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Exquisitely preserved fossil of Jurassic sea turtle includes near-complete skull and limbs
By Mindy Weisberger, CNN
(CNN) — About 150 million years ago, a marine turtle with a massive head dived through a shallow, tropical sea covering what is now Europe. Few complete fossils of this Jurassic sea turtle, named Solnhofia parsonsi, have been discovered. However, scientists recently described a remarkable fossil that has all its limbs with nearly all the bones of the feet in place — revealing the shape and structure of the turtle’s extremities for the first time.
Today’s marine turtle species all have elongated, rigid flippers to propel them through the ocean depths. But the newly described fossil’s limbs were stumpier than those of modern sea turtles relative to its body size. These shorter limbs suggest that S. parsonsi swam in coastal waters rather than in the open ocean, scientists reported July 26 in the journal PLOS One.
Fossils of this marine turtle were first discovered in the 1970s, but the new specimen “is the best preserved individual of this species,” said lead study author Felix Augustin, a doctoral candidate in the department of geosciences at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “It is the first that preserves the complete skull, the complete shell, and also all four complete limbs.”
In life, S. parsonsi measured about 12 inches (30 centimeters) long from nose to tail, and its head was “relatively large” — the skull measured about 4 inches (10 centimeters) long, Augustin told CNN.
Such a large skull may have been useful for crunching through the hard shells of bottom-dwelling crustaceans and mollusks, but such conclusions are “highly speculative at this point” as paleontologists have yet to find direct evidence of the extinct turtle’s diet, said study coauthor Dr. Márton Rabi, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Tübingen’s department of geosciences.
The fossil was excavated in 2014 from a limestone quarry in southeastern Germany at a site rich in fossils from the latter part of the Jurassic Period (199.6 million to 145.5 million years ago). Plenty of turtles are preserved there, along with fishes, crocodilians and even marine reptile giants such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, according to the study. The site has been an actively mined quarry since the 1950s, but fossil excavations only began there about 20 years ago.
S. parsonsi was described as a species in 1975 based on two near-complete skulls: one from Bavaria and one from Switzerland. Over the decades, discoveries of partial skeletons — all found in Jurassic marine deposits — provided more clues about the turtle’s anatomy and aquatic lifestyle. In 2000, scientists discovered a skeleton with a more complete shell than had ever been seen before. The specimen also included some bones from the reptile’s paddling limbs.
The newly described fossil presents a far more complete view of those limbs, showing that they differed dramatically from the extremities of sea turtles alive today.
“In modern-day sea turtles, the limbs are really elongated — especially the digits and the phalanges of the digits — to serve as flippers in this marine environment,” Augustin said. By comparison, the limbs and feet of the S. parsonsi fossil from Bavaria were less elongated, so the species was probably better adapted to swim closer to the shore, rather than hundreds of miles away in the open ocean.
That hypothesis makes sense considering the locale where the fossil was excavated, Rabi told CNN. During the Jurassic, what is now southern Germany was an archipelago of small islands. S. parsonsi’s habitat was likely a network of coastal reefs and lagoons. The turtles “were always more or less close to the shore,” Rabi said.
Numerous fossils from these rich and diverse coastal ecosystems are found in fine-grained limestone deposits known as “plattenkalk” across southern Germany. Such rock is known for preserving fossils in exquisite detail, and the quarry where the turtle was unearthed has already yielded many examples of marine animals and plants as well as fossils of terrestrial dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
But because the site is relatively new, many of those fossils have yet to be studied and scientifically described, and there is much to be learned about the individual species and the coastal habitat where they coexisted millions of years ago, Augustin said.
“We are particularly interested in reconstructing the ecosystem as a whole to show the diversity — how it functioned, and what different constituents of the ecosystems were present during the Late Jurassic,” he said.
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. | https://kion546.com/news/national-world/cnn-world/2023/07/30/exquisitely-preserved-fossil-of-jurassic-sea-turtle-includes-near-complete-skull-and-limbs/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:00 | 0 | https://kion546.com/news/national-world/cnn-world/2023/07/30/exquisitely-preserved-fossil-of-jurassic-sea-turtle-includes-near-complete-skull-and-limbs/ |
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.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-our-infrastructure-needs-changes-too | 2023-07-30T14:34:04 | 0 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-our-infrastructure-needs-changes-too |
Christian Bethancourt Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Christian Bethancourt -- with a slugging percentage of .167 in his past 10 games (including no home runs) -- will be in action for the Tampa Bay Rays against the Houston Astros, with Brandon Bielak on the hill, on July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
In his last game he had a one-hit showing (1-for-4) against the Astros.
Christian Bethancourt Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -161)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +525)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +200)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +155)
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Read More About This Game
Christian Bethancourt At The Plate
- Bethancourt is hitting .219 with 13 doubles, seven home runs and nine walks.
- In 53.7% of his games this year (36 of 67), Bethancourt has picked up at least one hit, and in 10 of those games (14.9%) he recorded more than one.
- In seven games this season, he has hit a long ball (10.4%, and 3% of his trips to the plate).
- In 23.9% of his games this year, Bethancourt has had at least one RBI. He's picked up more than one in 6.0% and driven in three or more of his team's runs in two contests.
- He has scored a run in 25 games this season, with multiple runs six times.
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Christian Bethancourt Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The Astros pitching staff is sixth in MLB with a collective 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings.
- The Astros have the third-ranked team ERA among all MLB pitching staffs (3.81).
- Astros pitchers combine to rank 17th in baseball in home runs surrendered (125 total, 1.2 per game).
- Bielak (5-5) takes the mound for the Astros in his 13th start of the season. He's put together a 3.62 ERA in 69 2/3 innings pitched, with 55 strikeouts.
- In his most recent time out on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, the right-hander went 4 2/3 innings, allowing three earned runs while surrendering six hits.
- In 13 games this season, the 27-year-old has an ERA of 3.62, with 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings. Opponents are hitting .262 against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/christian-bethancourt-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:04 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/christian-bethancourt-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Time for a summer check-in on your finances? Here are 4 areas to take a look at right now
There's no summer break when it comes to monitoring your money. Rising fees, changing investment risks and overlooked opportunities might warrant a fresh look at your financial situation.
Here are some issues to review.
Check up on unused gift cards
It’s easy to lose track of unused gift cards, vouchers or store credits. Nearly half of U.S. adults, 47%, said they have at least one of the above, according to a recent survey by Bankrate.com. Among those with unused gift cards, the average amount is a sizable $187 per person.
Consumers enjoy important protections with gift cards. For example, they can’t expire for at least five years after the activation date. There are also limitations on fees. "The card issuer cannot charge a dormancy or inactivity fee on a gift card unless there has been no activity for one year and the card clearly states its policy toward that fee,” said the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Still, gift cards can get stolen or lost, so it's smart to use them promptly or at least keep track of what you have.
Remember, also, that scammers often request payment in gift cards, demanding that you provide the codes and personal identification numbers listed on the back side. “No business or government agency will ask you to make payments with gift cards, so if you are contacted in this manner, it is most likely a scam,” the FDIC cautioned.
Check up on deposit insurance
If you have bank accounts, make sure your money is covered by federal deposit insurance. Most consumers don’t need to worry much about this on conventional bank or credit union accounts, which typically are insured up to $250,000. But this can arise as an issue with money stored on payment apps such as PayPal, Venmo and Cash App, warns the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Money sitting in payment-app accounts often lack deposit insurance, the agency added, and user agreements often don’t specify where the funds are held, whether or not they are insured and what would happen if the company holding the money were to fail.
"Popular digital-payment apps are increasingly used as substitutes for a traditional bank or credit union account but lack the same protections to ensure that funds are safe,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra in a prepared statement.
More than three in four American adults have used payment apps, finding them a fast and convenient way to pay friends, retailers, service providers and others. They are especially popular among younger adults, the agency said.
Check up on insurance policies
It’s a good idea to evaluate your auto and home insurance policies from time to time, especially when costs are rising like now.
Premiums for auto coverage have risen about 15.5% over roughly the past year, said J.D. Power. This reflects more expensive vehicles, more costly repairs, more drivers resuming their workday commutes and other factors. Higher premiums have led to the largest decrease in customer satisfaction with insurance coverage in the past 20 years, J.D. Power reported.
In addition to shopping around and possibly switching insurers, there are other ways to shave premiums. These include bundling home and auto policies to get a discount and allowing your insurer to monitor your driving behavior with telematics devices installed on your vehicle.
Home insurance premiums also have risen, up 8% per policy over the past year to a national average of $1,902, according to a study by QuoteWizard by Lending Tree. The price hikes are more pronounced in states including Arizona (up 15% to an average of $1,608). Factors contributing to the increases include more expensive homes and costlier repairs and building materials.
Check up on your investments
Now that the stock market is humming again, that makes it easier for investors to overlook — or choose to ignore — emerging risks in their portfolios. But a rare recent rebalancing of the technology-dominated Nasdaq 100 index is a reminder that it's usually best not to let big stocks get out of hand.
The rebalancing on July 24 reduced the weighting or importance of seven giant companies to reduce their dominance in the index and increase the presence of smaller stocks, Nasdaq said. These seven stocks still have a combined weighting of around 40% in the index, though that's down from nearly 50% previously. It's not a huge change, even for investors owning funds pegged to the Nasdaq 100, but it serves as a reminder that, when a few stocks are crowding others out, a portfolio becomes less diversified and thus more risky.
Big tech stocks have enjoyed a huge run lately, driven by excitement over artificial intelligence and more. The Magnificent Seven are Amazon, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Meta Platforms (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. These giants could continue to outperform for months or years to come, but investors should recognize the risks.
Hence the wisdom of looking under the hood of your portfolio, and examining the top holdings in various mutual funds and exchange traded funds, if you haven't done so in a while.
Reach the writer at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2023/07/30/here-are-4-things-you-should-check-with-your-finances-this-summer/70463155007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:05 | 0 | https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2023/07/30/here-are-4-things-you-should-check-with-your-finances-this-summer/70463155007/ |
Trump leadership PAC spends more than $40 million on legal fees amid indictments
By Alayna Treene, CNN
(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee, Save America, has spent more than $40 million on legal fees since the start of this year, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The PAC, which raises most of its funds through small-dollar donations from Trump’s supporters, is expected to report to the Federal Election Commission on Monday that it spent $40.2 million on legal costs in the first half of the year – more than double the amount the group spent on legal fees in all of 2022.
Save America spent over $16 million on legal costs in 2022, according to Federal Election Commission records. The political action committee must file its disclosure report covering the first six months of this year by the end of the day Monday.
The Washington Post first reported the PAC’s spending on legal costs.
Trump’s team argues that the considerable amount of money being spent on defending the former president and members of his inner circle is necessary as Trump’s legal troubles mount.
“In order to combat these heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies and to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, the leadership PAC contributed to their legal fees to ensure they have representation against unlawful harassment,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told CNN.
Special counsel Jack Smith brought new charges on Thursday against Trump, his aide Walt Nauta and a third defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, in the case alleging Trump mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House.
The charges included allegations that Trump and his employees attempted to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by the grand jury. Both Nauta and De Oliveira are being represented by attorneys paid for by Trump’s operation.
The former president was also indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud in March and faces potential charges in the special counsel’s January 6 grand jury investigation, as well as an investigation by the Fulton County District Attorney’s office in Georgia relating to claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election. Trump has expanded his legal team as his legal challenges grow.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. | https://kion546.com/politics/cnn-us-politics/2023/07/30/trump-leadership-pac-spends-more-than-40-million-on-legal-fees-amid-indictments/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:06 | 1 | https://kion546.com/politics/cnn-us-politics/2023/07/30/trump-leadership-pac-spends-more-than-40-million-on-legal-fees-amid-indictments/ |
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.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane | 2023-07-30T14:34:10 | 1 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/georgias-famous-peanut-statue-has-been-rebuilt-after-the-hurricane |
Will Arizona's new water limits halt Phoenix-area home building? No, and here's why
Home building in metro Phoenix hasn’t come to a grinding halt and isn’t expected to, despite new water restrictions for subdivisions on the area’s edges.
And while the Valley’s water woes won’t help the area’s housing shortage, they aren’t going to make it substantially worse either, according to water and housing experts.
Arizona’s water agency said last month it would stop approving new home developments that rely solely on groundwater, which experts say is already spoken for in the Phoenix area.
The move set off alarms about metro Phoenix’s continued growth.
It only really immediately impacts a couple of Phoenix-area suburbs: Buckeye in the West Valley and Queen Creek in the East Valley. These communities rely more on groundwater for development.
But those areas, with more affordable land, are hotspots for home building. Of the 10 top-selling subdivisions under construction, four are in Buckeye and Queen Creek.
Growth experts say while solutions need to be found for Arizona’s water issues, the buzz that recent rules from the Arizona Department of Water Resources will stop metro Phoenix’s growth isn’t warranted.
“Phoenix is not out of water,” said real estate analyst Mark Stapp, director of the master of real estate development program at Arizona State University. “The messaging on this terrible.”
He said every city has growth and sustainability problems, but Arizona is being proactive in tackling its water issues.
Arizona needs more housing
What Arizona isn’t ahead of is tackling its housing shortage.
The state needs 100,000 to 270,000 additional homes — estimates vary — and most of those need to go up in metro Phoenix.
A recent report from the Kyl Center for Water Policy at ASU works on untangling what the recent water limits mean for the Valley's affordable housing problem.
The group, part of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy, found the new water rules can increase housing costs in areas like Buckeye and Queen Creek. That’s because those areas, unlike most other metro Phoenix suburbs, don’t have a designated water provider, and developers typically rely on groundwater.
But new houses don’t account for most of the affordable housing that metro Phoenix needs, said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center.
That's because new, single-family homes are too expensive for most Valley residents.
“It’s disingenuous to say imposing water rules to make sure all homes will have a long-term supply will hurt housing affordability,” she said.
The median new home price in metro Phoenix is about $466,000, according to housing research firm Zonda. That’s about $20,000 to $40,000 more than new houses in Buckeye and Queen Creek.
But that's still out of the reach of the typical Valley household making the area's median family income of $99,000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's latest income study.
The Kyl Center report suggests many of the potential solutions for building more affordable housing that housing advocates and failed legislation have tried to get. Those include expediting the development process, requiring less parking, adding density, working to ease not in my backyard opposition and providing building fee waivers and property tax breaks.
Building more new homes
Many growth advocates agree that adding more houses of all types and prices will help ease Arizona’s housing shortage.
New home building can keep going in metro Phoenix developments that already have a Certificate of Assured Water Supply. About 80,000 new homes could be built in those communities, which at the current Valley building pace could be a four-year supply.
Also, Stapp said the Arizona State Land Department could expedite selling more of its Phoenix-area land for housing to ease the housing shortage.
About half a million acres of state land are available for mostly non-commercial development in the Valley, according to the state agency.
State land has an allocation of water from the Colorado River.
But Lynn Córdova of the agency said that doesn't mean all new subdivisions get water allocations.
Tina Tamboer, Cromford Report senior housing analyst, said “the sky isn’t falling” on metro Phoenix’s new home market. It’s too early to tell how new water limits will impact the new home market, she said.
Also, Porter said the Assured Water Supply Committee of the Governor’s Water Policy Council has received several proposals on changes to the new Department of Water Resources rules, and many discussions are underway to address their impact on development.
Reach the reporter at catherine.reagor@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8040. Follow her on Twitter @CatherineReagor. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/real-estate/catherine-reagor/2023/07/30/will-arizonas-new-water-limits-halt-metro-phoenix-home-building/70415482007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:11 | 1 | https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/real-estate/catherine-reagor/2023/07/30/will-arizonas-new-water-limits-halt-metro-phoenix-home-building/70415482007/ |
How to Watch the Dream vs. Mystics Game: Streaming & TV Channel Info for July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:32 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
The Washington Mystics (12-12) aim to break a six-game road losing streak at the Atlanta Dream (13-11) on Sunday, July 30, 2023 at 3:00 PM ET.
Watch live WNBA games without cable on all your devices with a seven-day free trial to Fubo!
Check out the latest odds and place your bets on the Dream or Mystics with BetMGM Sportsbook. Use our link for the best new user offer, no promo code required!
Dream vs. Mystics Game Info
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 3:00 PM ET
- TV: Bally Sports
- Arena: Gateway Center Arena
- Live Stream: Watch on Fubo!
Rep your team with officially licensed Dream gear! Head to Fanatics to find jerseys, shirts, and much more.
Key Stats for Dream vs. Mystics
- Atlanta records 85 points per game, only 4.7 more points than the 80.3 Washington gives up.
- Atlanta makes 43.4% of its shots from the field this season, which is 0.1 percentage points higher than Washington has allowed to its opponents (43.3%).
- The Dream are 10-2 when they shoot higher than 43.3% from the field.
- Atlanta is knocking down 35.5% of its three-point shots this season, 2.3% higher than the 33.2% Washington allows opponents to shoot from deep.
- The Dream are 10-6 when they shoot better than 33.2% from distance.
- Atlanta averages 37 rebounds a contest, 4.5 more rebounds per game than Washington's average.
Dream Recent Performance
- The Dream have averaged 85 points per game over their last 10 contests, the same amount they've racked up on average this season.
- Atlanta has been tougher on defense as of late, allowing 78.4 points per game over its past 10 contests compared to the 85.1 points per game its opponents are averaging on the 2023 season.
- Over their past 10 outings, the Dream are making 0.6 more three-pointers per game than their season long average (7.7 compared to 7.1 season-long), while shooting the same percentage from beyond the arc in that span as their season-long average (35.5%).
Dream Injuries
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/dream-vs-mystics-wnba-live-stream-tv/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:11 | 1 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/dream-vs-mystics-wnba-live-stream-tv/ |
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.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements | 2023-07-30T14:34:16 | 1 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/over-1-100-rioters-have-been-charged-for-jan-6-many-name-trump-in-their-statements |
Red, blue, purple: With independents surging, what is Arizona's political identity?
Independents are once again Arizona's largest group of registered voters, but political experts hold varying views on what that means for the state's political identity as it barrels toward a presidential election year.
About 1.45 million Arizonans are independents, or voters not affiliated with a political party officially recognized by the state, per data released by the Arizona Secretary of State's Office on Friday. That gives them a narrow lead over the state's 1.44 million registered Republicans.
Arizona also has about 1.26 million registered Democrats, 33,700 registered Libertarians and 8,500 voters registered to the No Labels Party, which was just officially recognized by the state in March.
It's the second time that independents have led in statewide voter registration numbers. Unaffiliated voters first took the lead from GOP voters in 2014, but were overtaken again by Republicans two years later. From 2018 to 2020, both the Republican and Democratic parties deployed paid efforts to up their voter registration numbers, leaving the independent voting bloc in the dust.
Now, independents are surging again. In June, unaffiliated voters made up about 53% of new voter registrations in the state's largest county, Maricopa. Independents currently lead Republicans in Maricopa County registrations by about 30,000 voters and lead Democrats by nearly 150,000 voters.
Arizona pollsters and political strategists generally agree that the shift is unlikely to dramatically change the elections landscape in Arizona. But they had varying takes on exactly what the change means for the state's political identity.
"There's a lot of varying opinions and also just misperceptions that go throughout our society (of) what an independent voter is," said Democratic strategist D.J. Quinlan of Radar Strategies.
Are unaffiliated voters actually independent voters?
Unaffiliated voters are not necessarily moderates or swing voters, experts say.
Those who switch to unaffiliated from being registered to a party tend to maintain their party preference, said Paul Bentz, a pollster and strategist at Republican-leaning Phoenix firm HighGround. He conducted a statewide survey of 400 independent voters in 2021. The results of his research showed that a little under 60% of unaffiliated voters described themselves as independent swing voters, and only about 35% said they had never been registered to a political party.
Bentz estimates that about half of the unaffiliated electorate are true swing voters. Bentz said he sees these voters as more likely to be issue-driven.
"These are the same folks that won Arizona for Donald Trump in 2016 and then turned around and moved it for Biden in 2020," he said. "So, they are movable."
Others believe the number of unaffiliated voters who are actually swing voters is lower, with conservative strategist and pollster Landon Wall of Alloy Analytics estimating that 70% to 80% of unaffiliated voters won't split their ticket.
"These people really do mostly vote a single party" for much of their lives, Wall said. "Independents are becoming a bigger group, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there's more persuadable votes."
But independent voters also tend to participate in elections at lower rates than party-affiliated voters, experts said. That makes their impact smaller.
"Part of the reason why they're not registered with a party is, to some extent, that they just haven't been as engaged in the political process," said Quinlan, the Democratic strategist. "So I do think there is a scenario where they could matter, but it's not a super likely scenario."
Being unaffiliated means more barriers, experts say
It's not just that independents are less engaged, Bentz said. Their turnout is also driven down because they are treated differently than other voters and are forced into party-specific primaries that may not satisfy them.
"The rules aren't the same for independent voters and everybody else," he said.
For instance, voters registered to political parties and signed up for early voting by mail automatically receive their party's ballot during primary elections. But independent voters must notify election officials which party's ballot they want. Only then is it mailed to their door.
That means that unaffiliated voters must "shop from one aisle" in primary elections, Bentz said. They cannot choose from a slate of Republican candidates in the gubernatorial primary and a list of Democratic candidates in the secretary of state's race.
There are also some limitations on which primary elections independent voters get a voice in. Arizona's Libertarian Party doesn't allow independent voters to vote in their primary elections at all. Additionally, they cannot vote in presidential preference elections.
All those limitations combined mean that the party faithful tend to pick the candidates that appear in general elections — many of whom may not be appealing to independent voters. An independent candidate could try to get on the ballot, but in Arizona, that's "incredibly difficult," Bentz said.
"They face signature requirements that are six times as high as either their Republican or Democratic counterparts," he said. "It is a significant barrier to participation for any of these independent candidates."
Taking a look:Federal officials to test Maricopa County's electronic poll books in pilot program
Will independents stay on top?
Independents are unlikely to hold their lead in voter registrations for too long — at least, in the short term. That's because some unaffiliated voters will change their registration so they can vote in a presidential primary.
While Democrats aren't expected to hold a presidential primary since President Joe Biden is planning to run again, Republicans are preparing to hold a presidential primary in March 2024, ahead of the November general election.
That means some unaffiliated voters will register as Republicans to vote in the party's presidential preference race, Quinlan said.
"Historically, what you've seen is there is a rush of people in the lead-up to the presidential preference reregistering from independent to whatever party they want to participate in," he said. "That's going to count for some of the Republican gains."
Bentz predicts that the parties or other political organizations may also opt to begin efforts to up Republican and Democratic registrations, like in 2018. That could pull some people away from the crowd of unaffiliated voters.
Arizona's political identity? Purple? Or purple-spotted?
Nobody entirely agrees on whether Arizona is a red state, a blue state, a purple state or something else entirely.
Bentz believes that the state — and Maricopa County — is still largely conservative, pointing to Republican Kimberly Yee's victory in the state treasurer's race last year. Arizona voters, he said, still "default" toward moderate Republicans.
But, he said, there are parts of the state that are changing.
"Arizona is not a purple state," Bentz said. "It's a red state with purple spots. It's more like a Dr. Seuss character than, you know, full purple."
Quinlan views it a little differently. Like Bentz, he sees portions of the state where Republicans have a competitive advantage and other areas in which Democrats have done well in recent election cycles.
"Parts of rural Arizona are getting redder as they're growing, particularly Mojave, Yavapai and Pinal counties," he said. "And meanwhile, the central metropolitan areas are getting more blue, more Democratic. And the suburbs are becoming more Democratic, which is turning them more purple."
But, unlike Bentz, he sees the state as purple overall, with Democrats making increasing gains. Yes, political polarization and far-right Republicans have helped Democratic candidates win victories, Quinlan said, but the Democratic Party has also made significant gains. "Two things can be true at the same time," he said.
"This line that you get from some folks that, 'This is still a Republican state, but with a little bit more purple' — the numbers don't really back that up," Quinlan said. "In the elections, you look out across the board, this is the quintessential definition of a purple state."
From drop boxes to faster vote counting:Bipartisan group gives nod to 20-plus election changes
Sasha Hupka covers Maricopa County, Pinal County and regional issues for The Arizona Republic. Do you have a tip to share on elections or voting? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter: @SashaHupka. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/07/30/with-independents-surging-what-is-arizonas-political-identity/70393743007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:17 | 1 | https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/07/30/with-independents-surging-what-is-arizonas-political-identity/70393743007/ |
Isaac Paredes Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Isaac Paredes -- 2-for-3 with two home runs and three RBI in his last game -- will be in action for the Tampa Bay Rays versus the Houston Astros, with Brandon Bielak on the mound, on July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
In his last game, he hit two homers in his most recent game (going 2-for-3) against the Astros.
Isaac Paredes Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -167)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +450)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +170)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +120)
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Read More About This Game
Isaac Paredes At The Plate
- Paredes leads Tampa Bay with 77 hits, batting .258 this season with 35 extra-base hits.
- Among the qualifying hitters in MLB action, he ranks 69th in batting average, 27th in on-base percentage, and 15th in slugging.
- In 54.9% of his 91 games this season, Paredes has picked up at least one hit. He's also had 21 multi-hit games.
- He has gone deep in 18.7% of his games in 2023 (17 of 91), and 5.7% of his trips to the dish.
- In 36 games this season (39.6%), Paredes has picked up an RBI, and in 10 of those games (11.0%) he had two or more. He has also driven in three or more of his team's runs in seven contests.
- He has scored in 35 of 91 games this season, and more than once 12 times.
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Isaac Paredes Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The pitching staff for the Astros has a collective 9.3 K/9, the sixth-best in the league.
- The Astros have the third-ranked team ERA among all league pitching staffs (3.81).
- Astros pitchers combine to give up 125 total home runs at a clip of 1.2 per game (to rank 17th in the league).
- Bielak (5-5 with a 3.62 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 69 2/3 innings pitched) gets the start for the Astros, his 13th of the season.
- His most recent appearance came on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, when the righty threw 4 2/3 innings, surrendering three earned runs while allowing six hits.
- The 27-year-old has put together a 3.62 ERA and 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings across 13 games this season, while allowing a batting average of .262 to opposing hitters.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/isaac-paredes-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:18 | 1 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/isaac-paredes-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Anyone seduced by AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard — wow, they can write essays and recipes! — eventually runs into what are known as hallucinations, the tendency for artificial intelligence to fabricate information.
The chatbots, which guess what to say based on information obtained from all over the internet, can’t help but get things wrong. And when they fail — by publishing a cake recipe with wildly inaccurate flour measurements, for instance — it can be a real buzzkill.
Yet as mainstream tech tools continue to integrate AI, it’s crucial to get a handle on how to use it to serve us. After testing dozens of AI products over the last two months, I concluded that most of us are using the technology in a suboptimal way, largely because the tech companies gave us poor directions.
The chatbots are the least beneficial when we ask them questions and then hope whatever answers they come up with on their own are true, which is how they were designed to be used. But when directed to use information from trusted sources, such as credible websites and research papers, AI can carry out helpful tasks with a high degree of accuracy.
“If you give them the right information, they can do interesting things with it,” said Sam Heutmaker, the founder of Context, an AI startup. “But on their own, 70% of what you get is not going to be accurate.”
With the simple tweak of advising the chatbots to work with specific data, they generated intelligible answers and useful advice. That transformed me over the last few months from a cranky AI skeptic into an enthusiastic power user. When I went on a trip using a travel itinerary planned by ChatGPT, it went well because the recommendations came from my favorite travel websites.
Directing the chatbots to specific high-quality sources like websites from well-established media outlets and academic publications can also help reduce the production and spread of misinformation.
Let me share some of the approaches I used to get help with cooking, research and travel planning.
Meal planning
Chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard can write recipes that look good in theory but don’t work in practice. In an experiment by The New York Times’ Food desk in November, an early AI model created recipes for a Thanksgiving menu that included an extremely dry turkey and a dense cake.
I also ran into underwhelming results with AI-generated seafood recipes. But that changed when I experimented with ChatGPT plug-ins, which are essentially third-party apps that work with the chatbot. (Only subscribers who pay $20 a month for access to ChatGPT4, the latest version of the chatbot, can use plug-ins, which can be activated in the settings menu.)
On ChatGPT’s plug-ins menu, I selected Tasty Recipes, which pulls data from the Tasty website owned by BuzzFeed, a well-known media site. I then asked the chatbot to come up with a meal plan including seafood dishes, ground pork and vegetable sides using recipes from the site. The bot presented an inspiring meal plan, including lemongrass pork banh mi, grilled tofu tacos and everything-in-the-fridge pasta; each meal suggestion included a link to a recipe on Tasty.
For recipes from other publications, I used Link Reader, a plug-in that let me paste in a web link to generate meal plans using recipes from other credible sites like Serious Eats. The chatbot pulled data from the sites to create meal plans and told me to visit the websites to read the recipes. That took extra work, but it beat an AI-concocted meal plan.
Research
When I did research for an article on a popular video game series, I turned to ChatGPT and Bard to refresh my memory on past games by summarizing their plots. They messed up on important details about the games’ stories and characters.
After testing many other AI tools, I concluded that for research, it was crucial to fixate on trusted sources and quickly double-check the data for accuracy. I eventually found a tool that delivers that: Humata.AI, a free web app that has become popular among academic researchers and lawyers.
The app lets you upload a document such as a PDF, and from there a chatbot answers your questions about the material alongside a copy of the document, highlighting relevant portions.
In one test, I uploaded a research paper I found on PubMed, a government-run search engine for scientific literature. The tool produced a relevant summary of the lengthy document in minutes, a process that would have taken me hours, and I glanced at the highlights to double-check that the summaries were accurate.
Cyrus Khajvandi, a founder of Humata, which is based in Austin, Texas, developed the app when he was a researcher at Stanford and needed help reading dense scientific articles, he said. The problem with chatbots like ChatGPT, he said, is that they rely on outdated models of the web, so the data may lack relevant context.
Travel planning
When a New York Times travel writer recently asked ChatGPT to compose a travel itinerary for Milan, the bot guided her to visit a central part of town that was deserted because it was an Italian holiday, among other snafus.
I had better luck when I requested a vacation itinerary for me, my wife and our dogs in Mendocino County, California. As I did when planning a meal, I asked ChatGPT to incorporate suggestions from some of my favorite travel sites, such as Thrillist, which is owned by Vox, and the Times’ travel section.
Within minutes, the chatbot generated an itinerary that included dog-friendly restaurants and activities, including a farm with wine and cheese pairings and a train to a popular hiking trail. This spared me several hours of planning, and most important, the dogs had a wonderful time.
Bottom line
Google and OpenAI, which works closely with Microsoft, say they are working to reduce hallucinations in their chatbots, but we can already reap AI’s benefits by taking control of the data that the bots rely on to come up with answers.
To put it another way: The main benefit of training machines with enormous data sets is that they can now use language to simulate human reasoning, said Nathan Benaich, a venture capitalist who invests in AI companies. The important step for us, he said, is to pair that ability with high-quality information. | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/were-using-ai-chatbots-wrong-heres-how-to-direct-them/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business | 2023-07-30T14:34:22 | 0 | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/were-using-ai-chatbots-wrong-heres-how-to-direct-them/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business |
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.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/washingtons-new-tax-could-be-a-solution-to-fund-long-term-care | 2023-07-30T14:34:22 | 1 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-30/washingtons-new-tax-could-be-a-solution-to-fund-long-term-care |
Phoenix heat wave is proof: Climate change is hitting the point of no return
Letter to the editor: Phoenix's record-breaking heat shows the impact of burning carbon on our climate. What kind of planet will we leave for our grandchildren?
