8% from the field (seventh in WNBA).
- Marina Mabrey is averaging 14.1 points, 3.7 assists and 3.9 rebounds per contest.
Sky vs. Mercury Betting Info
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France’s Céline Boutier out to break home hoodoo at Evian Championship
By Jack Bantock, CNN
(CNN) — Sometimes, the more you want something, the harder it becomes to obtain. French golfer Céline Boutier knows that as well as anyone.
The 29-year-old has risen to become one of the best players on the LPGA Tour since turning pro in 2016, propelled by a string of top-10 performances in major championships. The world No. 15 has finished at least seventh in all but one of the game’s flagship events.
All except the one she wants to impress at most of all – The Evian Championship.
Tied-29th marks Boutier’s best outing in six appearances at her home major, hosted at Evian Resort Golf Club in Evian-les-Bains, a five-and-a-half-hour drive from her home in Montrouge in the Parisian suburbs.
On Thursday, the tournament will tee off for its 10th year as a major championship. Boutier will be one of four French players among the star-studded 132-player field, and the quartet can count on heavy home support from behind the ropes.
“I feel like you put a little bit more pressure on yourself because you want to perform and not disappoint anybody,” Boutier told CNN.
“Being on home soil definitely hasn’t been easy for me to handle myself and my emotions … it’s the only tournament that I get to play at home and I feel like there’s definitely a lot more attention.”
Complicating matters further is the course itself. Nestled at the bottom of the Swiss Alps with views overlooking Lake Geneva, flat areas are few and far between at hilly Evian. An emphasis on long game does not play to the strengths of Boutier, who was ranked 104th in LPGA Tour driving distance on the eve of the tournament.
But as a three-time major winner on the LPGA Tour, Boutier knows she is capable of challenging on any terrain, and those victories could well hold the key to breaking her home hoodoo.
“I’m definitely trying to see the course from a different lens and just try to take it like a regular tournament,” Boutier said.
“Just doing all the preparation and the work ahead of time so you feel prepared and a little bit more confident going into the tournament, then just focus on each shot at a time.”
Olympics calling
But no matter how much home support Boutier receives at the Evian Championship, it is unlikely to rival anything she will likely ever experience when the Olympics arrives in Paris next year.
Staged at Golf National, 41 kilometres southwest of Paris in the city of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, it’s a venue with serious pedigree, having hosted the 2018 Ryder Cup.
Boutier is trying not to think ahead, but it’s a losing battle when – naturally – people keep asking her about it.
“I am fortunate enough to know the course, so I’m definitely trying to picture some of the holes and stuff like that,” Boutier said.
“It’s going to be unbelievable. I’m so looking forward to the experience and being able to share it with not only the French athletes, but also with my family and my friends being there.
“I think it’s going to definitely be a special week and I’ll probably remember it forever.”
Before then though is the small matter of another international competition: The Solheim Cup.
The 18th edition of the biennial team competition touches down at Finca Cortesin in Andalusia, Spain in September.
As the fourth highest ranked European on the LPGA Tour, Boutier is in strong contention to make her third appearance in the blue and yellow uniform. Her Solheim Cup résumé will only help her chances; two appearances, two wins for Team Europe, and a 78% win rate in her matches.
“I just really enjoy playing as a team,” Boutier said.
“You get to share the emotions … it’s really nice to be able to rely on someone else and being able to share the highs and lows.”
At a tournament famed for its atmosphere, Boutier is expecting the crowd to crank up the sound as Europe chases a famous three-peat.
“I feel like the Spanish crowd is always very passionate, so I will be expecting a lot of noise,” she said.
“But I think it’s going to be fun and hopefully we can ride the wave and get the cup back again.”
The-CNN-Wire
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Moscow targeted again as Kyiv steps up drone attacks inside Russia
CNN
By Josh Pennington, Mariya Knight, Zahra Ullah and Heather Chen, CNN
(CNN) — Russia says Ukraine targeted Moscow with drones on Sunday, the latest in a series of attacks that have brought the Ukraine war to Russia’s capital.
The Russian Defense Ministry said three drones were intercepted but a business and shopping development in the west of the capital was hit. The fifth and sixth floor of a 50-story building were damaged, and no casualties were reported, state news agency TASS reported.
Videos showed debris as well as emergency services at the scene.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force said the latest drone attacks on Moscow were aimed at impacting Russians who, since the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, felt the war was distant.
“There’s always something flying in Russia, as well as in Moscow. Now the war is affecting those who were not concerned,” the spokesman, Yurii Ihnat, said on Ukrainian television.
“No matter how the Russian authorities would like to turn a blind eye on this by saying they have intercepted everything … something does hit.”
Ukraine’s military has increasingly been deploying unmanned aerial vehicles for more than just reconnaissance.
Ukrainian Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, whose Digital Transformation Ministry oversees the country’s “Army of Drones” procurement plan, had said there would be more drone strikes to come as Kyiv ramps up a summer counteroffensive aimed at pushing Russian troops out of Ukrainian territory.
Moscow was targeted earlier this week. Ukraine claimed responsibility for a strike on Monday that hit two non-residential buildings, including one near the Ministry of Defense headquarter. Russia called that incident a “terrorist attack,” although the Kremlin’s military actions in Ukraine have regularly caused civilian casualties.
A Russian missile attack in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy late on Saturday killed at least two people civilian and injured another 20, while a rocket strike on Zaporizhzhia left another two people dead.
Both areas had been subject to lengthy bombardments over the weekend. Ukrainian authorities in Sumy said there had been 25 instances of shelling in a single day, while a military leader in Zaporizhzhia said Russian forces had carried out 77 attacks on 20 settlements across the Zaporizhzhia, hitting 31 residential buildings and other pieces of infrastructure.
Though the strikes in Moscow did not reportedly cause any injuries or fatalities, they have unsettled residents of the Russian capital.
One witness to Sunday’s attack explained how the incident upended some planned down time.
“My friends and I rented an apartment to come here and unwind, and at some point, we heard an explosion – it was like a wave, everyone jumped,” she told Reuters. “There was a lot of smoke, and you couldn’t see anything. From above, you could see fire.”
Ukrainian drones also targeted the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula on Sunday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it intercepted 25 unmanned aerial vehicles over the territory, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, shooting down 16 of them with air defense systems.
The other nine crashed into the Black Sea after their signals were jammed by electronic warfare equipment, according to the ministry. There do not appear to have been any casualties, but CNN has not been able to verify claims made by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
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Huntsville Police investigate shooting at Bridge Street
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - Huntsville Police are investigating a shooting at Bridge Street Town Centre. The 911 call went out just before 7:30 on Saturday evening. Police say this happened on the north end of the shopping center, near the Red Robin / Cinemark / Westin area.
HEMSI spokesperson Don Webster confirms two people were shot: one is a male who is in serious condition, the other is a female whose injuries are not life threatening. The ages and names of the victims are not available at this time. Witnesses tell us both victims appear to be teenagers.
A police spokesperson tells us that this was an isolated incident, with no threat to the public. That spokesperson told us that this started as a verbal altercation between groups of juveniles.
Investigators detained three people for questioning. Late Saturday night, police confirmed one juvenile was taken the the Neaves-Davis Juvenile Center and charged with assault. Their name is not being made public due to their age.
Witnesses at the scene tell WAFF they saw the teenage boy laying in the parking lot with gunshot wounds.
Nick Stratacos is one of those witnesses, who recalls letting more than a dozen officers pass by him to get to the scene.
“Right next to this blue Camry in the parking lot, there’s a young gentleman lying on the floor with gunshot wounds. He looked like he was no older than 16 [or] 17, [a] real youngin,” Stratacos said. “He seemed to be in okay condition. As they were putting him in the ambulance, he was talkative, he was alert, he even looked up to wave to his friends as they were loading him in.”
Businesses like Red Robin’s were shut down after the shooting. But people who were inside the Cinemark Theater during the shooting tell me that movies kept playing without the customers being told what was going on.
Harrison Cerniway and Kacey Fast, who were in the theater during the shooting say they are concerned that all their information was coming from outside sources.
“I got text from my mom and like 20 friends that said there’s a shooting here, right? But the movie theater didn’t say anything about like if the situation’s even here or is it safe to leave or not,” Cerniway said. “And I didn’t know if the shooter was all the way down Bridge Street or are they in the theater so I didn’t know if it was safe to leave or not.”
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ROANOKE, Va. – Aug 5-6 Berglund Center – Roanoke, VA 710 Williamson Rd NE, Roanoke, VA 24016.
Ticket Prices: Saturday – $17, Sunday – $16, Weekend Pass – $25 (weekend pass includes early entry at 10am on Saturday, August 5th!)
Saturday – 10am-6pm, 10am for weekend pass holders, 11am for General Admission
Sunday – 11am-5pm, no early entry
Kids 12 and under with paying customer are FREE!
Virginia’s biggest celebration of comics, pop culture, toys and gaming returns to Roanoke, VA! Featuring a massive selection of exhibitors from comic vendors, artists, celebrity guests, creators, crafters, gaming enthusiasts, plus on site experiences live stage entertainment and more.
Event website: www.biglickcomiccon.com and follow on Facebook for the most up to date information, www.facebook.com/biglickcomiccon | https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2023/07/30/big-lick-comicon-comes-to-berglund-center-aug-5th-6th/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:20 | 1 | https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2023/07/30/big-lick-comicon-comes-to-berglund-center-aug-5th-6th/ |
How to Watch the Rays vs. Astros Game: Streaming & TV Channel Info for July 30
Kyle Tucker and Wander Franco will be among the stars on display when the Houston Astros play the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday at 2:10 PM ET, at Minute Maid Park.
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Rays vs. Astros Live Stream, TV Channel and Game Info:
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 2:10 PM ET
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Location: Houston, Texas
- Venue: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
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Discover More About This Game
Rays Batting & Pitching Performance
- The Rays have hit 154 homers this season, which ranks fourth in the league.
- Fueled by 356 extra-base hits, Tampa Bay ranks fifth in MLB with a .445 slugging percentage this season.
- The Rays' .255 batting average is among the best in baseball, ranking 10th in MLB.
- Tampa Bay is among the highest scoring teams in baseball, ranking fourth with 553 total runs this season.
- The Rays have the 11th-ranked on-base percentage in MLB this season (.327).
- The Rays rank 17th in strikeouts per game (8.6) among MLB offenses.
- Tampa Bay strikes out 9.2 batters per nine innings as a pitching staff, eighth-best in MLB.
- Tampa Bay has pitched to a 3.82 ERA this season, which ranks fourth in baseball.
- The Rays have a combined 1.193 WHIP as a pitching staff, second-lowest in MLB.
Rays Probable Starting Pitcher
- Zack Littell (0-2) will take to the mound for the Rays and make his fourth start of the season.
- The right-hander last pitched on Sunday against the Baltimore Orioles, throwing two scoreless innings of relief and allowing one hit.
- In 16 appearances this season, he has finished six without allowing an earned run.
Rays Schedule
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More women are aiming to become church leaders. Together, they could change American Christianity
By AJ Willingham, CNN
(CNN) — Christian leadership in the US has typically been seen as a male occupation. The right for women to be ordained and serve as faith leaders has been hard-won over decades, and in several major factions, like the Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist churches, women are barred from the highest levels of leadership.
However, among mainstream denominations that do ordain women, a sea change is occurring. More women are entering seminary and other theological programs with the intent of becoming priests. As it follows, more women are also occupying those roles after being ordained.
Experts say one of the main reasons for the increase is that women of faith are looking at their religious traditions and sensing a need for change.
“Women — and men — in the church, have seen abuse and suffering. They’ve seen the role of the patriarchy in the church. They want to address constructively some of these challenges that have been facing both the church and in our society,” says Alexis Abernethy, chief academic officer at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. “They’re saying, ‘Enough of this. We need to be different.’ So I think a lot of these women are marshaling energy in that direction.”
However, female priests still face an alarming number of challenges navigating institutional structures built by and for men — challenges that are similar to those faced by women in other workplaces. These challenges also sow deep examinations of faith: If church traditions have historically marginalized women and others, what leads those who have been excluded to forge on anyway?
How the presence of women church leaders has grown
The definitions of Christian leaders, the process by which they are selected and the specific credentials needed to fill such positions vary from denomination to denomination. A church leader could be called a priest, a pastor, a rector, a minister or some other term. Ordination is the process by which someone is given the authority for these positions, and there is sometimes a hierarchy within each position. Oftentimes, training at a seminary or theological institution is necessary for ordination. This process can get a little murky with some groups that have less centralized leadership structures. However, numbers across different denominations reveal the same pattern: More women in training, more women being ordained.
Let’s look at a specific example: In the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, a large denomination with about 4 million members in the US, 40% of the church’s pastors are women, according to a 2022 report from the church. Women also made up 46% of all bishop positions, and 54% of associate or assistant pastors (though only 22% of senior pastor positions). Across the board, these numbers marked a dramatic increase from the ELCA’s 2015 data. (The ELCA began ordaining women in 1970.)
Research from noted theologian Eileen Campbell-Reed paints a broader picture. Her 2018 report reveals the proportion of US clergy who are women rose from 2.3% in 1960 to 20.7% in 2016. She also noted most mainline denominations have seen their proportion of clergywomen rise in multiples since the early 1990s. In some denominations, like Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ, the number of women in clergy positions has pulled even with men.
How women can change the church that is
Fuller Theological Seminary, where Abernethy works, is one of the largest seminaries in the US and one with a noted history of championing female faith leaders.
“The question used to be whether women should even be pastors, but that’s not as critical a question anymore in some denominations,” she tells CNN. “Now the question is, how can we make the environment in which women are pastors more fruitful, productive and supportive?”
She says having women in roles of power can help amend church structures that are inhospitable to underrepresented people and clear wider paths for acceptance and empowerment among communities.
“Power and privilege is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it can mean the opportunity to speak and share your perspective,” she says. “Folks who’ve been marginalized or oppressed, have a clearer radar regarding things like power and when it’s abusive, or when people are being excluded. At their best, they would then not set up systems that perpetuate that exclusion — although that requires courage and energy and people need to be attentive to that fact.”
When considering women in the priesthood, this history of exclusion can appear to be a major conflict. The argument against women in Christian leadership is largely based on a specific interpretation of the Bible, but even in cultures where the theology has been decided in favor of women, they still face things like lower pay, less opportunities, and inconsistent support in areas like maternity leave.
However, Abernethy says it’s because of this history that a lot of women feel called to such work.
“I’ve heard over my 25 years in this field, that women want to be a part of the movement for change. Even recognizing that they may not at this moment, or in this decade, serve in a way they want to, there are playing a role in contributing to that change,” she says. “And I have to tell you, I hear that with admiration because it really is quite a sacrifice. And yet, you understand. Because how would we have we gotten to the place we are without women, without other people, doing the same thing in the past?”
How women can create the church that will be
Emily Badgett is a fellow at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. A lifelong Episcopalian, Emily grew up with a supportive network of family, friends and mentors and plans to be ordained in 2024.
Whether training for a clergy role or already occupying one, community and mentorship are critical for women in the church. In Badgett’s case, these circles have also been a way to find specific purpose in faith.
“Working with my older church mentors, we often look back at the early church mothers and how, at the very beginning of Christianity, there were a lot of women doing this work,” she tells CNN. “They were community organizers. Many of them literally ran churches as administrators and secretaries.”
Badgett recalls a trip to a Tanzanian church where the women showed her what they called “trunk archives” — years and years of church records, safely tucked away in, yes, trunks.
“They were passed down from woman to woman, and we wouldn’t have that documentation without them,” she says.
In addition to shedding light on the ways women have always contributed to the church, Badgett says she also sees her contemporaries looking at priesthood as something more than a staid, traditional profession. The women in her circles see their calling as an opportunity for activism, justice and a reinvigoration of faith.
“When it comes to its social duties, the church kind of gets, in my opinion, lazy,” she says. “And when we saw the pandemic happen you saw the church kind of reinvent itself because it had gotten so comfortable in its existence.”
Activism as part of the Christian church life is not a universally recognized concept. Some communities prefer to stay out of political tides and have hesitated at formulating clear public stances on what could be considered nonreligious issues. Moments of upheaval like the racial justice movements of 2020 and the multilateral impact of the pandemic tested these outlooks. However, for many women entering religious leadership, the relationship between pastoral work and social responsibility is inextricable to their identity.
“The thing about women, and specifically women of color, is that it’s never a singular thing,” Suzie Sang, the director of the Women in Leadership Initiative at Fuller, tells CNN. “It’s always a multiplicity of things that make up their identity and their place in the world. So women and women of color have never really served just one function or one role. To them, justice and advocacy is never separate from the gospel, and it’s never separate from their theological framing.”
Today, American Christianity is in a place of crisis. Church attendance is falling, less people are identifying as Christians, and some of the religion’s biggest denominations are stuck at controversial crossroads. The Southern Baptist Convention recently expelled several women-led churches, and ousted several female leaders. The Methodist Church has been fraying over the fallout from a decision by the denomination’s international governing body to deny same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy.
Sang says women who belong to faiths that don’t align with their views on how the church should be — for instance, in terms of gender outlook, face an added challenge when they feel called to the clergy.