July will be remembered as the hottest month on record in Phoenix as well as across much of the world.
I ask you, what do we value?
What do we want our personal and collective legacy to be?
Do we want to be remembered as the generation that destroyed life on earth — the last generation to be able to enjoy the beauty and abundance that nature has to offer?
This is the magnitude of the decisions we are making today. The clock is ticking.
Everywhere we look we see the impacts of the previous decisions that have allowed the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to reach 424 parts per million.
“We are absolutely at levels unseen in human civilization,” said Jason Furtado, a University of Oklahoma meteorology professor. “Humans are running a massive experiment on the Earth climate system via burning carbon, and the results are turning out not great for a lot of people on this planet.”
As a great-grandmom, I am very concerned about what life on earth will look like for our children and grandchildren.
Will humanity survive? What about plants, animals, insects, birds, amphibians?
We must act now while we still have time.
Hazel Chandler, Phoenix
I'm the exact opposite of a racist
Greg Moore’s column states that “Tom Horne is pursuing racist education policies …” (“Black therapists in Arizona address critical race theory in ways schools won’t”).
That is a vicious, defamatory, personal attack on me. My most fundamental belief is that we are all individuals entitled to be judged on what we know and can do, and that race is entirely irrelevant to anything.
I am the exact opposite of a racist.
But Moore is so immersed in racialized thinking that he cannot even contemplate the philosophy of treating people as individuals.
He also attacks my initiative to bring discipline back to the classroom as “a school-to-prison pipeline … .”
My overwhelming goal is to improve academics in our schools. If students can interfere with other students’ learning, without consequence, classrooms become unruly and learning cannot occur.
But Moore doesn’t care about academics. All he cares about is racialized thinking, a philosophy that produces no improvement in academics.
Tom Horne, Arizona superintendent of public instruction
Actually, governor, those plans exist
Many of us saw the letter sent by Gov. Katie Hobbs to our largest utilities last week when the weather once again exceeded 110 degrees.
While I understand her concern, I want to assure her office and Arizonans that the Arizona Corporation Commission has focused on ensuring energy reliability in preparation for the peak energy use we experience in the summer months.
Our commission hosts an annual Summer Preparedness Meeting to hear from utilities planners directly about the power that would be needed to provide reliable service to Arizonans. This planning is not done last minute, and projections occur many years in advance.
For the second year, the commission hosted an Energy Reliability Summit, where utilities provide updates over a longer timeframe. With updated weather predictions, economic development projections and residential growth patterns, they focused on adding the right mix of resources that would be needed to guarantee reliable electricity to their ratepayers.
Another view:Hobbs is 3 weeks late to the heat wave
I’m sure that the governor’s letter was well-meaning, but I was surprised that she was apparently unaware of the role the constitutionally created commission plays in ensuring energy reliability and affordability.
During the pandemic, we also mandated that the utilities could not disconnect residential customers from June 1 to Oct. 1 that were falling on financial hardships, and that rule remains in effect.
The Arizona Corporation Commission remains focused on our role of ensuring energy reliability and rate affordability — especially during the hottest time of the year.
Lea Márquez Peterson, Arizona Corporation Commissioner
Finally, some relief on robocalls
It’s about time the Federal Trade Commission did something about the millions of robocalls Americans get each day.
These robocalls have been rampant for years.
Instead of reining in robocalls, FTC Chair Lina Khan and her cohorts have focused on reasons why companies like Microsoft, Illumina and others should not be able to go further with their proposed mergers.
Then those reasons are shot down in court.
Nonetheless, it’s good to see some progress being made on robocalls. However, given all the money scammed and all the annoyance and time wasted, the fines and penalties look pretty light to me.
Craig Jacobsen, Gold Canyon
Court complainers, where are you?
I’m wondering if anyone can tell me what happened to all the conservatives who for decades have bitterly complained about activism in the courts?
Mike Ringer, Scottsdale
What I learned from the Founders
I recently visited Colonial Williamsburg where The Founders bravely resisted a monarchy and formed a nation of the people.
How difficult that must have been. Loyalists versus rebels, who may have been friends and neighbors.
We have had many difficult moments in our nation. We will get through this troubling time. There are enough reasonable people who believe in democracy and that no one side can have it its way indefinitely.
There have always been swings in power and influence that have shifted the fortunes of the rich and poor. We must remember that there are inequalities in education and wealth that must be looked at for all.
Education especially.
Larry Queen, Scottsdale
What’s on your mind? Send us a letter to the editor online or via email at opinions@arizonarepublic.com. And consider joining our moderated Voices: Engaging Arizona group on Facebook. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2023/07/30/phoenix-heat-wave-shows-climate-change-carbon-emissions/70467626007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:23 | 0 | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2023/07/30/phoenix-heat-wave-shows-climate-change-carbon-emissions/70467626007/ |
Jose Siri Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:26 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Jose Siri, with a slugging percentage of .459 in his past 10 games -- including two home runs -- will be in action for the Tampa Bay Rays versus the Houston Astros, with Brandon Bielak on the hill, July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
He is looking to get back on track after a four-strikeout performance in his last game against the Astros.
Jose Siri Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -139)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +475)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +195)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +150)
Looking to place a prop bet on Jose Siri? Check out what's available at BetMGM and use bonus code "GNPLAY" when you sign up with this link!
Explore More About This Game
Jose Siri At The Plate
- Siri is batting .225 with eight doubles, a triple, 20 home runs and 15 walks.
- Siri has recorded a hit in 41 of 67 games this season (61.2%), including 10 multi-hit games (14.9%).
- He has hit a home run in 28.4% of his games this season, and 8% of his trips to the dish.
- Siri has picked up an RBI in 28 games this season (41.8%), with more than one RBI in 11 of those contests (16.4%).
- He has scored in 32 games this season (47.8%), including multiple runs in seven games.
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Jose Siri Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings compiled by the Astros pitching staff ranks sixth in MLB.
- The Astros have the third-ranked team ERA across all league pitching staffs (3.81).
- Astros pitchers combine to rank 17th in baseball in home runs given up (125 total, 1.2 per game).
- The Astros will send Bielak (5-5) to the mound to make his 13th start of the season. He is 5-5 with a 3.62 ERA and 55 strikeouts through 69 2/3 innings pitched.
- In his most recent outing on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, the righty threw 4 2/3 innings, giving up three earned runs while surrendering six hits.
- The 27-year-old has amassed a 3.62 ERA and 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings in 13 games this season, while allowing a batting average of .262 to opposing hitters.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/jose-siri-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:24 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/jose-siri-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Remember when you resolved back in January to spend less and save more in 2023? Summer can be a good time to revisit those goals, financial advisers say.
A quick financial review now makes sense because there’s still time to make adjustments if you’re falling behind on your goal — whether it’s building an emergency fund, slashing credit card debt or resuming student loan payments, now that the pandemic pause is finally (really!) ending.
Many events that lead to spending, like back-to-school time (supplies and clothing), Halloween (costumes and candy), Thanksgiving (food) and the winter holidays (gifts), are coming up.
“So it’s a really good time to prepare for spending later in the year,” said Yanely Espinal, author of the book “Mind Your Money.”
Nate Hoskin, a certified financial planner in Denver who focuses on young adults, recommends a personal “audit.” If that sounds too much like something the Internal Revenue Service would do, think of it instead as a financial health “checkup.”
Hoskin, who has a substantial TikTok following, urged a hard-nosed assessment of the goals you set at the start of the year. Say you aimed to save $500 a month but have saved only $200 a month.
“Be really critical and ask yourself, ‘Why did I not reach this goal?’ ” he said.
Did you estimate that you would earn more money than you did? (Maybe a side hustle wasn’t as lucrative as anticipated.) Or did you go out to dinner too often? Inflation may have added to your costs, but it’s now cooling.
Hoskin recommends printing out bank and credit card statements, and using a highlighter to mark “frivolous” items, representing money you didn’t need to spend.
To get back on track, build up to your goal gradually. If you have been able to save $200 a month, Hoskin said, that’s great. Try to save $250 next month, then aim for $300.
“Try to reach $500 a month by the end of the year,” he said.
If your plan was vaguely to save any money left over at the end of the month — but there never seemed to be any extra — try a “save first” strategy. Divert 15% of your paycheck to a savings account automatically (your bank, your employer or various money apps can help arrange this), and then make a spending plan for the remaining funds.
“Switching it up may help you a lot,” Hoskin said.
Espinal said you might try making saving more of a habit and transferring money toward your goal weekly, or even daily.
Jesse Mecham, founder of the You Need a Budget app, advised that you — and your partner, if you’re part of a couple — first make a list of what you want your money to do. Pay for an overseas vacation? Create an emergency fund?
Then, he suggested, turn to your account statements and scroll through the past few months of transactions, taking perhaps 20 minutes at most. Many banks and credit cards automatically categorize purchases, which can offer a rough idea of where your money is going. Note any spending that advanced your priorities, but don’t beat yourself up for purchases that didn’t.
“Nobody’s perfect,” he said.
With that knowledge, Mecham said, set goals for the cash in your bank account by asking, “What do I want this money to do until I’m paid again?” You can use a budgeting app or a basic spreadsheet to lay out a plan.
If you’re aware of both your available cash and your goals, you can better manage trade-offs, Mecham said. Rather than thinking, “I can’t spend money on this,” you can tell yourself, “I’d rather spend money on that.”
Paying down credit card debt is especially timely this summer since both card balances and average card interest rates are high. The free, online debt payoff tool at calculator.net can help you see how much extra you can afford to pay and how long it will take to eliminate the balance, Espinal said.
Don’t get bogged down in the debate over whether to use the “avalanche” method — giving priority to paying off debt with the highest interest rate — or the “snowball” method, which focuses on paying off the smallest balance first to build a feeling of success.
“Most people should use a hybrid approach,” Espinal said. Start by paying off a small balance to gain confidence. Then switch to paying down high-interest-rate cards (put funds toward the highest rate and make minimum payments on the others until the first card is paid off) to save the most money.
Pick a specific date for your checkup to make sure it gets done before the end of summer, said Rob Williams, managing director of financial planning at Charles Schwab.
“Putting it on the calendar can help you get financially healthy,” he said.
Here are some questions and answers about how to do a summer financial checkup:
How can I tell if my paycheck withholdings are accurate?
Summer is a good time to review withholdings — the amount of tax withheld from your paycheck — especially if you got a raise or have had a big change in your life, like getting married or having a baby. If you have too little withheld, you may have an unexpectedly large tax bill next April.
The IRS offers an online estimator at irs.gov where you can answer a few questions to see if you should tweak your withholdings. To make changes, file an updated form W-4 with your employer.
How do I view my credit report?
Checking your credit report, which catalogs your borrowing history, is a smart step and can usually be done relatively quickly online. The three major credit reporting bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — are offering free reports weekly at least until the end of this year at www.annualcreditreport.com.
If you note any errors, contact both the credit bureau and the lender that provided the incorrect information, the Federal Trade Commission says. | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/why-its-smart-to-revisit-new-years-savings-goals-now/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business | 2023-07-30T14:34:28 | 0 | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/why-its-smart-to-revisit-new-years-savings-goals-now/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business |
ASU professors tried to drive a right-leaning center off campus. They succeeded
Opinion: If it was this easy to challenge a conservative center at ASU under the guise of offensive speech, it will happen again. And then who's the next target?
An ad hoc committee of the Arizona Legislature held hearings this month to examine free speech at Arizona’s public universities.
The meeting was provoked by an internal conflict at Arizona State University that led a wealthy benefactor to withdraw funding.
Republican lawmakers who called the hearing walked into heavy blowback.
“With all due respect, spare me,” Rep. Analise Ortiz, a Democrat, said. “This problem was manufactured. Everything else here today is political theater and a waste of our time.”
Jodi Liggett of the Arizona Center for Women’s Advancement and self-described “happy warrior,” tweeted, “Ok you’re free to have your dumb ideas, AND I am free to say those ideas are dumb or your funder is dumb for investing in them. Dear capitalists - recall the marketplace of ideas? The ‘invisible hand’ is smacking you upside the head. Quit crying.”
The Barrett letter was a provocation
Let’s consider what happened at Arizona State University.
On Feb. 1, no less than 39 faculty members at ASU’s Barrett Honors College signed a letter opposing three conservatives scheduled to speak on campus.
They directed most of their fire at two speakers, Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated radio talk host, and Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, an organization that promotes conservatism among high school and college students.
The faculty letter described the two speakers as “purveyors of hate” ... “anti-intellectual” ... “anti-democratic” ... “two white nationalist provocateurs” ... “who regularly attack our democracy.”
The Barrett letter was, itself, a provocation. Inked in acid.
People noticed. People were provoked.
Dennis Prager is not hateful or a bigot
Dennis Prager has been speaking for decades to Americans across this nation on now nearly 400 radio affiliates.
To call him a purveyor of hate is a libel. To describe him as anti-intellectual is a lie.
His talk-radio program is unique for its sweep of intellectual topics from classical music to Russian history to Jewish folklore to constitutional principles. Thirty years before there was the intellectual dark web, there was Dennis Prager.
A man of real warmth and decency, Prager eschews the fire-breather politics of our day.
He founded the online Prager University to calmly teach conservative principles to young people, and the site now draws a billion-plus page views per year.
He is not hateful. He is not a bigot. He is decent to his core.
ASU hates free speech?That's laughable, considering the source
Millions of his listeners across decades would vouch for that. They know that if you call Prager unworthy to visit your campus, you call them unworthy, too.
Can critics find Prager quotes that are irreverent and controversial? Yes, they can.
But removed from their larger context — his vast body of work as one of the most widely broadcast voices in the country — they become a distortion.
Further, this is a nasty little game that can be played both ways, as I will demonstrate later.
Charlie Kirk is a different animal
Charlie Kirk is a different cat than Prager. He is a provocateur, not unlike the Barrett 39.
He’s a skillful communicator who grew audience faster than he grew wisdom as he rode the coattails of Donald Trump to national fame.
Still young (he’s not yet 30), he has taken on the persona of Trump and practices the former president’s smash-mouth politics.
He has drawn well-earned criticism for some foul opinions, but he’s also been the target of leftist slurs, such as those hurled from ABC TV’s “The View,” which had to retract them more than once.
The Barrett letter isn’t primarily about de-platforming Prager and Kirk.
It’s a writ of divorce.
Faculty protest wasn't about either speaker
It’s a screed about the past sins of the T.W. Lewis Center, which was created with funding from real estate investor and philanthropist Tom Lewis to help teach Barrett students professional and life skills.
The Barrett faculty wrote, “This [speaking] event marks the culmination of a long history of choices made by the leadership of the Lewis Center, the sum of which demonstrate a vision for the center that runs contrary to the core values of the Barrett community.”
Months later, in a June 19 guest column, Ann Atkinson, executive director of the Lewis Center, revealed to the nearly 4 million readers of The Wall Street Journal that “as of June 30, ASU will dismantle the Lewis Center and terminate my position as its executive director.”
“ASU claims to value freedom of expression,” she wrote. “But in the end the faculty mob always wins.”
In an unsigned and snotty little riposte, ASU asserted that, in fact, free speech had flourished.
Atkinson’s “conclusion ... misses the obvious point” that the event went on as scheduled, the university explained.
The faculty, too, got to express their free speech rights when they condemned the event, said ASU.
ASU posts a snarky response to Atkinson
As for Atkinson and the Lewis Center, well, “Ms. Atkinson’s current job at the university will no longer exist after June 30 because the donor who created and funded the center decided to terminate his donation. Unfortunate, but hardly unprecedented.”
That’s one way to put it.
Another way is how Tom Lewis put it:
“After seeing this level of left-wing hostility and activism, I no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift, and made the decision to terminate our agreement, effective June 30, 2023.”
Either way, when all is said and done, the cold, hard math of the matter is this:
Lewis is gone as donor. The center he funded is going. And the center’s director, Atkinson, is looking for a new job.
The Barrett 39 win.
Barrett faculty won. And they'll do it again
In ASU’s snarky response to Atkinson, it added, “Ann Atkinson has lost the distinction between feelings and fact.”
That’s quite a thing to write.
There are a hundred new-wave feminists on the ASU campus alone who would instantly recognize the oozing sexism in that retort — the retrograde “hysterical woman” bit.
Somebody at ASU wrote that line, and somebody signed off on it.
Get the picture?
When speech isn’t protected everyone is vulnerable.
Thirty-nine ASU faculty members brazenly and successfully blew up a learning center inside their own college. They used offensive speech as their pretext.
The obvious point is that people who would do that will do it again.
The obvious question is who’s next?
Many will contemplate that with trepidation. And it won’t just be campus conservatives.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com. | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/philboas/2023/07/30/asu-faculty-stopped-conservative-center-danger-free-speech/70474024007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:30 | 0 | https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/philboas/2023/07/30/asu-faculty-stopped-conservative-center-danger-free-speech/70474024007/ |
Josh Lowe Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
The Tampa Bay Rays and Josh Lowe (.333 slugging percentage over his past 10 games, including one homer), battle starter Brandon Bielak and the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park, Sunday at 2:10 PM ET.
He had a hitless showing in his previous game (0-for-4) against the Astros.
Josh Lowe Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -208)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +500)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +175)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +125)
Looking to place a prop bet on Josh Lowe? Check out what's available at BetMGM and use bonus code "GNPLAY" when you sign up with this link!
Explore More About This Game
Josh Lowe At The Plate
- Lowe is batting .268 with 18 doubles, a triple, 13 home runs and 19 walks.
- In 52 of 83 games this season (62.7%) Lowe has picked up a hit, and in 22 of those games he had more than one (26.5%).
- He has gone deep in 15.7% of his games this year, and 4.2% of his trips to the dish.
- Lowe has an RBI in 34 of 83 games this year, with multiple RBI in 11 of them. He has also driven in three or more of his team's runs in four contests.
- He has scored in 35 of 83 games this year, and more than once 7 times.
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Josh Lowe Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The pitching staff for the Astros has a collective 9.3 K/9, the sixth-best in MLB.
- The Astros' 3.81 team ERA ranks third across all MLB pitching staffs.
- Astros pitchers combine to surrender 125 total home runs at a rate of 1.2 per game (to rank 17th in baseball).
- Bielak (5-5) gets the starting nod for the Astros in his 13th start of the season. He has a 3.62 ERA in 69 2/3 innings pitched, with 55 strikeouts.
- In his last time out on Tuesday, the righty threw 4 2/3 innings against the Texas Rangers, allowing three earned runs while surrendering six hits.
- The 27-year-old has amassed an ERA of 3.62, with 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings, in 13 games this season. Opponents have a .262 batting average against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/josh-lowe-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:31 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/josh-lowe-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
PORT ANGELES — Sitting at a weathered picnic table along Ediz Hook, a 3-mile-long sand spit that extends from the shores of the city, LaTrisha Suggs studied the jagged ridges of the Olympic Mountains on the horizon.
“The month of July, it’s not normally like this — it’s beautiful, but it’s not normally warm like this,” Suggs said, a few weeks before the state would declare a drought emergency in the watershed after a dry spring and an early snowmelt. “There’s a little speck up there, but we usually still have some snow.”
Glaciers from within the craggy mountaintops release water and nutrients carried by the Elwha River through a sea of evergreens. Some of the water is intercepted to supply drinking water for the city and county, while the rest flows to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, nourishing salmon and other species along the way.
But within the blanket of green are several brown patches — timber cuts — dotted with skinny, straggling trees. Another piece of this landscape is set to be logged, a few hundred feet from the site of the former lower Elwha Dam: the 126-acre Power Plant timber sale.
The sale has rankled local leaders from Port Angeles, who had requested the state Department of Natural Resources reconsider its plans, and spurred conservationists to file a lawsuit to stop the sale. They say the loss of forests like this one in the watershed could further warm streams, reduce flows in the river, and threaten drinking water and salmon.
The planned cut represents a growing controversy over the state’s forest-management practices and its sale of timber in the face of climate change.
“There are increasing numbers of different counties and different communities that are pushing back on DNR’s harvest plans,” former Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said. “Some of them for local reasons, and some of them are also for climate reasons.”
Suggs is a member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and the Port Angeles City Council. She said the city has seen worsening droughts and water-use restrictions. It now opposes all logging in the Elwha watershed until the state studies the effects.
“We’re seeing impacts of climate change,” Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West said in an interview at City Hall in early July. “We’re seeing major flow changes in the Elwha River. … We’re at a historically low point that probably in the last 25 years, it is probably one of three times where we’ve ever been this low at this time of year.”
Ten years ago, the removal of two dams on the Elwha was completed in a roughly $330 million salmon-recovery success story. Conservationists, who filed the lawsuit seeking to halt the timber sale, question why the state would allow trees to be harvested here, of all places.
But the state says 40% of its lands are managed for conservation and it recently began testing the impacts of logging on stream temperatures and flows.
Meanwhile, proceeds from the Power Plant sale will go to Clallam County and could help fund things like schools and fire and emergency services.
Even as the state gave in to pressure last week from the Metropolitan King County Council to postpone cutting one Duvall forest, the auction to sell off this mature forest along the Elwha charged ahead.
Randy Johnson, a Clallam County commissioner, said that while it may be easy for counties like King to step back and say they’d like to preserve a chunk of forest and forfeit the revenue, Clallam doesn’t have the luxury.
“We’re A, a rural area, and B, we’re not the most well-off county,” Johnson said.
“Those dollars matter — where are we going to make up for that shortfall?”
The forest comprising Power Plant has been harvested in the past, and Johnson said DNR told the council there were no significant risks to the environment associated with the sale.
“If a sale like Power Plant is contentious, then we’re just going to be importing more and more wood from outside of Washington from lands that aren’t managed as well as ours are,” said Duane Emmons, DNR’s assistant deputy supervisor for State Uplands.
About 1 in 4 logs that make it to a mill in Washington come from forests managed by the state, officials say.
On Wednesday, Murphy Co. submitted a high bid of about $657,000 to harvest some of the trees from the sale, which make up less than 1% of the Elwha watershed. The first page of the state’s auction packet noted the sale is the subject of a lawsuit and suggests contacting an attorney with questions.
Rich resource
The powerful river and nearby lush forests of the Elwha watershed have long been harnessed for their valuable resources. In the early 1900s, Canadian entrepreneur Thomas Aldwell saw the river and its narrow gorges as an economic opportunity.
He constructed a hydroelectric dam in 1910, eventually supplying enough energy to fire up a pulp mill in Port Angeles, bolstering the city’s growing logging industry. As energy demands from the industry rose, plans to construct a second dam were solidified. By 1927, Glines Canyon Dam was built 8 miles upstream.
Just last fall, DNR sold off more than 160 acres of timber in the Aldwell sale, netting $2.9 million. The land, near Olympic National Park, is strewn with stumps, woody debris and a few patchy stands of skinny trees.
Suggs saw the Elwha Dam removal come to fruition — the largest dam removal in the world.
“When the dams fell, tribal members were just kind of walking taller and were excited,” said Suggs, who then worked for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.
The tribe initiated a moratorium on fishing to give the salmon runs space to recover after dam removal. For more than a decade, tribal fishermen have not harvested salmon.
Growing up, Jessica Elofson remembers heading down to Sisson’s Hole with her aunties, setting nets and dragging big silvery salmon up the steep canyon from the river on a rope.
“There’s nothing like it, to be near the Elwha River: that color, smell and being there with all your heroes,” said Elofson, a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, fighting back tears. “It’s hard not getting to raise my kids in that way of life.”
The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe is slated to have a tribal ceremonial and subsistence fishery for coho salmon on the Elwha this fall. It would be the first in years.
People within the Dungeness-Elwha watershed have expressed concerns about the current drought’s potential to harm fish hatcheries and salmon migrations.
“Everybody has done something for the benefit of the watershed, and I think it’s time that Washington state DNR step up and do that same thing,” Suggs said.
Meanwhile, the Elwha is strained to provide enough water for the humans that rely on it.
The city says it is concerned about the potential impacts of logging on the river’s flows, which serve Port Angeles and 25% of Clallam County.
In October 2022, the city declared a “Stage III Water Shortage,” meaning the city’s water supplies are “critically impacted” and residents have to cut back on their water use. The shortage was in place for about a month.
The 2023 snow season ended May 31, and Washington’s snowpack quickly melted. The Olympic Mountains’ snowpack was about 57% of what was considered normal from 1991 to 2020. This week, the river’s flows are at about half of their average this time of year.
On Monday, the state declared a drought emergency in Clallam County. One county water district began trucking in water because the flows in a coastal stream were so low.
DNR in April notified the city about a pair of upcoming timber sales, including Power Plant. The city responded, asking the state to pull back its plans until the effects on the watershed could be evaluated.
“Logging these forests compromises efforts to restore endangered salmon habitat; threatens other endangered and recovering species; destroys essential carbon sinks; and threatens Port Angeles’ sole drinking water source,” the city manager wrote.
The city followed up in June, again asking for a pause on the timber sales. “The City will continue to oppose the State logging in the Elwha River Watershed, until such time that we can proactively and collectively discuss a long-term plan for harvests that protects the river,” Mayor Kate Dexter wrote.
The state Board of Natural Resources approved the timber sale days after the city sent the letter.
Timber sale moves ahead
In a pair of battered leather hiking boots, with keys clinking against a reusable water bottle in her pack, Elizabeth Dunne followed a dirt power line access road to a skinny trail leading to the lower Elwha Dam site.
Succulent, peachy salmonberries and velvety thimbleberry bush fronds flank the entrance to the trail, blanketed in soft shade from the outstretched limbs of towering Western red cedar, Douglas fir and hemlock. The churning river can be heard just steps into the forest. Eventually, an overlook where the lower dam once stood reveals the Elwha carving through steep canyon walls.
As policy director at the Earth Law Center, Dunne advocates for the rights of nature in the legal system.
The Earth Law Center joined the Center for Whale Research and the Keystone Species Alliance in appealing the state’s approval of the Power Plant timber sale.
The lawsuit in county court explains that the forest is in the headwaters of Colville Creek and other small tributaries of the Elwha, which are “areas critical for the recharging of groundwater to feed these streams” and central to supporting salmon and the endangered southern resident orcas that rely on them.
It alleges that the state failed to analyze the “effect of cumulative impacts of past, present, and future logging or consider alternatives that would have less of an adverse impact on the environment.”
And it alleges the state’s environmental impact analysis indicates no assessment of effects on instream flows, groundwater or water temperatures. The state confirmed this claim in a June Board of Natural Resources meeting, but said it is adhering to its Habitat Conservation Plan that was reviewed and approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries staff.
At the meeting, one board member said they were concerned about the impacts of timber harvest on water quality — not just runoff and sedimentation from the use of heavy equipment and trucks, but also the potential influence on stream temperatures. The Elwha is listed as a temperature-impaired stream by the state Ecology Department.
Paul Pickett, an environmental engineer who worked over 30 years at the Ecology Department, wrote to the state with concerns about the impacts of logging in the watershed.
“Trees of 60 years … or older provide the highest instream flows,” Pickett wrote in a June email.
Opponents of the timber sale noted in letters and testimony several studies tracing the impact of some types of logging on watersheds.
Clear-cut logging of old forests destroys the natural stream hydrology, with flows reduced by as much as 50% in summer as water is sucked up by young plantation trees, scientists have found. The water deficit can last decades.
According to state documents, some of the trees slated to be harvested in Power Plant are 80 to 100 years old.
Emmons, the DNR lands deputy, says it’s wrong to compare these studies with DNR practices. Many of the studies were based on Oregon forest practice rules, and the timber was harvested half a century ago when there weren’t as strict of protections for streams, as well as salmon and other species.
No part of the cut will be closer than 200 feet to the river, according to the state. DNR manages less than 20% of the total forestlands in the watershed.
After the forest is cut, it should be left with some 25-year-old trees, too small to be valuable for harvest, and eight larger trees per acre.
Emmons said the state is obligated to cut timber to raise revenue and that it is going “above and beyond” in its management of state lands and Clean Water Act requirements.
“Investing in studies, pausing all timber sales in the Elwha watershed … is not something that we see as a worthwhile investment,” Emmons said.
Environmentalists have long pushed the state agency to see the forests for the trees, beyond their economic value and the minimum conservation requirements. Conservationists celebrated a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that they believe gave the state flexibility to manage lands for diverse public interests like mitigating the worst impacts of climate change, such as worsening flooding, drought and extreme heat.
“We recognize that there are people that just don’t like timber harvests; they want to see forests in Washington conserved to sequester carbon or for other uses,” Emmons said. “We’ve conserved half of our lands for conservation. The other half is there to generate the forest products that we all need.”
Vision for the Elwha and beyond
The all-terrain vehicle puttered down a winding dirt road shaded by mature Douglas fir and cedar, with sword ferns and vine maple brushing the sides of the cart along the way. At the bottom was a meadow with knee-high grasses, a table and chairs overlooking the blue-green Elwha.
Ken Balcomb, the late founder of the Center for Whale Research, spent some of his last years here, at the Big Salmon Ranch. The perimeter spans the river from slow-going, translucent, deep-blue pools to tumbling rocks in a furious rush toward saltwater.
His brother, Howard Garrett, said Balcomb invested in the ranch in part to highlight and protect the value of whole ecosystems: from conserving healthy forests that anchor slopes, store water and filter it, to freeing main river channels from dams and other barriers, and allowing nutrients to flow from the mountains to the estuary.
He’s now fighting, just as Balcomb always had, for healthy salmon runs to support the recovery of the endangered southern resident orcas. Part of that fight includes joining the lawsuit, and offering to work with DNR to protect ecologically complex state forests.
Peter Goldman, managing attorney for the Washington Forest Law Center, who is not involved with the lawsuit, sees a common thread among the opposition to state timber sales.
“That’s the same issue that’s under all these cases, is what is DNR’s legal duty to identify and protect these old, structurally significant forests, many of which are over 100 years old,” Goldman said. “They’re pre-old growth, soon-to-be old growth.”
A Clallam County judge on Tuesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction to pause the Power Plant timber sale and still needs to hear the merits of the case.
DNR could confirm the sale within a couple of weeks. Then the trees would be next to fall. | https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/controversial-wa-timber-sale-near-elwha-river-rankles-conservationists-port-angeles-leaders/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_seattle-news | 2023-07-30T14:34:34 | 0 | https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/controversial-wa-timber-sale-near-elwha-river-rankles-conservationists-port-angeles-leaders/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_seattle-news |
Luke Raley Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:26 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
On Sunday, Luke Raley (batting .185 in his past 10 games) and the Tampa Bay Rays play the Houston Astros, whose starting pitcher will be Brandon Bielak. First pitch is at 2:10 PM ET.
In his most recent game he had a hitless showing (0-for-4) against the Astros.
Luke Raley Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -189)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +375)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +150)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +100)
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Discover More About This Game
Luke Raley At The Plate
- Raley has 18 doubles, two triples, 15 home runs and 21 walks while batting .269.
- In 57.3% of his games this season (47 of 82), Raley has picked up at least one hit, and in 19 of those games (23.2%) he recorded multiple hits.
- He has homered in 15.9% of his games in 2023 (13 of 82), and 5.2% of his trips to the dish.
- Raley has an RBI in 26 of 82 games this year, with multiple RBI in 10 of them. He has also driven home three or more of his team's runs in three contests.
- He has scored at least once 32 times this year (39.0%), including 12 games with multiple runs (14.6%).
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Luke Raley Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The Astros pitching staff ranks sixth in the league with a collective 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings.
- The Astros' 3.81 team ERA ranks third among all MLB pitching staffs.
- Astros pitchers combine to rank 17th in baseball in home runs given up (125 total, 1.2 per game).
- Bielak gets the start for the Astros, his 13th of the season. He is 5-5 with a 3.62 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 69 2/3 innings pitched.
- In his last outing on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, the right-hander threw 4 2/3 innings, giving up three earned runs while surrendering six hits.
- The 27-year-old has put up an ERA of 3.62, with 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings, in 13 games this season. Opponents are batting .262 against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/luke-raley-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:38 | 1 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/luke-raley-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Members of a group that for years has been fighting poverty and gun violence in Seattle’s Rainier Valley were among five people shot Friday night in a grocery store parking lot that police and community members have said is a magnet for crime.
Two members of a “Safe Passage Team” and three other people were shot while gathered around a cluster of small blue tents erected by the group in the parking lot of the Rainier Beach Safeway in the 9200 block of Rainier Avenue South.
Until Friday, the teams had provided pop-up resources at the Safeway every Friday night for three years without incident, according to Jayme Hommer, the chief development officer for Boys and Girls Clubs of King County, which sponsors Safe Passage. She said the teams “provide hot meals and resources to community members and create a safe space for grieving, healing, and connection in response to community violence.”
No arrests were made and police had no further details Saturday.
Two of the victims, a 24-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man, were initially listed in critical condition. They were both upgraded to satisfactory condition Saturday, according to Harborview Medical Center.
Two other men in their 20s were treated at the hospital overnight and released Saturday. A fifth victim was treated at the scene and released, according to police.
The shopping center’s parking lot has a history of violence, and police have repeatedly warned the owners about crime on the property, according to a pair of lawsuits filed this spring by the family of a bystander who was killed there during a shooting in 2020.
The Safeway and a liquor store next door attract milling crowds, particularly on weekend evenings, and over the years the parking lot as been witness to “scores of crimes, including assaults, shootings, murders, prowls, robberies, theft and intoxication,” the lawsuits allege.
According to police, at least two shooters opened fire around 9 p.m. Friday, with witnesses saying dozens of rounds were fired into the temporary tents and tables set up by the SE Network, the parent organization of Safe Passage.
Thinh Ngo, 36, was in the Safeway when he saw people running, and heard a girl yelling, “Gun! Gun! Gun!”
“And next thing I heard was popping,” he said, noting the gunshots didn’t sound loud to him.
“It didn’t register to me that it was shots, even,” adding that it took him several seconds to realize that he needed to get away.
One of Safe Passage’s primary goals has been to connect with those who hang out in the Safeway parking lot, form relationships and de-escalate any interactions that might turn critical, according to its literature.
“We are deeply saddened by this traumatic incident,” said Hommer, the Boys & Girls Club spokesman.
“It is particularly devastating that this act of violence is in direct contrast to the purpose and mission of this space,” she said. “Our community warriors put their lives on the line every day to ensure that the members of our community are safe.”
“They’ve been there every weekend,” said Otis Ames, the director of critical incident response at the Freedom Project, a community anti-violence and anti-incarceration group that responded to the shooting. “They’ve been working to help the community and disrupt gun violence for years. This is supposed to be a safe space, and people in this community know that and appreciate it.
“We can’t let this change what we do,” he said.
The shootings sparked fear and outrage in the community and hand-wringing by police and politicians who have watched as gun violence has spiked throughout the city.
Chief Adrian Diaz called the incident “really disturbing,” given that the victims were involved in community outreach to address the very issues that led to the violence Friday night. Diaz was joined at the scene by Mayor Bruce Harrell, who denounced the shootings as “appalling and unacceptable” in a post on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter.
“There are too many guns in hands where they do not belong, and we can never accept this violence as a normal fact of life,” the mayor wrote.
City Councilmember Tammy Morales, whose District 2 includes South Seattle, said in the coming days she will work with “all parties” to discuss “evidence-based solutions that will prevent such tragedies from recurring.”
The shooting is being investigated by SPD’s Gun Violence Reduction Task Force, which was formed by Diaz in June to address the spiral in gun violence.
Police are asking anyone with information to call the SPD Violent Crimes Tip Line at 206-233-5000.
Shantel Patu, executive director of Urban Family, said her group was called to the scene to manage the crowd and help people impacted by the shooting. She said the pop-up has been a constant mechanism for good, focusing on youth programs, neighborhood safety and family support.
With the increase in gun violence in Seattle, she said it’s time for the community to step up, and for parents to look inside their homes at what their kids are doing and what they’re going through.
The lawsuits, filed in King County Superior Court this spring by the family of Christopher Wilson, name as defendants Safeway and Yee LLC, a family-owned company that owns the shopping center housing the store, its parking lot and adjacent properties — including a former King Donuts shop — alleging they are liable for negligence, nuisance and wrongful death for failing to address the ongoing violence and crime on the property.
Wilson, 35, was one of two bystanders struck and killed in the Safeway parking lot by rounds allegedly fired by another man involved in a gang-related dispute the night of May 23, 2020.
According to the documents, SPD on Jan. 30, 2020 “formally identified the area surrounding the liquor store as host to a history of public safety issues constituting ‘chronic illegal activity.'” The previous year, SPD officers were dispatched 89 times to “multiple shootings, numerous assaults and fights” and liquor violations.
The state Liquor and Cannabis Control Board has received numerous community complaints as well, according to the lawsuit.
Among the incidents outlined in the lawsuits were a May 5, 2019, shootout inside the liquor store after two groups of young men — including teenagers — got into an argument, leaving several people hurt, and a Dec. 29, 2019, incident where gunfire erupted at a candlelight vigil for a victim of gun violence.
“With a wholesale lack of security to protect business invitees, defendants exacerbated the problem of third-party criminal activity in the parking lot,” the lawsuits allege. “Defendants each and all knew about the danger of shootings at their parking lot … and knew that the shootings posed a substantial risk of harm to bystanders patronizing the lot for business purposes,” claims the lawsuit, filed by the Seattle firm of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala.
Friday’s shooting underscores an unsettling increase in gun violence in the city.
Two weeks ago, three men in their 20s were shot a few blocks away from Friday’s shooting scene, in the 9000 block of Seward Park Avenue South. No arrests have been made in that shooting.
Last weekend, two men and two women were shot early Sunday during a street racing event on Capitol Hill, near Broadway and East Pike Street.
One of the women, 20, died at Harborview Medical Center, according to police. The woman’s family identified her in an online crowdfunding campaign as Essence Naje Greene.
With an alarming uptick in gun violence in the lead-up to summer, the Seattle Police Department in June created a community violence task force of officers and detectives pulled from units across the agency who will target people responsible for the shootings.
The task force, composed of about 50 officers, is focusing efforts on four areas where violence is widespread: Aurora Avenue, downtown, the Central District and the city’s South End.
Seattle police investigated 55 homicides in 2022, up from 41 the previous year. Fifty-four people were killed in Seattle homicides in 2020, 20 more than in 2019.
Seattle Times staff reporters Filip Timotija and Daisy Zavala Magaña contributed to this story. | https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/rainier-beach-safeway-where-5-were-shot-has-been-magnet-for-violence-lawsuits-say/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_seattle-news | 2023-07-30T14:34:41 | 0 | https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/rainier-beach-safeway-where-5-were-shot-has-been-magnet-for-violence-lawsuits-say/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_seattle-news |
Florida real estate fundamentals healthy despite a 'locked in' feeling for some | Home Front
If you follow real estate in the news, you may be left scratching your head wondering are we in a good real estate market or preparing for a crash.
Ever since the housing crash during the Great Recession in 2008 and the subsequent recovery, real estate pundits have been quick to try and predict the next housing crash. First it was the economic whiplash from pandemic shutdowns, then the global unrest and now it is the rise in interest rates that are sure to cause the housing market’s collapse. Headlines have ranged from touting Florida as the best place to live, the worst place to live, great value, most overvalued and everything in between. The reality lies somewhere in the middle where we have experienced a relatively healthy real estate market that has the foundation to last for some time.
As I have said in the past, real estate follows the relatively simple relationship of supply and demand whereby with a steady demand and a still restricted supply of available homes, prices will still increase (albeit at a slower pace than the last few years of accelerated appreciation). When you look a little closer at the factors contributing to the supply and demand of residential real estate, it is not quite as sensational as the headlines may lead you to believe.
From a demand perspective, the state of Florida, and more particularly, the west coast of Florida, remains attractive to a large number of people from all over the world. It is estimated that the state’s population will swell to over 25 million people by 2032 – almost an 11% increase from today’s population. From an economic perspective, Florida has outperformed most other states and its favorable tax benefits are providing the boost in demand in addition to the typical retirement/relocation that Florida has enjoyed for so many years. In addition to this domestic influx of demand, Florida far outpaces other states when it comes to investment from foreign buyers.
The main factor cooling demand is the stubbornly high interest rates for borrowing money to purchase a home. In the first half of 2022, interest rates more than doubled and have bounced around that high level ever since. Initially, the shock from those increases certainly impacted a buyer’s appetite for buying real estate. And although the overall activity has come off of the frantic pace of the past few years, buyers have settled into the realization that 3% rates are a thing of the past and waiting further will only cost them more with prices continuing to rise. Furthermore, the high level of cash buyers in our local real estate market partially insulates us from interest rate volatility.
Another factor that is starting to influence the demand for homes is the rising cost of homeowner’s insurance. This is an increasingly problematic area for all homeowners that will require further action from the state legislature to ensure more stability in the insurance market. It is imperative to attract more insurers to the Florida market to begin to stabilize prices and eventually see a decrease in the cost of homeowners insurance. If this issue is not resolved soon, we will see more of a negative impact on overall buyer demand.
From the supply side of the equation, while we have come off of the pandemic lows in housing inventory, our market is still woefully undersupplied with both new and existing homes for sale. The inability of builders to create enough new homes coupled with existing seller’s unwillingness to put their homes on the market is tipping the supply curve lower relative to the demand for homes. This imbalance is why prices have remained so resilient in the face of some of the headwinds described above.
For builders, the main challenge since the pandemic began (and even before it started) is the lack of availability of skilled construction workers to complete their new construction projects. New immigration legislation recently enacted is only going to make the supply of available workers even more challenging. While there is a healthy demand for new construction throughout our local market, it will be difficult for builders to keep up with their inventory, resulting again in higher prices.
From the resale perspective, many reluctant sellers are experiencing the “lock in” effect. Over 60% of homes with a mortgage have an interest rate less than 4%. With interest rates hovering close to 7%, this creates a disincentive for sellers to give up their lower interest rate. The seller feels “locked in” to their lower rate and as a result will not place their home on the market and further limits the supply of available homes for sale. With interest rates predicted to head lower in the next several months, many think that once rates approach 5%, many of these “locked in” sellers will start to put their homes on the market. This will provide some much needed inventory to begin to balance out the supply and demand dynamics and ultimately continue to reduce price appreciation in our area.
For the meantime, if you are in a position where you need to sell your home or you want to capitalize on the enormous equity that you have acquired in recent years, it is an excellent time to sell. Furthermore, if you are on the sideline to buy expecting prices to plunge, you are going to be disappointed. The fundamentals of our overall real estate market remain sound and should continue for the foreseeable future.
Peter Crowley is president of Re/Max Alliance Group. | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/business/real-estate/2023/07/30/peter-crowley-for-sw-florida-real-estate-fundamentals-remain-sound/70438419007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:44 | 1 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/business/real-estate/2023/07/30/peter-crowley-for-sw-florida-real-estate-fundamentals-remain-sound/70438419007/ |
Randy Arozarena Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Randy Arozarena -- with an on-base percentage of .225 in his past 10 games, 141 points lower than his season-long percentage -- will be in action for the Tampa Bay Rays against the Houston Astros, with Brandon Bielak on the mound, on July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
In his previous game he had a hitless performance (0-for-3) against the Astros.
Randy Arozarena Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -208)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +425)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +135)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +100)
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Read More About This Game
Randy Arozarena At The Plate
- Arozarena has 10 doubles, two triples, 17 home runs and 51 walks while hitting .260.
- Among qualifying hitters, he ranks 63rd in batting average, while his on-base percentage ranks 24th and he is 69th in slugging.
- Arozarena has picked up a hit in 58.8% of his 102 games this year, with multiple hits in 27.5% of them.
- He has hit a home run in 15.7% of his games in 2023, and 3.9% of his trips to the dish.
- Arozarena has driven home a run in 36 games this season (35.3%), including more than one RBI in 12.7% of his games and producing three or more of his team's runs on eight occasions..
- He has scored in 49 games this year (48.0%), including multiple runs in 12 games.
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Randy Arozarena Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The pitching staff for the Astros has a collective 9.3 K/9, the sixth-best in MLB.
- The Astros' 3.81 team ERA ranks third across all league pitching staffs.
- Astros pitchers combine to rank 17th in baseball in home runs given up (125 total, 1.2 per game).
- Bielak (5-5) gets the starting nod for the Astros in his 13th start of the season. He has a 3.62 ERA in 69 2/3 innings pitched, with 55 strikeouts.
- The righty's most recent appearance was on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, when he threw 4 2/3 innings, surrendering three earned runs while allowing six hits.
- The 27-year-old has put up an ERA of 3.62, with 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings, in 13 games this season. Opposing hitters have a .262 batting average against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/randy-arozarena-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:44 | 1 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/randy-arozarena-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
This municipal election, in which every district in Seattle is up for grabs, voters will expect the new City Council to strike a balance between an effective response to public safety concerns and a just reformation of that system following what has been a tumultuous four-year term.
One of the city’s most universal and divisive issues, public safety has dominated the current council term. Members have grappled with increasing public-facing crime in a downtown that had become vacant from the COVID-19 pandemic, a burgeoning fentanyl crisis, a decline in deployable police officers and a debate around the right solution to policing, which peaked during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Now, 45 candidates from across the city are sharing their visions of a safer, more just Seattle before Tuesday’s primary election, and incumbents are explaining how things will be different.
A more cohesive responder debate
The state of public safety in Seattle is a mixed bag of progress — like an apparent break in a three-year crime wave late last year — and concerning stats, like homicides trending upward this year. Perceptions of public safety also vary across the city: An April survey by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce found it to be the second-biggest issue for residents after homelessness, and a poll by The Seattle Times in June found that 85% of respondents feel safe in their own neighborhoods, though concerns about drug use and gun violence remain top of mind.
Council members running for reelection have had to acknowledge that some of the concern comes from frustrated voters who think the city has not adequately handled these new and perennial safety concerns, and those who felt disenfranchised by the council’s near-vote to defund the Seattle Police Department by 50% after pressure from protests in summer 2020 — a commitment that was later reversed.
While the planned divestment never happened, council members made smaller changes to SPD’s budget, like moving parking enforcement and its $20 million budget to the Seattle Department of Transportation, only to return the funding to SPD in 2022.
That discussion created a lasting distraction from larger public safety issues in the council’s purview, District 7 Councilmember Andrew Lewis said. Lewis is defending his seat against five other candidates including retired Navy Commander Bob Kettle and business owner Olga Sagan, who say they would be tougher than Lewis has been on public safety.
“The focus on budgets is misleading,” Lewis said Wednesday. “If there’s anything that the whole conversation around ‘defund’ exposed, it’s that we get weird policy outcomes that miss the point,” he said of driving reform through budget cuts.
Now Lewis says the city is ready to focus on “the crisis in the street.”
“When there is a crisis, when there’s an emergency in our community and someone needs the collective help of the government, when they call 911, we need to be sending the most appropriate and effective response ,” Lewis said. “In many cases that is police, in many cases that is not.”
To Lewis and many candidates, that means a well-staffed Police Department and a team of civilian responders to address emergency calls, like in the event of mental health or substance abuse crises, wherearmed officers are not the best fit.
While Lewis supports a plan by Mayor Bruce Harrell to bolster the Police Department by around 500 officers for a deployable force of 1,400 officers, District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales said it’s too soon to identify the right number of officers.
Rather, Morales says the emphasis needs to be on preventing crime by providing a safer, more affordable and equitable community. When there is a need for first responders, however, she agrees there needs to be more relevantly trained alternative responders for many types of calls.
Morales, Lewis and Councilmember Dan Strauss — the only other incumbent running for reelection, defending his District 6 seat — voted in favor of a council-funded pilot program, launching this fall, that will provide a single-vehicle team of mental health clinicians to respond to those calls.
Strauss, who did not respond to requests for comment, faces five challengers, and Morales is up against two community members, Tanya Woo and Margaret Elisabeth.
After a suite of appropriate alternative responders is established, Morales says the city should determine the right number of police, depending on what body of work alternative responders are able to cover.
“There’s a Tetris of staff allocation resources that needs to be reconfigured,” Morales said Wednesday, noting that she supports the department’s current efforts to make hires. SPD needs “a really clear picture of what the needs are and what they can do with available resources.”
This general approach is unlikely to change, as most potential newcomers support hiring additional police and creating police alternatives.
New candidates and incumbents are also considering how technology can alleviate staffing in response to needs. On Tuesday, the council voted to approve several new automatic speed camera zones to curtail street racing, including near Alki Beach in West Seattle, which District 1 candidate Maren Costa says is one of the top safety issues in her district.
Lewis and Morales mentioned their interest in a rapid response program tested in Kent, England, which allows police to respond to certain report-taking calls via video.
The incumbents diverge on so-called “emphasis zones” established by Harrell last year in areas of downtown and South Seattle with high volumes of emergency calls.
In Lewis’ district, a corridor of Third Avenue became a host to ubiquitous open-air drug use and the resale of stolen goods during the pandemic. Worse, the once-bustling downtown street saw an uptick in serious violent crime, including multiple shootings and fatalities on a single block in the first quarter of 2022.
Since Harrell and police Chief Adrian Diaz added extra police and a mobile patrol station to the area, Lewis says crime has visibly decreased, noting there has only been one homicide — an incident in August 2022, when a man was beaten to death with a pipe following an altercation and the suspect was arrested by nearby police.
“That added attention, that added presence is incredibly helpful to the situation we’re dealing with,” Lewis said.
Morales says an emphasis zone established at 12th and Jackson streets in Chinatown International District was not as helpful.
“Particularly when talking about people experiencing homelessness, this kind of pushing people from one neighborhood to another isn’t solving any problems,” Morales said.
Others, like former King County Superior Court Judge Cathy Moore, who is running in District 5, believe more specific corridors require heightened police intervention.
Moore says robust sex trade and gun violence on Aurora Avenue in North Seattle will require increased, localized intervention to make her district safer.
“I think initially that we do need to try to break the cycle of the sex trade,” Moore said.
One way to make that intervention more effective, she says, is making promoting prostitution a misdemeanor, giving the city attorney the authority to prosecute.
“Then police officers can begin to make [additional] arrests, and then it becomes clear that the city is not going to tolerate that behavior,” Moore said, noting that the city could then help people being trafficked to obtain no-contact orders and social services. Moore is one of 10 candidates running to replace outbound Council President Debora Juarez in District 5, the most crowded race on the ballot.
Costa, a former Amazon employee known for climate activism, said Thursday that while she believes in hiring additional police, the city should not be overly focused on making arrests to improve public safety.
“I oftentimes feel like a toothpick in a tidal wave and can see my kid ending up there,” said Costa, who described her son as having “special needs” and considers him at a high risk of mental health or substance abuse crises. “When each of us puts a family member in that position, we want to see people treated humanely and we want to see people treated in a way that has the best likelihood of working.”
Because she believes jail time for people who face these crises is regressive, Costa says she would have voted against a council bill this summer to establish public drug use and possession as gross misdemeanors.
The bill in question would have adopted a state law making both charges a gross misdemeanor into the city’s code, giving the city attorney the ability to make prosecutorial decisions about these cases. The council narrowly voted 5-4 to reject the bill in June, meaning police can still make these arrests, but the prosecution would fall to the county prosecutor who does not have the bandwidth to prosecute misdemeanors, the prosecutor’s office said.
Lewis was the deciding vote in June but said he will support a similar bill in August if the city improves its diversion programs.
Woo, one of Morales’ challengers, helped found and actively works on the Chinatown International District Community Watch, and says groups like hers could be a tool for the city to engage with people in crisis.
“The city needs to consider, ‘How do we involve people who know the community, who are already doing the outreach?’ and make sure that no one slips through the cracks,” Woo said, noting her own time on the watch administering Narcan and helping people get in contact with various social services.
Kettle, one of Lewis’ top challengers, has similarly spent time chairing the Public Safety Committee of the Queen Anne Community Council and says that having police engage directly with community groups would also improve policing in those neighborhoods.
Morales said she believes improvements to a community-based public safety model can solve many issues without involving more officers.
“There are a lot of things we can do to increase safety in our community to make people’s lives better, and none of it requires police,” Morales said. “That’s the kind of community safety that I think we should be striving for.” | https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-candidates-chart-new-courses-for-public-safety/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_seattle-news | 2023-07-30T14:34:47 | 0 | https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-candidates-chart-new-courses-for-public-safety/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_seattle-news |
Goodwill Manasota announces 2023 Community Ambassadors of the Year
Goodwill Manasota will hold its Community Ambassador of the Year Awards, honoring leaders in the areas of veterans services, philanthropy, and community partnership, on Oct. 12 at Michael’s On East in Sarasota.
The awards, returning for the first time since 2019, include:· Veterans: Rob Kehs. A U.S. Navy veteran who served from 1985-89 as a jet engine mechanic, Kehs has been an “unsung hero” for veterans in the community, serving as vice president of SRQ Vets, an all-veteran, all-volunteer organization that connects veterans with services, since 2018.
· Philanthropy: Sarasota Private Trust Company, New York Private Bank & Trust Company and The Milstein Family. In the wake of Hurricane Ian, Sarasota Private Trust Company, New York Private Bank & Trust Company and the Milstein Family donated $1 million to assist community members impacted by the storm. Goodwill served as the pass-through agency for $750,000 of the total gift, which was used to purchase gift cards and subsidize Goodwill vouchers for individuals and families severely impacted by the storm.
· Community Partner: Easterseals Southwest Florida. Goodwill Manasota and Easterseals are longtime partners, collaborating on initiatives to assist those with disabilities in finding and retaining employment. The organizations recently began working together to help veterans through the Operation1Stride program, which provides equine assisted learning to support life and leadership skills.
“We are thrilled to bring back this event, which recognizes those in the community whose contributions of time, resources, expertise and passion for helping others have enabled our organization to expand our mission impact,” said Goodwill Manasota president and CEO Donn Githens. “We could not succeed in our work of strengthening the community without the leadership, support and collaboration of people and organizations like those we will honor.”
Goodwill also will present its inaugural Robert W. Rosinsky Achievement Award – made possible by the Louis & Gloria Flanzer Philanthropic Trust – to team member Dora Talamantes. The award recognizes a team member who embodies dedication to the Goodwill mission. For information and tickets, visit experiencegoodwill.org.
Submitted by Sharon Kunkel | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/2023/07/30/goodwill-manasota-to-honor-community-leaders-during-awards-banquet/70461135007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:50 | 1 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/2023/07/30/goodwill-manasota-to-honor-community-leaders-during-awards-banquet/70461135007/ |
Wander Franco Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:26 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
The Tampa Bay Rays, including Wander Franco (.250 on-base percentage in past 10 games, 82 points below season-long percentage), battle starter Brandon Bielak and the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park, Sunday at 2:10 PM ET.
He hit a home run while going 2-for-3 in his previous game against the Astros.
Wander Franco Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -250)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +675)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +220)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: -105)
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Read More About This Game
Wander Franco At The Plate
- Franco leads Tampa Bay with a slugging percentage of .443, fueled by 40 extra-base hits.
- Among the qualified hitters in MLB play, he ranks 49th in batting average, 69th in on-base percentage, and 64th in slugging.
- In 66.0% of his games this season (66 of 100), Franco has picked up at least one hit, and in 31 of those games (31.0%) he recorded multiple hits.
- In 12 games this year, he has homered (12.0%, and 2.7% of his trips to the dish).
- Franco has driven in a run in 33 games this year (33.0%), including 12 games with more than one RBI (12.0%). He has also driven home three or more of his team's runs in four contests.
- He has scored in 41.0% of his games this year, with more than one run scored in 11.0%.
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Wander Franco Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings put together by the Astros pitching staff ranks sixth in the league.
- The Astros' 3.81 team ERA ranks third across all MLB pitching staffs.
- The Astros rank 17th in baseball in home runs allowed (125 total, 1.2 per game).
- The Astros will send Bielak (5-5) to make his 13th start of the season. He is 5-5 with a 3.62 ERA and 55 strikeouts through 69 2/3 innings pitched.
- The right-hander's most recent time out was on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, when he tossed 4 2/3 innings, surrendering three earned runs while allowing six hits.
- In 13 games this season, the 27-year-old has amassed an ERA of 3.62, with 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings. Opponents are hitting .262 against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/wander-franco-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:51 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/wander-franco-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
VIN'S PEOPLE: Books for Kids literacy program seeking volunteers to help make a difference
Want to help make a difference to the youngest students in some of our schools in Manatee and Sarasota?
Consider volunteering for the Books For Kids Promoting Literacy programs sponsored by the Rotary Club of Lakewood Ranch. Books For Kids is designed not only to improve reading comprehension, but also instill a love of reading in young learners.
Beginning in October, there will be a weekly program with kindergarteners in addition to a monthly program with first, second and third graders. Overall the programs include approximately 4,000 students in 10 schools and thousands of books are distributed monthly.
The weekly program involves volunteers working with kindergarteners 1-on-1, reading a pre-selected book, a lesson plan and additional materials – i.e., magnetic letters, art materials – to amplify the book connection. The monthly program involves a group setting with the volunteer reading a pre-selected book aloud to the class followed by a discussion.
Students get to keep books at the conclusion of each session in both programs.
Interested? Call 845-304-5793 for more details or email: Ted Lindenberg at stlind88@cloud.com, Susan Travilla at stravilla@msn.com, or Joanne Vernon at joannevernon12@gmail.com.
· Alphonso Clark is 55.
· A bow to the 2023 graduating class from Pace Center for Girls Manatee. The young women are Thekenyia Lang, Kylie Lawson, Allison Jordan, Cadence Peterson, Janyris Rivera, Ashanti Robinson, Gabriella Rodrigues, Trinity Russell, Desiray Stalowski and Sydney Vega.
· Jodi Chrustowski is 39. Again.
· So is Mark Granstrand.
· And Angela Williams.
· Big ups to Activities Coordinator Jackie Davis, July Employee of the Month at Discovery Village at Sarasota Bay.
· Louis Murrell is 63.
· Welcome to Bradenton to Dr. Justin Fields, who has joined the Klement, Jungman, Varga and Troxler dental group. A Philly guy, he’s an alum of Syracuse University and Temple University’s Kornberg School of Dentistry and comes here from the West Palm Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
· Sean Tuttle is 38.
· Respect to both Patricia Hamilton and Sarah Cohawitz. The two Child Protective Services investigators are the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office June Employees of the Month for their patience, persistence and professionalism in ensuring the safety of two children, getting them away from a chronically dangerous situation at home involving domestic violence.
· And well done to Caddy Award winner Roger Salazar, Personal Care Services at Manatee Memorial Hospital.
Vin’s People runs Sundays. Email Vin Mannix at vinspeople@gmail.com. Or call 941-962-5944. Twitter: @vinmannix. | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/2023/07/30/vin-mannix-volunteers-needed-for-rotary-clubs-books-for-kids-program/70461210007/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:56 | 1 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/2023/07/30/vin-mannix-volunteers-needed-for-rotary-clubs-books-for-kids-program/70461210007/ |
Yandy Díaz Player Prop Bets: Rays vs. Astros - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Yandy Diaz, with a slugging percentage of .361 in his past 10 games -- including one home run -- will be in action for the Tampa Bay Rays versus the Houston Astros, with Brandon Bielak on the mound, July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
He had a hitless showing in his most recent game (0-for-3) against the Astros.
Yandy Díaz Game Info & Props vs. the Astros
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Minute Maid Park
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- Astros Starter: Brandon Bielak
- TV Channel: SportsNet SW
- Hits Prop: Over/under 1.5 hits (Over odds: +195)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +450)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +200)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: -115)
Looking to place a prop bet on Yandy Díaz? Check out what's available at BetMGM and use bonus code "GNPLAY" when you sign up with this link!
Explore More About This Game
Yandy Díaz At The Plate
- Diaz has 104 hits this season and a team-best OBP of .395.
- Among the qualifying hitters, he ranks sixth in batting average, while his on-base percentage ranks seventh and he is 23rd in slugging.
- Diaz has gotten at least one hit in 68.2% of his games this year (60 of 88), with at least two hits 31 times (35.2%).
- He has gone deep in 14 games this season (15.9%), leaving the park in 3.7% of his chances at the plate.
- In 34.1% of his games this year, Diaz has driven in at least one run. In 12 of those games (13.6%) he recorded more than one RBI, while accounting for three or more of his team's runs in six contests.
- In 45 of 88 games this season, he has scored, and 12 of those games included multiple runs.
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Yandy Díaz Home/Away Batting Splits
Astros Pitching Rankings
- The Astros pitching staff ranks sixth in the league with a collective 9.3 strikeouts per nine innings.
- The Astros' 3.81 team ERA ranks third across all MLB pitching staffs.
- The Astros rank 17th in baseball in home runs surrendered (125 total, 1.2 per game).
- The Astros will send Bielak (5-5) out to make his 13th start of the season. He is 5-5 with a 3.62 ERA and 55 strikeouts through 69 2/3 innings pitched.
- In his most recent time out on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers, the righty tossed 4 2/3 innings, allowing three earned runs while surrendering six hits.
- In 13 games this season, the 27-year-old has amassed a 3.62 ERA and 7.1 strikeouts per nine innings, while giving up a batting average of .262 to his opponents.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/yandy-diaz-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:34:57 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/yandy-diaz-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Report: Sarasota ranked among top 10 metros where homebuyers want to move
It must be a day that ends in the letter Y, as the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton metro area once again finds itself atop a national list related to real estate — this time from the real estate website Redfin.com.
The local metro area landed at sixth among the nation's top 10 metros where homebuyers are moving.
The list is ranked by "net inflow."
Redfin described "net inflow" as the number of Redfin.com home searchers who sought information on moving to a particular metro, minus the number of searchers looking to leave that metro.
The Sarasota area metro had a 2023 "net inflow" of 4,700, compared to 5,900 in 2022.
Redfin attributes less net inflow this year — experienced across most metro areas — to increased interest rates that have caused mortgage rates to spike in 2023.
Sarasota and Manatee counties make up the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton metro area, with about 830,000 residents combined.
The five metro areas placing ahead of Sarasota-Manatee were Sacramento, California, with a metro population of about 2.4 million and a Redfin net inflow of 4,800; Orlando, with a metro population of 2.5 million and a Redfin net inflow of 4,900; Tampa, with a metro population of about 3.2 million and a Redfin net inflow of 5,000; Phoenix, Arizona, with a metro population of about 4.9 million and a Redfin net inflow of 5,300; and Las Vegas, Nevada, at No. 1, with a metro population of about 2.9 million and a net inflow of 5,700.
The Cape Coral metro area, with a Redfin net inflow of 4,100, came in at number seven on the list.
Interestingly, the Redfin data also included the city where the most searches originated. For Tampa, Orlando and the Sarasota area metros, New York City was the top spot for people searching the local real estate market looking to move.
Cape Coral's top city where people were seeking to move from was Chicago.