“Women already need to make so many difficult choices when looking to seminary (or theological training). They need to think about their plans for a family, about how they will find avenues of support and success in a very difficult field,” she says. “Then, if you are part of denomination that not only doesn’t ordain women but upholds ideas of subservience, you have to say, what is the cost to me? If I feel a sense of call to seminary, will I at some point have to ask the question, ‘Can I stay with my denomination or do I need to go elsewhere?’ And if I have to go elsewhere, where do I go?”
These issues are echoed in our national dialogue, where the influence of Christianity and the rights of women are constantly at the political forefront. From the outside, one could wonder why women — or women of color, or any marginalized person — would seek to wade into such waters against the current of tradition, or of a narrow theology, or of their own upbringing. However, in the language of seminary, one doesn’t just decide to become a priest. They are called, they discern their purpose, and they feel moved to help others. They weigh a lot of heavy decision in the balance. If they decide to seek leadership in spite of prejudice and uncertainty, it’s not because they think their religion is perfect. It’s because they can see the good in it, and hope they can make it better.
“The church is not perfect, it’s not a heaven. It is a human institution trying to do the will of God and that means we’re going to fail,” Badgett says. “And that means the church is not always going to get things right. Even in the Bible, there were people who got things wrong. The whole point is people are redeemable. And the church is a redeemable place.”
The-CNN-Wire
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Rays vs. Astros: Odds, spread, over/under - July 30
Tampa Bay Rays (63-44) will take on the Houston Astros (59-46) at Minute Maid Park on Sunday, July 30 at 2:10 PM ET. Currently stuck at 29 steals, Wander Franco will be looking to nab his 30th stolen base of the year.
The Astros are favored in this one, at -110, while the underdog Rays have -110 odds to play spoiler. The matchup's over/under is set at 9 runs.
Rays vs. Astros Time and TV Channel
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 2:10 PM ET
- TV: SportsNet SW
- Location: Houston, Texas
- Venue: Minute Maid Park
- Probable Pitchers: Brandon Bielak - HOU (5-5, 3.62 ERA) vs Zack Littell - TB (0-2, 5.11 ERA)
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Rays vs. Astros Betting Odds, Run Line and Total
Here's a look at the odds, run line and over/under for this matchup across several sportsbooks.
Wanting to wager on the Rays and Astros game but aren't sure how to get started? Here's a quick breakdown. Some of the most common betting types include the moneyline, run line, and total. A moneyline bet means that you think one of the teams -- the Rays (-110), for instance -- will win. It's that easy! If the Rays bring home the win, and you bet $10, you'd get $19.09 back.
There are tons of other ways to bet, including on player props (will Yandy Díaz hit a home run?), parlays (combining picks from multiple games to multiply your winnings), and more. Check out the BetMGM website and app for more details on the multitude of ways you can play.
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Rays vs. Astros Betting Trends and Insights
- This season, the Astros have been favored 68 times and won 40, or 58.8%, of those games.
- The Astros have a record of 43-33 when they have played as moneyline favorites with odds of -110 or shorter (56.6% winning percentage).
- The sportsbooks' moneyline implies a 52.4% chance of a victory for Houston.
- The Astros have a 6-2 record from the eight games they were moneyline favorites over their last 10 matchups.
- Over its last 10 matchups -- all had a set run total -- Houston and its opponents combined to hit the over on the total four times.
- The Rays have been victorious in four, or 25%, of the 16 contests they have been chosen as underdogs in this season.
- This season, the Rays have been victorious four times in 16 chances when named as an underdog of at least -110 or worse on the moneyline.
- The Rays have played as underdogs in three of their past 10 games and lost each of those contests.
- Tampa Bay and its opponents have combined to hit the over three times in the last 10 games with a total.
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Rays Futures Odds
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© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/rays-vs-astros-mlb-odds-over-under/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:25 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/rays-vs-astros-mlb-odds-over-under/ |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – The discovery of four dead women in a drainage ditch just outside Atlantic City was shocking news in 2006.
International media flocked to the seaside gambling resort. More than 100 detectives and prosecutors were assigned to investigate. Casino guests worried about safety, and the victims’ fellow sex workers began carrying hidden knives.
But as the years passed, the public’s attention and fear faded, and the case of the “Eastbound Strangler” – so named for the direction the victims’ heads were facing – remained unsolved.
The arrest earlier this month of a man charged with killing three women whose remains were found on a Long Island beach in 2010 has breathed fresh life into another long-dormant case with obvious parallels; the Gilgo Beach serial killings involve a total of 11 victims, most of whom were young, female sex workers. Yet the recent breakthrough, and the rekindling of public interest, only highlights a painful truth: Many similar cases – like the one in Atlantic City -- remain open.
The FBI would not say how many killings of sex workers in the U.S. remain unsolved. Media accounts and statements from local authorities show a long trail of open cases, from nine women whose bodies were found along highways in Massachusetts, to 11 found dead in New Mexico, and eight more found amid the crawfish farms and swamps of southern Louisiana. The killings of other sex workers in Chicago, New Haven, Connecticut and Ohio, among other places, also remain mysteries.
From the days of London’s Jack The Ripper in the 1880s, serial killers, particularly those preying on sex workers, have often gotten away with it, in part because their victims were easy targets living on the margins of society.
Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River killer convicted of 49 killings in Washington state, said at during a 2003 court hearing in which he pleaded guilty that he chose sex workers as victims because he knew they would not be missed quickly, if at all.
“I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught,” he said.
Two women were out for an afternoon walk near Atlantic City in November 2006 when they found a body in a ditch. They called police, who quickly found three others nearby.
The $15-a-night motel in Egg Harbor Township behind which the four bodies were found is long gone. It was torn down in an attempt to clear a seedy area known for crime, drugs and disturbances – and the murders of Barbara Breidor, 42, Molly Jean Dilts, 20, Kim Raffo, 35, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23.
Because it is near the ocean, like Gilgo Beach, the location has prompted much speculation by amateur detectives about a single killer, but some other online sleuths have pointed out that oceanside areas are often the remotest locations after hours on the densely packed East Coast. Gilgo Beach is about 3.5 hours drive from Atlantic City.
Gone in New Jersey are the four small wooden crosses someone erected on the site, along with the folded-up paper note bearing a Biblical quote promising justice that someone left there on one of the anniversaries of the discovery of the bodies.
For families left behind, each new day without word in the case of their loved one brings fresh pain.
“I kind of lost hope that anyone was even searching for the killer anymore,” said Joyce Roberts, whose daughter Tracy Ann was one of the four Atlantic City-area victims. “The first six months, the prosecutor did get on the phone with me and told me they were working on it.
“Then it just fell off the radar,” she said. “It was like nobody cared anymore.”
That is a sentiment echoed by Phoenix Calida, a former sex worker from Chicago who now advocates for them through the Sex Workers Outreach Project.
“Police departments often refer to it as an ‘NHI’ case: No humans involved,” she said. ”You feel like the only way you’ll be remembered is when they catch the serial killer who killed you, and then they’ll make five movies about him and no one will remember your name.”
Massachusetts State Police are investigating “nine unsolved homicides possibly committed by the same person,” said David Procopio, a spokesperson for the agency. He said two additional missing persons cases may be homicides related to the other nine.
Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said the New Mexico cases remain actively investigated, with “multiple detectives” working them. The 11 victims were all involved in drugs and prostitution, police said.
A reward of $100,000 has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case, which involved two victims who were just 15 years old.
Despite the decade-long efforts of a local, state and federal task force, Louisiana has at least eight unsolved apparent homicide cases involving sex workers between the ages of 17 and 30. Their bodies were found in marshy areas in Jennings, a small town in the area known as Cajun Country, between 2005 and 2009.
Prosecutors in New York's Suffolk County investigating the Gilgo Beach cases have been in touch with multiple law enforcement agencies, but District Attorney Ray Tierney would not say which ones.
“Everything is being examined and looked at, and this is an active investigation,” said Anthony Carter, Suffolk County's deputy police commissioner. He would not say if his agency was investigating any connection between Heuermann and the Atlantic City murders.
Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds said the four cases from the drainage ditch outside Atlantic City remain active, with detectives assigned to them, but would not say how many. He declined comment on the Long Island case “as we are not involved.”
Joyce Roberts, the victim’s mother, said no one from law enforcement has called her since the arrest was made in the Long Island cases.
Police in Las Vegas, where Heuermann owns a time share, said they are investigating whether Heuermann may be involved in cases involving the killings of sex workers there.
In the months immediately after the bodies’ discovery near Atlantic City, the local prosecutor’s office and a dozen other law enforcement agencies had 140 people assigned to the cases, Ted Housel, who was prosecutor at the time, said in 2008. By the first anniversary, the total had fallen to 85, and those investigators were also working other cases.
Calida, the former sex worker from Chicago, said women involved the sex trade are frequently robbed by people who know they’re carrying cash, and are sometimes coerced into sexual activity by police in return for not being arrested.
She said an attacker “knows you can’t or won’t report it. You’re an easy target and they know it.”
Three of her friends who were also sex workers in Chicago also turned up dead.
“You see someone, you become friends with them and then one day they’re suddenly just not there,” she said. “We’d all go out asking around and looking for them, and then a few days later a body would be found. There’s always this specific fear that it’s a serial killer. Sometimes we never even get a body back to bury. And we wonder: Will law enforcement take it seriously because it’s ‘just another sex worker?’”
___
AP writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; Julie Walker and Robert Bumsted in Suffolk County, New York; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this story.
Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC | https://www.wsls.com/news/national/2023/07/30/breakthrough-in-long-island-serial-killings-shines-light-on-the-many-unsolved-murders-of-sex-workers/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:25 | 0 | https://www.wsls.com/news/national/2023/07/30/breakthrough-in-long-island-serial-killings-shines-light-on-the-many-unsolved-murders-of-sex-workers/ |
At 24, Alberto Rodriguez has grandparents younger than Joe Biden. But he's more interested in the 80-year-old president's accomplishments than his age.
“People as young as me, we're all focusing on our day-to-day lives and he has done things to help us through that," Rodriguez, a cook at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, said of Biden's support among young voters. Rodriguez pointed specifically to federal COVID-19 relief payments and government spending increases on infrastructure and other social programs.
Voters like him were a key piece of Biden’s winning 2020 coalition, which included majorities of young people as well as college graduates, women, urban and suburban voters and Black Americans. Maintaining their support will be critical in closely contested states such as Nevada, where even small declines could prove consequential to Biden's reelection bid.
His 2024 campaign plans to emphasize messages that could especially resonate with young people in the coming weeks as the anniversary of the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act approaches in mid-August. That legislation includes provisions that the White House will embrace to argue that Biden has done more than any other president to combat climate change.
Such efforts, however, could collide with Biden’s personal reality — like when he recalled that, while attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade at age 14, he appeared in a photo with President Harry S. Truman.
“Purely by accident — I assume it was an accident — the photographer from the newspaper got a picture of me making eye contact with Harry Truman,” Biden said to chuckles last week at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium in Washington.
In 2020, 61% of voters under age 30 — and 55% of those between 30 and 44 — supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the electorate.
It's an age group with which Republicans hope to make inroads. Former President Donald Trump, who is the early front-runner in the GOP presidential primary and is only 3 1/2 years younger than Biden, said Friday, "We are hitting the young person’s market like nobody’s ever seen before.”
Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign, referred to Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement in arguing that “young people are acutely impacted by the issues front and center in this election, driven by the extreme MAGA agenda." He said that included inaction on climate change, gun violence and student debt.
“We will meet younger Americans where they are and turn their energy into action,” Munoz said in a statement.
That might not defuse questions about age, though, when it comes to Biden or Trump.
“There’s a frustration and exhaustion that they feel with the rematch,” Terrance Woodbury, co-founder & CEO of the Democratic polling firm HIT Strategies, said of young voters.
“That’s more of a problem than either of those two candidates individually, is that a system can just keep reproducing," Woodbury added. "And I think a lot of people just find that untenable.”
An April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 25% of Democrats under 45 said they would definitely support Biden in a general election, compared with 56% of older Democrats. A majority of Democrats across age groups said they would probably support him as the party’s nominee, however.
Biden's campaign is relying heavily on the Democratic National Committee, which during last year's midterms, hired campus organizers in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and other battleground states and offered weekly youth coordinating meetings to encourage in-class contacts and “dormstorms.” The DNC sees young people as some of the most critical voters it will need to reach in 2024 and promises “significant investments” to mobilize them. Plans are underway to expand on its work last cycle, including trainings it held on how best to turn out voters.
The Republican National Committee is trying to use Biden's age against him, posting online videos of Biden seeming frail or making verbal gaffes, such as when he declared in June “God save the queen,” nearly nine months after the death of England’s Queen Elizabeth II.
Rodriguez shrugged off online attacks, “People can make all the hit pieces and memes and TikToks all they want.”
A starker contrast might be between the president and rising Democrats such as 46-year-old California Rep. Ro Khanna and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 41, one of Biden's primary rivals in 2020. Neither seriously entertained running for the White House in 2024 and have backed Biden's reelection.
“The only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job,” Buttigieg, who was 37 when he launched his 2020 presidential bid, said recently on CNN. Khanna told Fox News Channel that age will “obviously” be a 2024 factor, but suggested that Biden's staff “overprotects” him and “the more he’s out there, the better.”
Other top young Democrats have lined up to back Biden. Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, who was elected to Congress last year at 26, is on the Biden campaign's advisory board, as is Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, 44. New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, 33, recently endorsed Biden.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive who says strong turnout among young voters helped him win a runoff election this spring, said Biden's policies transcend his age. Johnson noted that the president's work “around climate justice speaks not just to this generation, but generations to come.”
“The excitement that I believe that we’re going to have is going to speak to the incredible work and organizing that we are committed to doing as a party," said Johnson, 47. “And we’re looking forward to working with the president over the course of his next four years.”
Still, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, acknowledged that even the president's supporters understand how demanding the White House can be.
“People worry about Joe Biden. They worry like you would worry about a beloved father or grandfather,” said Weingarten, 65. “What you normally hear from Democrats is this sense of, ‘OK, I just want him to be OK.’ And you’re hearing just the consternation of, ’This is a hard job.’"
Biden said he “took a hard look” at his age while deciding to seek a second term. But he’s also tried to suggest his age and experience are assets rather than liabilities by joking repeatedly about them. That’s a departure from 2020, when Biden called himself a “transition candidate” and pledged to be a “bridge” to younger Democrats.
Santiago Mayer, the founder of Voters of Tomorrow, which has 20-plus chapters nationwide and works to increase political engagement among young voters, argues that Biden is not defying his past promise by running for reelection, but keeping it.
“He just needs more time,” said Mayer, who graduated from California State University at Long Beach in May. “I think the second term is a very important part of that pledge. He’s building a progressive future for young people and he can’t actually pass the baton until that’s done.”
One key policy piece of Biden’s efforts to appeal to young voters, providing student debt relief, was recently struck down by the Supreme Court. The White House has launched a new effort, but it will take longer.
“Of course it’s going to dampen some of that because people are disappointed,” Weingarten said of the ruling's effect on enthusiasm for Biden. But she said the decision could also motivate young Biden supporters anxious show their support for the president's alternative plan.
“It is also about the fight," Weingarten said "not just about the results.”
___
AP polling director Emily Swanson in Washington contributed to this report. | https://www.wsls.com/news/politics/2023/07/30/joe-biden-americas-oldest-sitting-president-needs-young-voters-to-win-again-will-his-age-matter/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:28 | 1 | https://www.wsls.com/news/politics/2023/07/30/joe-biden-americas-oldest-sitting-president-needs-young-voters-to-win-again-will-his-age-matter/ |
Rays vs. Astros Probable Starting Pitchers Today - July 30
The Tampa Bay Rays (63-44) match up against the Houston Astros (59-46), a game after Isaac Paredes went deep twice in a 17-4 defeat to the Astros, at 2:10 PM ET on Sunday.
This contest's pitching matchup is set, as the Astros will send Brandon Bielak (5-5) to the mound, while Zack Littell (0-2) will answer the bell for the Rays.
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Rays vs. Astros Pitcher Matchup Info
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 2:10 PM ET
- TV: SportsNet SW
- Location: Houston, Texas
- Venue: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Probable Pitchers: Bielak - HOU (5-5, 3.62 ERA) vs Littell - TB (0-2, 5.11 ERA)
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Rays Probable Starting Pitcher Tonight: Zack Littell
- The Rays are sending Littell (0-2) to the mound to make his fourth start of the season. He is 0-2 with a 5.11 ERA and 26 strikeouts over 24 2/3 innings pitched.
- The right-hander last appeared in relief on Sunday, when he tossed two scoreless innings against the Baltimore Orioles while giving up one hit.
- During 16 games this season, the 27-year-old has put up a 5.11 ERA and 9.5 strikeouts per nine innings, while allowing a batting average of .301 to opposing hitters.
- In six of his 16 total appearances this season he has not allowed an earned run.
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Astros Probable Starting Pitcher Tonight: Brandon Bielak
- Bielak (5-5) will take the mound for the Astros, his 13th start of the season.
- The right-hander last pitched on Tuesday, when he gave up three earned runs and allowed six hits in 4 2/3 innings against the Texas Rangers.