Within the last several weeks, the Sarasota area has made several lists compiled by various sources. Local master-planned communities posted strong sales so far in 2023, according to the mid-year report from a real estate consulting firm that has tracked the fastest growing communities in the country for nearly three decades.
Lakewood Ranch remained the fastest selling multigenerational master-planned community in the United States, posting 1,227 sales through the first six months, according to national real estate consulting firm RCLCO.
Daytime television show "The Today Show" in July named Sarasota as the second-ranked place to live in the U.S. According to the July 10 ranking, released by Frances Katzen, a real estate broker with Douglas Elliman, Sarasota ranks just behind Round Rock, Texas, a suburb of Austin, for the most growth and is one of the top five "booming" cities in the United States this year.
A recent ranking released by national moving and storage company PODS has ranked Sarasota near the top of its 2023 list of the top 20 cities where people are moving across the country.
Sarasota ranked as the second most moved-to city in the United States, one slot lower than its first-place finish on the 2022 list of cities where people relocated. Based on PODS customer moves in 2022, Sarasota had the highest growth rate in Florida and the entire country, and that trend continued into 2023, the company's data shows.
A leading real estate data and analytics company also identified several Florida areas as the "top markets at risk of home price decline," including the North Port-Sarasota-Manatee metro area.
The most recent report examining May data was released last week showing home prices increased by 1.4% compared to May 2022.
While the report notes that May was the 136th consecutive month of year-over-year home price growth in the United States' residential real estate market, it was the lowest increase in prices since May 2012.
The report identified the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton metro area as one of five markets where the likelihood of home price decline was rated "very high" over the next 12 months.
The other five markets identified as having a very high risk of price declines were Provo-Orem, Utah, followed by four Florida markets: Lakeland-Winter Haven, North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Cape Coral-Fort Myers and Port St. Lucie.
Recent real estate articles:Report: Four Florida markets named as 'at risk for home price decline'
More:Strong sales put Florida master-planned communities in top ranks in nation | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/sarasota/2023/07/30/sarasota-near-top-of-another-real-estate-list-of-places-people-want-to-move/70487994007/ | 2023-07-30T14:35:02 | 0 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/local/sarasota/2023/07/30/sarasota-near-top-of-another-real-estate-list-of-places-people-want-to-move/70487994007/ |
Australia vs. Canada: Live Stream, TV Channel & Game Info - July 31
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:37 AM EDT|Updated: 57 minutes ago
Australia will meet Canada in Melbourne, Australia, in the last round of group-stage matches at the 2023 Women's World Cup, on July 31 at 6:00 AM ET.
Go to FOX US to watch Australia take on Canada.
Watch the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup on Fubo! Sign up for a free trial and start watching live sports without cable today!
How to Watch Australia vs. Canada
- Game Day: Monday, July 31, 2023
- Game Time: 6:00 AM ET
- TV Channel: FOX US
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Venue: Melbourne Rectangular Stadium
Sign up for a Fubo free trial now to watch the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and more live sports!
Australia Group Stage Schedule
Australia's Recent Performance
- Australia lost on July 27 against Nigeria by a final score of 3-2. It took 17 more shots in the contest, 27 to 10.
- Emily van Egmond and Alanna Kennedy scored the only goals for their side in the match versus .
- Kyra Cooney-Cross has not scored a goal, but has recorded one assist for Australia in Women's World Cup play (two games).
- In two Women's World Cup matches, Caitlin Foord has not scored a goal but has one assist.
- During Women's World Cup play, van Egmond has scored one goal (but has no assists).
Get your 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup gear at Fanatics!
Australia's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Lydia Williams #1
- Courtney Nevin #2
- Aivi Luik #3
- Clare Polkinghorne #4
- Cortnee Vine #5
- Clare Wheeler #6
- Steph Catley #7
- Alexandra Chidiac #8
- Caitlin Foord #9
- Emily van Egmond #10
- Mary Fowler #11
- Teagan Micah #12
- Tameka Yallop #13
- Alanna Kennedy #14
- Clare Hunt #15
- Hayley Raso #16
- Kyah Simon #17
- Mackenzie Arnold #18
- Katrina Gorry #19
- Sam Kerr #20
- Ellie Carpenter #21
- Charlotte Grant #22
- Kyra Cooney-Cross #23
Canada Group Stage Schedule
Canada's Recent Performance
- In its last game on July 26, Canada claimed a 2-1 victory against Ireland, outshooting Ireland 16 to 13.
- Adriana Leon recorded one goal to lead Canada in the game.
- In two Women's World Cup matches for Canada, Leon has one goal (12th in the 2023 Women's World Cup).
- Sophie Schmidt has not scored, but does have one assist for Canada in Women's World Cup.
Canada's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Kailen Sheridan #1
- Allysha Chapman #2
- Kadeisha Buchanan #3
- Shelina Zadorsky #4
- Quinn #5
- Deanne Rose #6
- Julia Grosso #7
- Jayde Riviere #8
- Jordyn Huitema #9
- Ashley Lawrence #10
- Evelyne Viens #11
- Christine Sinclair #12
- Sophie Schmidt #13
- Vanessa Gilles #14
- Nichelle Prince #15
- Gabrielle Carle #16
- Jessie Fleming #17
- Sabrina D'Angelo #18
- Adriana Leon #19
- Cloe Lacasse #20
- Simi Awujo #21
- Lysianne Proulx #22
- Olivia Smith #23
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-australia-canada-live-stream-tv/ | 2023-07-30T14:35:04 | 1 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-australia-canada-live-stream-tv/ |
Sunday's letters: DeSantis struggling to gain momentum against indicted former president
Trump backers loyal despite charges
I see Gov. Ron DeSantis is rebooting his campaign in response to poll numbers that lag tremendously behind Donald Trump. (“DeSantis 2.0: Leaner, meaner campaign,” July 26). The governor laid off more than a third of his staff.
I wonder if his campaign donors will get a return on their investment or will it turn out like Enron? Hmm.
I see Trump rising and gaining strength in the polls no matter what the Democrats and the liberal legal system charge him with. How many of us could withstand the financial and mental anguish that comes with each charge? And there are many. I couldn’t.
Whether Republican or Democrat, many Americans may not realize how attorneys can trump up charges and manipulate the law. How pathetic is that?
More:How to send a letter to the editor
How many innocent people have gone to prison or had a financial loss due to their attorneys’ incompetence or questionable charges/actions? How does a lay person fight back when justice is not on their side?
If Trump wins the election, my request is to establish an agency to overrule state Bar decisions and make it easier for a lay person to fight for justice. Weed out those who should not hold a law license.
Elizabeth Martin Sullivan, Bradenton
Students won’t stand for censorship
Gov. Ron DeSantis and appointees to the state Board of Education have proposed to sanitize Black history curricula in our state consistent with the 2022 Stop Woke Act, which prohibits instruction that could prompt students to “feel discomfort about a historical event because of their race, sex, or national origins.”
Curriculum changes would, for example, teach middle schoolers that enslaved Americans developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
What? Really?
What DeSantis fails to realize is that students aren’t so stupid as to accept such nonsense. They will reach out to learn more.
With a few computer keystrokes, for example, they can access authoritative websites such as “SlaveVoyages,” where scholars post and update information about the slave trade.
Students learn that some 12 million Africans were kidnapped from their homes and enslaved, including over 300,000 shipped here to the U.S. They also learn that an estimated 12% of those captured didn’t survive the trip due to “endemic gastro-intestinal diseases and a range of epidemic pathogens, together with periodic breakouts of violent resistance.”
We are fortunate that soon-to-be voters have easy access to information demonstrating the absurdity of the DeSantis censorship effort.
Steve Johnson, Punta Gorda
Play, exploration key to child development
July is National Make a Difference to Children Month, a time dedicated to celebrating children and recognizing the potential they hold for the future. Central to healthy development is the importance of exploration and play.
Through play and exploration, children engage their senses, boost cognitive skills, form social bonds and lay the foundation for future academic success. For children who are overcoming developmental challenges, it becomes a unique pathway to explore their capabilities, build confidence and acquire essential life skills.
As 1 in every 6 children has a diagnosed developmental delay or disability, our community is fortunate to have numerous organizations focused on children’s needs. At The Florida Center for Early Childhood, we specialize in evaluation, therapeutic intervention and inclusive education for young children.
Our L.E.A.P. (Learning through Exploration, Activity, and Play) campaign is aimed at enhancing play spaces and wraparound supports for children at our Sarasota and North Port campuses, benefiting more than 1,000 children annually.
In honor of National Make a Difference to Children Month, we encourage you to support the needs of children, whether it is spending quality time with a child in your life or contributing to initiatives that improve the lives of other children.
Dr. Kristie Skoglund, CEO, The Florida Center for Early Childhood, Sarasota | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/letters/2023/07/30/desperate-desantis-reorganizes-two-month-old-campaign/70477011007/ | 2023-07-30T14:35:08 | 0 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/letters/2023/07/30/desperate-desantis-reorganizes-two-month-old-campaign/70477011007/ |
Nigeria vs. Ireland: Live Stream, TV Channel & Game Info - July 31
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:38 AM EDT|Updated: 57 minutes ago
In the final round of Group B matches at the 2023 Women's World Cup, on July 31 at 6:00 AM ET, Nigeria will play Ireland in Brisbane, Australia.
You should head to Fox Sports 1 in order to watch this matchup.
Watch the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup on Fubo! Sign up for a free trial and start watching live sports without cable today!
How to Watch Nigeria vs. Ireland
- Game Day: Monday, July 31, 2023
- Game Time: 6:00 AM ET
- TV Channel: Fox Sports 1
- Location: Brisbane, Australia
- Venue: Suncorp Stadium
Sign up for a Fubo free trial now to watch the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and more live sports!
Nigeria Group Stage Schedule
Nigeria's Recent Performance
- Nigeria met Australia in its previous game and was victorious by a final score of 3-2. The Nigeria side won despite being outshot by 17 in the match, 27 to 10.
- Nigeria got its three goals from Osinachi Ohale, Asisat Oshoala and Uchenna Kanu in that match versus .
- Oshoala's Women's World Cup statline through two appearances for Nigeria includes one goal.
- Ohale has scored one goal for Nigeria in Women's World Cup so far.
- In Women's World Cup action, Kanu has scored one goal (but has no assists).
Get your 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup gear at Fanatics!
Nigeria's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Tochukwu Oluehi #1
- Ashleigh Plumptre #2
- Osinachi Ohale #3
- Glory Ogbonna #4
- Onome Ebi #5
- Ifeoma Onumonu #6
- Toni Payne #7
- Asisat Oshoala #8
- Desire Oparanozie #9
- Christy Ucheibe #10
- Gift Monday #11
- Uchenna Kanu #12
- Deborah Abiodun #13
- Oluwatosin Demehin #14
- Rasheedat Ajibade #15
- Chiamaka Nnadozie #16
- Francisca Ordega #17
- Halimatu Ayinde #18
- Onyi Echegini #19
- Rofiat Imuran #20
- Esther Okoronkwo #21
- Michelle Alozie #22
- Yewande Balogun #23
Ireland Group Stage Schedule
Ireland's Recent Performance
- In its last game on July 26, Ireland fell 2-1 to Canada. Canada outshot Ireland 16 to 13.
- Katie McCabe scored the lone goal for Ireland on three shots.
- In two Women's World Cup matches for Ireland, McCabe has one goal (12th in the 2023 Women's World Cup).
Ireland's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Courtney Brosnan #1
- Claire O'Riordan #2
- Chloe Mustaki #3
- Louise Quinn #4
- Niamh Fahey #5
- Megan Connolly #6
- Diane Caldwell #7
- Ruesha Littlejohn #8
- Amber Barrett #9
- Denise O'Sullivan #10
- Katie McCabe #11
- Lily Agg #12
- Aine O'Gorman #13
- Heather Payne #14
- Lucy Quinn #15
- Grace Moloney #16
- Sinead Farrelly #17
- Kyra Carusa #18
- Abbie Larkin #19
- Marissa Sheva #20
- Ciara Grant #21
- Isibeal Atkinson #22
- Megan Walsh #23
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-nigeria-ireland-live-stream-tv/ | 2023-07-30T14:35:11 | 0 | https://www.mysuncoast.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-nigeria-ireland-live-stream-tv/ |
High school football practice begins Monday: Here is what you need to know
Fall classic games begin the week of Aug. 14; regular season begins the week of Aug. 21
High school football practice begins Monday.
Here is what you need to know:
Many of the teams will practice in the morning hours before teachers are required to return to school. Then practices will shift to the afternoon.
The first two days of practice are with helmets only. The next three days are with shells (helmets and shoulder pads). On the sixth day, teams can practice in full pads.
QBs on the move:See which high school quarterbacks are on the move entering the fall
Year of the back?Could this be the season of the running back in high school football?
Best of the decade:Which high school football team has the best record during the past 10 years?
The kickoff classics (games that do not count toward the regular season standings) are the week of Aug. 14. Most of the games are Friday, Aug. 19, but there are a couple Thursday, Aug. 18.
The regular season begins the week of Aug. 21. Again most of the games are Friday, Aug. 25, but there are a pair on Thursday, Aug. 24. Lakewood Ranch at Lemon Bay, a matchup last year that was postponed in the first quarter because of inclement weather but was deemed an official game. Also Cambridge Christian plays at IMG Academy Blue.
The regular season runs through Oct. 27.
There are a handful of new coaches in the area: Nate Strawderman (Bradenton Christian School, was an assistant), Josh Phillips (Sarasota High, was an assistant at Manatee High), Scott Paravicini (Lakewood Ranch High from Bradenton Christian), Rashad West (Palmetto High from Lakewood Ranch High) and Dylan Clark (Parrish Community from Alonso High in Tampa).
Football district assignments (all teams are in suburban)
Class 4S-District 13
AREA TEAMS: Lakewood Ranch, Manatee, Palmetto.
Class 4S-District 14
AREA TEAMS: Riverview, Sarasota, Venice.
Class 4S-District 15
AREA TEAM: Charlotte.
OUT-OF-AREA TEAMS: Cape Coral Ida Baker, Lehigh Acres, Lehigh Senior, Fort Myers Riverdale.
Class 3S-District 13
AREA TEAMS Braden River, Parrish Community, Port Charlotte, Southeast.
Class 2S-District 15
AREA TEAMS: Bayshore, Booker, Lemon Bay.
OUT-OF-AREA TEAM: DeSoto County.
Class 1S-District 6
AREA TEAM: Cardinal Mooney.
OUT-OF-AREA TEAM: Fort Pierce John Carroll
INDEPENDENTS: North Port, IMG Academy National, IMG Academy Blue, IMG Academy White
SUNSHINE STATE ATHLETIC CONFERENCE: Bradenton Christian, Out-of-Door Academy, Saint Stephen’s
SSAC 8-MAN: Sarasota Christian, Classical Academy of Sarasota
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Four- or five-star (depending on the recruiting service) cornerback/athlete Charles Lester III committed to attend Florida State University. Lester, who transferred from Riverview High to Venice High for his senior season, is expected to see action on both sides of the ball.
OTHER SPORTS: Football is not the only sport beginning practice Monday. Other fall sports - cross country, golf, volleyball and swimming and diving - also start training.
In swimming and diving, Riverview High girls and Sarasota High boys are also defending Class 4A state champions. In volleyball, Venice High will be looking to defend its Class 7A state title. | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2023/07/30/primer-for-high-school-football-practice-in-sarasota-manatee-charlotte-begins-monday/70492767007/ | 2023-07-30T14:35:14 | 0 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2023/07/30/primer-for-high-school-football-practice-in-sarasota-manatee-charlotte-begins-monday/70492767007/ |
Sarasota Babe Ruth 15 Alll-Stars lose, eliminated from Southeast Regional tournament
SARASOTA - The performance of the three Sarasota Babe Ruth All-Star teams at this year's Southeast Regional should send a message to future players who will wear the Sarasota uniform.
It's not the uniform. It's the player wearing the uniform.
The loss of the Sarasota 15s to Arlington on Saturday, knocking head coach Mike Marquez's team from the tourney, made it three up and three down for the Sarasota representatives. The 14s were eliminated last week at their regional, the 13s on Friday, and the 15s by a 4-3 decision to Arlington at the Guy Smith Stadium Complex in Greenville, N.C., in a game Sarasota had to win for a shot at qualifying for Sunday's semifinals.
But, once again, errors on routine plays sealed Sarasota's fate. Had his team played to its capabilities, Marquez has little doubt it would have finished the tournament with a 4-0 record. Instead, the 15s limped back to Sarasota with an underachieving 1-3 mark. The 13s, 14s, and 15s combined to go 3-8, hardly representative of the reputation the area has for strong youth baseball.
On more than one occasion, Sarasota players were accused of lacking focus, as if the name on their uniform somehow would guarantee automatic success. Perhaps, if anything, it made Sarasota's opponents even more determined and engaged.
A microcosm of the regional for all three Sarasota teams helped Arlington break a scoreless deadlock against the 15s.
With two out in the top of the third inning, Arlington’s Drew Welch got on first via a hit off Sarasota starter Jackson Smith. With Cameron Hershey at the plate, a Smith throw over to first baseman Luke Duffy had Welch picked off.
But as the Arlington second baseman took off for second, Duffy’s throw to second baseman Luca Meehan covering the base was wide and ricocheted off Meehan’s glove into the outfield. The deflection sent the ball past Sarasota center fielder Stephen Commander, who was backing up the play.
By the time Commander retrieved the ball, Welch had come all the way around to score, giving Arlington an unearned run and 1-0 lead. Following a single and a walk, Arlington’s Patrick Mellett hit a deep fly ball to center that Commander, after a long run, lost in the sun. Two more unearned runs scored for a 3-0 Arlington lead.
“My big horse (Smith) was about to get out of that inning,” lamented Marquez. “Seven pitches, and it turned into a 20-pitch inning.”
Both teams exchanged runs, and Arlington took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the sixth. Sarasota scored two runs, cutting the lead to 4-3, and had the bases loaded with two out, but couldn’t capitalize.
And in the seventh, again with two out, a Sarasota single, stolen base, and passed ball had the tying run at third base. But that’s where he stayed.
“He was right there (at third),” Marquez said. “We could have tied it in the bottom of the seventh. Just couldn’t get him in.”
In only one game, a 9-3 victory over Greenville, Sarasota’s lone win in the tournament, did errors not factor into the outcome. But far too often, they did.
“It was not our best defense,” Marquez said. “Definitely made an impact. If we weren’t hitting, it just made it more difficult. We come all this way, and I know how good of a baseball team we are. I definitely expected to perform better than 1-3.”
The last time a Sarasota Babe Ruth team won a regional title was in 2017. Coach Dave Million took the 15s to the World Series that year in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. The year before, Million had taken the 14s to the World Series in Westfield, Mass.
Future Sarasota Babe Ruth players, take note. To get to where Million’s clubs went, performing as these three Sarasota teams did won’t do it. | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/local/2023/07/30/sarasota-babe-ruth-15s-lose-eliminated-from-southeast-regional-tournament-joining-13s-and-14s/70493083007/ | 2023-07-30T14:35:20 | 0 | https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/sports/local/2023/07/30/sarasota-babe-ruth-15s-lose-eliminated-from-southeast-regional-tournament-joining-13s-and-14s/70493083007/ |
One person is dead and multiple were wounded in Indiana shooting, police say
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — A shooting at a large party in Indiana early Sunday morning left one person dead, police said. A hospital said 19 people were being treated for injuries at its facility.
Muncie police responded to multiple reports of gunfire on the city’s east side just after 1 a.m., The Star Press reported. Police said in a news release that there was no active threat to the community and that “multiple” victims were injured, including some critically.
“Due to the number of victims and nature of the incident, multiple agencies were contacted to assist,” Muncie Deputy Police Chief Melissa Criswell said in a statement sent to The Star Press.
Police did not say how many people were injured, but officials at Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie told WTHR-13 that 19 victims were treated in their emergency department for injuries related to the shooting. Criswell said some victims sustained critical injuries and were transferred by medical helicopter to other facilities.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T14:36:20 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ |
One person is dead and multiple were wounded in Indiana shooting, police say
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — A shooting at a large party in Indiana early Sunday morning left one person dead, police said. A hospital said 19 people were being treated for injuries at its facility.
Muncie police responded to multiple reports of gunfire on the city’s east side just after 1 a.m., The Star Press reported. Police said in a news release that there was no active threat to the community and that “multiple” victims were injured, including some critically.
“Due to the number of victims and nature of the incident, multiple agencies were contacted to assist,” Muncie Deputy Police Chief Melissa Criswell said in a statement sent to The Star Press.
Police did not say how many people were injured, but officials at Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie told WTHR-13 that 19 victims were treated in their emergency department for injuries related to the shooting. Criswell said some victims sustained critical injuries and were transferred by medical helicopter to other facilities.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wibw.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:08 | 0 | https://www.wibw.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ |
Former President Trump’s legal crises are growing more serious this week and show no signs of fading, even as his 2024 bid for the White House barrels forward.
Federal prosecutors filed additional serious charges against Trump on Thursday over his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, and anticipation has reached a fever pitch over whether Trump will be charged in Washington, D.C., for his conduct after the 2020 election.
Here are five takeaways from the latest legal developments around Trump.
The new documents case charges are serious
The additional charges filed in Thursday’s superseding indictment point to more serious allegations against Trump that could make his grip on the GOP more tenuous in the months to come.
Prosecutors laid out a new set of allegations that Trump acted with two aides in attempts to delete surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago after prosecutors subpoenaed it in connection with their investigation in June 2022. Trump now faces two new obstruction charges in connection with the allegations.
The indictment also included a new charge over Trump’s retention of a classified document containing secret Pentagon plans to attack Iran. The document is at the center of a recorded conversation mentioned in the original indictment in which Trump is discussing the materials with individuals who did not have security clearances.
The former president has tried to claim that he may not have had the physical document at the time, but the fresh allegations suggest prosecutors believe they have enough evidence to bring charges over the incident.
The nature of the allegations are sure to fuel further charges from Trump’s critics that he is unfit for office.
“I’ve never been indicted and I am not a lawyer, but if you are deleting evidence, it is because you know you are committing a crime,” former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a 2024 presidential candidate, said Thursday night. “And anybody who supports this, anybody who defends this, is complicit in endangering America.”
Trump’s circle is increasingly implicated
The superseding indictment added a third defendant to the case: Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
De Oliveira joins longtime Trump aide Walt Nauta in being charged in connection with the former president’s retention of classified documents and possible obstruction of efforts to get them back.
The indictment alleges De Oliveira, 56, extensively pushed Mar-a-Lago’s director of information technology (IT) — who was not charged or named in the indictment — to delete surveillance footage after prosecutors subpoenaed it in June 2022 in connection with their investigation.
Other Trump associates could still be implicated in the ongoing investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, particularly over a scheme to appoint alternative electors that would flip the Electoral College in Trump’s favor.
“Sadly, I’ve made this statement to many different people … Walt Nauta, run. Carlos [De Oliveira], run,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who reached a deal with prosecutors in Manhattan and has since turned against the former president.
Volume of legal risks is on the rise
One concern for Trump is that the sheer volume of charges against him is mounting, increasing his legal exposure.
The superseding indictment in the documents case means Trump now faces a total of 40 criminal counts in that case alone, three more than he did previously.
Trump is separately facing 34 felony counts in Manhattan over allegations of a hush money scheme to keep quiet allegations of an affair.
And Trump may face charges elsewhere; he is still under federal investigation in Washington, D.C., and in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Legal experts have noted that the more charges Trump faces, the greater his risk of being convicted on even a single count. “If you had a choice, you wouldn’t want to be indicted in three different jurisdictions,” said one Republican strategist.
Jan. 6 charges loom
Trump attorneys met with special counsel Jack Smith’s office Thursday over the investigation into the former president’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
With an indictment seeming imminent, Trump’s lawyers sought to make the case for why their client should not be charged.
A grand jury has typically been meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though no indictment was announced this week.
Still, Trump has received a target letter in the case, typically a sign that prosecutors have enough evidence to charge an individual in an investigation.
On top of the anticipation that is building over charges in D.C., the former president is under investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the state’s election results in 2020. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated charges could be announced in August, setting up for yet another cycle of bad legal developments for the former president.
Trump ups pressure on GOP allies
As the legal pressure on Trump mounts, he has turned to some of his Republican allies to ratchet up their defenses.
Trump, in comments to Fox News Digital after the superseding indictment was filed, complained that the charges against him were “ridiculous” and that the Justice Department was abusing its power.
“Hopefully the Republican Party will do something about it,” Trump said.
The former president’s comments may turn up the heat on some of his supporters in the House, and even Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), to back funding cuts to the special counsel’s office. Such measures have been floated by staunch Trump allies such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
The reality for Republicans is they will have to continue to answer questions about Trump’s conduct as the cases against him develop and the charges potentially mount.
Trump, asked if he would end his 2024 campaign even if convicted, told conservative radio host John Fredericks, “not at all.”
“There’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could. And not at all,” Trump said. “Even the radical left crazies are saying no, that wouldn’t stop. And it wouldn’t stop me either.” | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/hill-politics/5-takeaways-as-trumps-legal-troubles-mount/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:47 | 1 | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/hill-politics/5-takeaways-as-trumps-legal-troubles-mount/ |
A bomb at a political rally in northwest Pakistan kills at least 35 people and wounds more than 100
KHAR, Pakistan (AP) — A powerful bomb ripped through a rally by supporters of a hard-line cleric and political leader in the country’s northwestern Bajur district that borders Afghanistan on Sunday, police and health officials said. At least 35 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded.
Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the workers convention of Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema Islam party was taking place on the outskirts of Khar, the capital of Bajur district, when the explosion took place.
Initially, police said 10 people were killed but later more bodies were moved to a hospital bringing the death toll to 35. He said some of the wounded were taken to the city’s main hospital in critical condition and the death toll could increase.
Azam Khan, head of the emergency room at Khar’s main hospital, said 35 bodies were brought to the hospital and some wre taken back by relatives while the number of wounded was now more than 100 as those who earlier went to near small clinics for medical aid consequently brought to the main government hospital.
Government administrator Mohibullah Khan Yousufzai also said death toll rose to 35 and the number of wounded was well over 100. He said the serious wounded people were being airlifted to provincial capital, Peshawar, for better medical care.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but the Islamic State group operates across the border in Afghanistan.
Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman’s party, was among the dead. Senator Abdur Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin was also on the stage but escaped unhurt. Party officials said Rehman was not in the rally.
Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad. It is not known whether Rehman was present. Meetings are being organized across the country to mobilize supporters for the coming elections.
Bajur, once used to be a tribal region but now a district, has been a safe haven for Islamic militants until recent years when Pakistani military carried out massive operations to eliminate militancy from the tribal region. Militants still strike attacking security forces and civilians often.
___
Riaz Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/bomb-political-rally-northwest-pakistan-kills-least-35-people-wounds-more-than-100/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:47 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/bomb-political-rally-northwest-pakistan-kills-least-35-people-wounds-more-than-100/ |
(The Conversation) – Rivers have been the lifeblood of human civilization throughout history, and yet we know surprisingly little about what lives in many of them – including the giant creatures that prowl their depths.
While we know the biggest animal in the ocean is the blue whale and the largest marine fish is the whale shark, the identity of the world’s largest freshwater fish species long remained a mystery.
Until 2022, that is, when fishers in Cambodia caught a giant freshwater stingray in the remote reaches of the Mekong River.
Weighing an astounding 661 pounds, the stingray surpassed by 15 pounds a giant catfish caught in Thailand in 2005 that had previously been considered the unofficial record holder.
The discovery marked a milestone in fish biologist Zeb Hogan’s more than two-decade quest to study and protect giant freshwater fish. As a group, these megafish are among the most endangered animals on the planet.The world’s largest freshwater fish confirmed so far is a stingray caught in the Mekong River.
Before releasing the female ray back into the river, Hogan’s research team put an acoustic tracker on her. She has been sending back clues about stingrays’ elusive behavior ever since.
Colossal catfish and gargantuan gars
In a new book, “Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish,” Hogan and I tell the troubling story of the 30 or so fish species that live exclusively in rivers and lakes and can grow to more than 200 pounds or at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) long.
Found on all continents except Antarctica, they are a wonderfully weird bunch of creatures, from colossal catfish and carp to gargantuan gars.
But freshwater vertebrate populations have declined over the past five decades at twice the rate experienced by species within terrestrial or marine ecosystems. Megafish numbers in particular fell by a shocking 94%, according to one study of more than 200 large freshwater species.
One of the largest species, the Chinese paddlefish, is believed to have gone extinct sometime in the 2000s. “This is a fish that had been on Earth for more than 100 million years before disappearing in a flash,” says Hogan, who used to host National Geographic’s “Monster Fish” television show and now leads a University of Nevada, Reno, research project I am involved with called Wonders of the Mekong, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The importance of very large fish to freshwater ecosystems has been woefully understudied. Many giant freshwater fish are apex predators that can have profound effects on the ecosystems in which they live by keeping their prey populations in check and maintaining biodiversity.
What’s killing off the megafish
The decline of giant freshwater fish is due to human impacts, such as overfishing, dam building and climate change.
Large fish are disproportionately targeted by fishing. Since many of these species are slow to mature, they may never reach the age to reproduce. Dam building is another major threat, because large fish often need to make long migrations to complete their life cycles, and a new dam can block their migration paths.
In the Mekong, where more giant fish species are found than in any other river, climate change is causing more severe droughts and disrupting the monsoon seasons that govern the river’s essential flood regime.
There are signs that interest in freshwater species is gaining momentum, including increasing calls to explicitly include freshwater ecosystems in the 30×30 initiative, a global effort to set aside 30% of land and sea area for conservation by 2030. So far, however, conservation efforts to protect endangered giant freshwater fish species are mostly regional.
Alligator gars and sturgeon make a comeback
Although the outlook for most giant fish remains grim, some species, like the air-breathing arapaima in South America, may be bucking the trend.
The arapaima, a torpedo-shaped giant that can grow to lengths of more than 12 feet, has long been overharvested by fishers in the Amazon, where it’s known as the Amazonian cod. But stricter fishing regulations introduced by Indigenous communities appear to have led to populations’ rebounding in many places.
In the United States, the alligator gar, another air-breathing megafish, was once largely considered a “trash fish” thought to devour game fish, so it was systematically exterminated from much of its southern range. But then scientists began to study the species and found it was an important contributor to ecosystem functions. Today, alligator gar populations have bounced back in rivers like the Trinity in Texas.
A similar case involves the lake sturgeon, one of the few true freshwater sturgeons, whose populations in Wisconsin have benefited from long-term conservation efforts and science-driven management that includes strictly regulated seasonal recreational fishing.
Protecting the giants of the Mekong
Back in Cambodia, our Wonders of the Mekong project is raising public awareness about the plight of the megafish, and we are working closely with local fishers to encourage them to protect threatened species.
In an example of those efforts’ paying off, fishers in early 2023 caught a Mekong giant catfish weighing more than 200 pounds. Instead of killing it and selling the meat for a sizable profit, the fishers decided to release the fish in an elaborate ceremony in which it was sprinkled with flowers before it was let go.
In recent months, our project has also reintroduced into the Mekong rare giant catfish that were captured as young fish and raised in Cambodia, and giant barb, another critically endangered megafish species that historically has grown to 600 pounds.
While giant freshwater stingray numbers have plummeted in other parts of its native Southeast Asian range, the population appears to be relatively robust in the upper stretches of the Mekong River in Cambodia where the record ray was discovered. Data collected from that female, and reported in a study I co-authored, shows it is staying in much the same location, leading researchers to believe the area could be an important refuge for the stingrays and possibly other megafish.
Long-standing plans by the Cambodian government to build two large dams on this section of the river appear to have been scrapped, at least for now. At the end of 2022, the government instead put forth a proposal to turn the biodiverse stretch of the river, which is also home to a critically endangered population of Irrawaddy river dolphins, into a UNESCO World Heritage site.
While the record stingray is big, it might not be the largest of this species of ray in the Mekong. Local fishers speak of rays growing up to 200 pounds heavier.
It’s also possible the giant stingray is not the largest freshwater fish species. Research on the arapaima, for example, suggests it could grow as big, or even bigger, in places like Guyana. But, as Hogan says, “It’s not about finding the biggest fish. It’s about learning more about these amazing creatures to figure out how to better protect them.” | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/in-search-of-the-wonderfully-weird-giants-lurking-in-earths-rivers/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:50 | 1 | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/in-search-of-the-wonderfully-weird-giants-lurking-in-earths-rivers/ |
A boom in apartment construction is helping to curb rents but not all renters will benefit
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.”
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/boom-apartment-construction-is-helping-curb-rents-not-all-renters-will-benefit/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:50 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/boom-apartment-construction-is-helping-curb-rents-not-all-renters-will-benefit/ |
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – The U.S. Geological Survey has a morbid request: they want you to mail in deceased butterflies, moths, and skippers if you live in one of six states.
According to the USGS, the pilot program hopes to collect specimens that can help “identify contaminants and environmental factors which may be contributing to the decline of insect populations.” said USGS.
“There are some questions that can’t effectively be answered without help from a lot of people. It’s what makes citizen science so special and valuable,” said Julie Dietze, USGS scientist-in-charge of the effort. “Collections like this one are important because they have the potential to provide scientists now, and 20 years from now, access to specimens.”
“Citizen scientists” have been submitting their butterflies, moths, and skippers since April, but based on how many specimens have been received, collections may continue through November 2024.
The USGS is hoping to collect these dead insects to establish a Lepidoptera Research Collection and all the specimens collected will be added to the USGS Research Scientific Collections database.
If you live in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Texas, you can participate in the USGS’s pilot program. These states were selected because they’re relatively close the migration pathway of Monarch butterflies, their proximity to the Corn Belt, and the number of Confined Animal Feeding Operations.
Before you run out to catch butterflies for submission, USGS says it will only accept insects that are already dead that have not been collected alive. The insect must also be larger than two inches.
Additionally, species that are protected by the U.S.’s Endangered Species Act or by state law are not accepted. Within the six participating states, that includes only the Mitchell’s satyr Butterfly, which is found in Alabama.
Once you’ve found your dead bug, the USGS recommends putting it in a resealable plastic bag. Insects that are damaged or not fully intact will be accepted, and bugs can be put into the same bags. If you aren’t able to ship your bugs within three days, you can freeze them.
Specimens should then be placed into a sealed envelope addressed to:
USGS LRC
1217 Biltmore Drive
Lawrence, KS 66049
You do not need to include a return address.
Species that are mailed in will be evaluated for the occurrence of antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, and mycotoxins, according to USGS.
Officials say the ‘dead’-line is November 1, 2023. | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/scientists-want-your-dead-butterflies-moths-if-you-live-in-these-states/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:51 | 1 | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/scientists-want-your-dead-butterflies-moths-if-you-live-in-these-states/ |
One person is dead and multiple were wounded in Indiana shooting, police say
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — A shooting at a large party in Indiana early Sunday morning left one person dead, police said. A hospital said 19 people were being treated for injuries at its facility.
Muncie police responded to multiple reports of gunfire on the city’s east side just after 1 a.m., The Star Press reported. Police said in a news release that there was no active threat to the community and that “multiple” victims were injured, including some critically.
“Due to the number of victims and nature of the incident, multiple agencies were contacted to assist,” Muncie Deputy Police Chief Melissa Criswell said in a statement sent to The Star Press.
Police did not say how many people were injured, but officials at Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie told WTHR-13 that 19 victims were treated in their emergency department for injuries related to the shooting. Criswell said some victims sustained critical injuries and were transferred by medical helicopter to other facilities.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:51 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ |
(AP) – A woman from New Hampshire who works for a nonprofit organization in Haiti and her young daughter have been reported as kidnapped as the U.S. State Department issued a “do not travel advisory” in the country and ordered nonemergency personnel to leave there amid growing security concerns.
Alix Dorsainvil, a nurse for El Roi Haiti, and her daughter were kidnapped on Thursday, the organization said in a statement Saturday. El Roi, which runs a school and ministry in Port au Prince, said the two were taken from campus. Dorsainvil is the wife of the program’s director, Sandro Dorsainvil.
“Alix is a deeply compassionate and loving person who considers Haiti her home and the Haitian people her friends and family,” El Roi president and co-founder Jason Brown said in the statement. “Alix has worked tirelessly as our school and community nurse to bring relief to those who are suffering as she loves and serves the people of Haiti in the name of Jesus.”
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement Saturday it is “aware of reports of the kidnapping of two U.S. citizens in Haiti,” adding, “We are in regular contact with Haitian authorities and will continue to work with them and our U.S. government interagency partners.”
In its advisory Thursday, the department said that “kidnapping is widespread, and victims regularly include U.S. citizens.”
It said kidnappings often involve ransom negotiations and U.S. citizen victims have been physically harmed.
Earlier this month, the National Human Rights Defense Network issued a report warning about an upsurge in killings and kidnappings and the U.N. Security Council met to discuss Haiti’s worsening situation.
WMUR-TV reported that Dorsainvil is from Middleton, New Hampshire, and went to Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, which has a program to support nursing education in Haiti.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Alix chose to get involved in this type of service work,” Regis College president Toni Hays told the station. “She was amazing. She was passionate, she was compassionate.” | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/us-mother-daughter-reportedly-kidnapped-in-haiti-do-not-travel-advisory-issued/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:53 | 0 | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/u-s-world/us-mother-daughter-reportedly-kidnapped-in-haiti-do-not-travel-advisory-issued/ |
US mother, daughter, reported kidnapped in Haiti, people warned not to travel there
(AP) - A woman from New Hampshire who works for a nonprofit organization in Haiti and her young daughter have been reported as kidnapped as the U.S. State Department issued a “do not travel advisory” in the country and ordered nonemergency personnel to leave there amid growing security concerns.
Alix Dorsainvil, a nurse for El Roi Haiti, and her daughter were kidnapped on Thursday, the organization said in a statement Saturday. El Roi, which runs a school and ministry in Port au Prince, said the two were taken from campus. Dorsainvil is the wife of the program’s director, Sandro Dorsainvil.
“Alix is a deeply compassionate and loving person who considers Haiti her home and the Haitian people her friends and family,” El Roi president and co-founder Jason Brown said in the statement. “Alix has worked tirelessly as our school and community nurse to bring relief to those who are suffering as she loves and serves the people of Haiti in the name of Jesus.”
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement Saturday it is “aware of reports of the kidnapping of two U.S. citizens in Haiti,” adding, “We are in regular contact with Haitian authorities and will continue to work with them and our U.S. government interagency partners.”
In its advisory Thursday, the department said that “kidnapping is widespread, and victims regularly include U.S. citizens.”
It said kidnappings often involve ransom negotiations and U.S. citizen victims have been physically harmed.
Earlier this month, the National Human Rights Defense Network issued a report warning about an upsurge in killings and kidnappings and the U.N. Security Council met to discuss Haiti’s worsening situation.
WMUR-TV reported that Dorsainvil is from Middleton, New Hampshire, and went to Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, which has a program to support nursing education in Haiti.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Alex chose to get involved in this type of service work,” Regis College president Toni Hays told the station. “She was amazing. She was passionate, she was compassionate.”
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/us-mother-daughter-reported-kidnapped-haiti-people-warned-not-travel-there/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:53 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/07/30/us-mother-daughter-reported-kidnapped-haiti-people-warned-not-travel-there/ |
(iSeeCars) — The average new car costs $43,528, while the average one-to-five-year-old used car costs $34,291 according to the latest iSeeCars data.
While used cars are significantly cheaper than new cars, both are still a major expense. That’s why it’s important to set a realistic budget and determine how much money you can afford to pay for your new — or new to you — car. We have the answers to help you determine that age-old question: how much car can I afford?
- Determine Your Credit Score
Unless you’re paying for your car in full, you’ll need to secure a car loan. The first step toward getting a car loan and figuring out how much you can afford to pay is determining your credit score. This can also be referred to as your “FICO score” and is a numerical representation of your credit history. The three major credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – can each provide you with your FICO credit score. Another option is to check with your bank or credit card companies. Many of these institutions also provide a free credit monitoring service that will tell you your credit score.
A credit report, as well as monitoring services, also include a record of your credit history, including any items that are lowering your credit score. The higher your credit score, the better loan term you will be able to secure. Car manufacturers and dealerships will advertise special payment terms like zero-percent financing, but it’s important to remember those terms typically only apply to buyers with favorable, if not top-tier, credit scores.
If your credit score is low, you should try to boost your number before you purchase a car. You should aim for a credit score of 680 or above, but higher is always better. You can start by making sure you make your credit card and loan payments — especially any auto loan payments — on time. Resolve any past-due accounts, and pay down as much of the balance on your loans as you can, especially revolving credit accounts. You should also avoid opening new accounts, as frequent inquiries to the credit bureaus seeking new credit can lower your credit score.
While a good credit score isn’t required to secure a car loan, it will afford you a better annual percentage rate (APR) on the interest you’ll have to pay. The higher interest rate you have, the more you will end up paying in the long run. If you are unable to achieve a favorable credit score, another option is to get a co-signer on your loan. Your co-signer will agree to make loan payments if you default on your loan, which can lower an otherwise high interest rate.
- Determine Your Down Payment
Making a down payment will lower the amount of the loan, or principle, you will need to take out, which will reduce your monthly payment. This also reduces the overall interest you’ll pay on the loan over time. While this can help make a car easier to afford, don’t deplete your savings account. Be sure to keep enough money on hand for whatever surprises might come your way. Dealers and lenders may offer deals for zero down payment financing, but you can still put money down to shorten the length of your loan and reduce your monthly payment.
- Estimate the Value of Your Trade-In
The process of trading in your car begins with determining how much your car is worth. Major factors that impact your car’s value include how many miles it has on the odometer and its overall condition. Having your vehicle professionally detailed can also boost the trade-in value for your current vehicle.
Several websites, including Edmunds (Edmunds.com) and Kelley Blue Book (kbb.com) have valuation tools that will give you a ballpark estimate on the value of your car. Make sure you are as honest as possible in answering any questions about your car’s condition. Some valuation tools offer an estimate specifically for trade-in value, but that’s just what it is – an estimate.
You can also sell your car to a private buyer, which will be more profitable than trading your car into a dealership. In this instance, you can price your car in accordance with its market value, which is higher than your car’s trade-in value. A car’s trade-in value is the amount of money a car dealer will offer you for your vehicle, whereas market value, also referred to as private party value, is the amount of money you would get selling your car directly to a buyer. Because dealerships handle the complex process of selling the vehicle, they offer a lower trade-in value to ensure they make a profit when they sell the car.
There are helpful online tools like the iSeeCars Price My Car Tool, which provide a detailed pricing report to help calculate your used car’s value. Simply enter your vehicle’s VIN or provide its make, model, year, trim, style, and mileage.
Whether you decide to sell your car privately or trade-in at the dealership, you can apply your car’s value toward the purchase price of your next vehicle, along with your down payment if you’re making one.
- Calculate Your Car Budget
Setting a monthly budget will guide your new or used car search. As a general rule of thumb, your car payment should not exceed 10 percent of your monthly income, and your total car expenses (fuel, maintenance, car insurance, registration) should not exceed 15 percent of your monthly take-home pay, which is the amount of money you make each month after taxes. Or, if you’re paying in cash, determine the amount you’re willing to pay for your vehicle. You can use the 15 percent rule as a guide, but if you have other major monthly expenses like student loans, you should determine a monthly payment you can comfortably afford.
- Determine Your Car Loan Amount
After you determine your monthly payment amount, you can determine how much you can borrow from a lender for your car purchase. One way to do this is by obtaining a pre-approval letter from a financial institution, which will review your credit history to determine how much money they will loan you. Keep in mind that you might be pre-approved for more than you can afford, so make sure you stick to your budget. You can also use a car affordability calculator, which is available on many personal finance websites, by entering your credit score, estimated monthly payment, and desired loan term. Remember — the shorter your loan term, the less you will pay in interest over time. Don’t be tempted to stretch out your loan term in order to have a lower monthly payment, because you’ll end up paying more in the long term. For example, if you purchase a $25,000 used car and put $4,000 down with an interest rate of 4.5 percent, your monthly payment on a four-year loan will be roughly $625 and you will pay $1,488 in interest over the duration of the loan. If you spread the loan out over five years with a higher interest rate of 5 percent, you will pay roughly $396 per month and nearly double, $2,778, in total interest. While a smaller monthly payment might seem appealing, it will cost you a lot more in the long run.
It’s important to note that most lenders will not provide a loan on a vehicle that’s more than five years old, so if you are relying on the financing you should consider a later model used vehicle.
- Shop Around for the Best Loan Rates
You should always visit a bank or credit union to get pre-approved for a loan before you go to the dealership. Even if you plan on securing an auto loan through the dealership, having a pre-approval option from a financial institution can help you negotiate against the dealer’s rate. It will also show them that you are a serious buyer, which will give you more bargaining power. Because dealers make more money on vehicles they finance, they will likely try to beat the rates you’ve already secured.
- New Car or Used Car?
When purchasing a vehicle, you have the choice of buying a new or used car. Although they are more expensive, there are perks to buying a new vehicle, including peace of mind, the reduced likelihood of unexpected repair bills, and warranty coverage. New cars also typically come with lower interest rates and financial incentives.
According to an iSeeCars study on off-lease car deals, the average used car loses 39 percent of its value after three years. When you buy a used car, the largest percentage of depreciation has already been absorbed by the original owner, and you get the car at a much lower price. You can even buy a car that is just one year old, which will typically cost 17 percent less than its new version. However, in today’s market, some lightly used cars cost more than their new versions, so be sure to compare the cost of new and lightly used vehicles. You may find that buying a new car is a better financial decision than purchasing a lightly-used one.
If you’re purchasing your used car through a franchise dealer, you will have the option to purchase a certified pre-owned (CPO) car. (Check out our handy guide to learn what does certified pre-owned mean? to better understand the CPO car buying process.) CPO cars are typically used cars that are less than five-years-old and have fewer than 75,000 miles on the odometer. CPO cars typically cost slightly more than non-certified used cars, but they are backed by manufacturer warranties and may also carry special financing. CPO cars combine the best of both the new and used car worlds, by offering added warranty protection on a late-model used car.
- Buying or Leasing?
Another factor to consider is whether you want to buy or lease your vehicle. If you choose to lease, you don’t need to finance because you’re not buying the car. You just need to be able to afford the down payment and the monthly payments. If you don’t want to borrow from a bank and take out a loan, leasing could be your best option. Your lease payments typically cost less money than what you would pay for a monthly car payment if you were buying the vehicle. You can also get a much nicer car for your money and get to drive a new car every few years. Another benefit of leasing is that you don’t have to pay for repairs, as issues with your car that occur during your lease term are usually covered by the car’s factory warranty.
The downside to leasing is that you never own the vehicle. As soon as your leasing term ends, you will begin the cycle again. If you purchase a vehicle, you will likely be able to enjoy several years without a car payment, provided that you don’t take out too long of a loan term. Another drawback is that car leases come with mileage limits, which commonly range from 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year. If you exceed those mileage limits, you will have to pay excessive mileage fees, which can get expensive. Lastly, the upfront cost to lease is usually more than if you were purchasing. You might need to put down a larger down payment due to your credit score, and it’s likely that the dealership will often want the first month’s payment as well.
For more information on leasing vs. buying a car, refer to our guide.
- Be Sure to Factor In Extra Costs
It’s important to make sure you budget for more than the advertised price of the car. While each state has different taxes and associated fees, you can expect to pay an extra 10% on top of the purchase price to cover the total cost of the vehicle. This includes sales tax, which is typically 5 percent to 10 percent depending on your state. There’s also documentation and registration fees, which also vary by state and the amount can be found on your state’s department of motor vehicles website. If you’re financing the vehicle, it’s important to understand you’ll also be paying interest on the financed portion of the vehicle. You should also research the car’s ownership costs to get a better understanding of what you’ll be paying per month. Car insurance is a major added expense, and it will cost more on later-model used vehicles. Be sure to check with your insurance agent before you purchase the vehicle to get an idea of what your new monthly rate will be. Be aware that used car insurance rates are also higher on sports cars and performance vehicles. You can also take the opportunity to shop around with other auto insurance companies to compare insurance quotes to ensure you’re getting the best rate. If you’re purchasing an SUV or a less fuel-efficient vehicle, you should also factor in additional fuel costs to make sure there is room in your budget. (You can refer to our list of Best Gas Mileage Cars to help reduce your fuel costs.)
- Find the Right Car
Once you’ve determined your budget, you can now search for cars within your budget. Helpful car websites and search engines have made it easier and more convenient than ever to find the right car to meet your needs. Car search engines like iSeeCars.com equip buyers with all the information they need to find the right vehicle.
- Beware of Depreciation
The depreciation on a new car means there’s a much greater loss in its value in the first few years after purchase compared to a used car. After all, The average new car loses nearly half its value after five years. If you’re going to keep your new car for the life of your loan, which will likely be between 5 and 7 years, that’s not a concern. But if you decide to switch cars earlier, the vehicle’s depreciation represents a significant ownership cost. If you plan to switch cars every few years you’ll save a lot of money buying cars that are at least 3 years old. Keep in mind that cars depreciate at different rates, so buying a car that best holds its value is a smart purchase decision.
12. Find the Best Price
Now that you’ve selected which models you’re interested in, you can do your research to find the best deal. While this mainly applies to used cars, which vary greatly in pricing, you can also do research to see which dealerships and manufacturers are offering the best new car incentives and finance rates. You may find that you can afford a more expensive vehicle than you anticipated if you spot a good deal.
Used car search engine iSeeCars.com uses data to objectively rank millions of cars and thousands of dealers, providing helpful insights and guidance to car buyers to find a good car at a good price from a trustworthy seller. Used car search engines and research sites allow you to easily compare prices and features like warranties, vehicle histories, and condition. Tools like the iSeeCars free VIN check will provide you with a pre-purchase analysis to ensure you are making the smartest purchase decision possible. It will also alert you to any red flags that could end up costing you money down the road. This includes:
- Pricing Analysis – Calculates the car’s fair value based on the local market and maps similar cars for sale locally.
- Condition – Analysis of mileage on the odometer, positives and negatives about the vehicle’s features and condition, and other resources like theft record, recalls.
- Depreciation – Estimates how much the car will depreciate over 1, 3, and 5 years
- Supply Analysis –Identifies similar vehicles for sale within the local area.
- Best Time to Buy – Analyzes when or what months may get you a better price.
- Vehicle History – Free CARFAX or Autocheck reports when provided by the seller.
Bottom Line
Whether you’re buying or leasing a car, it’s important to understand that you’ll likely keep your vehicle for several years. When taking out an auto loan or signing a lease contract, do your best to anticipate your future financial situation and make sure you’ll be able to make payments for the duration of the payment term. Also, when you determine how much you can afford to pay for a vehicle, you can still shop for cars that cost less than that amount. Just like it’s important to do your research and shop around for a vehicle, the same rule extends to auto loans. Follow our steps and you will find the best car at the best price within your budget.
More from iSeeCars:
Ready to begin your used car search? The iSeeCars.com used car search engine is the perfect place to start. With millions of listings that rank the best deals first and 59 user-friendly search filters, it can help you find the best car at the best price. And be sure to check out the comprehensive iSeeCars VIN check report to further help guide you through the car buying process and securethe best deal possible.
This article, How Much Car Can I Afford?, originally appeared on iSeeCars.com. | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/reviews/br/automotive-br/how-much-car-can-i-afford-3/ | 2023-07-30T14:37:53 | 1 | https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/reviews/br/automotive-br/how-much-car-can-i-afford-3/ |
Gabriel Arias Player Prop Bets: Guardians vs. White Sox - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Gabriel Arias -- with a slugging percentage of .217 in his past 10 games (including zero home runs) -- will be in action for the Cleveland Guardians versus the Chicago White Sox, with Michael Kopech on the hill, on July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
He had a hitless showing in his last game (0-for-2) against the White Sox.
Gabriel Arias Game Info & Props vs. the White Sox
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Guaranteed Rate Field
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- White Sox Starter: Michael Kopech
- TV Channel: NBCS-CHI
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -128)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +575)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +250)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +170)
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Gabriel Arias At The Plate
- Arias has six doubles, four home runs and 23 walks while batting .193.
- In 40.4% of his games this year (23 of 57), Arias has picked up at least one hit, and in six of those games (10.5%) he recorded at least two.
- He has hit a home run in 7.0% of his games this season, and 2.3% of his plate appearances.
- Arias has driven in a run in four games this year (7.0%), including two games with multiple runs batted in.
- He has scored in 12 of 57 games (21.1%), including multiple runs twice.
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Gabriel Arias Home/Away Batting Splits
White Sox Pitching Rankings
- The 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings compiled by the White Sox pitching staff ranks first in the league.
- The White Sox's 4.61 team ERA ranks 24th across all league pitching staffs.
- White Sox pitchers combine to surrender 145 total home runs at a clip of 1.4 per game (fourth-most in the league).
- Kopech (4-9) takes the mound for the White Sox in his 20th start of the season. He has a 4.44 ERA in 97 1/3 innings pitched, with 107 strikeouts.
- In his most recent appearance on Wednesday against the Chicago Cubs, the righty went five innings, giving up four earned runs while surrendering nine hits.
- In 19 games this season, the 27-year-old has put up an ERA of 4.44, with 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings. Opponents are hitting .224 against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/gabriel-arias-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:07 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/gabriel-arias-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Guardians vs. White Sox Predictions & Picks: Odds, Moneyline, Spread - July 30
Sunday's contest at Guaranteed Rate Field has the Chicago White Sox (43-63) taking on the Cleveland Guardians (52-53) at 2:10 PM ET (on July 30). Our computer prediction projects a close 5-4 win for the White Sox, so expect a tight matchup.
The probable pitchers are Aaron Civale (4-2) for the Guardians and Michael Kopech (4-9) for the White Sox.
Guardians vs. White Sox Game Info & Odds
- When: Sunday, July 30, 2023 at 2:10 PM ET
- Where: Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago, Illinois
- How to Watch on TV: NBCS-CHI
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
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Guardians vs. White Sox Score Prediction
Our prediction for this contest is White Sox 5, Guardians 4.
Total Prediction for Guardians vs. White Sox
- Total Prediction: Over 9 runs
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Guardians Performance Insights
- In seven games as the favorite over the last 10 matchups, the Guardians have a record of 3-4.
- In its last 10 games with a total, Cleveland and its opponents have failed to hit the over five times.
- There has not been a spread set for any of the Guardians' last 10 games.
- This season, the Guardians have been favored 54 times and won 31, or 57.4%, of those games.
- Cleveland has entered 26 games this season favored by -145 or more and is 17-9 in those contests.
- The bookmakers' moneyline implies a 59.2% chance of a victory for the Guardians.
- Cleveland has scored 436 runs (4.2 per game) this season, which ranks 24th in MLB.
- The Guardians have the seventh-ranked team ERA among all MLB pitching staffs (3.88).
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Guardians Schedule
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/guardians-white-sox-mlb-picks-predictions/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:14 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/guardians-white-sox-mlb-picks-predictions/ |
Josh Bell Player Prop Bets: Guardians vs. White Sox - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Josh Bell -- with a slugging percentage of .500 in his past 10 games, including two home runs -- will be in action for the Cleveland Guardians versus the Chicago White Sox, with Michael Kopech on the hill, on July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
He had a one-hit showing in his most recent game (1-for-4) against the White Sox.
Josh Bell Game Info & Props vs. the White Sox
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Guaranteed Rate Field
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- White Sox Starter: Michael Kopech
- TV Channel: NBCS-CHI
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -189)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +400)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +155)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +115)
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Read More About This Game
Josh Bell At The Plate
- Bell has 19 doubles, 11 home runs and 43 walks while hitting .236.
- In 64.2% of his 95 games this season, Bell has picked up at least one hit. He's also had 15 multi-hit games.
- He has hit a long ball in 11 games this year (11.6%), homering in 2.9% of his trips to the plate.
- In 38.9% of his games this season, Bell has driven in at least one run. In nine of those games (9.5%) he recorded more than one RBI, while he was responsible for three or more of his team's runs in one contest.
- In 21 of 95 games this season, he has scored, and three of those games included multiple runs.
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Josh Bell Home/Away Batting Splits
White Sox Pitching Rankings
- The 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings put together by the White Sox pitching staff ranks first in the league.
- The White Sox have a 4.61 team ERA that ranks 24th across all league pitching staffs.
- White Sox pitchers combine to allow 145 total home runs at a rate of 1.4 per game (fourth-most in the league).
- The White Sox will send Kopech (4-9) to the mound for his 20th start of the season. He is 4-9 with a 4.44 ERA and 107 strikeouts through 97 1/3 innings pitched.
- The righty's last time out came on Wednesday against the Chicago Cubs, when he went five innings, surrendering four earned runs while allowing nine hits.
- The 27-year-old has a 4.44 ERA and 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings in 19 games this season, while giving up a batting average of .224 to his opponents.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/josh-bell-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:26 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/josh-bell-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Josh Naylor Player Prop Bets: Guardians vs. White Sox - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
The Cleveland Guardians, including Josh Naylor (.368 slugging percentage in past 10 games, including no homers), battle starting pitcher Michael Kopech and the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field, Sunday at 2:10 PM ET.
He had a one-hit showing in his most recent game (1-for-4) against the White Sox.
Josh Naylor Game Info & Props vs. the White Sox
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Guaranteed Rate Field
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- White Sox Starter: Michael Kopech
- TV Channel: NBCS-CHI
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -238)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +375)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +110)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +100)
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Josh Naylor At The Plate
- Naylor leads Cleveland with 110 hits, batting .312 this season with 40 extra-base hits.
- Among the qualifying hitters in MLB action, he ranks sixth in batting average, 36th in on-base percentage, and 13th in slugging.
- Naylor enters this game on a four-game hitting streak. During his last outings, he's hitting .350.
- In 63 of 94 games this season (67.0%) Naylor has picked up a hit, and in 34 of those games he had more than one (36.2%).
- He has hit a home run in 14 games this season (14.9%), homering in 3.9% of his plate appearances.
- Naylor has had an RBI in 41 games this season (43.6%), including 20 multi-RBI outings (21.3%). He has also driven in three or more of his team's runs in 10 contests.
- He has scored at least once 32 times this season (34.0%), including eight games with multiple runs (8.5%).
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Josh Naylor Home/Away Batting Splits
White Sox Pitching Rankings
- The pitching staff for the White Sox has a collective 9.7 K/9 to lead the league.
- The White Sox's 4.61 team ERA ranks 24th among all league pitching staffs.
- The White Sox allow the fourth-most home runs in baseball (145 total, 1.4 per game).
- Kopech (4-9) takes the mound for the White Sox in his 20th start of the season. He has a 4.44 ERA in 97 1/3 innings pitched, with 107 strikeouts.
- In his most recent outing on Wednesday against the Chicago Cubs, the righty threw five innings, allowing four earned runs while surrendering nine hits.
- The 27-year-old has amassed a 4.44 ERA and 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings across 19 games this season, while giving up a batting average of .224 to opposing hitters.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/josh-naylor-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:32 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/josh-naylor-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Oscar Gonzalez Player Prop Bets: Guardians vs. White Sox - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:26 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Oscar Gonzalez -- batting .269 in his past 10 games -- will be in action for the Cleveland Guardians versus the Chicago White Sox, with Michael Kopech on the hill, on July 30 at 2:10 PM ET.
He had a one-hit showing in his previous game (1-for-4) against the White Sox.
Oscar Gonzalez Game Info & Props vs. the White Sox
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Guaranteed Rate Field
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- White Sox Starter: Michael Kopech
- TV Channel: NBCS-CHI
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -227)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +550)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +160)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: +150)
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Oscar Gonzalez At The Plate
- Gonzalez is hitting .205 with two doubles, a triple, a home run and two walks.
- Gonzalez enters this game on a four-game hitting streak. During his last games, he's hitting .400.
- Gonzalez has had a hit in 13 of 25 games this season (52.0%), including multiple hits three times (12.0%).
- He has homered in one of 25 games, and in 1.3% of his plate appearances.
- Gonzalez has driven in a run in four games this year (16.0%), including one multiple-RBI game.
- He has scored in four games this season (16.0%), but has had no multi-run games.
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Oscar Gonzalez Home/Away Batting Splits
White Sox Pitching Rankings
- The pitching staff for the White Sox has a collective 9.7 K/9, the first-best in MLB.
- The White Sox have a 4.61 team ERA that ranks 24th across all league pitching staffs.
- White Sox pitchers combine to allow the fourth-most home runs in baseball (145 total, 1.4 per game).
- Kopech (4-9) gets the starting nod for the White Sox in his 20th start of the season. He has a 4.44 ERA in 97 1/3 innings pitched, with 107 strikeouts.
- In his most recent time out on Wednesday, the righty threw five innings against the Chicago Cubs, giving up four earned runs while surrendering nine hits.
- The 27-year-old has put up an ERA of 4.44, with 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings, in 19 games this season. Opponents are hitting .224 against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/oscar-gonzalez-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:38 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/oscar-gonzalez-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
A jury has ordered anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy and associates to pay more than $50 million in damages to Idaho's largest hospital in connection with armed protests last year that led to a security lockdown.
The decision handed down late Monday follows a ten day civil trial in which Bundy was a no show and where attorneys with St. Luke's Hospital outlined what they called an extensive campaign of bullying, intimidation and disinformation directed at doctors and medical staff that they say continues today.
"Standing up to threats, bullying, intimidation, disruption and self serving actions was necessary. Inaction would have signaled that their menacing behavior was acceptable," said Chris Roth, CEO of St. Luke's Health System, in a statement.
The drama goes back to March of 2022 when Bundy led a series of tense protests against the hospitalization of one of his associate's infant grandkids who state social workers said was malnourished. According to court documents, protesters, some armed, tried to force their way into the hospital's locked exits. Some held "wanted" signs naming individual doctors and nurses and even blocked an ambulance entrance as car horns blared.
At the trial, the hospital's security director, Abbey Abbondandolo told the jury that he ordered a security lockdown and diverted all incoming ambulances to other hospitals because he feared Bundy and his militia followers were close to taking over the hospital and carrying out a "Pizzagate" style attack.
"This is not just a guy going rogue. He's like a military leader who's able to coordinate actions and mobilize people on different fronts," Abbondandolo said.
The jury trial offered a window into the dark world of far-right extremism, with intimidation and threats being directed at top officials even in one of the most conservative states in the nation.
Ammon Bundy, who ran for governor in Idaho in 2022, receiving some 90,000 votes, routinely attacks the state's Republican leaders, including its conservative governor, on social media. Bundy and his followers frequently spread Q Anon conspiracy theories that St. Luke's and its staff who cared for the infant grandson were part of a global child sex trafficking cabal.
Meanwhile, it's unclear how much if any of the $50 million in damages, half of them punitive, will ever get paid. St Luke's says it plans to donate the money upon collection to one of its child health services organizations.