- The 27-year-old has pitched in 13 games this season with an ERA of 3.62, a 1.83 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a WHIP of 1.435.
- In 12 starts this season, he's earned a quality start in two of them.
- In 12 starts, Bielak has pitched through or past the fifth inning nine times. He has a season average of 5.3 frames per outing.
- He has made 13 appearances and finished two of them without allowing an earned run.
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COLUMBIA, S.C. – With less than a month to go until the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 campaign, seven candidates say they have met qualifications for a spot on stage in Milwaukee.
But that also means that about half the broad GOP field is running short on time to make the cut.
To qualify for the Aug. 23 debate, candidates needed to satisfy polling and donor requirements set by the Republican National Committee: at least 1% in three high-quality national polls or a mix of national and early-state polls, between July 1 and Aug. 21, and a minimum of 40,000 donors, with 200 in 20 or more states.
A look at who's in, who's (maybe) out and who's still working on making it:
WHO'S QUALIFIED
The current front-runner long ago satisfied the polling and donor thresholds. But he is considering boycotting and holding a competing event.
Campaign advisers have said the former president has not made a final decision about the debate. One noted that “it’s pretty clear,” based on Trump's public and private statements, that he is unlikely to appear with the other candidates.
“If you’re leading by a lot, what’s the purpose of doing it?” Trump asked on Newsmax.
In the meantime, aides have discussed potential alternative programming if Trump opts for a rival event. One option Trump has floated is an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now has a program on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
The Florida governor has long been seen as Trump's top rival, finishing a distant second to him in a series of polls in early-voting states, as well as national polls, and raising an impressive amount of money.
But DeSantis' campaign has struggled in recent weeks to live up to the sky-high expectations that awaited him when he entered the race. He let go of more than one-third of his staff as federal filings showed his campaign was burning through cash at an unsustainable rate.
If Trump is absent, DeSantis may be the top target on stage at the debate.
The South Carolina senator has been looking for a breakout moment. The first debate could be his chance.
A prolific fundraiser, Scott enters the summer with $21 million cash on hand.
In one debate-approved poll in Iowa, Scott joined Trump and DeSantis in reaching double digits. The senator has focused much of his campaign resources on the leadoff GOP voting state, which is dominated by white evangelical voters.
She has blitzed early-voting states with campaign events, walking crowds through her electoral successes ousting a longtime incumbent South Carolina lawmaker, then becoming the state's first woman and first minority governor. Also serving as Trump's U.N. ambassador for about two years, Haley frequently cites her international experience, arguing about the threat China poses to the United States.
The only woman in the GOP race, Haley has said transgender students competing in sports is “the women’s issue of our time” and has drawn praise from a leading anti-abortion group, which called her “uniquely gifted at communicating from a pro-life woman’s perspective.”
Bringing in $15.6 million since the start of her campaign, Haley's campaign says she has “well over 40,000 unique donors" and has satisfied the debate polling requirements.
The biotech entrepreneur and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” is an audience favorite at multicandidate events and has polled well despite not being nationally known when he entered the race.
Ramaswamy's campaign says he met the donor threshold earlier this year. He recently rolled out “Vivek's Kitchen Cabinet" to boost his donor numbers even more, by letting fundraisers keep 10% of what they bring in for his campaign.
The former New Jersey governor opened his campaign by portraying himself as the only candidate ready to take on Trump. Christie called on the former president to “show up at the debates and defend his record.”
Christie will be on that stage, even if Trump isn't, telling CNN this month that he surpassed “40,000 unique donors in just 35 days.” He also has met the polling requirements.
Burgum, a wealthy former software entrepreneur now in his second term as North Dakota’s governor, has been using his fortune to boost his campaign.
He announced a program this month to give away $20 gift cards — “Biden Relief Cards,” as a critique of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy — to as many as 50,000 people in exchange for $1 donations. Critics have questioned whether the offer violated campaign finance law.
Within about a week of launching that effort, Burgum announced he had surpassed the donor threshold. Ad blitzes in the early-voting states also helped him meet the polling requirements.
WHO HASN'T QUALIFIED:
Trump's vice president has met the polling threshold but has yet to amass a sufficient number of donors, raising the possibility that he might not qualify for the party's first debate.
Pence and his advisers have expressed confidence he will do so, noting that most other Republican hopefuls took a month or two of being active candidates to meet the mark. Pence entered the race on June 7, the same day as Burgum and one day after Christie.
“We’re making incredible progress toward that goal. We’re not there yet,” Pence told CNN in a recent interview. “We will make it. I will see you at that debate stage."
According to his campaign, the former two-term Arkansas governor has met the polling requirements but is working on satisfying the donor threshold. As of Wednesday, Hutchinson marked more than 11,000 unique donors.
Hutchinson is running in the mold of an old-school Republican and has differentiated himself from many of his GOP rivals in his willingness to criticize Trump. He has posted pleas on Twitter for $1 donations to help secure his slot.
The Miami mayor has been one of the more creative candidates in his efforts to boost his donor numbers. He offered up a chance to see Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi’s debut as a player for Inter Miami, saying donors who gave $1 would be entered in a chance to get front-row tickets.
Still shy of the donor threshold, he took a page from Burgum’s playbook by offering a $20 “Bidenomics Relief Card” in return for $1 donations. A super political action committee supporting Suarez launched a sweepstakes for a chance at up to $15,000 in tuition, in exchange for a $1 donation to Suarez’s campaign.
Suarez's campaign did not return a message seeking details on his number of donors or qualifying polls.
The conservative radio host wrote in an op-ed that the RNC “has rigged the rules of the game by instituting a set of criteria that is so onerous and poorly designed that only establishment-backed and billionaire candidates are guaranteed to be on stage.”
His campaign last week declined to detail its number of donors, saying only that there had been "a strong increase the last few weeks.” He has not met the polling requirements.
Johnson, a wealthy but largely unknown businessman from Michigan, said in a recent social media post that he had notched 23,000 donors and was “confident” he would make the debate stage. He added that all donors were “eligible to attend my free concert in Iowa featuring” country duo Big & Rich next month.
Johnson, who has reached 1% in one qualifying poll, has also offered to give copies of his book “Two Cents to Save America” to anyone who donated to his campaign.
The former Texas congressman — the last candidate to enter the race, on June 22 — has said repeatedly that he would not pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee, a stance that would keep him off the stage even if he had the qualifying donor and polling numbers.
___
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP | https://www.wsls.com/news/politics/2023/07/30/whos-in-whos-out-a-look-at-which-candidates-have-qualified-for-the-1st-gop-presidential-debate/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:29 | 0 | https://www.wsls.com/news/politics/2023/07/30/whos-in-whos-out-a-look-at-which-candidates-have-qualified-for-the-1st-gop-presidential-debate/ |
Explosion at Thailand fireworks warehouse kills at least 12 people
By Kocha Olarn and Teele Rebane, CNN
(CNN) — At least 12 people were killed and 121 injured in an explosion at a fireworks warehouse in southern Thailand.
The incident – in the village of Mu No – reduced the warehouse and surrounding area to rubble, drone footage showed.
At least two of the victims were children, including a four-year-old boy and a eight-month-old baby girl, according to state run Radio Thailand.
Over a hundred houses were also damaged.
The cause of the explosion is under investigation but initial reports suggested there had been a welding error.
Police plan to charge the owner of the warehouse with a criminal offense for “causing the explosion and resulting in people’s deaths and injuries and property damage,” Narathiwat Provincial Police Commander Anuruth Imarb said in a press conference on Sunday.
“I have nothing left,” said Samsueya Chuenchompoo, whose house was destroyed, according to the AFP news agency.
“I don’t even have a roof over my head now. When there was a flood, I still could survive but now I really have nothing left.”
Fireworks accidents are not uncommon in Thailand. Several people were reportedly injured in another blast in the northern city of Chiang Mai earlier this week.
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Kocha Olarn reported from Bangkok and Teele Rebane wrote in Hong Kong. | https://kion546.com/news/national-world/cnn-world/2023/07/30/explosion-at-thailand-fireworks-warehouse-kills-at-least-12-people/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:29 | 0 | https://kion546.com/news/national-world/cnn-world/2023/07/30/explosion-at-thailand-fireworks-warehouse-kills-at-least-12-people/ |
Kamala Harris takes center stage in Biden reelection campaign’s rapid response to GOP
By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
(CNN) — Gathered at the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory last weekend, a group of aides and advisers to Kamala Harris marveled at what they had just pulled off.
They did not even have a venue lined up when they started reaching out to supporters about attending a quickly arranged speech in Jacksonville, Florida, the next day. But by Friday afternoon, Harris had delivered a fiery speech that was well received among Democrats, blasting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the state’s new curriculum standards on Black history and expressing concern that Republicans wanted to “replace history with lies.” That set off a week of responses from the governor, which his opponents have used as ongoing fodder for attacks.
So last Monday, Harris aides started planning her trip to Iowa for four days later: a discussion on reproductive rights in a state where Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds had just signed a new ban on abortions after six weeks. (A state judge has since put the law on hold.) There were many of the same lines, including her riff on so-called leaders, but now on another topic that President Joe Biden’s aides are eager to highlight Republican positions on. And instead of speaking from behind a podium, Harris sat in a comfortable chair in front of a packed room of women at Drake University.
The timing – hours before the leading GOP presidential candidates gathered in Des Moines for a marquee fundraising dinner – was no mistake.
Aides and advisers are already workshopping ideas for the next quickly targeted and arranged appearance.
Growing her profile
This is a shift for a vice president whose aides have often complained of her being left out of the spotlight and without support by many in the president’s inner circle. Now there is a conscious effort by both Biden and Harris aides to build her up.
Harris has been quietly noting how other Democrats, including her friend and sometimes rival for attention California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have grabbed the national spotlight by swinging at Republicans aggressively. Aides say she has also been watching the news out of the Republican presidential race and telling Biden aides she wants to be seen as fighting against extremism.
“This is moment where I do believe there is a full-on attack against hard-won freedoms, but we have power,” Harris said in Iowa.
Two years into wrestling with the ambiguities of her job responsibilities and facing questions about how she spends her days, Harris is embracing what comes with being the administration’s No. 2. There are fewer can’t-move meetings on her schedule than there are for the president. Fewer logistics are required to get her around the country. The security threshold is much lower for having traffic rerouted around her motorcade, or for protecting wherever she goes on the ground.
Biden aides see their path to victory next year rooted in large part in connecting with Black voters, women, young people and other groups that tend to respond warmly to Harris. Her increased public presence – speaking out on issues such as race, reproductive rights and guns – is part of a broader strategy overseen by Biden’s senior advisers and coordinated by campaign aides that is also about deliberately keeping the president mostly out of the direct fray until at least early next year.
“These are all issues that resonate with the core constituencies we need to turn out in 2024. They are also issues that she is uniquely well positioned to speak to, and that motivate our base,” a Biden campaign official said. “She’s in the center of this three-circle Venn diagram.”
A bonus: Because these are technically official government events, they are a way to have taxpayers, rather than a campaign still bulking up its finances, foot the bill.
And when she touches down, Harris can drive almost as much attention as the president. Sometimes, given the topics and her profile, even more.
“Her presence made this a national story – which it should have been regardless,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said of Harris’ speech in Jacksonville on the state’s new standards for teaching Black history, which, according to a document posted to the state’s Department of Education website, require instruction for middle schoolers to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Biden aides lapped up the response and the series of events it set off, including DeSantis accusing Rep. Byron Donalds – a Black Republican from Florida who backs former President Donald Trump – of being a shill for Harris, and Trump aides firing back at DeSantis in Donalds’ defense. Donalds said later he disagreed with Harris, stating that his issue was with “one line” in the Black history curriculum. Michigan Rep. John James and Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt – who, like Donalds, are Black Republicans who have endorsed Trump – also criticized DeSantis over the line about slavery in Florida’s new curriculum standards.
Presidential candidates have been pushed to weigh in, too. South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, responded to a question on the subject by discussing what he called the devastation of slavery and adding, “I would hope that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that.”
Even people who were already Harris fans say they have been impressed by what they have been seeing out of her in this new approach.
“It felt like a new Kamala had arrived into the sphere from the White House,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder of the Florida Black political group Equal Ground, reflecting on Harris’ Jacksonville speech.
Burney-Clark said she was struck both by the lack of the usual stilted teleprompter feel to Harris’ speech and by how the vice president engaged with a small group about the path forward on the issue ahead of her remarks.
Even after multiple meetings and events with Harris in recent years, Burney-Clark said, “It was not someone I felt like I had seen before.
‘People were inspired’
The proof of concept that Harris and her aides are using is April’s quickly put-together trip to Nashville, where she delivered an impassioned speech after Tennessee Republicans expelled two Black Democratic state legislators who had protested on the state House floor against inaction on gun control following a mass shooting in the city.
The lawmakers’ expulsion – and the sparing of one of their White colleagues who had also protested – was already all over the local and national press that week, but Harris’ arrival brought a different level of attention. It also provided a different sense for the activists on the ground about why they should stay involved and believe in the Democratic leadership out of Washington.
“People were inspired by what they heard. They were motivated by what they heard. It brought some sense of revival,” state Rep. Justin Jones, one of the two expelled (and since reinstated) lawmakers, told CNN. “It gave us some more flames to what was already burning here.”
Harris has had more stops scheduled on what her office is calling her “summer conference tour,” including at the NAACP convention this past Saturday in Boston and an Everytown for Gun Safety event in Chicago in mid-August. In between, though, are many days that can be filled in with less-planned trips – Harris herself, according to an aide, was the one who told staff to get her to Jacksonville while flying on Air Force Two to Indiana for another event the day before.
To date, Harris’ role in the reelection campaign has been mostly as a fundraising draw, with multiple people involved telling CNN that she has been in high demand.
But stepping out more publicly also inevitably makes Harris more of a target for Republican attacks – most of which have seized on both Biden’s age and the criticism that the vice president is out of touch. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has so far been the one leading that charge. Haley warned an Iowa crowd earlier this month, “We can’t afford a President Kamala Harris – I will say that over and over again.”
But for disaffected Democrats looking for leaders to leap into fights, Burney-Clark said, Harris is important as a different kind of lightning rod.
“People are untethered. They’re unenthusiastic and uninterested in electoral politics,” Burney-Clark said. “Hope is something people always hold on to. Inspiration is something people always hold on to.”
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CNN’s Jasmine Wright and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report. | https://kion546.com/politics/cnn-us-politics/2023/07/30/kamala-harris-takes-center-stage-in-biden-reelection-campaigns-rapid-response-to-gop/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:36 | 1 | https://kion546.com/politics/cnn-us-politics/2023/07/30/kamala-harris-takes-center-stage-in-biden-reelection-campaigns-rapid-response-to-gop/ |
Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US
By Ella Nilsen, CNN
(CNN) — Deadly heatwaves are baking the US. Scientists just reported that July will be the hottest month on record. And now, after years of skepticism and denial in the GOP ranks, a small number of Republicans are urging their party to get proactive on the climate crisis.
But the GOP is stuck in a climate bind – and likely will be for the next four years, in large part because they’re still living in the shadow of former president and 2024 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Even as more Republican politicians are joining the consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has driven the party to the right on climate and extreme weather. Trump has called the extremely settled science of climate change a “hoax” and more recently suggested that the impacts of it “may affect us in 300 years.”
Scientists this week reported that this summer’s unrelenting heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” were it not for the planet-warming pollution from burning fossil fuels. They also confirmed that July will go down as the hottest month on record – and almost certainly that the planet’s temperature is hotter now than it has been in around 120,000 years.
Yet for being one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, climate is rarely mentioned on the 2024 campaign trail.
“As Donald Trump is the near presumptive nominee of our party in 2024, it’s going to be very hard for a party to adopt a climate-sensitive policy,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, told CNN. “But Donald Trump’s not going to be around forever.”
When Republicans do weigh in on climate change – and what we should do about it – they tend to support the idea of capturing planet-warming pollution rather than cutting fossil fuels. But many are reticent to talk about how to solve the problem, and worry Trump is having a chilling effect on policies to combat climate within the party.
“We need to be talking about this,” Rep. John Curtis, a Republican from Utah and chair of the House’s Conservative Climate Caucus, told CNN. “And part of it for Republicans is when you don’t talk about it, you have no ideas at the table; all you’re doing is saying what you don’t like. We need to be saying what we like.”
Extreme weather changes GOP minds
With a few exceptions, Republicans largely are no longer the party of full-on climate change denial. But even as temperatures rise to deadly highs, the GOP is also not actively addressing it. There is still no “robust discussion about how to solve it” within the party, said former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who now runs the conservative climate group RepublicEn, save for criticism of Democrats’ clean-energy initiatives.
“The good news is Republicans are stopping arguing with thermometers,” Inglis told CNN. Still, he said, “when the experience is multiplied over and over of multiple days of three-digit temperatures in Arizona and record ocean temperatures, people start to say, ‘this is sort of goofy we’re not doing something about this.’”
Meanwhile, the impacts of a dramatically warming atmosphere are becoming more and more apparent each year. Romney and Curtis, two of the loudest climate voices in the party, both represent Utah – a state that’s no stranger to extreme heat and drought, which scientists say is being fueled by rising global temperatures.
“There are a number of states, like mine, that are concerned about wildfires and water,” Romney said, adding he believes Republican governors of impacted states have been vocal about these issues.
Utah and other Western states are looking for ways to cut water use to save the West’s shrinking two largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead. And even closer to home, Utah’s Great Salt Lake has already disappeared by two-thirds, and scientists are sounding alarms about a rapid continued decline that could kill delicate ecosystems and expose one of fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the nation to toxic dust.
“I think the evidence so far is that the West is getting drier and hotter,” Romney told CNN. “That means that we’re going to have more difficulty with our crops, we’re going to have a harder time keeping the rivers full of water. The Great Salt Lake is probably going to continue to shrink. And unfortunately, we’re going to see more catastrophic fires. If the trends continue, we need to act.”
An issue ‘held hostage’
While Republicans blast Democrats’ clean energy policies ahead of the 2024 elections, it’s less clear what the GOP itself would prefer to do about the climate crisis.
As Curtis tells it, there’s a lot that Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree on. They both want to further reform the permitting process for major energy projects, and they largely agree on the need for more renewable and nuclear energy.
As the head of the largest GOP climate caucus on the Hill, Curtis’ Utah home is “full solar,” he told CNN, and is heated using geothermal energy.
While at a recent event at a natural gas drilling site in Ohio, as smoke from Canada’s devastating wildfire season hung thick in the air, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked how he would solve the climate crisis. He suggested planting a trillion trees to help offset the pollution created by burning fossil fuels – a bill House Republicans introduced in 2020. The measure has not yet passed the House and has an uncertain future in the Senate.
But the biggest and most enduring difference between the two parties is that Republicans want fossil fuels – which are fueling climate change with their heat-trapping pollution – to be in the energy mix for years to come.
Democrats, meanwhile, have passed legislation to dramatically speed up the clean energy transition and prioritize the development of wind, solar and electrical transmission to get renewables sending electricity into homes faster.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Democrats want to pass more climate legislation if they take back a full majority in Congress. He later told CNN the GOP is “way behind” on climate and there’s been “too little” progress on the party’s stances.
“I think we’d get a lot more done with a Democratic House, a Democratic president and continuing to have a Democratic Senate,” Schumer told CNN. “Unfortunately, if you look at some of the Republican House and Senate Super PACs, huge amounts of money come from gas, oil and coal.”
Even though Curtis and Romney are aligned on the party needing to talk about climate change, they differ on how to fix it. While Curtis primarily supports carbon capture and increased research and development into new technologies, Romney is one of the few Republicans speaking in favor of a carbon tax – taxing companies for their planning warming pollution.
“It’s very unlikely that a price on carbon would be acceptable in the House of Representatives,” Romney said. “I think you might find a few Republican senators that would be supportive, but that’s not enough.”
The idea certainly doesn’t have the support of Trump, or other 2024 candidates for president, and experts predict climate policy will get little to no airtime during the upcoming presidential race.
“Regrettably, the issue of climate change is currently being held hostage to the culture wars in America,” Edward Maibach, a professor of climate communication at George Mason University and a co-founder of a nationwide climate polling project conducted with Yale University, told CNN in an email. “Donald Trump’s climate denial stance will have a chilling effect on the climate positions of his rivals on the right — even those who know better.”
Even if climate-conscious Republicans say Trump won’t be in the party forever, Inglis said even a few more years may not be enough time to counteract the rapid changes already happening.
“That’s still a long way away,” Inglis said. “The scientists are saying we can’t wait, get moving, get moving.”
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A small town holds its breath as home hero Céline Boutier edges closer to fairytale first major
By Jack Bantock, CNN
(CNN) — Tucked at the bottom of the Alps, Évian-les-Bains was a picture of calm on Saturday afternoon as drizzles of rain cast light ripples across nearby Lake Geneva.
Yet beneath the surface, the charming spa town is crackling with excitement. If France’s Celine Boutier can achieve her dream on Sunday, that electricity will spread across the country.
The 29-year-old took a step closer to her first major title with another imperious showing at The Evian Championship on Saturday, shooting four-under 67 to take a three-shot cushion into Sunday’s final round.
It’s the type of performance that’s been a long time coming for the world No. 15. Despite top-10 finishes in every other major, tied-29th marks Boutier’s best career outing in six appearances at the tournament she wants to impress at more than any other.
That sense of yearning has festered even longer for the nation as a whole. Even including the 19 years prior to the Evian Championship becoming a major in 2013, no Frenchwoman has ever won – let alone finished runner-up – at the tournament.
Both Boutier and organizers played down the occasion on the eve of the event. Admitting it “hadn’t been easy” to manage herself and her emotions in Evian, the Montrouge-native told CNN she was planning to treat the week “like a regular tournament.”
When asked what the impact of a French winner would be, championship director Jacques Bungert said “it wouldn’t change anything from us.”
“Of course we would be happy for it and that’s great,” Bungert told reporters Wednesday. “What is important to understand is that we have two major Grand Slams in France, Roland Garros and the Evian Championship. It’s the same impact.
“If a French tennis woman won Roland Garros, it’s fantastic, just like Yannick Noah 30 years ago. It changes a little bit the sports here and the crowd and the audience in France behind it.”
Tournament president Frank Riboud added: “The real question for me is one day if we have a player from Morocco or Tunisia winning the Evian Championship, what will be the impact? It’s much more open because you open a new country for the game of golf.”
Allez
Even so, all week the small spa town – with a population of less than 15,000 – has buzzed with the growing hope of a historic home winner.
Large crowds had already trailed Boutier during her first round, where she opened with a 66 to move within two of the lead, and grew in number on Friday to watch her shoot 69 to edge to the front of the field.
It was a testament to the levels of support that her number of followers grew further still on Saturday, when tee times were moved forward due to the forecasts of stormy weather later in the day.
Even as dark clouds rolled in across the lake and rain started to fall, the crowds remained, coos of “allez” soundtracking Boutier’s third-round charge. Four birdies before the turn extended her lead, a bogey at the 12th the sole blemish on her scorecard amid tricky closing conditions.
“It’s been really amazing to be able to see and hear the support from the fans,” Boutier told reporters.
“I feel like it’s been very enjoyable for me. I am just trying to take it one shot at a time.”
Chasers
Best placed to spoil the party is Japan’s Nasa Hataoka, who – three shots behind in solo second – has enjoyed impressive support of her own in her pursuit of a first major title.
Hataoka has been the best performer of 10 Japanese players at the tournament, with the country’s national flag dotting the crowds at Evian Resort Golf Club.
Her own reflection that she was “dialed in” during the front nine was something of an understatement – the 24-year-old shot four birdies in a row on course to arrive at the turn five-under par.
The six-time LPGA Tour winner could not maintain the pace as conditions worsened though, carding no further birdies and two bogeys to drop to 68 for the round.
Trailing Hataoka by a stroke are a pair of two-time major winners, Australia’s Minjee Lee and Canada’s defending champion Brooke Henderson, who shot 66 and 67 respectively.
One to watch Sunday is Nelly Korda, who motors into the final round at a furious pace after shooting a bogey-free third round 64, the joint-best score of the week.
It marked the lowest round of the American’s season, and puts her within range of a second career major in joint-third alongside Japan’s Yuka Saso.
“It was super nice to see all the hard work kind of pay off today,” Korda told reporters.
“Obviously still have 18 more holes, anything can happen, but I made a push today on moving day, which I’m really happy about.”
Korda and Saso will be the third-last pairing to tee off for Sunday’s final round at 12:05 p.m. local time (6:05 a.m. ET), followed by Lee and Henderson at 12:15 p.m, then Boutier and Hataoka at 12:25 p.m.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades.
Median rent rose just 0.5% in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years.
A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. Renters in cities such as Cincinnati and Indianapolis are still getting hit with increases of 5% or more. Much of the new construction is located in just a few metro areas, and many of the new units are luxury apartments, which rent for well north of $2,000.
Median U.S. rent has risen to $2,029 this June from $1,629 in June 2019, according to rental listings company Rent, which tracks rents in 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Demand for apartments exploded during the pandemic as people who could work remotely sought more space or decided to relocate to another part of the country.
The steep rent increases have left tenants like Melissa Lombana, a high school teacher who lives in the South Florida city of Miramar, with progressively less income to spend on other needs.
The rent on her one-bedroom apartment jumped 13% last year to $1,700. It climbed another 6% to $1,800 this month when she renewed her lease.
“Even the $1,700 was a stretch for me,” said Lombana, 43, who supplements her teaching income with a side job doing educational testing. “In a year, I will not be able to afford living here at all.”
Lombana’s rent is now gobbling up nearly half her monthly income. That puts her in a category referred to as “cost-burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, denoting households that pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Last year, the average rent-to-income ratio per household rose to 30%. This March, it was 29.6%.
Lombana hasn’t had any luck finding a more affordable apartment. While South Florida is one of the metropolitan areas seeing a rise in apartment construction, the units are mostly high-end and not a viable option.
That scenario is playing out across the nation. Developers are rushing to complete projects that were green-lit during the pandemic-era surge in demand for rentals or left in limbo by delays in supplies of fixtures and building materials. Nearly 1.1 million apartments are currently under construction, according to the commercial real estate tracker CoStar, a pace not seen since the 1970s.
Increasing the supply of apartments tends to moderate rent increases over time and can give tenants more options on where to live. But more than 40% of the new rentals to be completed this year will be concentrated in about 10 high job growth metropolitan areas, including Austin, Nashville, Denver, Atlanta and New York, according to Marcus & Millichap. In many areas, the boost to overall inventory will be barely noticeable.
Even within metros where there’ll be a notable increase in available apartments, such as Nashville, most of it will be in the luxury category, where rents average $2,270, nationally. Some 70% of the new rental inventory will be the luxury class, said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.
That will leave most tenants unlikely to see a big enough reduction in rent to make a difference, industry experts and economists say.
“I think we’re in a period of rent flattening for 12 or 18 months, but it’s certainly not a big rent decline,” said Hessam Nadji, CEO of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap.
“We’re building a multi-decade record number of units,” Nadji said. “It’s going to cause some softening and some pockets of overbuilding, but it’s not going to fundamentally resolve the housing shortage or the affordability problem for renters across the U.S.”
The surge in rents has made it difficult for workers to keep up with inflation despite solid wage gains the past few years and exacerbated a long-term trend. Between 1999 and 2022, U.S. rents soared 135%, while income grew 77%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
Realtor.com is forecasting that rents will drop an average of 0.9% this year. But while down nationally, rents are still rising in many markets around the country, especially those where hiring remains robust.
In the New York metro area, the median rent climbed 4.7% in June from a year earlier to $2,899, according to Realtor.com. In the Midwest, rents surged 5.6% in the Cincinnati metro area to $1,188, and 6.9% to $1,350 in the Indianapolis metro area.
The current spike in apartment construction alone isn’t going to be enough to address how costly renting has become for many Americans.
“For the rest of the 2020s rents will continue to grow because millennials are such a big generation and we’re very much in the hole in terms of building housing for that generation,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “It will take many good years of new construction to build adequate housing for millennials.”
The bigger challenge is building more work force housing, because the cost of land, labor and navigating the government approval process incentivize developers to put up luxury apartments buildings.
Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.
Despite the overall pullback in U.S. rents, Joey Di Girolamo, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, worries that he’ll face more sharp rent increases in coming years.
Last year, the web designer left a two-bedroom, two-bath townhome he rented for $2,200 a month to avoid a $600 a month increase. This year, his rent went up by $200, a nearly 10% jump.
“That blew me away,” said Di Girolamo, 50. “I’m just kind of dreading what it’s going to be like next year, but especially 3 or 4 years from now.” | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/a-boom-in-apartment-construction-is-helping-to-curb-rents-but-not-all-renters-will-benefit/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business | 2023-07-30T13:02:55 | 1 | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/a-boom-in-apartment-construction-is-helping-to-curb-rents-but-not-all-renters-will-benefit/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business |
Colombia stages stunning upset against Germany in Women’s World Cup
By Ben Church, CNN
(CNN) — Colombia produced one of the most dramatic Women’s World Cup upsets, scoring in the last minute to beat two-time world champion Germany 2-1 on Sunday.
The South American side looked to have been denied a famous win after Alexandra Popp equalized for Germany from the penalty spot in the 89th minute, canceling out 18-year-old sensation Linda Caicedo’s wonderful opener at the start of the second half.
But, in the dying seconds, Manuela Vanegas scored with a brilliant header from a corner to spark frenzied celebrations inside the Sydney Football Stadium.
With one round of fixtures left, Colombia is top of Group H with Germany in second, ahead of Morocco on goal difference.
The winning goal, which officially came in the 97th minute, secured Colombia its biggest win to date and inflicted on Germany its first World Cup group stage defeat since 1995.
The world No. 25 was very much the underdog heading into the game against a Germany side ranked 2nd in the world and considered one of the pre-tournament favorites.
But, as has often been the case as this year’s tournament, the lesser-fancied teams have performed far better than many had expected and Colombia stopped Germany from stamping its authority.
Caicedo impresses again
Caicedo’s opening goal will also go down as one of the finest goals scored at the Women’s World Cup.
The teenager has been one of the breakthrough stars of this year’s tournament and again produced a spectacular moment on the biggest stage.
The Real Madrid youngster picked the ball up in Germany’s box before jinking past two defenders and rifling a shot into the corner of the net in the 52nd minute.
Caicedo had already made history by scoring in three separate World Cup tournaments this year – having shone at the under-17 and under-20 editions.
Her magical moment in Sunday’s match came after a worrying incident on Thursday where she appeared to collapse during a training session. Coach Nelson Abadia said on Saturday that the teenager was just “tired.”
“She was a bit stressed as well, because she was playing in her first World Cup … (which) has great relevance,” Abadia said, per Reuters.
“She’s 18 years of age. She’s a girl as far as football goes. But she has a great capacity and great character to assimilate all of this.”
There was no sign of that tiredness on Sunday as the youngster showed her class to inspire her side to a memorable win – she was also named Player of the Match.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. | https://kion546.com/sports/cnn-sports/2023/07/30/colombia-stages-stunning-upset-against-germany-in-womens-world-cup/ | 2023-07-30T13:02:55 | 1 | https://kion546.com/sports/cnn-sports/2023/07/30/colombia-stages-stunning-upset-against-germany-in-womens-world-cup/ |
How Time Flies is a daily feature looking back at Pantagraph archives to revisit what was happening in our community and region.
100 years ago
July 30, 1923: Miss Ina Stout has received notification of her appointment as postmistress at Hopedale and will assume the duties of the office as soon as her commission arrives from Washington. A graduate of Hopedale High School, she was the head of the telephone exchange for several years and for the past two years has been conducting a millinery business in Hopedale.
75 years ago
July 30, 1948: "The best outfit in my command," said Brig. Gen. Julius Klein as Bloomington's 396th anti-aircraft battalion neared the halfway mark in a two-week training period at Fort Sheridan. The unit's 200 guardsmen, participating in the first postwar camp session, have shown "amazing" progress even though many are recruits without previous military experience, said Klein, a former Chicago newspaper editor.
50 years ago
July 30, 1973: Sen. Adlai Stevenson III, D-Illinois, charged that President Richard Nixon has betrayed "the trust of the Senate, his own attorney general and the special prosecutor" by refusing to release tape recordings and documents that could clear up conflicting testimony about the Watergate scandal. "I am sickened by the President's disdain for the orderly process of law," he said. "He does not seem to care about his own solemn assurances. They are made one day and are inoperative the next."
25 years ago
July 30, 1998: The board of directors at the McLean County Prenatal Clinic has voted to dissolve the clinic, 902 Franklin Ave. in Normal, as of Sept. 1. Its services will be transferred to other community organizations, such as the McLean County Health Department. The clinic has had contact with more than 2,600 patients since it was established in 1993 by OSF St. Joseph Medical Center, BroMenn Healthcare, the health department and McLean County Medical Society.
101 years ago: See vintage Pantagraph ads from 1922
Gerthart's
Union Gas and Electric Co.
Hoover
Dr. J.A. Moore Dentists
Moberly & Klenner
W.P. Garretson
W.H. Roland
Pease's Candy
Thor 32 Electric Washing Machine
The Kaiser's Story of the War
Ike Livingston & Sons
Gossard Corsets
Cat'n Fiddle
'Stolen Moments'
Case Model X
The Johnson Transfer & Fuel Co.
The Pantagraph want ads
Franklin Motor Car Co.
'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'
Calumet Baking Powder
Mayer Livingston & Co. Newsmarket
'The Emperor Jones'
'California Fig Syrup'
Compiled by Pantagraph staff | https://pantagraph.com/news/local/history/50-years-ago-stevenson-condemns-nixon/article_1d0fb740-2cba-11ee-b34a-277dc9b7b79b.html | 2023-07-30T13:03:18 | 1 | https://pantagraph.com/news/local/history/50-years-ago-stevenson-condemns-nixon/article_1d0fb740-2cba-11ee-b34a-277dc9b7b79b.html |
Russian authorities say three Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow in the early hours on Sunday, injuring one person and prompting a temporary closure for traffic of one of four airports around the Russian capital.