Bundy, who has defied a civil arrest warrant, appears to remain holed up in his home in a rural area outside Boise where he's been claiming erroneously that he has no assets left to be taken.
"People in a jury deciding how much St. Luke's is going to take from those who exposed the truth about them is a mockery to justice. When a baby is born he or she does not become property of the state or hospital executives," Bundy said in a tweet responding to the verdict.
This is just the latest legal drama for Bundy, who a jury actually acquitted in 2016 for leading a 41 day armed takeover of a federal bird sanctuary in Oregon. Bundy has also been arrested for trespassing in the Boise area several times more recently, even leading to his being banned from the Idaho state capitol for one year.
"They are, to some degree, terrorists in the way that they're acting. And then he turns around and makes himself the martyr or the victim, which is just ludicrous," says Gary Raney, a retired sheriff in Ada County, Idaho's most populous.
Leading up to the civil trial, Raney was advising local law enforcement to wait things out and not immediately go in and serve the warrant. The local sheriff had warned earlier this year that Bundy was becoming increasingly aggressive toward his deputies.
Raney told NPR he thinks Bundy will get served soon but there's no rush while tempers are flaring.
"The predicament is just keeping the community safe over there with all these - I'll use the technical term - yahoos that are over living on Bundy's property, trying to protect him from who knows what," Raney said.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2023-07-25/ammon-bundy-ordered-to-pay-50-million-but-will-the-hospital-ever-see-the-money | 2023-07-30T14:38:43 | 1 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2023-07-25/ammon-bundy-ordered-to-pay-50-million-but-will-the-hospital-ever-see-the-money |
Steven Kwan Player Prop Bets: Guardians vs. White Sox - July 30
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:26 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
The Cleveland Guardians, including Steven Kwan and his .452 slugging percentage in past 10 games, including three extra-base hits but no homers), take on starting pitcher Michael Kopech and the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field, Sunday at 2:10 PM ET.
He strung together three hits (going 3-for-4) in his most recent game against the White Sox.
Steven Kwan Game Info & Props vs. the White Sox
- Game Day: Sunday, July 30, 2023
- Game Time: 2:10 PM ET
- Stadium: Guaranteed Rate Field
- Live Stream: Watch this game on Fubo!
- White Sox Starter: Michael Kopech
- TV Channel: NBCS-CHI
- Hits Prop: Over/under 0.5 hits (Over odds: -250)
- Home Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 home runs (Over odds: +900)
- RBI Prop: Over/under 0.5 RBI (Over odds: +240)
- Runs Prop: Over/under 0.5 runs (Over odds: -118)
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Steven Kwan At The Plate
- Kwan has an OPS of .725, fueled by an OBP of .347 and a team-best slugging percentage of .378 this season.
- Among the qualified hitters in MLB play, he ranks 35th in batting average, 41st in on-base percentage, and 119th in slugging.
- In 68.9% of his games this year (71 of 103), Kwan has picked up at least one hit, and in 33 of those games (32.0%) he recorded more than one.
- He has hit a home run in 3.9% of his games in 2023 (four of 103), and 0.8% of his trips to the dish.
- Kwan has driven home a run in 23 games this year (22.3%), including more than one RBI in 7.8% of his games and producing three or more of his team's runs on three occasions..
- In 53 of 103 games this year, he has scored, and 12 of those games included multiple runs.
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Steven Kwan Home/Away Batting Splits
White Sox Pitching Rankings
- The 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings compiled by the White Sox pitching staff ranks first in the league.
- The White Sox have the 24th-ranked team ERA among all MLB pitching staffs (4.61).
- White Sox pitchers combine to allow the fourth-most home runs in baseball (145 total, 1.4 per game).
- The White Sox are sending Kopech (4-9) to the mound for his 20th start of the season. He is 4-9 with a 4.44 ERA and 107 strikeouts through 97 1/3 innings pitched.
- In his last time out on Wednesday, the righty tossed five innings against the Chicago Cubs, allowing four earned runs while surrendering nine hits.
- The 27-year-old has amassed an ERA of 4.44, with 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings, in 19 games this season. Opponents are hitting .224 against him.
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/steven-kwan-mlb-player-prop-bets/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:45 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/30/steven-kwan-mlb-player-prop-bets/ |
Australia vs. Canada: Live Stream, TV Channel & Game Info - July 31
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:37 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
Australia will meet Canada in Melbourne, Australia, in the last round of group-stage matches at the 2023 Women's World Cup, on July 31 at 6:00 AM ET.
Go to FOX US to watch Australia take on Canada.
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How to Watch Australia vs. Canada
- Game Day: Monday, July 31, 2023
- Game Time: 6:00 AM ET
- TV Channel: FOX US
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Venue: Melbourne Rectangular Stadium
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Australia Group Stage Schedule
Australia's Recent Performance
- Australia lost on July 27 against Nigeria by a final score of 3-2. It took 17 more shots in the contest, 27 to 10.
- Emily van Egmond and Alanna Kennedy scored the only goals for their side in the match versus .
- Kyra Cooney-Cross has not scored a goal, but has recorded one assist for Australia in Women's World Cup play (two games).
- In two Women's World Cup matches, Caitlin Foord has not scored a goal but has one assist.
- During Women's World Cup play, van Egmond has scored one goal (but has no assists).
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Australia's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Lydia Williams #1
- Courtney Nevin #2
- Aivi Luik #3
- Clare Polkinghorne #4
- Cortnee Vine #5
- Clare Wheeler #6
- Steph Catley #7
- Alexandra Chidiac #8
- Caitlin Foord #9
- Emily van Egmond #10
- Mary Fowler #11
- Teagan Micah #12
- Tameka Yallop #13
- Alanna Kennedy #14
- Clare Hunt #15
- Hayley Raso #16
- Kyah Simon #17
- Mackenzie Arnold #18
- Katrina Gorry #19
- Sam Kerr #20
- Ellie Carpenter #21
- Charlotte Grant #22
- Kyra Cooney-Cross #23
Canada Group Stage Schedule
Canada's Recent Performance
- In its last game on July 26, Canada claimed a 2-1 victory against Ireland, outshooting Ireland 16 to 13.
- Adriana Leon recorded one goal to lead Canada in the game.
- In two Women's World Cup matches for Canada, Leon has one goal (12th in the 2023 Women's World Cup).
- Sophie Schmidt has not scored, but does have one assist for Canada in Women's World Cup.
Canada's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Kailen Sheridan #1
- Allysha Chapman #2
- Kadeisha Buchanan #3
- Shelina Zadorsky #4
- Quinn #5
- Deanne Rose #6
- Julia Grosso #7
- Jayde Riviere #8
- Jordyn Huitema #9
- Ashley Lawrence #10
- Evelyne Viens #11
- Christine Sinclair #12
- Sophie Schmidt #13
- Vanessa Gilles #14
- Nichelle Prince #15
- Gabrielle Carle #16
- Jessie Fleming #17
- Sabrina D'Angelo #18
- Adriana Leon #19
- Cloe Lacasse #20
- Simi Awujo #21
- Lysianne Proulx #22
- Olivia Smith #23
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-australia-canada-live-stream-tv/ | 2023-07-30T14:38:51 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-australia-canada-live-stream-tv/ |
Updated July 27, 2023 at 3:40 PM ET
When The Sims came out back in the year 2000, it changed the gaming landscape. Here was a game made for everybody, a game that looked and played like real life, if only real life was a lot more fun.
It was such a big deal that even mainstream news outlets like us were talking about it. Dan Morris, former executive editor of PC Gamer Magazine, told NPR that part of its appeal was its familiarity and relatability. "It's sort of the part of us that always liked, you know, playing with dollhouses," he said. In a medium where players were usually confronted with science fiction and fantasy, it was the mundanity of The Sims' world that proved refreshing.
But while The Sims spawned many sequels, you can't officially buy the original, and even if you have it, it's not designed to run on modern systems. That fate, sadly, isn't an anomaly — most classic video games can't be played on today's hardware. A new study from The Video Game History Foundation finds that only 13% of titles produced before 2010 are available on modern platforms.
Games made before 1985 fare even worse, with only 3% still being sold. Salvador calls that period the "silent film" era of video games, when designers established the medium's basic grammar. "There's a very real danger," says study author Phil Salvador, "that in a few decades these games will be unavailable and unplayable to a wide audience." That concern took on new urgency this year, when Nintendo shuttered its 3DS and Wii eShops, taking whole generations of games off the market.
But why does it matter that we can't, for example, play the original Sims when its commercially successful sequels are easily purchasable? "That's like saying, well, you know, why do we need the original Psycho if we can get Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho?" argues Salvador. "Video games are cultural history in the same way that film is cultural history or books or movies."
That history can tell you a lot about a video game, and the time and place it was born into.
In the early 1990's, Sega was a video game giant. But when they released their Sega Saturn video game console in America in 1995, it flopped. Many of the games on that system are now out of print. But fans are keeping its memory alive.
David Lee writes about the system and its games on the blog SegaSaturnShiro, which he co-founded. "I just really love the mystique of it," he explains. "I love how it kind of has this troubled and complex story." Games like Clockwork Knight, he says, have a colorful and chaotic visual style that felt uniquely 90's Sega. "It's just got a look to it, a visual charm to it, that's just very much of the time," he explains.
Fan communities have played a major role preserving video games, but official institutions are lagging behind. Phil Salvador argues that libraries also need the power to make these games and their histories more accessible to researchers. "I worry about the long-term future of video games [is] going to be if we have to sort of rely entirely on the fan community for this kind of documentation."
Kendra Albert at the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic says that current copyright law makes that difficult, and video game companies want to keep it that way. "The rationale that the lobbying groups often come forward with is that this will harm the market for existing games," Albert says.
But Albert feels that this perspective is out of step with both the reality of consumer demand and the goals of preservationists. Preservationists want libraries to have more flexibility when it comes to making games available to researchers. For example, current copyright law makes it legally questionable to share video games remotely through software emulation. Games historians want access to the original titles, because companies change old games when they re-enter the market as remasters and remakes.
Professor Adrienne Shaw of Temple University, who founded the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, points to the game Baldur's Gate as an example. The 2012 remaster of the original game added same-sex relationship options for some of its characters. While the game became accessible to more players, it became a fundamentally different object to a researcher studying queer relationships in video games.
Albert and other advocacy organizations will ask the U.S. Copyright Office to exempt video games from some of these copyright laws when the appeals process begins this fall. Similar appeals have been denied in the past, leaving official preservation of the young medium in doubt.
James Perkins Mastromarino contributed to this story. contributed to this story
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-21/these-are-the-classic-video-games-you-can-no-longer-play-spoiler-its-most-of-them | 2023-07-30T14:39:02 | 1 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-21/these-are-the-classic-video-games-you-can-no-longer-play-spoiler-its-most-of-them |
A U.S. District Court in Mississippi on Tuesday temporarily blocked a voting law in the state that was supposed to go into effect July 1. The law, known as Senate Bill 2358, creates new restrictions for who can assist someone while voting by mail.
Voting rights and disability rights advocates, who filed the lawsuit, argue Mississippi's law violates a federal protection that allows a voter to choose who helps them cast a ballot.
In his order striking down the law, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate wrote, "voting polls are expected to extend outstretched hands of welcome and provide unfettered access to conscientious citizens anxious to enjoy 'participatory democracy'- whether those citizens be among the vulnerable and the disabled."
SB 2358, which was signed into law earlier this year, set new limits on who can collect and transmit a ballot that was mailed to someone else. In Mississippi, the state's absentee-by-mail voting program is for limited groups of voters — people out of town on Election Day, people 65 or older and people with a temporary or permanent physical disability.
Under the new law, though, only election officials, postal workers, a family member or household member or a caregiver would be able to assist these voters in mailing back their ballot. The law also set new criminal penalties. Under SB 2358, not following these restrictions is punishable by imprisonment of up to one year in county jail and/or a fine of up to $3,000.
Opponents of Mississippi's law say voters should be able to choose who helps them vote — including a friend or someone from a community organization.
Ahmed Soussi, a staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a written statement that "Mississippians may now continue to assist voters without the fear of prosecution."
"We are glad that the Court recognized the federal guarantee to voters with a disability or language barrier to select a person of their choice to provide them assistance," he said. "What is important now is to make sure everyone who is eligible to vote does vote in the upcoming elections."
Supporters of the Mississippi law argued it was necessary to prevent ballot harvesting, which is when someone collects and returns other people's ballots.
Many Republicans have argued this practice leads to vote stealing and fraud, which studies have found to be extremely rare in United States elections.
Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said in a video address earlier this year that across the country "bad actors have used ballot harvesting to take advantage of elderly and vulnerable voters." He said the practice is an effort to undermine the democratic process.
"Senate Bill 2358 is now law and Mississippi's elections are safer because of it," Reeves said.
However, Judge Wingate wrote that state and local election officials were "unable to provide any data illustrating whether Mississippi has a widespread ballot harvesting problem" when asked in court.
"Seemingly, no fact-findings or committee-finding investigations or legislative committee inquiries have focused upon this perceived threat," he wrote. "This may explain why the definitional approach of the statute is so barren."
The court's injunction blocking SB 2358 applies to Mississippi's upcoming general election in November — as well as the state's August primary, which is currently underway.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-26/a-mississippi-law-limits-who-can-help-mail-in-voters-a-federal-court-struck-it-down | 2023-07-30T14:39:06 | 1 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-26/a-mississippi-law-limits-who-can-help-mail-in-voters-a-federal-court-struck-it-down |
Nigeria vs. Ireland: Live Stream, TV Channel & Game Info - July 31
Published: Jul. 30, 2023 at 9:38 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
In the final round of Group B matches at the 2023 Women's World Cup, on July 31 at 6:00 AM ET, Nigeria will play Ireland in Brisbane, Australia.
You should head to Fox Sports 1 in order to watch this matchup.
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How to Watch Nigeria vs. Ireland
- Game Day: Monday, July 31, 2023
- Game Time: 6:00 AM ET
- TV Channel: Fox Sports 1
- Location: Brisbane, Australia
- Venue: Suncorp Stadium
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Nigeria Group Stage Schedule
Nigeria's Recent Performance
- Nigeria met Australia in its previous game and was victorious by a final score of 3-2. The Nigeria side won despite being outshot by 17 in the match, 27 to 10.
- Nigeria got its three goals from Osinachi Ohale, Asisat Oshoala and Uchenna Kanu in that match versus .
- Oshoala's Women's World Cup statline through two appearances for Nigeria includes one goal.
- Ohale has scored one goal for Nigeria in Women's World Cup so far.
- In Women's World Cup action, Kanu has scored one goal (but has no assists).
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Nigeria's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Tochukwu Oluehi #1
- Ashleigh Plumptre #2
- Osinachi Ohale #3
- Glory Ogbonna #4
- Onome Ebi #5
- Ifeoma Onumonu #6
- Toni Payne #7
- Asisat Oshoala #8
- Desire Oparanozie #9
- Christy Ucheibe #10
- Gift Monday #11
- Uchenna Kanu #12
- Deborah Abiodun #13
- Oluwatosin Demehin #14
- Rasheedat Ajibade #15
- Chiamaka Nnadozie #16
- Francisca Ordega #17
- Halimatu Ayinde #18
- Onyi Echegini #19
- Rofiat Imuran #20
- Esther Okoronkwo #21
- Michelle Alozie #22
- Yewande Balogun #23
Ireland Group Stage Schedule
Ireland's Recent Performance
- In its last game on July 26, Ireland fell 2-1 to Canada. Canada outshot Ireland 16 to 13.
- Katie McCabe scored the lone goal for Ireland on three shots.
- In two Women's World Cup matches for Ireland, McCabe has one goal (12th in the 2023 Women's World Cup).
Ireland's 2023 Women's World Cup Roster
- Courtney Brosnan #1
- Claire O'Riordan #2
- Chloe Mustaki #3
- Louise Quinn #4
- Niamh Fahey #5
- Megan Connolly #6
- Diane Caldwell #7
- Ruesha Littlejohn #8
- Amber Barrett #9
- Denise O'Sullivan #10
- Katie McCabe #11
- Lily Agg #12
- Aine O'Gorman #13
- Heather Payne #14
- Lucy Quinn #15
- Grace Moloney #16
- Sinead Farrelly #17
- Kyra Carusa #18
- Abbie Larkin #19
- Marissa Sheva #20
- Ciara Grant #21
- Isibeal Atkinson #22
- Megan Walsh #23
© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-nigeria-ireland-live-stream-tv/ | 2023-07-30T14:39:08 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/sports/betting/2023/07/31/2023-womens-world-cup-nigeria-ireland-live-stream-tv/ |
Updated July 29, 2023 at 11:35 AM ET
Two Supreme Court decisions are changing the way students, educators and even the Biden administration are approaching higher education.
The first ruling ended affirmative action for public and private colleges. It declared that race conscious admissions programs at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The second put a halt to President Biden's student loan cancellation plan. Now the Biden administration is trying to find new ways to make college more accessible. The administration recently unveiled a new student loan repayment plan that will save borrowers thousands of dollars by keeping monthly payments low and preventing interest from accumulating.
This week, the administration's focus is on affirmative action: The U.S. Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into the practice of legacy admissions at Harvard University, and on Friday, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited Wesleyan University, which recently got rid of legacy admissions.
Legacy admissions are on the chopping block
The federal inquiry comes after to three Boston-based groups — the Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England and the Greater Boston Latino Network — filed a complaint with the Education Department against Harvard. It accuses the university of discriminating against Black, Hispanic, Asian and other non-white undergraduate applicants by showing preference for those who have family relationships with donors or alumni.
In a statement to NPR, Harvard spokesperson Nicole Rura said the university is reviewing its admissions policy to ensure it is "complying with the law and to carry forward Harvard's longstanding commitment to welcoming students from a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences."
Ivory Toldson, the national director of Education Innovation and Research at the NAACP, said that legacy admissions compromise a university's ability to create a diverse student body. He said if colleges are committed to diversity, they should not be favoring applicants from wealthier backgrounds.
"Now that race conscious admissions has been outlawed by the Supreme Court, you have to look at other ways to achieve diversity," Toldson said during an interview for Morning Edition.
Toldson said legacy admissions should be abolished.
The impact of legacy admissions policies on a student body
A study released this week by the Harvard School of Economics showed that richer applicants are getting a leg up in the college admissions process. Students from affluent backgrounds are twice as likely to get into top colleges than students from more middle class backgrounds, even if the students have similar GPAs and SAT scores.
Admissions data cited in documents that were part of the affirmative action case revealed that nearly 70% of the university's legacy applicants were white — including applicants who have relationships with donors, those who are children of faculty or staff, and athletes applicants. And while legacy applicants make up less than 5% of applicants to Harvard, the data showed they constitute around 30% of the applicants admitted each year, the ruling cited.
Some schools have gotten rid of legacy admissions altogether.
Wesleyan University, a private liberal arts college in Connecticut that has a 16% acceptance rate, recently eliminated its legacy admissions policy. Wesleyan President Michael Roth told NPR's Leila Fadel, during an interview for Morning Edition, the decision to end the policy was a direct response to the Supreme Court ruling that effectively ended affirmative action as part of college admissions.
"It became clear to me that any advantage you give to incumbents, to people who already have advantages, is a glaring sign of unfairness," Roth said.
Other schools have done the same. The University of Minnesota Twin Cities also ended legacy admissions this month, and Colorado passed a state law banning the practice at all public colleges and universities.
"Not getting in" is just one concern for students
Whitney Gouche is vice president of a nonprofit called EMERGE that serves high-achieving students from low-income areas in Texas. She said her students feel discouraged by the recent Supreme Court decision.
"We've explained to our students, that regardless of the decision, you still belong here, she said. "You have the merits to be a successful student at this campus."
Convincing students to apply isn't the easiest task — concerns about high cost are also on students' minds. Even if they get in, it could cost about $70,000 in tuition for an elite college like Wesleyan.
Roth said that while admitted students who qualify for financial aid will receive it at Wesleyan, the university has to do more to convince students to apply in the first place.
"We have to be very aggressive in recruiting students from places that haven't typically looked at schools like Wesleyan," Roth said.
Roth said that ending legacy admissions won't solve the more widespread problem of education disparities in the United States.
"Legacy admissions is attractive to talk about, but the real issues are elsewhere," Roth said.
This story was edited by Nicole Cohen and Erika Aguilar.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-26/colleges-are-ending-legacy-admissions-to-diversify-campuses-post-affirmative-action | 2023-07-30T14:39:08 | 1 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-26/colleges-are-ending-legacy-admissions-to-diversify-campuses-post-affirmative-action |
The new social media site Threads is less than a month old and it has already amassed tens of millions of users. Facebook parent Meta launched the Twitter-rival earlier this month and it's quickly become a place where people can follow celebrities, news organizations and politicians.
This has some voting rights groups worried. That's because Threads is yet to outline a plan to curb election disinformation on the site.
Vote.org, one of the largest get-out-the-vote organizations in the country, sent a letter to Meta asking that it "release a robust plan to ensure the platform has strong election policies in place from the start." The letter was co-signed by 11 other voting rights groups, including End Citizens United, RepresentUs and Public Citizen.
"If you have that many people, you have a great responsibility to the people that are on the platform," said Andrea Hailey, CEO of Vote.org. "What we're asking for here is a real plan, knowing that we're only a few months out from presidential primaries, and that very soon the presidential election will be on our doorstep."
The voting rights groups say they have cause for concern. During the past few elections, disinformation involving voter registration, polling places and political candidates was rampant on social media. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed how that company used Facebook to target and manipulate swing voters. And in 2020, mentions of "stolen election" and "voter fraud" skyrocketed after Joe Biden won the presidency.
"Misinformation, like social media itself, has gotten considerably more sophisticated," said Bond Benton, communications associate professor who studies misinformation at Montclair State University. "There are ways that you can manipulate and game the system to get misinformation seen by a lot of people very rapidly. And if you're not investing to prevent and curtail that, it's going to find its way through."
Meta has election disinformation policies for Facebook and Instagram, but it hasn't published any specifically for Threads. A company spokesman told NPR that Facebook's rules apply to Threads. So, for example, people can't post false claims about voter registration. He also said Meta is looking at additional ways to address misinformation in future updates to the Threads app.
The voting rights groups say Threads needs a stand-alone policy. Otherwise, it's unclear how the rules will be implemented and enforced. They say this is especially urgent given reports that Meta has made staff cuts to its teams that work on election disinformation.
Meta has been explicit that it doesn't want Threads to be like Twitter, where people's feeds have been dominated with news and politics. Days after the Threads launch, Meta executive Adam Mosseri posted on the site saying the company wasn't going to do anything to encourage politics and news.
But with the 2024 election cycle already ramping up and the first Republican primary debate just weeks away, Vote.org's Hailey said Threads won't be able to escape politics.
"As we see large growth week over week, they're likely to be in a position to have an effect on elections," Hailey said. "So, you just want to make sure that information up there is accurate."
Vote.org and the other voting rights groups say they want Meta to provide information on how it plans to allocate resources, create rules and policies, and ensure people receive accurate information about elections on Threads.
Hailey said the group has yet to get a response from the company.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-27/metas-threads-needs-a-policy-for-election-disinformation-voting-groups-say | 2023-07-30T14:39:10 | 0 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-27/metas-threads-needs-a-policy-for-election-disinformation-voting-groups-say |
Welcome to the Sunday Funday Stat Leaderboard. If you were following my work ahead of my transition to NBC Sports then you might know this as the Samulski Sunday Tribune. It’s a new name, but if the same column with just a few sections removed since it’s now FULLY FREE.
If you’re new to this column, the goal is to present you with the top performers in a few key stats for this week of action. I then try to give some context to some of the names on that list, so we can begin to see just how real this hot week of production was. This way we can together decide if these are players we should be bidding on, bidding BIG on, or maybe trying to trade away or trade for.
I also have two sections of minor league leaders over the last 30 days, so we can see if there are any under-the-radar names that might be worth stashing. So far this season, those leaderboards put us onto Matt McLain , Trey Cabbage , Tanner Bibee , Bryan Woo , Nolan Jones , Maikel Garcia , and many more weeks (sometimes months) ahead of their call-up. That can be valuable insight in redraft leagues.
With that said, let’s dive into the leaders from this week. Happy Sunday!
Hitting Leaders (Week of July 24th)
Hard Hit Baseballs
- Max Kepler , MIN - 10 hard-hit baseballs (58.8%)
- Julio Rodriguez , SEA - 10 hard-hit baseballs (52.6%)
- Joey Meneses , WAS - 10 hard-hit baseballs (52.6%)
- 14 hitters with nine hard-hit baseballs, including Tyler O’Neill , Leody Taveras , Ian Happ , Jeremy Pena , Tim Anderson , Gunnar Henderson , Xander Bogaerts , and Matt Olson .
Max Kepler is rostered in 8% of Yahoo leagues. Why? He has 15 home runs this season, and is hitting .294/.344/.506 with four home runs, 15 runs, and 14 RBI in July. Kepler is being a little more aggressive this year, which has led to an uptick in strikeouts, but he is nowhere near concerning in that regard and still possesses great contact rates. He’s no longer running, so you want to keep that in mind, but when he’s hitting the ball well, you’re going to get power and RBI and a solid average. Then you can move on when he cools.
The time to scoop up Tyler O’Neill before people remembered his upside has most likely passed. The Cardinals outfielder hit the ball hard all week, batting .389 with a .566 SLG. He’s only played 39 games this season and injuries are certainly part of his profile, but there are few people with his power/speed combo that remain rostered in UNDER 50% of leagues. I think he could certainly benefit from a fresh start at the trade deadline, but even if he stays in St. Louis, he appears likely to play every day and hit in the middle of the order.
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Home Runs
- Pete Alonso , NYM - 4 home runs
- Jake Burger , CWS - 4 home runs
- Lars Nootbaar , STL - 3 home runs
- Julio Rodriguez , SEA - 3 home runs
- Shohei Ohtani , LAA - 3 home runs
- Marcell Ozuna , ATL - 3 home runs
- Carlos Santana , PIT/MIL - 3 home runs
- Max Muncy , LAD - 3 home runs
- Matt Wallner , MIN - 3 home runs
People seem to keep talking about dropping Jake Burger , but I don’t really see why. With Chicago selling at the deadline, Burger should be locked into every day at bats for the White Sox to finish the season. He may only be hitting .218, but he has 25 home runs and a 20% barrel rate. His strikeout rate remains high, but is coming down a bit in August, and I think there is a reasonable expectation he can hit .220-.230 the rest of the way with plus power.
Even with Tyler O’Neill back, Lars Nootbaar is playing nearly every day for the Cardinals and has turned his season around a bit after coming back from injury in late June. Since coming back, Nootbaar is hitting .297/.389/.514 with six home runs, 25 runs scored, 13 RBI, and two steals in 31 games. With St. Louis claiming they won’t be trading Nolan Arenado or Paul Goldschmidt , their offense should remain as productive as it has been, and Nootbaar figures to remain in the middle of it, which makes him a candidate to close the season strong.
Stolen Bases
- Ronald Acuna Jr., ATL - 4 SBs
- Nico Hoerner , CHC - 3 SBs
- Willi Castro , MIN - 3 SBs
- Corbin Carroll , ARI - 3 SBs
- Zack Gelof , OAK - 3 SBs
Zack Gelof is doing what we thought he would do since getting promoted to the big leagues. He’s hitting just .235 with a 30% strikeout rate, but he has three home runs and five steals in 13 games. That power pace won’t keep up, but he has some decent raw power, and the speed is real. I’d expect a slight bump in on-base percentage as he gets more comfortable at this level and takes his usual number of walks; however, his average will remain low and the strikeouts will be high. If you need steals in a deep league, there should be enough value here.
Willi Castro has been a great story this year, hitting .243 but stealing 26 bases in 89 games for the Twins. Even with Jorge Polanco back, Castro has continued to play, just shifting to the outfield and replacing Joey Gallo , who is struggling again this season. While Minnesota could acquire a hitter at the deadline, Castro figures to start a handful of games each week at worst and will clearly look to run. That gives him value in deeper formats.
Pitching Leaders (Week of July 24th)
SwStr% (Starting Pitchers)
- Freddy Peralta , MIL - 24.7% SwStr%
- Michael Grove , LAD - 22.1% SwStr%
- Cristian Javier , HOU - 20.2% SwStr%
- Shane McClanahan , TB 18.6% SwStr%
- Sandy Alcantara , MIA - 17.5% SwStr%
- Ryan Walker , SF - 17.5% SwStr%
- Gavin Williams , CLE - 17.2% SwStr%
- Touki Toussaint , CWS - 16.9% SwStr%
- Tyler Glasnow , TB - 16.5% SwStr%
- Luis Castillo , SEA - 16.5% SwStr%
Who knows if Michael Grove is going to remain in the starting rotation after the deadline, but he’s made an interesting change to his pitch mix recently, adding a cutter in June and then aggressively leaning on the slider in this last start. In his last start, he had a 50% whiff rate on both pitches, which is pretty nice and certainly something Grove could look to build on if he gets more chances in the Dodgers’ rotation, especially since the cutter has a 30% whiff rate and .158 batting average against so far.
I didn't include Michael Grove in today's article but he's been tweaking his arsenal, adding in a FC and reducing his SL. UNTIL YESTERDAY, when he went back to the SL but still leaned on the FC. Both pitches had 50% whiff rates. The SL got hit but there might be something there pic.twitter.com/06FF4N349E
— Eric Samulski (@SamskiNYC) July 25, 2023
Ryan Walker is not in the Giants rotation, but he pitches two or three innings two times a week as a bulk reliever, which essentially gives him a starter’s workload each week. On the season, he has a 2.50 ERA, 3.25 SIERA, 1.17 WHIP, and 21.6% K-BB%, which makes him an intriguing option in deeper leagues if the starting pitcher options on the wire are a bit bare.
Saves
- Adbert Alzolay , CHC - 3 saves
- Pete Fairbanks , TB - 2 saves
- Alexis Diaz , CIN - 2 saves
- David Bednar , PIT - 2 saves
- Paul Sewald , SEA - 2 saves
- Kenley Jansen , BOS - 2 saves
- Scott Barlow , KC - 2 saves
Scott Barlow figures to be dealt at the deadline and move into a role where he doesn’t get save opportunities, so this may be your last few days of real value there. Rumors have also surfaced that the Mariners would be interested in trading Paul Sewald , much like they did with Kendal Graveman when they were last in a playoff race. That would be a real blow to Sewald’s fantasy value, but could mean big things for Andres Munoz over the final couple of months.
Not mentioned on the list above is Gregory Santos , who got one save for the White Sox and seems to be their closer until Liam Hendriks comes back. Santos has been really solid this year and makes for a strong waiver add. I also like Robert Suarez of the Padres and Drew Smith of the Mets as speculative adds since I think they could become closers for their teams if Josh Hader and Adam Ottavino are dealt at the deadline, as is being reported.
It’s fantasy football season! Dominate your draft with the 2023 Rotoworld Football Draft Guide. Get regularly updated rankings, profiles, mock drafts and more. Click here and use promo code Draft2023 to save 20% at checkout.