It was the fourth such attempt at a strike on the capital region this month and the third this week, fueling concerns about Moscow's vulnerability to attacks as Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.
The Russian Defense Ministry referred to the incident as an "attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime" and said three drones targeted the city. One was shot down in the surrounding Moscow region by air defense systems and two others were jammed. Those two crashed into the Moscow City business district in the capital.
Photos from the site of the crash showed the facade of a skyscraper damaged on one floor. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the attack "insignificantly damaged" the outsides of two buildings in the Moscow City district. A security guard was injured, Russia's state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials.
No flights went into or out of the Vnukovo airport on the southern outskirts of the city for about an hour, according to Tass, and the air space over Moscow and the outlying regions was temporarily closed for any aircraft. Those restrictions have since been lifted.
Moscow authorities have also closed a street for traffic near the site of the crash in the Moscow City area.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who rarely if ever take responsibility for attacks on Russian soil.
Russia's Defense Ministry reported shooting down a Ukrainian drone outside Moscow on Friday. Two more drones struck the Russian capital on Monday, one of them falling in the center of the city near the Defense Ministry's headquarters along the Moscow River about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Kremlin. The other drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting several upper floors.
In another attack on July 4, the Russian military said four drones were downed by air defenses on the outskirts of Moscow and a fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wvasfm.org/2023-07-30/a-drone-attack-on-moscow-briefly-shut-one-of-its-airports-and-injured-one | 2023-07-30T13:03:20 | 1 | https://www.wvasfm.org/2023-07-30/a-drone-attack-on-moscow-briefly-shut-one-of-its-airports-and-injured-one |
It’s often known, fairly or not, as the “Forgotten War,” sandwiched as it is between the enormity of the Second World War and the divisiveness of the one in Vietnam. Yet the Korean War (June 1950 to July 1953) represented a bloodbath on an enormous scale, taking the lives of some 36,500 Americans, as well more than 1 million North and South Korean soldiers, 600,000 Chinese troops, and more than 1.6 million Korean civilians.
When war broke out on the Korean Peninsula, the Pentagon found that the post-World War II peacetime drawdown had left the U.S. with too few men to halt the North Korean advance. American troops from occupied Japan were rushed to the front lines, and as casualties mounted at a horrific pace National Guardsmen were called up to help fill the thinning ranks.
In Illinois, 15 Guard units were “federalized” during the war, and although most remained stateside, many of the men in these units found themselves overseas anyway, serving as replacement (or “filler”) troops.
This call for National Guard manpower eventually reached the 144th Antiaircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, led by Bloomington attorney Col. Richard T. Dunn. Battalion Headquarters and Batteries A and B were based in Bloomington, while Batteries C and D were in LeRoy and Gibson City, respectively. The 144th, fielding trailer-mounted 40 mm single-barrel anti-aircraft guns and .50-caliber machine guns mounted on halftracks, was part of the Illinois National Guard’s sprawling 44th Infantry Division, with headquarters in Urbana.
In February 1952, the 44th Division was ordered to Camp Cooke, Calif., for a two-year term of extended active duty. On the 14th of that month, Bloomington staged a farewell for its own battalion, the 144th, calling the event “D-Day” (the “D” for Departure). It included a torchlight parade to the Armory on South Main Street, where some 2,000 Guardsmen, family members and local residents gathered for a last hurrah, capped by a late-night dance.
Lt. Col. Richard J. Nelson read a letter from Illinois Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson II, who grew up on East Washington Street in Bloomington. Stevenson, while tacitly acknowledging the exhaustion of the American public when it came to unending conflict (World War II was but seven years in the past), didn’t shy away from placing this deployment in the context of the Cold War, maintaining such sacrifices are essential to defending freedom abroad.
“Even in peacetime, the separation of men from their families, friends and jobs is dismal,” Stevenson said. “But while my duty cannot be called happy, I will not call it tragic, wasteful or unnecessary, as some men do today.”
Demand for platoon leaders was especially high, and at one point an entire planeload of 44th Division officers flew to Japan in order to serve as ready replacements in combat units.
The 320 or so men of the 144th were formally placed into federal service on Feb. 15, and three days later they were off to Camp Cooke. That summer, 22 Guardsmen, 13 of whom volunteered, made up the 144th’s first “levy” (or quota) for overseas replacements. Eleven of the men headed to Europe (where the Cold War was still cold) and the other 11 to the Far East Command, which included Korea.
The requests for more men continued throughout the year.
“We have been levied, re-levied, and levied again until our present battalion strength is 140 men,” noted a 144th newsletter dated Nov. 17, 1952, from Camp Cooke, and sent to battalion “alumni” so those discharged could keep tabs on their old unit.
In December 1952, the 144th removed to Fort Lewis, Wash., though before the move, Col. Dunn was transferred to division staff, with LeRoy native Maj. Judson Chubbuck taking command.
Dunn returned to Bloomington in early February 1953 on his way to the Illinois Capitol to testify on National Guard legislation. He told The Pantagraph that not more than 25 of the local men who left Bloomington for California the previous year were still with the 144th headquarters at Fort Lewis, most others having been reassigned to other Army units or discharged (many in the 144th had their original 24-month commitment reduced by five months).
The two Koreas never signed a peace treaty and thus technically remain at war, which explains why U.S. troops remain in South Korea to this day.
Thankfully, the “Forgotten War” has not been forgotten in Bloomington. The Korean and Vietnam War Memorial in the northwest corner of Miller Park was dedicated in 1988. The memorial includes the names of 72 area men killed or missing in action during those awful years of 1950 to 1953. | https://pantagraph.com/news/local/history/local-national-guard-called-up-during-korean-war/article_0638ba96-2da3-11ee-a1da-5b1a6163e019.html | 2023-07-30T13:03:23 | 0 | https://pantagraph.com/news/local/history/local-national-guard-called-up-during-korean-war/article_0638ba96-2da3-11ee-a1da-5b1a6163e019.html |
Question: A little more than a century ago, instead of playing golf on Bloomington's Lakeside Country Club, what were they doing there?
Answer: They were digging holes bigger than just golf holes. The ground where Lakeside is today is so clay-filled, it was the site of a brick-making operation. Many yards of homes in that area are, in fact, still pocked with brick remnants just below the ground’s surface. It is also why a southeast-side street is today called Brickyard Drive. Lakeside itself is 100 years old this year.
Watch now: Photos from 20 Stars for Life
Brandon Shaffer, Garrett VonDerHeide
Friends and family of “Star” Derek Sample
Brandon Thornton, Julie Riley
Tony Segobiano, Becky Dluski
Paul Segobiano, Liz Skinner
Jenna, Eyla and Tim Bassett
Heather Hopkins, Tim Erickson
Brent Wick, Ritchie Cooper
Dr. Jenesi Moore, Steve Skinner
Amy Zitkus, Sandra Gagliano
John and Mary Penn
Lt. Col Jason and Celena Carter
Nithin and Jennifer Aurora
Mark Young, Harlan Bottles, Scott Grotbo
Nick Stockweather, Jason Kieser
Ruston Edelman, Isaac Steidinger
Liz Skinner, John Penn, Paul Segobiano
Mandy Ganieny, Stuart and Lauren Palmer
Lori Albright, Jamie Zeller
Jenna Bassett, Amy Denham
Kim Priller, Molly Allen
Rachel Brandt, Nargis Khokhar
Derek and Jessica Vogler, Ian King
Adrianna Melgosa, Kylie Conroy
Paul Segobiano, Brandon Shaffer
Paula Weiland, Kristin Jordan, Mike Weiland
Ronald and Angela Childs
Camille Matamoros, Chirathi Jayesinghe
Dustin Carter, Paul Segobiano, Maggie Nichols, Liz Skinner
Paul Segobiano, Liz Skinner, Keith Cornille
Zak and Alicia Vinson
Laura and Jeff Beal
Mark Segobiano performing the National Anthem
Lt. Col. Jason Carter (right) shaking the hand of Mark Young
Harlan Bottles shaking the hand of Lt. Col. Jason Carter | https://pantagraph.com/opinion/column/flick-fact-before-lakeside-was-a-golf-course-its-clay-built-your-home/article_44d6ee70-2c05-11ee-9a6a-4755d6e5eff9.html | 2023-07-30T13:03:24 | 1 | https://pantagraph.com/opinion/column/flick-fact-before-lakeside-was-a-golf-course-its-clay-built-your-home/article_44d6ee70-2c05-11ee-9a6a-4755d6e5eff9.html |
Persian-American Chef Nasim Alikhani has published her first cookbook, based on her highly acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn. She brought the feast to Los Angeles for a recent series of pop up dinners.
Copyright 2023 NPR
Persian-American Chef Nasim Alikhani has published her first cookbook, based on her highly acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn. She brought the feast to Los Angeles for a recent series of pop up dinners.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wvasfm.org/arts/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook | 2023-07-30T13:03:26 | 0 | https://www.wvasfm.org/arts/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook |
Members of the mid-Columbia River tribes set off on an annual intertribal canoe journey after a three-year hiatus due to COVID. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 28, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR
Members of the mid-Columbia River tribes set off on an annual intertribal canoe journey after a three-year hiatus due to COVID. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 28, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wvasfm.org/arts/2023-07-30/intertribal-canoe-trip-from-oregon-to-seattle-will-set-out-for-first-time-since-covid | 2023-07-30T13:03:32 | 1 | https://www.wvasfm.org/arts/2023-07-30/intertribal-canoe-trip-from-oregon-to-seattle-will-set-out-for-first-time-since-covid |
She's one of India's biggest Barbie fans. When Vichitra Rajasingh was growing up, family and friends helped her build her collection of Barbie dolls until she had almost 80 of them. She once owned a Barbie camper, a speedboat, supermarket and post office. The mermaid Barbie and scuba-diving Barbie were her favorites.
Since her family ran a hotel, they put the dolls on display in the lobby in the late '90s. On Rajasingh's 14th birthday, her parents painted her room bright pink and hired artists to draw her favorite Barbie dolls on the walls.
All her Barbies were blond. She says she didn't like the Indian ethnic ones that came on the local market.
Living the pink life
"My love for the color pink began with my childhood passion for Barbie," she says. "And now it's become my identity." For her, the color represents love, joy, femininity and playfulness, everything she once associated with Barbie, she says.
Today Rajasingh lives in the southern Indian city of Madurai, where she drives a pink mini-Cooper and runs a bakery and lives in an apartment that are dominated by that color.
When the Barbie movie released in India on July 21, she gathered a bunch of friends, "everyone dressed to the nines in pink," and watched it on the day of its release. "I loved the movie. It was fun to watch and brought back many joyful childhood memories," she says.
While she no longer has her huge doll collection — having long since given it away to family and friends — Rajasingh is still a Barbie lover. She bakes six or seven Barbie-themed cakes a week, with an actual doll at the center of a cake that serves as her frothy dress, constructed around her in a swirl of sugar and cream.
Rajasingh saw Barbie as an aspirational figure — and grew up admiring the doll's freedom, confidence, globe-trotting lifestyle and even her arched feet in sassy stilettos.
But for others in India, Barbie has a far more complicated legacy.
The pressures Barbie can bring
Shweta Sharan, a writer who lives in Mumbai, admits to being conflicted about whether or not to watch the movie with her 13-year-old daughter, Laasya, who until a year ago ardently loved Barbie but then outgrew playing with dolls.
"I am aware that these dolls have many complicated associations," Sharan says. "Watching my daughter love a doll that looked nothing like her — with blond hair, blue eyes, perfect breasts — I worried if she would always strive to be someone else and feel inadequate."
These worries are valid in the opinion of ElsaMarie DSilva, a social entrepreneur from India and an Aspen fellow. "While Barbie is almost universally loved among girls of all ages, many do aspire to look like her, unconsciously pressurizing young girls to conform to unrealistic body shapes and expectations," she says — a common criticism aimed at Barbie.
Indian Barbie is not a rousing success
Mattel did make an effort to adapt the doll for an Indian market. When Mattel launched Barbie in India in 1991, it was the familiar Western-looking blond-haired blue-eyed Barbie. Then in 1996, they rolled out Indian Barbie, with brown skin. She came either wearing a bright sari or a salwar kameez — a knee-length tunic over fitted trousers.
But the Indian Barbie was not popular. "Indian kids gravitated toward the white-skinned Barbie instead of the brown-skinned one because light-skinned women were considered more beautiful in India and an automatic choice," DSilva says.
She points out how even in Indian clothes, Barbie still had a body that did not represent real women in India or anywhere else — she was way too tall and way too thin.
Priti Nemani, an Indian American attorney living in Chicago, analyzed why Barbie failed so spectacularly in the Indian market in a research paper published in 2011. In addition to the unrealistic, impossibly thin appearance of the doll, she points out how other cultural factors were at play.
"We weren't seeing Indian features on Barbie," she says. "We were seeing white Barbies dipped in brown. And even those brown Barbies didn't last long on the shelves. The latest versions of the Indian Barbie have much lighter skin tone.
Meanwhile, even though blond Barbies sold well, Ken tanked in India. "Indian parents who wouldn't want their daughters in romantic relationships at such an early age weren't going to buy the boyfriend," Nemani says.
In spite of her initial misgivings, Sharan enjoyed the Barbie movie with her daughter, now 13, who especially liked the feminist overtones. Laasya loved the beginning, when they were told "Barbie has a great day everyday. Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him."
Barbie inspires a poem
There are other issues about Barbie in India. For many kids, the doll is too expensive.
Ankita Apurva, 26, a writer who grew up in a farming family in Ranchi, a city in the Eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, recalls a childhood bereft of Barbies.
Her parents, who struggled to pay for a good education that they hoped would be her armor against bullying and discrimination, could not afford to buy their daughter a Barbie.
"They weren't in a position to splurge on fancy dolls like a Barbie," she says. She recalls feeling inferior for not owning one of these expensive dolls that would help her connect with other Barbie owners in her circle. It was especially hard for her at lunch when girls would boast about how many dolls they owned.
"I believe that even if children from marginalized communities manage to enter [private] institutions [for the privileged], there are certain social, cultural and economic symbols which are consciously and subconsciously deployed to mark them out, and Barbie, as loved as it is, is definitely one of them," she says.
Over the years, Apurva's family has grown stronger financially. When she saw the global resurgence of interest in Barbie now, she didn't feel angry or alienated, but it did bring back memories of desperately wanting to fit in – and not just because she didn't have a Barbie.
"Growing up, I rarely felt represented in literature or media. If pens or cameras turned toward us, they inadvertently counted us as data: dead bodies of farmers or survivors of violence of umpteen kinds."
As a girl from a farming family in Jharkhand, Apurva felt invisible. And so, she decided to express those emotions. She wrote a poem that she posted on Instagram, not to shame anyone who is privileged enough to own a Barbie but to comfort those who, like her, may have felt left out.
Here are some excerpts:
"Here's to the girls who do not get the Barbie craze,
...
girls who had parents who could not
or did not or choose not
to get them Barbie dolls
...
it's okay,
to not relate to any of it
...
what is not okay are friends ...
who intentionally make you
feel low by asking how many Barbies
you owned as a kid even as they
know you weren't privileged enough
to have them.
...
you are also not "too much" ...
if you feel
that Barbie is a colonial icon
legitimizing racial supremacy
while being a 'white feminist' trope
...
and once again
remember,
you are everything,
they are just Ken
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science, and development, and her work has been published in the New York Times, The British Medical Journal, BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on twitter @kamal_t
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wvasfm.org/arts/arts/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake | 2023-07-30T13:03:39 | 0 | https://www.wvasfm.org/arts/arts/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake |
Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.
Based in New York, David Gura is a correspondent on NPR's business desk. His stories are broadcast on NPR's newsmagazines, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, and he regularly guest hosts 1A, a co-production of NPR and WAMU. | https://www.wvasfm.org/business/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy | 2023-07-30T13:03:45 | 0 | https://www.wvasfm.org/business/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy |
The U.S. auto industry is experiencing unanticipated stumbles and challenges as it pivots to producing more electric vehicles, even as it makes large profits.
Copyright 2023 NPR
The U.S. auto industry is experiencing unanticipated stumbles and challenges as it pivots to producing more electric vehicles, even as it makes large profits.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wvasfm.org/business/business/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs | 2023-07-30T13:03:51 | 1 | https://www.wvasfm.org/business/business/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs |
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — New Zealand striker Hannah Wilkinson has helped create two milestones at the Women’s World Cup.
With her 48th-minute goal in the tournament opener against Norway, she led the co-host Football Ferns to their first win in six trips to the Women’s World Cup. She’s also one of at least 95 out members of the LGBTQ+ community competing in this year’s tournament, according to a count being kept by Outsports, a website that covers the LGBTQ+ sports.
The Ferns were greeted with a fan-made sign at their next match in Wellington: “Gay for soccer, gay for Wilkie,” it read.
The 95 out participants make up roughly 13% of the 736 total players at the Women’s World Cup, more than doubling the 40 players and coaches Outsports counted in 2019.
The 2023 tournament also is hosting the first openly trans and non-binary player in either a men’s or Women’s World Cup, Quinn of Canada.
“Last World Cup was so big, especially with the visibility of the U.S. women’s national team winning and (Megan Rapinoe) fighting with (Donald) Trump. So I think that was a huge year for LGBTQ+ visibility,” said Lindsey Freeman, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
“It’s just the ad hoc, fun culture of women’s soccer that you’re seeing in this World Cup,” said Freeman, who is in New Zealand conducting research on the topic.
Jim Buzinski, co-founder of Outsports, agreed. “In the Western world, it’s such a non-issue that it really just doesn’t get talked about,” he said. “And I think that’s in a good way.”
Visibility
Prior to the start of the tournament, FIFA designated eight socially conscious armbands team captains could wear throughout the Women’s World Cup. The decision came after “One Love” armbands were denied to men’s teams in Qatar in 2022.
The armbands being used this year include anti-discriminatory sayings and multiple colors, but the rainbow version Germany wanted to use is not allowed. None of the available options explicitly mention LGBTQ+ rights.
The decision has led many players to express their support in more creative ways across Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand midfielder Ali Riley was interviewed on the official Women’s World Cup broadcast after her team’s upset of Norway. Her painted fingernails, left hand in the colors of the pride flag and right hand as the trans flag, were clearly visible as she held her head and fought back tears.
“She’s such an advocate and she’s definitely someone who uses her platform in such a positive way. We are all so proud of her and the way she represents the LGBTQ+ community,” teammate CJ Bott said. “Good on her. We’re all backing her, and we all back the community as well.”
The Philippines, making its Women’s World Cup debut, took home its own historic win over New Zealand 1-0 thanks to the foot of Sarina Bolden. Bolden’s Instagram bio reads, “i just wanna have fun n b gay.”
Irish star Katie McCabe wowed fans with a goal directly from a corner kick. She’s also made tabloid news for her relationships with other players.
Thembi Kgatlana, who has scored in the tournament for South Africa, has a patch of her hair dyed rainbow colors.
“My personality is very big for me, and my hair has become a part of my personality,” Kgatlana said. “And I did this rainbow because I want to represent all the people that are part of the LGBTQ and cannot talk while in countries where they’re oppressed.”
Fan experience
Kristen Pariseau and her wife started a U.S. women’s national team supporters group on Facebook ahead of traveling to this year’s Women’s World Cup. Aside from some hateful users she blocked, it’s been “super LGBT friendly.”
She and her wife did not go to Qatar for the 2022 men’s World Cup to avoid referencing each other as friends and receiving questions on their sexuality. In New Zealand, she said she’s met many same-sex couples at games and while traveling around the country.
“Everywhere you turn, it’s like, ‘Oh, my wife, my girlfriend.’ It’s been so welcoming and open,” Pariseau said. “In a way, it is kind of cool to be where there’s a lot of other people like you.”
Kelsie Bozart took her own pride flag armband to the United States’ second match in Wellington, along with a pride scarf.
“If you look back a couple years, I feel like it just wasn’t really talked about or there just wasn’t much of a presence,” Bozart said. “But moving forward I feel like, especially for the U.S., they’ve done an amazing job of just incorporating pride and LGBTQ.”
Not universal
Though this year’s tournament has highlighted vast gains for the LGBTQ+ community in women’s soccer, advocates feel there is still work to be done.
According to Buzinski and Outsports, there were at least 186 LGBTQ+ athletes at the Tokyo Olympics. Women outnumbered men by a 9:1 ratio. There also were no confirmed out players at the 2022 men’s World Cup.
“I think women’s sports have always been open,” Denmark striker Pernille Harder said, adding that there are many role models for women who want to come out.
Freeman said it would be good to see men feel the same level of comfort.
“What can happen in the women’s game, I would love to spill over to the men’s game,” she said. “Because obviously, there’s way more queer players in the men’s game and it’s just not safe for them to come out.
“If you want to say that you’re in an inclusive space, you really have to be an inclusive space,” Freeman added. “And I think that that includes also holding the World Cup in places where it’s fine to be a queer person.”
___
Max Ralph is a student in John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.
___
Contributing reporters included Joe Lister in Wellington and Rafaela Pontes in Auckland, students in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State, and Clay Witt in Sydney, Australia, a student at the University of Georgia’s Carmical Sports Media Institute. | https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ct-world-cup-lgbtq-20230730-qkovb7c2njef3chcejy7ucnuwq-story.html | 2023-07-30T13:03:53 | 0 | https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ct-world-cup-lgbtq-20230730-qkovb7c2njef3chcejy7ucnuwq-story.html |
More than 1,100 people have already been charged for their actions around Jan. 6 and many of them invoked Former President Donald Trump, who may also be indicted.
Copyright 2023 NPR
More than 1,100 people have already been charged for their actions around Jan. 6 and many of them invoked Former President Donald Trump, who may also be indicted.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wvasfm.org/politics/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements | 2023-07-30T13:03:57 | 1 | https://www.wvasfm.org/politics/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements |
The new charges against former Pres. Trump in the classified documents case are in a different legal league and there are hints he is also not politically immune from them either.
Copyright 2023 NPR
The new charges against former Pres. Trump in the classified documents case are in a different legal league and there are hints he is also not politically immune from them either.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wvasfm.org/politics/politics/2023-07-30/politics-chat-trump-could-face-political-blowback-from-new-charges-after-all | 2023-07-30T13:04:04 | 1 | https://www.wvasfm.org/politics/politics/2023-07-30/politics-chat-trump-could-face-political-blowback-from-new-charges-after-all |
People have asked me what I've learned so far through this series. Have I gotten any clarity on what makes up my own spiritual identity? And the answer is, not really. I'm still in the research phase of this project. I'm still collecting experiences and perspectives and I imagine I'll keep doing that forever, but it's too early to draw any definitive conclusions — except for one.
I believe each and every one of us is capable of making our own meaning. Some of us do that by living according to a set of religious principles. Or by feeling the beauty and sanctity of nature. Or by choosing to see spiritual connections in what others might call mere coincidence.
I don't need anyone to validate those experiences for them to be meaningful to me. But according to Lisa Miller, a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, having a spiritual life is good for your mental health.
Miller is a psychologist and has dedicated most of her career to the study of neuroscience and spirituality. Her newest book is called The Awakened Brain, and in it she makes some really bold claims about how holding spiritual beliefs can decrease our rates of anxiety and depression and generally make us most likely to lead happier lives. I can hear your skepticism already! I get it. I'm a spiritually inclined kind of person but it's still hard for me to understand how, scientifically speaking, believing in something bigger than yourself can make you healthier and happier.
I needed to understand how Miller came to these conclusions. But before she got to the actual science, she told me a story.
It was the mid '90s. Miller was in the early stages of her career and working at a residential mental health facility in New York City. After she'd been there a few months, Yom Kippur rolled around — the day of atonement, considered the most significant of the Jewish religious holidays. One of the older male patients with severe bipolar disorder asked if there were any plans to mark the day. The doctor in charge shrugged his shoulders and said, no — there's no service planned. The patient walked out of the room with his shoulders slumped and Lisa, who is Jewish, saw an opportunity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lisa Miller: I approached the unit chief and said, "I'm certainly not a rabbi, but I've been to two-and-a-half decades of Yom Kippur services. I'd be happy to facilitate if that might be OK with you." So I showed up on Yom Kippur and the patients had arrived early to the kitchen, which was to be our sanctuary. The fluorescent lights were quite strong and as we crowded around the linoleum table there was an extraordinary feeling of specialness.
As we started the prayers that we all knew from our childhood, joining together saying in Hebrew the prayers of Yom Kippur, I looked over and noticed that as the gentleman with bipolar was davening, he could not have been further from explosive. He was holding our group in the cadence of the prayers and we were actually following him.
I took a pause and I said, "I feel so grateful to be here today in our Yom Kippur ceremony. Would anyone like to say anything?" We went around the table and the first person to speak was a very otherwise withdrawn woman with recurrent depression. She said, "You know, I always knew on Yom Kippur we could ask for forgiveness. But sitting here now with you all, I'm aware that we can be forgiven. God can forgive us." And she looked liberated.
As I looked around the table at the patients, whatever their symptoms had been yesterday, they were free in that moment. They were free of suffering. They were free of the characteristic patterns that had dragged them down in a way that was equal and opposite to their main symptoms. And so I thought a mental health system minus spirituality made no sense, and that became my life's work, to understand the place of spirituality in renewal, in recovery, in resilience, and to put this in the language of science.
Rachel Martin: What happened when you brought these kinds of questions to your peers, to the other people in your scientific community? Like when you said for the first time, "Hey, I think we need to look at the effect of spirituality on mental health." What did people say to you?
Miller: Well, the vast majority were very respectful, nodded, and didn't pick up the thread. Some of them would say, "That's not psychology, that's not psychiatry." And in fact, I remember early on giving a grand rounds presentation and I opened up saying, "I'm going to speak today about a body of data using nationally representative samples on spirituality and mental health with all the gold standard methods." And about 10 people got up and walked out. It was absolutely not of interest.
Martin: Using the gold standard, what did that mean in terms of the experiments you were running and the studies and the data you were collecting? How did you make sure that it would hold water in the scientific community?
Miller: If I were to characterize the first five years of my investigation, I would say I used the data sets that everyone else knew and trusted. I only asked one new question, which was: "What's the impact of spirituality on the DSM diagnosis of addiction and depression?" The findings were jaw dropping.
The protective benefit of personal spirituality, meaning someone who says their personal spirituality is very important, is 80% against addiction. They have 80% decreased relative risk for the DSM diagnosis of addiction to drugs or alcohol.
Martin: Wait, so someone who self-identifies as having a meaningful spiritual life is 80% less likely to get addicted to drugs or alcohol than someone who says they don't?
Miller: Yes.
Martin: Wow. And how can you prove that it is a spiritual life that is doing that and not some external factor? Because you heard this from other critics, too, some of your peers said you can't attribute that to spirituality, it's gotta be some other social conditioning.
Miller: Well, that's a very important point because in every study we controlled for all of the usual interpretations about this being social support or having resources. So we plugged into our equation every other possible explanation that was generally taken in mental health to explain the road to depression. And nonetheless, it actually turned out that the more high risk we are, the more that there's stress in our lives, the more that we might be genetically at risk for depression, the greater the impact of spirituality as a source of resilience as preventative against major depression.
Martin: What does that look like in the brain?
Miller: One of the most beautiful findings in my 20 years as an investigator was from an MRI study conducted together with our colleagues at Yale Medical School. We looked at people of many different faith traditions and the first finding was that there is one neuro seat of transcendent perception and we share it. Now there's human variability of course, and we can strengthen components.
Martin: How are you actually doing that with people? Are you asking your subjects to pray? What are the spiritual inputs that are going into them so that you can measure it on their brains?
Miller: The very specific prompt was, "Tell us about a time where you felt a deep connection to God, your higher power, the source of life." Everyone had a story like that and as they told their story, we recorded them and it was then played back in their ears while they were inside the scanner.
Martin: Ah, they heard themselves recounting their spiritual experience.
Miller: It was tailor made to their own moment.
Martin: And you saw their brains light up?
Miller: Oh yes. Connecting to these memories, the bonding network comes up online just as when we were held in the arms of our parents or grandparents.
Martin: Wait, when you say the bonding network you mean you can literally see that the brain will respond to spiritual stimuli in the same way that it does to a hug from a family member when you're a baby?
Miller: Precisely.
Martin: Can you tell me how this manifests in the real world? I'm thinking about this anecdote you include in the book about a client of yours. A girl you refer to as Iliana.
Miller: Iliana adored her father, I mean, he was the sun and the moon and the stars to her. They were so close. And one night two men who her father knew, came into his corner store, robbed him and murdered him. And she was devastated. This was a grief that was so deep. She simply could not free herself from the grief that was shackling her heart.
One day, Iliana skips into my office. There's a levity and joy. She plops into the seat and says, "Dr. Miller, you're never gonna believe this. My cousin and my cousin's girlfriend chaperoned me so I could go to a party and I met the most wonderful boy. We talked so long, it must have been 20 minutes. He was so polite and so kind. But here's the best part, his name." Which was the same very usual name as her father.
She said, "Don't you see? My father sent him. My father is looking out after me." And from that day on she was in the world of the living. What changed everything for Iliana was the awareness that her father walked with her. She maintained a deep transcendent relationship with her father, as most people around the world do.
Iliana trusted her deep inner knowing that this was far too probabilistic to have happened by chance. That this very rare name held both by this new boy and her father could possibly mean nothing.
Martin: Can I ask, what are you thinking as you hear this? I mean, are you thinking that is just a crazy coincidence, but if she needs to believe that this is a sign from God, who am I to tell her otherwise? Because it seems to be working.
Miller: Well, at the time, that was certainly the most common interpretive framework amongst psychologists and psychiatrists. But I could see plain as day that this was a tremendously sacred moment. This was a living miracle. This was a gift.
For me to have treated it like some kind of cultural diversity variable or that it's just the meaning she makes would've actually taken all of the energy and spirit out of that transformative awakening moment. I joined her.
Now I did that authentically because it was my view as well that this is far too nonprobabilistic to have happened by chance, that there are very few people by that very same name and that the first boy she met in a year and a half since her father's passing should have the name of the father. It was a synchronicity. There was a deeper meaning being revealed.
Martin: When you're talking to people who aren't scientists, someone who's skeptical, someone who doesn't have faith, who doesn't have what they define as a spiritual life, what do you want them to take away from your research and your message?
Miller: I've given a number of talks to audiences who, prior to seeing the science, would not necessarily consider themselves spiritual people. And, in fact, I oftentimes hear from people who consider themselves skeptics and very left-brained and when they see the peer reviewed science that says we're naturally spiritual beings, that when we cultivate our spirituality we're 80% less likely to be addicted, 82% less likely to take our lives, it speaks to the left side of their brains long enough that it quiets down the skepticism.
In other words, three cheers for the skeptic. Here is published, peer reviewed science for skeptical audiences to begin to explore, to be curious about our spiritual nature. You know, at the inner table of human knowing we all have an empiricist, a logician, an intuitive, a mystic, and a skeptic. And the skeptic is very welcome, but the skeptic is not the bouncer at the door.
It is not scientific to put a skeptic as a bouncer at the door. It is not more rigorous to toss out an idea before being examined in every way. We are wired to be able to investigate. So I simply say to the biggest skeptic of all, you are most welcome to your own inner table of inquiry, but be sure to invite everyone else.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wvasfm.org/science/science/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health | 2023-07-30T13:04:10 | 1 | https://www.wvasfm.org/science/science/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with children's book author Matt de la Peña about summer reading recommendations for kids of all ages when they complain, "I'm bored!"
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with children's book author Matt de la Peña about summer reading recommendations for kids of all ages when they complain, "I'm bored!"
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/a-childrens-book-author-recommends-books-to-keep-your-kids-busy-this-summer | 2023-07-30T13:04:48 | 1 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/a-childrens-book-author-recommends-books-to-keep-your-kids-busy-this-summer |
Persian-American Chef Nasim Alikhani has published her first cookbook, based on her highly acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn. She brought the feast to Los Angeles for a recent series of pop up dinners.
Copyright 2023 NPR
Persian-American Chef Nasim Alikhani has published her first cookbook, based on her highly acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn. She brought the feast to Los Angeles for a recent series of pop up dinners.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook | 2023-07-30T13:04:54 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook |
An archeological dig in Turkey has uncovered artifacts dating back 1,000 years By Peter Kenyon Published July 30, 2023 at 8:02 AM EDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email In Turkey, what started out as an exploration of a Roman garrison has uncovered artifacts dating back to the time of the Assyrian empire. Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/an-archeological-dig-in-turkey-has-uncovered-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years | 2023-07-30T13:05:00 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/an-archeological-dig-in-turkey-has-uncovered-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years |
The U.S. auto industry is experiencing unanticipated stumbles and challenges as it pivots to producing more electric vehicles, even as it makes large profits.
Copyright 2023 NPR
The U.S. auto industry is experiencing unanticipated stumbles and challenges as it pivots to producing more electric vehicles, even as it makes large profits.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs | 2023-07-30T13:05:07 | 1 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Professor Amit Bhasin of the University of Texas at Austin about constructing roads and railways that can withstand extreme heat.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Professor Amit Bhasin of the University of Texas at Austin about constructing roads and railways that can withstand extreme heat.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-we-need-better-infrastructure-too | 2023-07-30T13:05:13 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-we-need-better-infrastructure-too |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Morristown Medical Center sports cardiologist Matthew Martinez about why some young athletes suffer from sudden cardiac-related medical emergencies.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Morristown Medical Center sports cardiologist Matthew Martinez about why some young athletes suffer from sudden cardiac-related medical emergencies.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/cardiac-issues-among-young-athletes-are-rare-but-there-are-precautions-to-take | 2023-07-30T13:05:19 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/cardiac-issues-among-young-athletes-are-rare-but-there-are-precautions-to-take |
Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast. | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/d-smith-on-her-new-documentary-kokomo-city | 2023-07-30T13:05:25 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/d-smith-on-her-new-documentary-kokomo-city |
Is recent news about the economy so good that the U.S. can say it is coming in for a "soft landing," where inflation gets tamed without a recession?
Copyright 2023 NPR
Is recent news about the economy so good that the U.S. can say it is coming in for a "soft landing," where inflation gets tamed without a recession?