MINOR LEAGUE HITTER LEADERBOARD (Last 30 Days)
- Luke Voit , 1B, NYM - 1.061 OPS (10 HR, 22 RBI)
- Masyn Winn , SS STL - 1.172 OPS (8 HR, 25 RBI, 2 SB)
- Justyn Henry-Malloy, 3B DET - 1.085 OPS (4 HR, 7 RBI, 1 SB)
- Jose Barrero , SS CIN - 1.040 OPS (6 HR, 20 RBI, 9 SB)
- Michael Busch , 2B/3B, LAD - 1.092 OPS (9 HR, 24 RBI, 1 SB)
If the Cardinals trade Brendan Donovan and/or Paul DeJong at the deadline, would they give Winn a shot to get some at-bats. He’s the likely starting SS in 2024 and has been finding his footing at Triple-A, but would a poor stint in the majors over the final month or so damage his confidence? The Mets are likely to trade away a bunch of assets at the deadline. Could Luke Voit work his way into DH at-bats? We’ve seen him produce at the MLB level before and 10 home runs in the last month makes it seem like maybe he could produce again.
At some point, the Tigers need to call up Henry-Malloy, right? He’s hitting .284 with 16 home runs at Triple-A and would likely produce just as well as most of the hitters currently in the MLB lineup. It wasn’t long ago that Barrero was the SS of the future for the Reds. Still just 25 years old, it would be nice to see him get a fresh start with another team. Could Michael Busch
also get a shot in another organization if the Dodgers make a big swing at the deadline? If so, he would be a must add fantasy player.
Subscribe now | https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/sunday-funday-stat-leaderboard-kepler-crushing-new-saves-options-emerge | 2023-07-30T14:39:52 | 0 | https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/sunday-funday-stat-leaderboard-kepler-crushing-new-saves-options-emerge |
It has been described as a two-year deal. Technically, it isn’t.
The new contract between Aaron Rodgers and the Jets lasts for seven years, with no void or other device for ending it early.
That’s significant, for a couple of reasons. First, it makes the no-tag clause meaningless, because the contract wouldn’t expire until March 2030. Second, it gives the Jets greater control over Rodgers’s next step, if there is one.
Rodgers can retire, but he can’t force his way to freedom without the Jets releasing him. Of course, giving up $33.7 million in pay over the next two years will make it hard for the man who saved that money to say “no” if Rodgers wants out.
Right away, Rodgers gets a $35 million roster bonus, subject to five-year proration. He also has a $1.838 million base salary for 2023. His cap number for the current year is $8.88 million.
For 2024, he has a $35 million option bonus and a base salary of $3.161 million. Both are fully guaranteed. And if the option bonus isn’t exercised, Rodgers’s salary for 2024 increases to $38.161 million. The cap number is $17.16 million.
Come 2025, there’s no void. Rodgers is on the books for another $35 million option bonus and a $2.5 million salary. Neither payment is guaranteed. It’s a cap number of $23.5 million, assuming he plays. If he does, he’ll be 41 when the season starts, and 42 by the time it ends.
The 2026 through 2029 seasons contain base salaries of $20 million per year.
If Rodgers retires after two years (or if he is released so he can continue to follow the Favre career arc and sign with the Vikings), a pre-June 1 move would result in a $49 million cap charge. After June 1, the Jets would take $14 million in 2025 and $35 million in 2026.
Thus, even with Rodgers taking so much less than he was due to make over the next two years, there will be a price to pay under the cap when he leaves. Specifically, they’ll have either $49 million less to work with in 2025, or $14 million less in 2025 and $35 million less in 2026.
There’s one last point to ponder on this. As a bookend to the $33.7 million gratuity that Rodgers gave the Jets on the way through the door, they could — in theory — pay him the $35 million option bonus in 2025 and then, if he retires, not try to recover it. However, that would drive the cap consequences for a post-June 1 retirement to $21 million in 2025 and a staggering $63 million in 2026. | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/aaron-rodgers-signed-a-seven-year-deal-with-no-voidable-years | 2023-07-30T14:40:02 | 0 | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/aaron-rodgers-signed-a-seven-year-deal-with-no-voidable-years |
The Dolphins will be getting offensive lineman Isaiah Wynn on the practice field.
Wynn opened training camp on the physically unable to perform list due to an injury that head coach Mike McDaniel said occurred while Wynn was working out on his own.
Wynn signed with the Dolphins as a free agent this offseason. He started 40 games for the Patriots after being drafted in the first round in 2018, but missed his rookie year with a torn Achilles and other injuries have caused him to miss more time over the last four seasons.
Left tackle Terron Armstead, cornerback Nik Needham, and tight end Tanner Conner remain on Miami’s PUP list.
In addition to activating Wynn, the Dolphins also officially announced the signing of cornerback Eli Apple. | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/dolphins-activate-isaiah-wynn | 2023-07-30T14:40:12 | 0 | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/dolphins-activate-isaiah-wynn |
Bills co-owner Kim Pegula has been out of the public eye since going into cardiac arrest in June 2022, but she made an appearance at Bills training camp on Sunday.
WIVB reports that Pegula and her husband Terry watched practice from an SUV that was parked near the field at St. John Fisher University.
Bills head coach Sean McDermott was seen going over to speak to the Pegulas and cornerback Tredavious White also interacted with the couple.
In a piece for The Players Tribune in February of this year, Pegula’s daughter Jessica wrote that her sister performed CPR on her mother after finding her unresponsive in bed. She also wrote that her mother was “dealing with significant expressive aphasia and significant memory issues” as part of her recovery. | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/kim-pegula-attends-first-bills-practice-since-2022-cardiac-arrest | 2023-07-30T14:40:22 | 1 | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/kim-pegula-attends-first-bills-practice-since-2022-cardiac-arrest |
The Giants will have a pair of wide receivers on the practice field for the first time this summer on Sunday.
Head coach Brian Daboll told reporters that Sterling Shepard and Jamison Crowder are being activated. Shepard is on the physically unable to perform list after tearing his ACL early last season and Crowder was on the non-football injury list.
Shepard tore his Achilles in 2021, so he has played just 10 games over the last two seasons. He signed a one-year deal with the Giants this offseason.
Crowder played four games for the Bills last season before going on injured reserve with an ankle injury. He spent the previous three seasons with the Jets, so signing with the Giants offered a chance to return to MetLife Stadium. | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/sterling-shepard-jamison-crowder-set-to-practice-for-giants | 2023-07-30T14:40:32 | 0 | https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/sterling-shepard-jamison-crowder-set-to-practice-for-giants |
As the sun continued to rise at Navy-Marine Corp Memorial Stadium, fans lined up in the concourse, eager to grab a free t-shirt. The sound of air filling up bounce houses filled the air as children lined up for their turn.
Parents walked around pushing strollers and watched their children play on the turf field. Fans waited in line at different booths on the field, waiting their turn for the mechanical bull ride and cotton candy.
Children ran around fighting with balloon swords and playing catch with footballs. Fans of all ages milled around the field, enjoying the warm summer day as the Navy football season rapidly approaches.
More than 1,000 fans came out to Nav’s annual Fan Fest and Media day event to meet and support the football team on Saturday. First-year head coach Brian Newberry along with his four captains answered questions ahead of the upcoming 2023 season.
The Fan Fest and Media day event hosted by the Naval Academy Athletic Association allows the public to interact with all the Navy football players and coaches in a casual atmosphere.
The concourse is lined with tables set up for fans to walk around and gather autographs from every player on the team. Players sit and chat with fans of all ages and are able to have personal interactions with the fans that support them every Saturday.
“I have my little ones out here and it gives them something to aspire to,” local resident Jamar Martin said. “They look up to the football players and the older generation. It’s definitely good to have.”
Following the autograph session, the players made their way down to the field and participated in events with the fans. Players posed for pictures with kids, tossed footballs around and spent time meeting fans, giving them an opportunity to connect with their community.
Booths and games are set up on the field, allowing parents and their children to participate and have some weekend fun. Games such as cornhole and Tic Tac Toe enabled fans to compete for prizes and memorabilia. Youngsters, and sometimes adults as well, also found fun in the bounce houses and the balloon animal stands — jumping around and having their favorite animal made for them.
Fan Fest also serves as a family event during which parents can experience memorable moments with their children. Parents threw footballs with their kids as they ran around, competed with them in games and posed for group pictures with the players.
The event connects the local community to the team they rally around and builds a connection that fans will remember.
“I think the relationship between the players and the little kids and being able to look up to them creates a sense of something they can look to be when they grow up,” Annapolis resident Stephany Samaras said. “That’s probably the most important thing.”
It all starts with the media portion of the day with Newberry and his captains spending more than a half hour answering questions about the offseason and the upcoming 2023 campaign.
Navy has posted one winning record in the past five years and that led to the firing of head coach Ken Niumatalolo following a 15-year tenure. Newberry was optimistic when asked why he thought the Midshipmen could enjoy a bounce-back season.
Daily Top Stories
“I think number one is we have a really good nucleus of players coming back,” Newberry said. “You look at 16 starters coming back, off a team that did some good things despite our record last year.”
Along with the promotion of Newberry to head coach, the Midshipmen added new offensive coordinator Grant Chesnut. With the addition of Chesnut, the Navy offense can bring a new element of explosiveness to the table.
Navy posted a 4-8 mark in each of the previous two seasons and closed out 2022 with a heartbreaking overtime loss to archrival Army. Newberry hopes to lead the the Midshipmen to their first winning season since 2019.
Many fans are excited for the upcoming season and what the coaching change can bring to the team. Some believe that the Midshipmen will find success on Saturdays in 2023.
“I think change is always difficult but it’s probably needed,” Martin said. “So hopefully instill a little different offense, maybe get the ball moving a bit better. I’m looking forward to it.”
Navy kicks off this season by renewing its historic series with Notre Dame in Dublin, Ireland on August 26. The Midshipmen then have a bye week before welcoming Wagner for the home opener on Sept. 9 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
“I’m really excited,” longtime Navy fan Chris Barron said. “I think it was time for a change. There was a lot of success from Niumatalolo, but I think it was time to move on. I’m excited to see what this year brings.” | https://www.capitalgazette.com/sports/navy/ac-cs-navy-football-fan-fest-20230730-2gq362td6jen5j2nkvaazl334i-story.html | 2023-07-30T14:41:23 | 1 | https://www.capitalgazette.com/sports/navy/ac-cs-navy-football-fan-fest-20230730-2gq362td6jen5j2nkvaazl334i-story.html |
One person is dead and multiple were wounded in Indiana shooting, police say
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — A shooting at a large party in Indiana early Sunday morning left one person dead, police said. A hospital said 19 people were being treated for injuries at its facility.
Muncie police responded to multiple reports of gunfire on the city’s east side just after 1 a.m., The Star Press reported. Police said in a news release that there was no active threat to the community and that “multiple” victims were injured, including some critically.
“Due to the number of victims and nature of the incident, multiple agencies were contacted to assist,” Muncie Deputy Police Chief Melissa Criswell said in a statement sent to The Star Press.
Police did not say how many people were injured, but officials at Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie told WTHR-13 that 19 victims were treated in their emergency department for injuries related to the shooting. Criswell said some victims sustained critical injuries and were transferred by medical helicopter to other facilities.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.ktre.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T14:41:23 | 0 | https://www.ktre.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ |
Washington (CNN) — A federal judge in Florida on Friday dismissed a $475 million defamation lawsuit former President Donald Trump brought against CNN that accused the network of defaming him by using the phrase “the big lie” and allegedly comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
District Judge Raag Singhal, a 2019 appointee of Trump’s, said that use of the phrase or similar statements are opinion that don’t meet the standard for defamation.
“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference,” Singhal wrote.
“Being “Hitler-like” is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” Singhal added.
The lawsuit is one of many Trump has filed against media outlets, including CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, objecting to coverage during his presidency and in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election he lost to Joe Biden.
Trump had accused CNN of a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander” and of creating a “false and incendiary association” between him and Hitler.
“Like Trump and CNN personalities … the Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant,” Singhal wrote. “But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement Saturday: “We agree with the highly respected judge’s findings that CNN’s statements about President Trump are repugnant.”
CNN declined to comment on the decision.
This story has been updated with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. | https://www.wxow.com/news/politics/judge-says-cnn-s-use-of-big-lie-regarding-trump-isn-t-defamation/article_42b54da3-f8e7-5e14-98fa-7f0764089200.html | 2023-07-30T14:42:09 | 1 | https://www.wxow.com/news/politics/judge-says-cnn-s-use-of-big-lie-regarding-trump-isn-t-defamation/article_42b54da3-f8e7-5e14-98fa-7f0764089200.html |
(iSeeCars) — The average new car costs $43,528, while the average one-to-five-year-old used car costs $34,291 according to the latest iSeeCars data.
While used cars are significantly cheaper than new cars, both are still a major expense. That’s why it’s important to set a realistic budget and determine how much money you can afford to pay for your new — or new to you — car. We have the answers to help you determine that age-old question: how much car can I afford?
- Determine Your Credit Score
Unless you’re paying for your car in full, you’ll need to secure a car loan. The first step toward getting a car loan and figuring out how much you can afford to pay is determining your credit score. This can also be referred to as your “FICO score” and is a numerical representation of your credit history. The three major credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – can each provide you with your FICO credit score. Another option is to check with your bank or credit card companies. Many of these institutions also provide a free credit monitoring service that will tell you your credit score.
A credit report, as well as monitoring services, also include a record of your credit history, including any items that are lowering your credit score. The higher your credit score, the better loan term you will be able to secure. Car manufacturers and dealerships will advertise special payment terms like zero-percent financing, but it’s important to remember those terms typically only apply to buyers with favorable, if not top-tier, credit scores.
If your credit score is low, you should try to boost your number before you purchase a car. You should aim for a credit score of 680 or above, but higher is always better. You can start by making sure you make your credit card and loan payments — especially any auto loan payments — on time. Resolve any past-due accounts, and pay down as much of the balance on your loans as you can, especially revolving credit accounts. You should also avoid opening new accounts, as frequent inquiries to the credit bureaus seeking new credit can lower your credit score.
While a good credit score isn’t required to secure a car loan, it will afford you a better annual percentage rate (APR) on the interest you’ll have to pay. The higher interest rate you have, the more you will end up paying in the long run. If you are unable to achieve a favorable credit score, another option is to get a co-signer on your loan. Your co-signer will agree to make loan payments if you default on your loan, which can lower an otherwise high interest rate.
- Determine Your Down Payment
Making a down payment will lower the amount of the loan, or principle, you will need to take out, which will reduce your monthly payment. This also reduces the overall interest you’ll pay on the loan over time. While this can help make a car easier to afford, don’t deplete your savings account. Be sure to keep enough money on hand for whatever surprises might come your way. Dealers and lenders may offer deals for zero down payment financing, but you can still put money down to shorten the length of your loan and reduce your monthly payment.
- Estimate the Value of Your Trade-In
The process of trading in your car begins with determining how much your car is worth. Major factors that impact your car’s value include how many miles it has on the odometer and its overall condition. Having your vehicle professionally detailed can also boost the trade-in value for your current vehicle.
Several websites, including Edmunds (Edmunds.com) and Kelley Blue Book (kbb.com) have valuation tools that will give you a ballpark estimate on the value of your car. Make sure you are as honest as possible in answering any questions about your car’s condition. Some valuation tools offer an estimate specifically for trade-in value, but that’s just what it is – an estimate.
You can also sell your car to a private buyer, which will be more profitable than trading your car into a dealership. In this instance, you can price your car in accordance with its market value, which is higher than your car’s trade-in value. A car’s trade-in value is the amount of money a car dealer will offer you for your vehicle, whereas market value, also referred to as private party value, is the amount of money you would get selling your car directly to a buyer. Because dealerships handle the complex process of selling the vehicle, they offer a lower trade-in value to ensure they make a profit when they sell the car.
There are helpful online tools like the iSeeCars Price My Car Tool, which provide a detailed pricing report to help calculate your used car’s value. Simply enter your vehicle’s VIN or provide its make, model, year, trim, style, and mileage.
Whether you decide to sell your car privately or trade-in at the dealership, you can apply your car’s value toward the purchase price of your next vehicle, along with your down payment if you’re making one.
- Calculate Your Car Budget
Setting a monthly budget will guide your new or used car search. As a general rule of thumb, your car payment should not exceed 10 percent of your monthly income, and your total car expenses (fuel, maintenance, car insurance, registration) should not exceed 15 percent of your monthly take-home pay, which is the amount of money you make each month after taxes. Or, if you’re paying in cash, determine the amount you’re willing to pay for your vehicle. You can use the 15 percent rule as a guide, but if you have other major monthly expenses like student loans, you should determine a monthly payment you can comfortably afford.
- Determine Your Car Loan Amount
After you determine your monthly payment amount, you can determine how much you can borrow from a lender for your car purchase. One way to do this is by obtaining a pre-approval letter from a financial institution, which will review your credit history to determine how much money they will loan you. Keep in mind that you might be pre-approved for more than you can afford, so make sure you stick to your budget. You can also use a car affordability calculator, which is available on many personal finance websites, by entering your credit score, estimated monthly payment, and desired loan term. Remember — the shorter your loan term, the less you will pay in interest over time. Don’t be tempted to stretch out your loan term in order to have a lower monthly payment, because you’ll end up paying more in the long term. For example, if you purchase a $25,000 used car and put $4,000 down with an interest rate of 4.5 percent, your monthly payment on a four-year loan will be roughly $625 and you will pay $1,488 in interest over the duration of the loan. If you spread the loan out over five years with a higher interest rate of 5 percent, you will pay roughly $396 per month and nearly double, $2,778, in total interest. While a smaller monthly payment might seem appealing, it will cost you a lot more in the long run.
It’s important to note that most lenders will not provide a loan on a vehicle that’s more than five years old, so if you are relying on the financing you should consider a later model used vehicle.
- Shop Around for the Best Loan Rates
You should always visit a bank or credit union to get pre-approved for a loan before you go to the dealership. Even if you plan on securing an auto loan through the dealership, having a pre-approval option from a financial institution can help you negotiate against the dealer’s rate. It will also show them that you are a serious buyer, which will give you more bargaining power. Because dealers make more money on vehicles they finance, they will likely try to beat the rates you’ve already secured.
- New Car or Used Car?
When purchasing a vehicle, you have the choice of buying a new or used car. Although they are more expensive, there are perks to buying a new vehicle, including peace of mind, the reduced likelihood of unexpected repair bills, and warranty coverage. New cars also typically come with lower interest rates and financial incentives.
According to an iSeeCars study on off-lease car deals, the average used car loses 39 percent of its value after three years. When you buy a used car, the largest percentage of depreciation has already been absorbed by the original owner, and you get the car at a much lower price. You can even buy a car that is just one year old, which will typically cost 17 percent less than its new version. However, in today’s market, some lightly used cars cost more than their new versions, so be sure to compare the cost of new and lightly used vehicles. You may find that buying a new car is a better financial decision than purchasing a lightly-used one.
If you’re purchasing your used car through a franchise dealer, you will have the option to purchase a certified pre-owned (CPO) car. (Check out our handy guide to learn what does certified pre-owned mean? to better understand the CPO car buying process.) CPO cars are typically used cars that are less than five-years-old and have fewer than 75,000 miles on the odometer. CPO cars typically cost slightly more than non-certified used cars, but they are backed by manufacturer warranties and may also carry special financing. CPO cars combine the best of both the new and used car worlds, by offering added warranty protection on a late-model used car.
- Buying or Leasing?
Another factor to consider is whether you want to buy or lease your vehicle. If you choose to lease, you don’t need to finance because you’re not buying the car. You just need to be able to afford the down payment and the monthly payments. If you don’t want to borrow from a bank and take out a loan, leasing could be your best option. Your lease payments typically cost less money than what you would pay for a monthly car payment if you were buying the vehicle. You can also get a much nicer car for your money and get to drive a new car every few years. Another benefit of leasing is that you don’t have to pay for repairs, as issues with your car that occur during your lease term are usually covered by the car’s factory warranty.
The downside to leasing is that you never own the vehicle. As soon as your leasing term ends, you will begin the cycle again. If you purchase a vehicle, you will likely be able to enjoy several years without a car payment, provided that you don’t take out too long of a loan term. Another drawback is that car leases come with mileage limits, which commonly range from 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year. If you exceed those mileage limits, you will have to pay excessive mileage fees, which can get expensive. Lastly, the upfront cost to lease is usually more than if you were purchasing. You might need to put down a larger down payment due to your credit score, and it’s likely that the dealership will often want the first month’s payment as well.
For more information on leasing vs. buying a car, refer to our guide.
- Be Sure to Factor In Extra Costs
It’s important to make sure you budget for more than the advertised price of the car. While each state has different taxes and associated fees, you can expect to pay an extra 10% on top of the purchase price to cover the total cost of the vehicle. This includes sales tax, which is typically 5 percent to 10 percent depending on your state. There’s also documentation and registration fees, which also vary by state and the amount can be found on your state’s department of motor vehicles website. If you’re financing the vehicle, it’s important to understand you’ll also be paying interest on the financed portion of the vehicle. You should also research the car’s ownership costs to get a better understanding of what you’ll be paying per month. Car insurance is a major added expense, and it will cost more on later-model used vehicles. Be sure to check with your insurance agent before you purchase the vehicle to get an idea of what your new monthly rate will be. Be aware that used car insurance rates are also higher on sports cars and performance vehicles. You can also take the opportunity to shop around with other auto insurance companies to compare insurance quotes to ensure you’re getting the best rate. If you’re purchasing an SUV or a less fuel-efficient vehicle, you should also factor in additional fuel costs to make sure there is room in your budget. (You can refer to our list of Best Gas Mileage Cars to help reduce your fuel costs.)
- Find the Right Car
Once you’ve determined your budget, you can now search for cars within your budget. Helpful car websites and search engines have made it easier and more convenient than ever to find the right car to meet your needs. Car search engines like iSeeCars.com equip buyers with all the information they need to find the right vehicle.
- Beware of Depreciation
The depreciation on a new car means there’s a much greater loss in its value in the first few years after purchase compared to a used car. After all, The average new car loses nearly half its value after five years. If you’re going to keep your new car for the life of your loan, which will likely be between 5 and 7 years, that’s not a concern. But if you decide to switch cars earlier, the vehicle’s depreciation represents a significant ownership cost. If you plan to switch cars every few years you’ll save a lot of money buying cars that are at least 3 years old. Keep in mind that cars depreciate at different rates, so buying a car that best holds its value is a smart purchase decision.
12. Find the Best Price
Now that you’ve selected which models you’re interested in, you can do your research to find the best deal. While this mainly applies to used cars, which vary greatly in pricing, you can also do research to see which dealerships and manufacturers are offering the best new car incentives and finance rates. You may find that you can afford a more expensive vehicle than you anticipated if you spot a good deal.
Used car search engine iSeeCars.com uses data to objectively rank millions of cars and thousands of dealers, providing helpful insights and guidance to car buyers to find a good car at a good price from a trustworthy seller. Used car search engines and research sites allow you to easily compare prices and features like warranties, vehicle histories, and condition. Tools like the iSeeCars free VIN check will provide you with a pre-purchase analysis to ensure you are making the smartest purchase decision possible. It will also alert you to any red flags that could end up costing you money down the road. This includes:
- Pricing Analysis – Calculates the car’s fair value based on the local market and maps similar cars for sale locally.
- Condition – Analysis of mileage on the odometer, positives and negatives about the vehicle’s features and condition, and other resources like theft record, recalls.
- Depreciation – Estimates how much the car will depreciate over 1, 3, and 5 years
- Supply Analysis –Identifies similar vehicles for sale within the local area.
- Best Time to Buy – Analyzes when or what months may get you a better price.
- Vehicle History – Free CARFAX or Autocheck reports when provided by the seller.
Bottom Line
Whether you’re buying or leasing a car, it’s important to understand that you’ll likely keep your vehicle for several years. When taking out an auto loan or signing a lease contract, do your best to anticipate your future financial situation and make sure you’ll be able to make payments for the duration of the payment term. Also, when you determine how much you can afford to pay for a vehicle, you can still shop for cars that cost less than that amount. Just like it’s important to do your research and shop around for a vehicle, the same rule extends to auto loans. Follow our steps and you will find the best car at the best price within your budget.
More from iSeeCars:
Ready to begin your used car search? The iSeeCars.com used car search engine is the perfect place to start. With millions of listings that rank the best deals first and 59 user-friendly search filters, it can help you find the best car at the best price. And be sure to check out the comprehensive iSeeCars VIN check report to further help guide you through the car buying process and securethe best deal possible.
This article, How Much Car Can I Afford?, originally appeared on iSeeCars.com. | https://www.krqe.com/automotive/how-much-car-can-i-afford-3/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:12 | 0 | https://www.krqe.com/automotive/how-much-car-can-i-afford-3/ |
Former President Trump’s legal crises are growing more serious this week and show no signs of fading, even as his 2024 bid for the White House barrels forward.
Federal prosecutors filed additional serious charges against Trump on Thursday over his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, and anticipation has reached a fever pitch over whether Trump will be charged in Washington, D.C., for his conduct after the 2020 election.
Here are five takeaways from the latest legal developments around Trump.
The new documents case charges are serious
The additional charges filed in Thursday’s superseding indictment point to more serious allegations against Trump that could make his grip on the GOP more tenuous in the months to come.
Prosecutors laid out a new set of allegations that Trump acted with two aides in attempts to delete surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago after prosecutors subpoenaed it in connection with their investigation in June 2022. Trump now faces two new obstruction charges in connection with the allegations.
The indictment also included a new charge over Trump’s retention of a classified document containing secret Pentagon plans to attack Iran. The document is at the center of a recorded conversation mentioned in the original indictment in which Trump is discussing the materials with individuals who did not have security clearances.
The former president has tried to claim that he may not have had the physical document at the time, but the fresh allegations suggest prosecutors believe they have enough evidence to bring charges over the incident.
The nature of the allegations are sure to fuel further charges from Trump’s critics that he is unfit for office.
“I’ve never been indicted and I am not a lawyer, but if you are deleting evidence, it is because you know you are committing a crime,” former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a 2024 presidential candidate, said Thursday night. “And anybody who supports this, anybody who defends this, is complicit in endangering America.”
Trump’s circle is increasingly implicated
The superseding indictment added a third defendant to the case: Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
De Oliveira joins longtime Trump aide Walt Nauta in being charged in connection with the former president’s retention of classified documents and possible obstruction of efforts to get them back.
The indictment alleges De Oliveira, 56, extensively pushed Mar-a-Lago’s director of information technology (IT) — who was not charged or named in the indictment — to delete surveillance footage after prosecutors subpoenaed it in June 2022 in connection with their investigation.
Other Trump associates could still be implicated in the ongoing investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, particularly over a scheme to appoint alternative electors that would flip the Electoral College in Trump’s favor.
“Sadly, I’ve made this statement to many different people … Walt Nauta, run. Carlos [De Oliveira], run,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who reached a deal with prosecutors in Manhattan and has since turned against the former president.
Volume of legal risks is on the rise
One concern for Trump is that the sheer volume of charges against him is mounting, increasing his legal exposure.
The superseding indictment in the documents case means Trump now faces a total of 40 criminal counts in that case alone, three more than he did previously.
Trump is separately facing 34 felony counts in Manhattan over allegations of a hush money scheme to keep quiet allegations of an affair.
And Trump may face charges elsewhere; he is still under federal investigation in Washington, D.C., and in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Legal experts have noted that the more charges Trump faces, the greater his risk of being convicted on even a single count. “If you had a choice, you wouldn’t want to be indicted in three different jurisdictions,” said one Republican strategist.
Jan. 6 charges loom
Trump attorneys met with special counsel Jack Smith’s office Thursday over the investigation into the former president’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
With an indictment seeming imminent, Trump’s lawyers sought to make the case for why their client should not be charged.
A grand jury has typically been meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though no indictment was announced this week.
Still, Trump has received a target letter in the case, typically a sign that prosecutors have enough evidence to charge an individual in an investigation.
On top of the anticipation that is building over charges in D.C., the former president is under investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the state’s election results in 2020. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated charges could be announced in August, setting up for yet another cycle of bad legal developments for the former president.
Trump ups pressure on GOP allies
As the legal pressure on Trump mounts, he has turned to some of his Republican allies to ratchet up their defenses.
Trump, in comments to Fox News Digital after the superseding indictment was filed, complained that the charges against him were “ridiculous” and that the Justice Department was abusing its power.
“Hopefully the Republican Party will do something about it,” Trump said.
The former president’s comments may turn up the heat on some of his supporters in the House, and even Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), to back funding cuts to the special counsel’s office. Such measures have been floated by staunch Trump allies such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
The reality for Republicans is they will have to continue to answer questions about Trump’s conduct as the cases against him develop and the charges potentially mount.
Trump, asked if he would end his 2024 campaign even if convicted, told conservative radio host John Fredericks, “not at all.”
“There’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could. And not at all,” Trump said. “Even the radical left crazies are saying no, that wouldn’t stop. And it wouldn’t stop me either.” | https://www.krqe.com/hill-politics/5-takeaways-as-trumps-legal-troubles-mount/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:16 | 0 | https://www.krqe.com/hill-politics/5-takeaways-as-trumps-legal-troubles-mount/ |
One person is dead and multiple were wounded in Indiana shooting, police say
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — A shooting at a large party in Indiana early Sunday morning left one person dead, police said. A hospital said 19 people were being treated for injuries at its facility.
Muncie police responded to multiple reports of gunfire on the city’s east side just after 1 a.m., The Star Press reported. Police said in a news release that there was no active threat to the community and that “multiple” victims were injured, including some critically.
“Due to the number of victims and nature of the incident, multiple agencies were contacted to assist,” Muncie Deputy Police Chief Melissa Criswell said in a statement sent to The Star Press.
Police did not say how many people were injured, but officials at Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie told WTHR-13 that 19 victims were treated in their emergency department for injuries related to the shooting. Criswell said some victims sustained critical injuries and were transferred by medical helicopter to other facilities.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wbtv.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:17 | 1 | https://www.wbtv.com/2023/07/30/one-person-is-dead-multiple-were-wounded-indiana-shooting-police-say/ |
(The Conversation) – Rivers have been the lifeblood of human civilization throughout history, and yet we know surprisingly little about what lives in many of them – including the giant creatures that prowl their depths.
While we know the biggest animal in the ocean is the blue whale and the largest marine fish is the whale shark, the identity of the world’s largest freshwater fish species long remained a mystery.
Until 2022, that is, when fishers in Cambodia caught a giant freshwater stingray in the remote reaches of the Mekong River.
Weighing an astounding 661 pounds, the stingray surpassed by 15 pounds a giant catfish caught in Thailand in 2005 that had previously been considered the unofficial record holder.
The discovery marked a milestone in fish biologist Zeb Hogan’s more than two-decade quest to study and protect giant freshwater fish. As a group, these megafish are among the most endangered animals on the planet.The world’s largest freshwater fish confirmed so far is a stingray caught in the Mekong River.
Before releasing the female ray back into the river, Hogan’s research team put an acoustic tracker on her. She has been sending back clues about stingrays’ elusive behavior ever since.
Colossal catfish and gargantuan gars
In a new book, “Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish,” Hogan and I tell the troubling story of the 30 or so fish species that live exclusively in rivers and lakes and can grow to more than 200 pounds or at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) long.
Found on all continents except Antarctica, they are a wonderfully weird bunch of creatures, from colossal catfish and carp to gargantuan gars.
But freshwater vertebrate populations have declined over the past five decades at twice the rate experienced by species within terrestrial or marine ecosystems. Megafish numbers in particular fell by a shocking 94%, according to one study of more than 200 large freshwater species.