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy | 2023-07-30T13:05:31 | 1 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to a patron of the party, musician George Brown of the band Kool & The Gang, about his new book, new record, and the "Celebration" of a long and funky career.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to a patron of the party, musician George Brown of the band Kool & The Gang, about his new book, new record, and the "Celebration" of a long and funky career.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/george-brown-of-kool-the-gang-on-celebrating-the-bands-long-career | 2023-07-30T13:05:38 | 1 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/george-brown-of-kool-the-gang-on-celebrating-the-bands-long-career |
How to Watch the Royals vs. Twins Game: Streaming & TV Channel Info for July 30
Ryan Yarbrough will take the mound for the Kansas City Royals against Byron Buxton and the Minnesota Twins on Sunday at 2:10 PM ET.
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Royals vs. Twins Live Stream, TV Channel and Game Info:
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 2:10 PM ET
- TV Channel: BSKC
- Location: Kansas City, Missouri
- Venue: Kauffman Stadium
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
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Explore More About This Game
Royals Batting & Pitching Performance
- The Royals' 96 home runs rank 27th in MLB this season.
- Kansas City ranks 27th in the majors with a .382 team slugging percentage.
- The Royals' .236 batting average ranks 23rd in the league this season.
- Kansas City is among the lowest scoring teams in baseball, ranking 29th with just 401 total runs (3.8 per game) this season.
- The Royals are among the worst in the league at getting on base, ranking last with an OBP of .295.
- The Royals rank 20th in strikeouts per game (8.8) among MLB offenses.
- Kansas City strikes out 8.1 batters per nine innings as a pitching staff, 25th in MLB.
- Kansas City pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.21 ERA this year, which ranks 28th in MLB.
- The Royals have a combined WHIP of 1.427 as a pitching staff, which is fifth-worst in baseball this season.
Royals Probable Starting Pitcher
- The Royals' Yarbrough (3-5) will make his seventh start of the season.
- The left-hander gave up one earned run and allowed six hits in six innings pitched against the Cleveland Guardians on Monday.
- He has earned a quality start two times in six starts this season.
- Yarbrough has four starts in a row of five innings or more.
- He has made 13 appearances and finished three of them without allowing an earned run.
Royals Schedule
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© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.wibw.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/royals-vs-twins-mlb-live-stream-tv/ | 2023-07-30T13:05:42 | 1 | https://www.wibw.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/royals-vs-twins-mlb-live-stream-tv/ |
She's one of India's biggest Barbie fans. When Vichitra Rajasingh was growing up, family and friends helped her build her collection of Barbie dolls until she had almost 80 of them. She once owned a Barbie camper, a speedboat, supermarket and post office. The mermaid Barbie and scuba-diving Barbie were her favorites.
Since her family ran a hotel, they put the dolls on display in the lobby in the late '90s. On Rajasingh's 14th birthday, her parents painted her room bright pink and hired artists to draw her favorite Barbie dolls on the walls.
All her Barbies were blond. She says she didn't like the Indian ethnic ones that came on the local market.
Living the pink life
"My love for the color pink began with my childhood passion for Barbie," she says. "And now it's become my identity." For her, the color represents love, joy, femininity and playfulness, everything she once associated with Barbie, she says.
Today Rajasingh lives in the southern Indian city of Madurai, where she drives a pink mini-Cooper and runs a bakery and lives in an apartment that are dominated by that color.
When the Barbie movie released in India on July 21, she gathered a bunch of friends, "everyone dressed to the nines in pink," and watched it on the day of its release. "I loved the movie. It was fun to watch and brought back many joyful childhood memories," she says.
While she no longer has her huge doll collection — having long since given it away to family and friends — Rajasingh is still a Barbie lover. She bakes six or seven Barbie-themed cakes a week, with an actual doll at the center of a cake that serves as her frothy dress, constructed around her in a swirl of sugar and cream.
Rajasingh saw Barbie as an aspirational figure — and grew up admiring the doll's freedom, confidence, globe-trotting lifestyle and even her arched feet in sassy stilettos.
But for others in India, Barbie has a far more complicated legacy.
The pressures Barbie can bring
Shweta Sharan, a writer who lives in Mumbai, admits to being conflicted about whether or not to watch the movie with her 13-year-old daughter, Laasya, who until a year ago ardently loved Barbie but then outgrew playing with dolls.
"I am aware that these dolls have many complicated associations," Sharan says. "Watching my daughter love a doll that looked nothing like her — with blond hair, blue eyes, perfect breasts — I worried if she would always strive to be someone else and feel inadequate."
These worries are valid in the opinion of ElsaMarie DSilva, a social entrepreneur from India and an Aspen fellow. "While Barbie is almost universally loved among girls of all ages, many do aspire to look like her, unconsciously pressurizing young girls to conform to unrealistic body shapes and expectations," she says — a common criticism aimed at Barbie.
Indian Barbie is not a rousing success
Mattel did make an effort to adapt the doll for an Indian market. When Mattel launched Barbie in India in 1991, it was the familiar Western-looking blond-haired blue-eyed Barbie. Then in 1996, they rolled out Indian Barbie, with brown skin. She came either wearing a bright sari or a salwar kameez — a knee-length tunic over fitted trousers.
But the Indian Barbie was not popular. "Indian kids gravitated toward the white-skinned Barbie instead of the brown-skinned one because light-skinned women were considered more beautiful in India and an automatic choice," DSilva says.
She points out how even in Indian clothes, Barbie still had a body that did not represent real women in India or anywhere else — she was way too tall and way too thin.
Priti Nemani, an Indian American attorney living in Chicago, analyzed why Barbie failed so spectacularly in the Indian market in a research paper published in 2011. In addition to the unrealistic, impossibly thin appearance of the doll, she points out how other cultural factors were at play.
"We weren't seeing Indian features on Barbie," she says. "We were seeing white Barbies dipped in brown. And even those brown Barbies didn't last long on the shelves. The latest versions of the Indian Barbie have much lighter skin tone.
Meanwhile, even though blond Barbies sold well, Ken tanked in India. "Indian parents who wouldn't want their daughters in romantic relationships at such an early age weren't going to buy the boyfriend," Nemani says.
In spite of her initial misgivings, Sharan enjoyed the Barbie movie with her daughter, now 13, who especially liked the feminist overtones. Laasya loved the beginning, when they were told "Barbie has a great day everyday. Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him."
Barbie inspires a poem
There are other issues about Barbie in India. For many kids, the doll is too expensive.
Ankita Apurva, 26, a writer who grew up in a farming family in Ranchi, a city in the Eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, recalls a childhood bereft of Barbies.
Her parents, who struggled to pay for a good education that they hoped would be her armor against bullying and discrimination, could not afford to buy their daughter a Barbie.
"They weren't in a position to splurge on fancy dolls like a Barbie," she says. She recalls feeling inferior for not owning one of these expensive dolls that would help her connect with other Barbie owners in her circle. It was especially hard for her at lunch when girls would boast about how many dolls they owned.
"I believe that even if children from marginalized communities manage to enter [private] institutions [for the privileged], there are certain social, cultural and economic symbols which are consciously and subconsciously deployed to mark them out, and Barbie, as loved as it is, is definitely one of them," she says.
Over the years, Apurva's family has grown stronger financially. When she saw the global resurgence of interest in Barbie now, she didn't feel angry or alienated, but it did bring back memories of desperately wanting to fit in – and not just because she didn't have a Barbie.
"Growing up, I rarely felt represented in literature or media. If pens or cameras turned toward us, they inadvertently counted us as data: dead bodies of farmers or survivors of violence of umpteen kinds."
As a girl from a farming family in Jharkhand, Apurva felt invisible. And so, she decided to express those emotions. She wrote a poem that she posted on Instagram, not to shame anyone who is privileged enough to own a Barbie but to comfort those who, like her, may have felt left out.
Here are some excerpts:
"Here's to the girls who do not get the Barbie craze,
...
girls who had parents who could not
or did not or choose not
to get them Barbie dolls
...
it's okay,
to not relate to any of it
...
what is not okay are friends ...
who intentionally make you
feel low by asking how many Barbies
you owned as a kid even as they
know you weren't privileged enough
to have them.
...
you are also not "too much" ...
if you feel
that Barbie is a colonial icon
legitimizing racial supremacy
while being a 'white feminist' trope
...
and once again
remember,
you are everything,
they are just Ken
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science, and development, and her work has been published in the New York Times, The British Medical Journal, BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on twitter @kamal_t
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.knkx.org/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake | 2023-07-30T13:05:42 | 0 | https://www.knkx.org/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake |
After nearly five years, the Big Peanut statue has returned to Ashburn, Ga. The original roadside attraction went down during Hurricane Michael. The new one is stronger and locally crafted.
Copyright 2023 NPR
After nearly five years, the Big Peanut statue has returned to Ashburn, Ga. The original roadside attraction went down during Hurricane Michael. The new one is stronger and locally crafted.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane | 2023-07-30T13:05:44 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane |
Lions offensive tackle Penei Sewell is in the concussion protocol.
Detroit head coach Dan Campbell told reporters this morning that Sewell was placed in the protocol but seems to be doing well. Sewell could be back at practice as soon as Wednesday.
Sewell was one of the players who most impressed Campbell this offseason. Campbell recently said of Sewell, “He’s our foundation.”
The Lions selected Sewell with the seventh overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft. He has started every game but one in his first two NFL seasons and was a Pro Bowler last year. | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/lions-penei-sewell-is-in-concussion-protocol | 2023-07-30T13:05:48 | 1 | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/lions-penei-sewell-is-in-concussion-protocol |
Royals vs. Twins: Odds, spread, over/under - July 30
Kansas City Royals (31-75) will square off against the Minnesota Twins (54-52) at Kauffman Stadium on Sunday, July 30 at 2:10 PM ET. Currently sitting at 29 steals, Bobby Witt Jr. will be looking to swipe his 30th stolen base of the season.
The Twins are the favorite in this one, at -185, while the underdog Royals have +150 odds to play spoiler. A 9-run total is listed for the game.
Royals vs. Twins Time and TV Channel
- Date: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Time: 2:10 PM ET
- TV: BSKC
- Location: Kansas City, Missouri
- Venue: Kauffman Stadium
- Probable Pitchers: Kenta Maeda - MIN (2-5, 4.62 ERA) vs Ryan Yarbrough - KC (3-5, 4.70 ERA)
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Royals vs. Twins Betting Odds, Run Line and Total
See the odds, run line and over/under for this matchup posted at multiple sportsbooks.
Have the desire to put money on the Royals' game versus the Twins but aren't quite sure where to start? We're here to assist you. Betting on the moneyline, run line, and total are three of the most common ways to make bets. A moneyline bet means that you think one of the teams -- for example, the Royals (+150) -- will win the contest. Pretty simple. If you bet $10 on the Royals to beat the Twins with those odds, and the Royals emerge with the victory, you'd get back $25.00.
Plus, there are lots of other ways to bet, like player props (will Salvador Pérez get a hit?), parlays (combining picks from multiple games to multiply your winnings), and more. For more details on the many different ways you can play, check out the BetMGM website and app.
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Discover More About This Game
Royals vs. Twins Betting Trends and Insights
- This season, the Twins have won 41 out of the 68 games, or 60.3%, in which they've been favored.
- The Twins have gone 11-7 when they have played as moneyline favorites with odds of -185 or shorter (61.1% winning percentage).
- The moneyline for this contest implies a 64.9% chance of a victory for Minnesota.
- The Twins went 4-4 across the eight games they were moneyline favorites in their last 10 matchups.
- In its last 10 matchups, Minnesota and its opponents combined to hit the over seven times (all 10 of the games had set totals).
- The Royals have won in 28, or 30.1%, of the 93 contests they have been named as odds-on underdogs this year.
- The Royals have a mark of 11-31 in contests where sportsbooks favor them by +150 or worse on the moneyline.
- In 10 games as underdogs over the last 10 matchups, the Royals have a record of 3-7.
- In the last 10 games with a total, Kansas City and its opponents have failed to hit the over five times.
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Royals Futures Odds
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© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.wibw.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/royals-vs-twins-mlb-odds-over-under/ | 2023-07-30T13:05:48 | 0 | https://www.wibw.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/royals-vs-twins-mlb-odds-over-under/ |
People have asked me what I've learned so far through this series. Have I gotten any clarity on what makes up my own spiritual identity? And the answer is, not really. I'm still in the research phase of this project. I'm still collecting experiences and perspectives and I imagine I'll keep doing that forever, but it's too early to draw any definitive conclusions — except for one.
I believe each and every one of us is capable of making our own meaning. Some of us do that by living according to a set of religious principles. Or by feeling the beauty and sanctity of nature. Or by choosing to see spiritual connections in what others might call mere coincidence.
I don't need anyone to validate those experiences for them to be meaningful to me. But according to Lisa Miller, a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, having a spiritual life is good for your mental health.
Miller is a psychologist and has dedicated most of her career to the study of neuroscience and spirituality. Her newest book is called The Awakened Brain, and in it she makes some really bold claims about how holding spiritual beliefs can decrease our rates of anxiety and depression and generally make us most likely to lead happier lives. I can hear your skepticism already! I get it. I'm a spiritually inclined kind of person but it's still hard for me to understand how, scientifically speaking, believing in something bigger than yourself can make you healthier and happier.
I needed to understand how Miller came to these conclusions. But before she got to the actual science, she told me a story.
It was the mid '90s. Miller was in the early stages of her career and working at a residential mental health facility in New York City. After she'd been there a few months, Yom Kippur rolled around — the day of atonement, considered the most significant of the Jewish religious holidays. One of the older male patients with severe bipolar disorder asked if there were any plans to mark the day. The doctor in charge shrugged his shoulders and said, no — there's no service planned. The patient walked out of the room with his shoulders slumped and Lisa, who is Jewish, saw an opportunity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lisa Miller: I approached the unit chief and said, "I'm certainly not a rabbi, but I've been to two-and-a-half decades of Yom Kippur services. I'd be happy to facilitate if that might be OK with you." So I showed up on Yom Kippur and the patients had arrived early to the kitchen, which was to be our sanctuary. The fluorescent lights were quite strong and as we crowded around the linoleum table there was an extraordinary feeling of specialness.
As we started the prayers that we all knew from our childhood, joining together saying in Hebrew the prayers of Yom Kippur, I looked over and noticed that as the gentleman with bipolar was davening, he could not have been further from explosive. He was holding our group in the cadence of the prayers and we were actually following him.
I took a pause and I said, "I feel so grateful to be here today in our Yom Kippur ceremony. Would anyone like to say anything?" We went around the table and the first person to speak was a very otherwise withdrawn woman with recurrent depression. She said, "You know, I always knew on Yom Kippur we could ask for forgiveness. But sitting here now with you all, I'm aware that we can be forgiven. God can forgive us." And she looked liberated.
As I looked around the table at the patients, whatever their symptoms had been yesterday, they were free in that moment. They were free of suffering. They were free of the characteristic patterns that had dragged them down in a way that was equal and opposite to their main symptoms. And so I thought a mental health system minus spirituality made no sense, and that became my life's work, to understand the place of spirituality in renewal, in recovery, in resilience, and to put this in the language of science.
Rachel Martin: What happened when you brought these kinds of questions to your peers, to the other people in your scientific community? Like when you said for the first time, "Hey, I think we need to look at the effect of spirituality on mental health." What did people say to you?
Miller: Well, the vast majority were very respectful, nodded, and didn't pick up the thread. Some of them would say, "That's not psychology, that's not psychiatry." And in fact, I remember early on giving a grand rounds presentation and I opened up saying, "I'm going to speak today about a body of data using nationally representative samples on spirituality and mental health with all the gold standard methods." And about 10 people got up and walked out. It was absolutely not of interest.
Martin: Using the gold standard, what did that mean in terms of the experiments you were running and the studies and the data you were collecting? How did you make sure that it would hold water in the scientific community?
Miller: If I were to characterize the first five years of my investigation, I would say I used the data sets that everyone else knew and trusted. I only asked one new question, which was: "What's the impact of spirituality on the DSM diagnosis of addiction and depression?" The findings were jaw dropping.
The protective benefit of personal spirituality, meaning someone who says their personal spirituality is very important, is 80% against addiction. They have 80% decreased relative risk for the DSM diagnosis of addiction to drugs or alcohol.
Martin: Wait, so someone who self-identifies as having a meaningful spiritual life is 80% less likely to get addicted to drugs or alcohol than someone who says they don't?
Miller: Yes.
Martin: Wow. And how can you prove that it is a spiritual life that is doing that and not some external factor? Because you heard this from other critics, too, some of your peers said you can't attribute that to spirituality, it's gotta be some other social conditioning.
Miller: Well, that's a very important point because in every study we controlled for all of the usual interpretations about this being social support or having resources. So we plugged into our equation every other possible explanation that was generally taken in mental health to explain the road to depression. And nonetheless, it actually turned out that the more high risk we are, the more that there's stress in our lives, the more that we might be genetically at risk for depression, the greater the impact of spirituality as a source of resilience as preventative against major depression.
Martin: What does that look like in the brain?
Miller: One of the most beautiful findings in my 20 years as an investigator was from an MRI study conducted together with our colleagues at Yale Medical School. We looked at people of many different faith traditions and the first finding was that there is one neuro seat of transcendent perception and we share it. Now there's human variability of course, and we can strengthen components.
Martin: How are you actually doing that with people? Are you asking your subjects to pray? What are the spiritual inputs that are going into them so that you can measure it on their brains?
Miller: The very specific prompt was, "Tell us about a time where you felt a deep connection to God, your higher power, the source of life." Everyone had a story like that and as they told their story, we recorded them and it was then played back in their ears while they were inside the scanner.
Martin: Ah, they heard themselves recounting their spiritual experience.
Miller: It was tailor made to their own moment.
Martin: And you saw their brains light up?
Miller: Oh yes. Connecting to these memories, the bonding network comes up online just as when we were held in the arms of our parents or grandparents.
Martin: Wait, when you say the bonding network you mean you can literally see that the brain will respond to spiritual stimuli in the same way that it does to a hug from a family member when you're a baby?
Miller: Precisely.
Martin: Can you tell me how this manifests in the real world? I'm thinking about this anecdote you include in the book about a client of yours. A girl you refer to as Iliana.
Miller: Iliana adored her father, I mean, he was the sun and the moon and the stars to her. They were so close. And one night two men who her father knew, came into his corner store, robbed him and murdered him. And she was devastated. This was a grief that was so deep. She simply could not free herself from the grief that was shackling her heart.
One day, Iliana skips into my office. There's a levity and joy. She plops into the seat and says, "Dr. Miller, you're never gonna believe this. My cousin and my cousin's girlfriend chaperoned me so I could go to a party and I met the most wonderful boy. We talked so long, it must have been 20 minutes. He was so polite and so kind. But here's the best part, his name." Which was the same very usual name as her father.
She said, "Don't you see? My father sent him. My father is looking out after me." And from that day on she was in the world of the living. What changed everything for Iliana was the awareness that her father walked with her. She maintained a deep transcendent relationship with her father, as most people around the world do.
Iliana trusted her deep inner knowing that this was far too probabilistic to have happened by chance. That this very rare name held both by this new boy and her father could possibly mean nothing.
Martin: Can I ask, what are you thinking as you hear this? I mean, are you thinking that is just a crazy coincidence, but if she needs to believe that this is a sign from God, who am I to tell her otherwise? Because it seems to be working.
Miller: Well, at the time, that was certainly the most common interpretive framework amongst psychologists and psychiatrists. But I could see plain as day that this was a tremendously sacred moment. This was a living miracle. This was a gift.
For me to have treated it like some kind of cultural diversity variable or that it's just the meaning she makes would've actually taken all of the energy and spirit out of that transformative awakening moment. I joined her.
Now I did that authentically because it was my view as well that this is far too nonprobabilistic to have happened by chance, that there are very few people by that very same name and that the first boy she met in a year and a half since her father's passing should have the name of the father. It was a synchronicity. There was a deeper meaning being revealed.
Martin: When you're talking to people who aren't scientists, someone who's skeptical, someone who doesn't have faith, who doesn't have what they define as a spiritual life, what do you want them to take away from your research and your message?
Miller: I've given a number of talks to audiences who, prior to seeing the science, would not necessarily consider themselves spiritual people. And, in fact, I oftentimes hear from people who consider themselves skeptics and very left-brained and when they see the peer reviewed science that says we're naturally spiritual beings, that when we cultivate our spirituality we're 80% less likely to be addicted, 82% less likely to take our lives, it speaks to the left side of their brains long enough that it quiets down the skepticism.
In other words, three cheers for the skeptic. Here is published, peer reviewed science for skeptical audiences to begin to explore, to be curious about our spiritual nature. You know, at the inner table of human knowing we all have an empiricist, a logician, an intuitive, a mystic, and a skeptic. And the skeptic is very welcome, but the skeptic is not the bouncer at the door.
It is not scientific to put a skeptic as a bouncer at the door. It is not more rigorous to toss out an idea before being examined in every way. We are wired to be able to investigate. So I simply say to the biggest skeptic of all, you are most welcome to your own inner table of inquiry, but be sure to invite everyone else.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.knkx.org/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health | 2023-07-30T13:05:48 | 1 | https://www.knkx.org/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with University of California, Berkeley, digital forensics expert Hany Farid about a recent political ad that used an AI-cloned vocal clip.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with University of California, Berkeley, digital forensics expert Hany Farid about a recent political ad that used an AI-cloned vocal clip.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/how-real-is-the-threat-of-ai-deepfakes-in-the-2024-election | 2023-07-30T13:05:50 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/how-real-is-the-threat-of-ai-deepfakes-in-the-2024-election |
Members of the mid-Columbia River tribes set off on an annual intertribal canoe journey after a three-year hiatus due to COVID. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 28, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR
Members of the mid-Columbia River tribes set off on an annual intertribal canoe journey after a three-year hiatus due to COVID. (This story first aired on All Things Considered on July 28, 2023.)
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/intertribal-canoe-trip-from-oregon-to-seattle-will-set-out-for-first-time-since-covid | 2023-07-30T13:05:56 | 1 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/intertribal-canoe-trip-from-oregon-to-seattle-will-set-out-for-first-time-since-covid |
The U.S. earned three gold medals on the last day of the world swimming championships, capping an eight-day meet that rekindled an old rivalry.
Hunter Armstrong (50m backstroke), plus the U.S. men’s and women’s 4x100m medley relays prevailed in Fukuoka, Japan, on Sunday.
Olympic champion Bobby Finke was out-touched for 1500m freestyle gold by five hundredths by Tunisian Ahmed Hafnaoui as they swam the second- and third-best times in history.
Sarah Sjöström of Sweden won the 50m free in 23.62 seconds — one hundredth off her world record from the semifinals — for a record 21st individual world medal, breaking her tie with Michael Phelps. Also at this meet, Phelps saw his last individual world record broken by Frenchman Léon Marchand and had his record for individual golds broken by Katie Ledecky (16).
SWIMMING WORLDS: Results
Canadian Summer McIntosh added the 400m individual medley to her 200m butterfly gold, completing that double for a second consecutive year. McIntosh, the 400m IM world record holder, swam the third-best time in history. Katie Grimes, who is 16 like McIntosh, took silver, missing the American record by 29 hundredths.
The U.S. finished with the most total medals (38) for a 15th consecutive worlds dating to 1991. However, Australia outshined the U.S. in gold — 13 to 7 — the first nation to better the U.S. since 2001.
The Americans’ seven golds were their fewest in 29 years, but they have a history of improving in Olympic years. U.S. men’s head coach Bob Bowman noted what happened two Olympic cycles ago. The U.S. won eight golds at the 2015 Worlds, then doubled it at the 2016 Olympics.
“If you historically look back on some of our world championships just prior to the Olympics, you’ll find that we’ve had similar results, and we bounce back to have some of our most successful Olympics,” Bowman said on Peacock. “You can look at several examples. So I’m very optimistic about it.”
Australia, which dueled the U.S. for swim supremacy in the 2000s, had its best world championships ever by medals.
The Aussies built to this since bottoming out with one gold medal at the 2017 World Championships.
Superstars developed including Ariarne Titmus (now 22 years old), Kaylee McKeown (also 22) and Mollie O’Callaghan (19).
Titmus, who broke the 400m free world record, and O’Callaghan, who broke the 200m free world record, are both coached by Dean Boxall in Brisbane. So are Shayna Jack and Brianna Throssell, who joined Titmus and O’Callaghan for a world record in the 4x200m free relay.
Titmus broke into tears in talking about Boxall.
“The best way to describe it is that each athlete is a door, and Dean has a bunch of keys, and he finds the key to unlock each door,” she told Australian media. “Every lock is different. I feel like he found my key very quickly, and he finds everyone else’s key to work with them differently to get the best out of them. I just feel very passionate about thanking our coach. I, personally, like most of us, have a very close relationship with him as my coach, as my friend and as a male figure in my life, and I will just be forever grateful to him for this. This will not be possible without him, and I think that’s why I owe it to him.”
The top Australian men from seven years ago, Kyle Chalmers and Cameron McEvoy, also resurfaced atop the podium this past week.
The Australians won five golds at the 2019 Worlds and nine at the Tokyo Olympics. They dropped back down to six golds at last year’s worlds, in part because some stars prioritized the Commonwealth Games instead.
Now with 13, Australia is arguably the world’s best swimming nation for the first time since Phelps drove with a learner’s permit. Good timing going into an Olympic year.
The U.S. can be optimistic after winning 13 more total medals than Australia at worlds.
For the 2024 Olympics, the Americans could return Caeleb Dressel, who won three individual golds in Tokyo and four at the 2019 Worlds. Dressel withdrew during last year’s worlds on unspecified medical grounds and took a long break from swimming but as of last month was excitedly planning to get a full offseason of training in this fall and winter.
The U.S. also has young individual medalists including Regan Smith, Kate Douglass, Carson Foster (all 21) and Jack Alexy (20).
“We’re still here,” breaststroker Lilly King said. “Don’t count us out.” | https://www.nbcsports.com/olympics/news/swimming-world-championships-usa-australia-medals | 2023-07-30T13:05:58 | 1 | https://www.nbcsports.com/olympics/news/swimming-world-championships-usa-australia-medals |
More than 1,100 people have already been charged for their actions around Jan. 6 and many of them invoked Former President Donald Trump, who may also be indicted.
Copyright 2023 NPR
More than 1,100 people have already been charged for their actions around Jan. 6 and many of them invoked Former President Donald Trump, who may also be indicted.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements | 2023-07-30T13:06:02 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements |
Consumer demand for speed and convenience drives labor unrest among workers in Hollywood and at UPS
NEW YORK (AP) — Six straight days of 12-hour driving. Single-digit paychecks. The complaints come from workers in vastly different industries: UPS delivery drivers and Hollywood actors and writers.
But they point to an underlying factor driving a surge of labor unrest: The cost to workers whose jobs have changed drastically as companies scramble to meet customer expectations for speed and convenience in industries transformed by technology.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated those changes, pushing retailers to shift online and intensifying the streaming competition among entertainment companies. Now, from the picket lines, workers are trying to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a show that can be binged any time or get dog food delivered to their doorstep with a phone swipe.
Overworked and underpaid employees is an enduring complaint across industries — from delivery drivers to Starbucks baristas and airline pilots — where surges in consumer demand have collided with persistent labor shortages. Workers are pushing back against forced overtime, punishing schedules or company reliance on lower-paid, part-time or contract forces.
At issue for Hollywood screenwriters and actors staging their first simultaneous strikes in 40 years is the way streaming has upended entertainment economics, slashing pay and forcing showrunners to produce content faster with smaller teams.
“This seems to happen to many places when the tech companies come in. Who are we crushing? It doesn’t matter,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a screenwriter and showrunner on the negotiating team for the Writers Guild of America, whose members have been on strike since May. Earlier this month, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the writers’ union on the picket line.
Actors and writers have long relied on residuals, or long-term payments, for reruns and other airings of films and television shows. But reruns aren’t a thing on streaming services, where series and films simply land and stay with no easy way, such as box office returns or ratings, to determine their popularity.
Consequently, whatever residuals streaming companies do pay often amount to a pittance, and screenwriters have been sharing tales of receiving single-digit checks.
Adam Shapiro, an actor known for the Netflix hit “Never Have I Ever,” said many actors were initially content to accept lower pay for the plethora of roles that streaming suddenly offered. But the need for a more sustainable compensation model gained urgency when it became clear streaming is not a sideshow, but rather the future of the business, he said.
“Over the past 10 years, we realized: ‘Oh, that’s now how Hollywood works. Everything is streaming,’” Shapiro said during a recent union event.
Shapiro, who has been acting for 25 years, said he agreed to a contract offering 20% of his normal rate for “Never Have I Ever” because it seemed like “a great opportunity, and it’s going to be all over the world. And it was. It really was. Unfortunately, we’re all starting to realize that if we keep doing this we’re not going to be able to pay our bills.”
Then there’s the rising use of “mini rooms,” in which a handful of writers are hired to work only during pre-production, sometimes for a series that may take a year to be greenlit, or never get picked up at all.
Sanchez-Witzel, co-creator of the recently released Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest,” said television shows traditionally hire robust writing teams for the duration of production. But Netflix refused to allow her to keep her team of five writers past pre-production, forcing round-the-clock work on rewrites with just one other writer.
“It’s not sustainable and I’ll never do that again,” she said.
Sanchez-Witzel said she was struck by the similarities between her experience and those of UPS drivers, some of whom joined the WGA for protests as they threatened their own potentially crippling strike. UPS and the Teamsters last week reached a tentative contract staving off the strike.
Jeffrey Palmerino, a full-time UPS driver near Albany, New York, said forced overtime emerged as a top issue during the pandemic as drivers coped with a crush of orders on par with the holiday season. Drivers never knew what time they would get home or if they could count on two days off each week, while 14-hour days in trucks without air conditioning became the norm.
“It was basically like Christmas on steroids for two straight years. A lot of us were forced to work six days a week, and that is not any way to live your life,” said Palmerino, a Teamsters shop steward.
Along with pay raises and air conditioning, the Teamsters won concessions that Palmerino hopes will ease overwork. UPS agreed to end forced overtime on days off and eliminate a lower-paid category of drivers who work shifts that include weekends, converting them to full-time drivers. Union members have yet to ratify the deal.
The Teamsters and labor activists hailed the tentative deal as a game-changer that would pressure other companies facing labor unrest to raise their standards. But similar outcomes are far from certain in industries lacking the sheer economic indispensability of UPS or the clout of its 340,000-member union.
Efforts to organize at Starbucks and Amazon stalled as both companies aggressively fought against unionization.
Still, labor protests will likely gain momentum following the UPS contract, said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, which released a report this year that found the number of labor strikes rose 52% in 2022.
“The whole idea that consumer convenience is above everything broke down during the pandemic. We started to think, ‘I’m at home ordering, but there is actually a worker who has to go the grocery store, who has to cook this for me so that I can be comfortable,’” Campos-Medina said.
___
Associated Press video journalist Leslie Ambriz contributed from Los Angeles.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/consumer-demand-speed-convenience-drives-labor-unrest-among-workers-hollywood-ups/ | 2023-07-30T13:06:04 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/consumer-demand-speed-convenience-drives-labor-unrest-among-workers-hollywood-ups/ |
The new charges against former Pres. Trump in the classified documents case are in a different legal league and there are hints he is also not politically immune from them either.
Copyright 2023 NPR
The new charges against former Pres. Trump in the classified documents case are in a different legal league and there are hints he is also not politically immune from them either.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/politics-chat-trump-could-face-political-blowback-from-new-charges-after-all | 2023-07-30T13:06:08 | 1 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/politics-chat-trump-could-face-political-blowback-from-new-charges-after-all |
On-air challenge: I'm going to give you some words. For each one, think of something that starts with the first letter of my word ... and that fits in the category named by the rest of my word.
Example: Factor — (Morgan) Freeman, (Henry) Fonda, (Harrison) Ford [actor starting with F]1. Scar
2. Aisle
3. Crank
4. Broom
5. Thorn
6. Bride
7. Swine
8. Cape
9. Trapper
Last week's challenge: Name a classic TV show in two words, in which the respective words rhyme with the first and last names of a famous writer - four letters in the first name, five letter in the last name. Who is it?
Challenge answer: "Get Smart" --> Bret Harte
Winner: Mary Butler from Columbus, Nebraska
This week's challenge: This challenge comes from listener Jim Vespe, of Mamaroneck, N.Y. Name a well-known U.S. city in nine letters. Change the third and fifth letters to get the name of a beverage. What is it?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, August 3rd at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/sunday-puzzle-let-the-categories-guide-you | 2023-07-30T13:06:09 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2023-07-30/sunday-puzzle-let-the-categories-guide-you |
Fever vs. Storm: Odds, spread, over/under and other Vegas lines - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 8:36 AM EDT|Updated: 29 minutes ago
On Sunday, July 30, 2023 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Indiana Fever (6-18) will be attempting to stop a three-game losing streak when hosting the Seattle Storm (5-19). It will air at 4:00 PM ET on ESPN3, FOX13+, and Prime Video.
In this article, you can find the spread and odds across multiple sportsbooks for the Fever vs. Storm matchup.
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Fever vs. Storm Game Info
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 4:00 PM ET
- TV Channel: ESPN3, FOX13+, and Prime Video
- Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
- Arena: Gainbridge Fieldhouse
Fever vs. Storm Odds, Spread, Over/Under
Check out the odds, spread and over/under for this WNBA matchup posted at multiple sportsbooks.
Fever vs. Storm Betting Trends
- The Fever have won 13 games against the spread this season, while failing to cover nine times.
- The Storm have covered 12 times in 23 matchups with a spread this season.
- Indiana has not covered the spread when favored by 3.5 points or more this season (in one opportunity).
- Seattle has an ATS record of 11-8 when playing as at least 3.5-point underdogs this season.
- So far this season, 12 out of the Fever's 23 games have hit the over.
- So far this year, 11 out of the Storm's 23 games with an over/under have gone over the point total.
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© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/fever-storm-wnba-odds-spread-over-under/ | 2023-07-30T13:06:10 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/fever-storm-wnba-odds-spread-over-under/ |