One of the largest species, the Chinese paddlefish, is believed to have gone extinct sometime in the 2000s. “This is a fish that had been on Earth for more than 100 million years before disappearing in a flash,” says Hogan, who used to host National Geographic’s “Monster Fish” television show and now leads a University of Nevada, Reno, research project I am involved with called Wonders of the Mekong, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The importance of very large fish to freshwater ecosystems has been woefully understudied. Many giant freshwater fish are apex predators that can have profound effects on the ecosystems in which they live by keeping their prey populations in check and maintaining biodiversity.
What’s killing off the megafish
The decline of giant freshwater fish is due to human impacts, such as overfishing, dam building and climate change.
Large fish are disproportionately targeted by fishing. Since many of these species are slow to mature, they may never reach the age to reproduce. Dam building is another major threat, because large fish often need to make long migrations to complete their life cycles, and a new dam can block their migration paths.
In the Mekong, where more giant fish species are found than in any other river, climate change is causing more severe droughts and disrupting the monsoon seasons that govern the river’s essential flood regime.
There are signs that interest in freshwater species is gaining momentum, including increasing calls to explicitly include freshwater ecosystems in the 30×30 initiative, a global effort to set aside 30% of land and sea area for conservation by 2030. So far, however, conservation efforts to protect endangered giant freshwater fish species are mostly regional.
Alligator gars and sturgeon make a comeback
Although the outlook for most giant fish remains grim, some species, like the air-breathing arapaima in South America, may be bucking the trend.
The arapaima, a torpedo-shaped giant that can grow to lengths of more than 12 feet, has long been overharvested by fishers in the Amazon, where it’s known as the Amazonian cod. But stricter fishing regulations introduced by Indigenous communities appear to have led to populations’ rebounding in many places.
In the United States, the alligator gar, another air-breathing megafish, was once largely considered a “trash fish” thought to devour game fish, so it was systematically exterminated from much of its southern range. But then scientists began to study the species and found it was an important contributor to ecosystem functions. Today, alligator gar populations have bounced back in rivers like the Trinity in Texas.
A similar case involves the lake sturgeon, one of the few true freshwater sturgeons, whose populations in Wisconsin have benefited from long-term conservation efforts and science-driven management that includes strictly regulated seasonal recreational fishing.
Protecting the giants of the Mekong
Back in Cambodia, our Wonders of the Mekong project is raising public awareness about the plight of the megafish, and we are working closely with local fishers to encourage them to protect threatened species.
In an example of those efforts’ paying off, fishers in early 2023 caught a Mekong giant catfish weighing more than 200 pounds. Instead of killing it and selling the meat for a sizable profit, the fishers decided to release the fish in an elaborate ceremony in which it was sprinkled with flowers before it was let go.
In recent months, our project has also reintroduced into the Mekong rare giant catfish that were captured as young fish and raised in Cambodia, and giant barb, another critically endangered megafish species that historically has grown to 600 pounds.
While giant freshwater stingray numbers have plummeted in other parts of its native Southeast Asian range, the population appears to be relatively robust in the upper stretches of the Mekong River in Cambodia where the record ray was discovered. Data collected from that female, and reported in a study I co-authored, shows it is staying in much the same location, leading researchers to believe the area could be an important refuge for the stingrays and possibly other megafish.
Long-standing plans by the Cambodian government to build two large dams on this section of the river appear to have been scrapped, at least for now. At the end of 2022, the government instead put forth a proposal to turn the biodiverse stretch of the river, which is also home to a critically endangered population of Irrawaddy river dolphins, into a UNESCO World Heritage site.
While the record stingray is big, it might not be the largest of this species of ray in the Mekong. Local fishers speak of rays growing up to 200 pounds heavier.
It’s also possible the giant stingray is not the largest freshwater fish species. Research on the arapaima, for example, suggests it could grow as big, or even bigger, in places like Guyana. But, as Hogan says, “It’s not about finding the biggest fish. It’s about learning more about these amazing creatures to figure out how to better protect them.” | https://www.krqe.com/news/national/in-search-of-the-wonderfully-weird-giants-lurking-in-earths-rivers/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:18 | 0 | https://www.krqe.com/news/national/in-search-of-the-wonderfully-weird-giants-lurking-in-earths-rivers/ |
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – The U.S. Geological Survey has a morbid request: they want you to mail in deceased butterflies, moths, and skippers if you live in one of six states.
According to the USGS, the pilot program hopes to collect specimens that can help “identify contaminants and environmental factors which may be contributing to the decline of insect populations.” said USGS.
“There are some questions that can’t effectively be answered without help from a lot of people. It’s what makes citizen science so special and valuable,” said Julie Dietze, USGS scientist-in-charge of the effort. “Collections like this one are important because they have the potential to provide scientists now, and 20 years from now, access to specimens.”
“Citizen scientists” have been submitting their butterflies, moths, and skippers since April, but based on how many specimens have been received, collections may continue through November 2024.
The USGS is hoping to collect these dead insects to establish a Lepidoptera Research Collection and all the specimens collected will be added to the USGS Research Scientific Collections database.
If you live in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Texas, you can participate in the USGS’s pilot program. These states were selected because they’re relatively close the migration pathway of Monarch butterflies, their proximity to the Corn Belt, and the number of Confined Animal Feeding Operations.
Before you run out to catch butterflies for submission, USGS says it will only accept insects that are already dead that have not been collected alive. The insect must also be larger than two inches.
Additionally, species that are protected by the U.S.’s Endangered Species Act or by state law are not accepted. Within the six participating states, that includes only the Mitchell’s satyr Butterfly, which is found in Alabama.
Once you’ve found your dead bug, the USGS recommends putting it in a resealable plastic bag. Insects that are damaged or not fully intact will be accepted, and bugs can be put into the same bags. If you aren’t able to ship your bugs within three days, you can freeze them.
Specimens should then be placed into a sealed envelope addressed to:
USGS LRC
1217 Biltmore Drive
Lawrence, KS 66049
You do not need to include a return address.
Species that are mailed in will be evaluated for the occurrence of antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, and mycotoxins, according to USGS.
Officials say the ‘dead’-line is November 1, 2023. | https://www.krqe.com/news/national/scientists-want-your-dead-butterflies-moths-if-you-live-in-these-states/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:20 | 0 | https://www.krqe.com/news/national/scientists-want-your-dead-butterflies-moths-if-you-live-in-these-states/ |
(AP) – A woman from New Hampshire who works for a nonprofit organization in Haiti and her young daughter have been reported as kidnapped as the U.S. State Department issued a “do not travel advisory” in the country and ordered nonemergency personnel to leave there amid growing security concerns.
Alix Dorsainvil, a nurse for El Roi Haiti, and her daughter were kidnapped on Thursday, the organization said in a statement Saturday. El Roi, which runs a school and ministry in Port au Prince, said the two were taken from campus. Dorsainvil is the wife of the program’s director, Sandro Dorsainvil.
“Alix is a deeply compassionate and loving person who considers Haiti her home and the Haitian people her friends and family,” El Roi president and co-founder Jason Brown said in the statement. “Alix has worked tirelessly as our school and community nurse to bring relief to those who are suffering as she loves and serves the people of Haiti in the name of Jesus.”
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement Saturday it is “aware of reports of the kidnapping of two U.S. citizens in Haiti,” adding, “We are in regular contact with Haitian authorities and will continue to work with them and our U.S. government interagency partners.”
In its advisory Thursday, the department said that “kidnapping is widespread, and victims regularly include U.S. citizens.”
It said kidnappings often involve ransom negotiations and U.S. citizen victims have been physically harmed.
Earlier this month, the National Human Rights Defense Network issued a report warning about an upsurge in killings and kidnappings and the U.N. Security Council met to discuss Haiti’s worsening situation.
WMUR-TV reported that Dorsainvil is from Middleton, New Hampshire, and went to Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, which has a program to support nursing education in Haiti.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Alix chose to get involved in this type of service work,” Regis College president Toni Hays told the station. “She was amazing. She was passionate, she was compassionate.” | https://www.krqe.com/news/national/us-mother-daughter-reportedly-kidnapped-in-haiti-do-not-travel-advisory-issued/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:20 | 0 | https://www.krqe.com/news/national/us-mother-daughter-reportedly-kidnapped-in-haiti-do-not-travel-advisory-issued/ |
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(The Hill) – A court in France sentenced a United Airlines pilot to a six-month suspended prison term and one-year suspended license for showing up to work intoxicated Tuesday, local media outlets reported.
The pilot, reportedly a 63-year-old American, referred to only as “Henry W.” in French media, showed up to work at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport with a blood alcohol content three times the legal limit for pilots in Europe. According to an emailed statement by United sent to The Hill, the flight was headed to Washington Dulles International Airport, despite other reports it was going to Dallas.
“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority,” the United statement said. “We hold all our employees to the highest standards and have a strict no-tolerance policy for alcohol. This employee was immediately removed from service and we are fully cooperating with local authorities.”
According to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by the National Gendarmerie, a French national law enforcement organization, the pilot’s license is suspended for a year. The incident reportedly occurred at 3 p.m. Sunday. | https://www.krqe.com/news/united-airlines-pilot-has-license-suspended-after-turning-up-drunk-to-work/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:32 | 1 | https://www.krqe.com/news/united-airlines-pilot-has-license-suspended-after-turning-up-drunk-to-work/ |
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(iSeeCars) — The average new car costs $43,528, while the average one-to-five-year-old used car costs $34,291 according to the latest iSeeCars data.
While used cars are significantly cheaper than new cars, both are still a major expense. That’s why it’s important to set a realistic budget and determine how much money you can afford to pay for your new — or new to you — car. We have the answers to help you determine that age-old question: how much car can I afford?
- Determine Your Credit Score
Unless you’re paying for your car in full, you’ll need to secure a car loan. The first step toward getting a car loan and figuring out how much you can afford to pay is determining your credit score. This can also be referred to as your “FICO score” and is a numerical representation of your credit history. The three major credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – can each provide you with your FICO credit score. Another option is to check with your bank or credit card companies. Many of these institutions also provide a free credit monitoring service that will tell you your credit score.
A credit report, as well as monitoring services, also include a record of your credit history, including any items that are lowering your credit score. The higher your credit score, the better loan term you will be able to secure. Car manufacturers and dealerships will advertise special payment terms like zero-percent financing, but it’s important to remember those terms typically only apply to buyers with favorable, if not top-tier, credit scores.
If your credit score is low, you should try to boost your number before you purchase a car. You should aim for a credit score of 680 or above, but higher is always better. You can start by making sure you make your credit card and loan payments — especially any auto loan payments — on time. Resolve any past-due accounts, and pay down as much of the balance on your loans as you can, especially revolving credit accounts. You should also avoid opening new accounts, as frequent inquiries to the credit bureaus seeking new credit can lower your credit score.
While a good credit score isn’t required to secure a car loan, it will afford you a better annual percentage rate (APR) on the interest you’ll have to pay. The higher interest rate you have, the more you will end up paying in the long run. If you are unable to achieve a favorable credit score, another option is to get a co-signer on your loan. Your co-signer will agree to make loan payments if you default on your loan, which can lower an otherwise high interest rate.
- Determine Your Down Payment
Making a down payment will lower the amount of the loan, or principle, you will need to take out, which will reduce your monthly payment. This also reduces the overall interest you’ll pay on the loan over time. While this can help make a car easier to afford, don’t deplete your savings account. Be sure to keep enough money on hand for whatever surprises might come your way. Dealers and lenders may offer deals for zero down payment financing, but you can still put money down to shorten the length of your loan and reduce your monthly payment.
- Estimate the Value of Your Trade-In
The process of trading in your car begins with determining how much your car is worth. Major factors that impact your car’s value include how many miles it has on the odometer and its overall condition. Having your vehicle professionally detailed can also boost the trade-in value for your current vehicle.
Several websites, including Edmunds (Edmunds.com) and Kelley Blue Book (kbb.com) have valuation tools that will give you a ballpark estimate on the value of your car. Make sure you are as honest as possible in answering any questions about your car’s condition. Some valuation tools offer an estimate specifically for trade-in value, but that’s just what it is – an estimate.
You can also sell your car to a private buyer, which will be more profitable than trading your car into a dealership. In this instance, you can price your car in accordance with its market value, which is higher than your car’s trade-in value. A car’s trade-in value is the amount of money a car dealer will offer you for your vehicle, whereas market value, also referred to as private party value, is the amount of money you would get selling your car directly to a buyer. Because dealerships handle the complex process of selling the vehicle, they offer a lower trade-in value to ensure they make a profit when they sell the car.
There are helpful online tools like the iSeeCars Price My Car Tool, which provide a detailed pricing report to help calculate your used car’s value. Simply enter your vehicle’s VIN or provide its make, model, year, trim, style, and mileage.
Whether you decide to sell your car privately or trade-in at the dealership, you can apply your car’s value toward the purchase price of your next vehicle, along with your down payment if you’re making one.
- Calculate Your Car Budget
Setting a monthly budget will guide your new or used car search. As a general rule of thumb, your car payment should not exceed 10 percent of your monthly income, and your total car expenses (fuel, maintenance, car insurance, registration) should not exceed 15 percent of your monthly take-home pay, which is the amount of money you make each month after taxes. Or, if you’re paying in cash, determine the amount you’re willing to pay for your vehicle. You can use the 15 percent rule as a guide, but if you have other major monthly expenses like student loans, you should determine a monthly payment you can comfortably afford.
- Determine Your Car Loan Amount
After you determine your monthly payment amount, you can determine how much you can borrow from a lender for your car purchase. One way to do this is by obtaining a pre-approval letter from a financial institution, which will review your credit history to determine how much money they will loan you. Keep in mind that you might be pre-approved for more than you can afford, so make sure you stick to your budget. You can also use a car affordability calculator, which is available on many personal finance websites, by entering your credit score, estimated monthly payment, and desired loan term. Remember — the shorter your loan term, the less you will pay in interest over time. Don’t be tempted to stretch out your loan term in order to have a lower monthly payment, because you’ll end up paying more in the long term. For example, if you purchase a $25,000 used car and put $4,000 down with an interest rate of 4.5 percent, your monthly payment on a four-year loan will be roughly $625 and you will pay $1,488 in interest over the duration of the loan. If you spread the loan out over five years with a higher interest rate of 5 percent, you will pay roughly $396 per month and nearly double, $2,778, in total interest. While a smaller monthly payment might seem appealing, it will cost you a lot more in the long run.
It’s important to note that most lenders will not provide a loan on a vehicle that’s more than five years old, so if you are relying on the financing you should consider a later model used vehicle.
- Shop Around for the Best Loan Rates
You should always visit a bank or credit union to get pre-approved for a loan before you go to the dealership. Even if you plan on securing an auto loan through the dealership, having a pre-approval option from a financial institution can help you negotiate against the dealer’s rate. It will also show them that you are a serious buyer, which will give you more bargaining power. Because dealers make more money on vehicles they finance, they will likely try to beat the rates you’ve already secured.
- New Car or Used Car?
When purchasing a vehicle, you have the choice of buying a new or used car. Although they are more expensive, there are perks to buying a new vehicle, including peace of mind, the reduced likelihood of unexpected repair bills, and warranty coverage. New cars also typically come with lower interest rates and financial incentives.
According to an iSeeCars study on off-lease car deals, the average used car loses 39 percent of its value after three years. When you buy a used car, the largest percentage of depreciation has already been absorbed by the original owner, and you get the car at a much lower price. You can even buy a car that is just one year old, which will typically cost 17 percent less than its new version. However, in today’s market, some lightly used cars cost more than their new versions, so be sure to compare the cost of new and lightly used vehicles. You may find that buying a new car is a better financial decision than purchasing a lightly-used one.
If you’re purchasing your used car through a franchise dealer, you will have the option to purchase a certified pre-owned (CPO) car. (Check out our handy guide to learn what does certified pre-owned mean? to better understand the CPO car buying process.) CPO cars are typically used cars that are less than five-years-old and have fewer than 75,000 miles on the odometer. CPO cars typically cost slightly more than non-certified used cars, but they are backed by manufacturer warranties and may also carry special financing. CPO cars combine the best of both the new and used car worlds, by offering added warranty protection on a late-model used car.
- Buying or Leasing?
Another factor to consider is whether you want to buy or lease your vehicle. If you choose to lease, you don’t need to finance because you’re not buying the car. You just need to be able to afford the down payment and the monthly payments. If you don’t want to borrow from a bank and take out a loan, leasing could be your best option. Your lease payments typically cost less money than what you would pay for a monthly car payment if you were buying the vehicle. You can also get a much nicer car for your money and get to drive a new car every few years. Another benefit of leasing is that you don’t have to pay for repairs, as issues with your car that occur during your lease term are usually covered by the car’s factory warranty.
The downside to leasing is that you never own the vehicle. As soon as your leasing term ends, you will begin the cycle again. If you purchase a vehicle, you will likely be able to enjoy several years without a car payment, provided that you don’t take out too long of a loan term. Another drawback is that car leases come with mileage limits, which commonly range from 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year. If you exceed those mileage limits, you will have to pay excessive mileage fees, which can get expensive. Lastly, the upfront cost to lease is usually more than if you were purchasing. You might need to put down a larger down payment due to your credit score, and it’s likely that the dealership will often want the first month’s payment as well.
For more information on leasing vs. buying a car, refer to our guide.
- Be Sure to Factor In Extra Costs
It’s important to make sure you budget for more than the advertised price of the car. While each state has different taxes and associated fees, you can expect to pay an extra 10% on top of the purchase price to cover the total cost of the vehicle. This includes sales tax, which is typically 5 percent to 10 percent depending on your state. There’s also documentation and registration fees, which also vary by state and the amount can be found on your state’s department of motor vehicles website. If you’re financing the vehicle, it’s important to understand you’ll also be paying interest on the financed portion of the vehicle. You should also research the car’s ownership costs to get a better understanding of what you’ll be paying per month. Car insurance is a major added expense, and it will cost more on later-model used vehicles. Be sure to check with your insurance agent before you purchase the vehicle to get an idea of what your new monthly rate will be. Be aware that used car insurance rates are also higher on sports cars and performance vehicles. You can also take the opportunity to shop around with other auto insurance companies to compare insurance quotes to ensure you’re getting the best rate. If you’re purchasing an SUV or a less fuel-efficient vehicle, you should also factor in additional fuel costs to make sure there is room in your budget. (You can refer to our list of Best Gas Mileage Cars to help reduce your fuel costs.)
- Find the Right Car
Once you’ve determined your budget, you can now search for cars within your budget. Helpful car websites and search engines have made it easier and more convenient than ever to find the right car to meet your needs. Car search engines like iSeeCars.com equip buyers with all the information they need to find the right vehicle.
- Beware of Depreciation
The depreciation on a new car means there’s a much greater loss in its value in the first few years after purchase compared to a used car. After all, The average new car loses nearly half its value after five years. If you’re going to keep your new car for the life of your loan, which will likely be between 5 and 7 years, that’s not a concern. But if you decide to switch cars earlier, the vehicle’s depreciation represents a significant ownership cost. If you plan to switch cars every few years you’ll save a lot of money buying cars that are at least 3 years old. Keep in mind that cars depreciate at different rates, so buying a car that best holds its value is a smart purchase decision.
12. Find the Best Price
Now that you’ve selected which models you’re interested in, you can do your research to find the best deal. While this mainly applies to used cars, which vary greatly in pricing, you can also do research to see which dealerships and manufacturers are offering the best new car incentives and finance rates. You may find that you can afford a more expensive vehicle than you anticipated if you spot a good deal.
Used car search engine iSeeCars.com uses data to objectively rank millions of cars and thousands of dealers, providing helpful insights and guidance to car buyers to find a good car at a good price from a trustworthy seller. Used car search engines and research sites allow you to easily compare prices and features like warranties, vehicle histories, and condition. Tools like the iSeeCars free VIN check will provide you with a pre-purchase analysis to ensure you are making the smartest purchase decision possible. It will also alert you to any red flags that could end up costing you money down the road. This includes:
- Pricing Analysis – Calculates the car’s fair value based on the local market and maps similar cars for sale locally.
- Condition – Analysis of mileage on the odometer, positives and negatives about the vehicle’s features and condition, and other resources like theft record, recalls.
- Depreciation – Estimates how much the car will depreciate over 1, 3, and 5 years
- Supply Analysis –Identifies similar vehicles for sale within the local area.
- Best Time to Buy – Analyzes when or what months may get you a better price.
- Vehicle History – Free CARFAX or Autocheck reports when provided by the seller.
Bottom Line
Whether you’re buying or leasing a car, it’s important to understand that you’ll likely keep your vehicle for several years. When taking out an auto loan or signing a lease contract, do your best to anticipate your future financial situation and make sure you’ll be able to make payments for the duration of the payment term. Also, when you determine how much you can afford to pay for a vehicle, you can still shop for cars that cost less than that amount. Just like it’s important to do your research and shop around for a vehicle, the same rule extends to auto loans. Follow our steps and you will find the best car at the best price within your budget.
More from iSeeCars:
Ready to begin your used car search? The iSeeCars.com used car search engine is the perfect place to start. With millions of listings that rank the best deals first and 59 user-friendly search filters, it can help you find the best car at the best price. And be sure to check out the comprehensive iSeeCars VIN check report to further help guide you through the car buying process and securethe best deal possible.
This article, How Much Car Can I Afford?, originally appeared on iSeeCars.com. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/automotive/how-much-car-can-i-afford-3/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:43 | 1 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/automotive/how-much-car-can-i-afford-3/ |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake | 2023-07-30T14:42:43 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-28/barbie-in-india-a-skin-color-debate-a-poignant-poem-baked-in-a-cake |
Former President Trump’s legal crises are growing more serious this week and show no signs of fading, even as his 2024 bid for the White House barrels forward.
Federal prosecutors filed additional serious charges against Trump on Thursday over his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, and anticipation has reached a fever pitch over whether Trump will be charged in Washington, D.C., for his conduct after the 2020 election.
Here are five takeaways from the latest legal developments around Trump.
The new documents case charges are serious
The additional charges filed in Thursday’s superseding indictment point to more serious allegations against Trump that could make his grip on the GOP more tenuous in the months to come.
Prosecutors laid out a new set of allegations that Trump acted with two aides in attempts to delete surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago after prosecutors subpoenaed it in connection with their investigation in June 2022. Trump now faces two new obstruction charges in connection with the allegations.
The indictment also included a new charge over Trump’s retention of a classified document containing secret Pentagon plans to attack Iran. The document is at the center of a recorded conversation mentioned in the original indictment in which Trump is discussing the materials with individuals who did not have security clearances.
The former president has tried to claim that he may not have had the physical document at the time, but the fresh allegations suggest prosecutors believe they have enough evidence to bring charges over the incident.
The nature of the allegations are sure to fuel further charges from Trump’s critics that he is unfit for office.
“I’ve never been indicted and I am not a lawyer, but if you are deleting evidence, it is because you know you are committing a crime,” former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a 2024 presidential candidate, said Thursday night. “And anybody who supports this, anybody who defends this, is complicit in endangering America.”
Trump’s circle is increasingly implicated
The superseding indictment added a third defendant to the case: Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
De Oliveira joins longtime Trump aide Walt Nauta in being charged in connection with the former president’s retention of classified documents and possible obstruction of efforts to get them back.
The indictment alleges De Oliveira, 56, extensively pushed Mar-a-Lago’s director of information technology (IT) — who was not charged or named in the indictment — to delete surveillance footage after prosecutors subpoenaed it in June 2022 in connection with their investigation.
Other Trump associates could still be implicated in the ongoing investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, particularly over a scheme to appoint alternative electors that would flip the Electoral College in Trump’s favor.
“Sadly, I’ve made this statement to many different people … Walt Nauta, run. Carlos [De Oliveira], run,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who reached a deal with prosecutors in Manhattan and has since turned against the former president.
Volume of legal risks is on the rise
One concern for Trump is that the sheer volume of charges against him is mounting, increasing his legal exposure.
The superseding indictment in the documents case means Trump now faces a total of 40 criminal counts in that case alone, three more than he did previously.
Trump is separately facing 34 felony counts in Manhattan over allegations of a hush money scheme to keep quiet allegations of an affair.
And Trump may face charges elsewhere; he is still under federal investigation in Washington, D.C., and in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Legal experts have noted that the more charges Trump faces, the greater his risk of being convicted on even a single count. “If you had a choice, you wouldn’t want to be indicted in three different jurisdictions,” said one Republican strategist.
Jan. 6 charges loom
Trump attorneys met with special counsel Jack Smith’s office Thursday over the investigation into the former president’s efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election.
With an indictment seeming imminent, Trump’s lawyers sought to make the case for why their client should not be charged.
A grand jury has typically been meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though no indictment was announced this week.
Still, Trump has received a target letter in the case, typically a sign that prosecutors have enough evidence to charge an individual in an investigation.
On top of the anticipation that is building over charges in D.C., the former president is under investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the state’s election results in 2020. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated charges could be announced in August, setting up for yet another cycle of bad legal developments for the former president.
Trump ups pressure on GOP allies
As the legal pressure on Trump mounts, he has turned to some of his Republican allies to ratchet up their defenses.
Trump, in comments to Fox News Digital after the superseding indictment was filed, complained that the charges against him were “ridiculous” and that the Justice Department was abusing its power.
“Hopefully the Republican Party will do something about it,” Trump said.
The former president’s comments may turn up the heat on some of his supporters in the House, and even Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), to back funding cuts to the special counsel’s office. Such measures have been floated by staunch Trump allies such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
The reality for Republicans is they will have to continue to answer questions about Trump’s conduct as the cases against him develop and the charges potentially mount.
Trump, asked if he would end his 2024 campaign even if convicted, told conservative radio host John Fredericks, “not at all.”
“There’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could. And not at all,” Trump said. “Even the radical left crazies are saying no, that wouldn’t stop. And it wouldn’t stop me either.” | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/hill-politics/5-takeaways-as-trumps-legal-troubles-mount/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:49 | 1 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/hill-politics/5-takeaways-as-trumps-legal-troubles-mount/ |
KHAR, Pakistan — A powerful bomb ripped through a rally by supporters of a hard-line cleric and political leader in the country's northwestern Bajur district that borders Afghanistan on Sunday, police and health officials said. At least 35 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.
Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the workers convention of Maulana Fazlur Rehman's Jamiat Ulema Islam party was taking place on the outskirts of Khar, the capital of Bajur district, when the explosion took place.
Initially police said 10 people were killed but later more bodies were moved to a hospital bringing the death toll to 35. He said some of the wounded were taken to the city's main hospital in critical condition and the death toll could increase.
Azam Khan, head of the emergency room at Khar's main hospital, said 35 bodies were brought to the hospital and some were taken back by relatives while the number of wounded was now more than 100 as those who earlier went to near small clinics for medical aid consequently brought to the main government hospital.
Government administrator Mohibullah Khan Yousufzai also said death toll rose to 35 and the number of wounded was well over 100. He said the serious wounded people were being airlifted to provincial capital, Peshawar, for better medical care.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but the Islamic State group operates across the border in Afghanistan.
Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman's party, was among the dead. Senator Abdur Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin was also on the stage but escaped unhurt. Party officials said Rehman was not in the rally.
Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad. It is not known whether Rehman was present. Meetings are being organized across the country to mobilize supporters for the coming elections.
Bajur, once used to be a tribal region but now a district, has been a safe haven for Islamic militants until recent years when Pakistani military carried out massive operations to eliminate militancy from the tribal region. Militants still strike attacking security forces and civilians often.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/a-bombing-at-a-political-rally-in-pakistan-has-killed-at-least-35-people | 2023-07-30T14:42:50 | 0 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/a-bombing-at-a-political-rally-in-pakistan-has-killed-at-least-35-people |
NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Security in Niger took a turn for the worse Sunday, as protesters marched through the capital in support of the recent military coup, the French embassy was attacked, and a regional economic bloc raised the possibility of military intervention if the president was not reinstated within a week.
Thousands of junta supporters surged through the streets of Niamey, the capital, waving Russian flags, chanting the name of the Russian president and forcefully denouncing former colonial power France.
The protesters marched through the city to the French Embassy, where a door was lit on fire, according to someone who was at the embassy when it happened and videos seen by The AP. Black smoke could be seen rising from across the city. The Nigerien army broke up the crowd.
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. However, it is unclear yet whether the new junta leaders will move toward Moscow or stick with Niger’s Western partners.
On Sunday at an emergency meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, the West African ECOWAS bloc said it was suspending relations with Niger and authorized the use of force if the president was not reinstated within a week.
“In the event the authorities’ demands are not met within one week, (we will) take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger. Such measures may include the use of force. To this effect, the chiefs of defense staff of ECOWAS are to meet immediately,” Omar Alieu Touray, president of the ECOWAS commission, said after the meeting.
It was not immediately clear how the bloc would use force in Niger. In December, it proposed creating a regional force that would intervene in case of necessity to help restore peace and constitutional order in member countries. However, that proposal has not yet come to fruition.
On Sunday, the bloc said it continued to recognize Bazoum as Niger’s president and would reject any form of his resignation. It demanded for his immediate release and reinstatement, saying that the junta had him in a “hostage situation.”
If the bloc uses force, this would be catastrophic for civilians, said Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Moroccan-based think tank. “Economic sanctions are the ones to be imposed but (I) don’t see a military intervention happening because of the violence that could trigger not only between Niger and ECOWAS forces, but also civilians from the both sides,” he said.
Days after the coup, uncertainty is mounting about Niger’s future, with some calling out the junta’s reasons for seizing control.
President Mohamed Bazoum was democratically elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence from France in 1960.
The mutineers said they overthrew him because he wasn’t able to secure the nation against 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.
“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 is now in charge of the country. Tchiani, who also goes by Omar, 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 been battling an Islamic insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.
Niger had 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. France has 1,500 soldiers in the country who conduct joint operations with the Nigeriens. The United States and other European countries have helped train the nation’s troops.
Regional bodies have denounced the coup. Some taking part in Sunday’s rally warned them 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.
Niger receives millions in international military assistance. Conflict experts say out of all the countries in the region, Niger has the most at stake if it turns away from the West.
On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the continuation of Niger’s security and economic arrangements 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.”
On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron said attacks on France and its interests would not be tolerated. Anyone who attacked French nationals, its army, diplomats or the French authorities would see an immediate response, he said.
The attack on the embassy in Niamey followed France’s move on Saturday to suspend all development and financial aid for Niger.
The African Union has issued a 15-day ultimatum to the junta to reinstall Niger’s democratically elected government. ECOWAS held an emergency summit Sunday in Abuja, Nigeria.
The 15-nation ECOWAS bloc has unsuccessfully tried to restore democracies in nations where the military took power in recent years. Four nations are run by military regimes in West and Central Africa, where there have been nine successful or attempted coups since 2020.
In the 1990s ECOWAS intervened in Liberia during its civil war and in 2017 it intervened in The Gambia to prevent the new president’s predecessor, Yahya Jammeh, from disrupting the handover of power. Approximately 7,000 troops from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal entered, according to the Global Observatory, which provides analysis on peace and security issues.
If ECOWAS imposes economic sanctions on Niger, which is what normally happens during coups, it could have a deep impact on Nigeriens, who live in the third-poorest country in the world, according to the latest U.N. data.
However, in a televised address Saturday, Col. Major Amadou Abdramane, one of the soldiers who ousted Bazoum, accused the meeting of making a “plan of aggression” against Niger and said the country 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 in conflict resolution and peace missions at the Centre FrancoPaix.
“Many actors are also trying to negotiate, but the outcome is unclear,” she said.
___
Associated Press reporters Angela Charlton, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria contributed. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/ap-as-regional-and-global-powers-decry-nigers-coup-the-countrys-future-remains-uncertain/ | 2023-07-30T14:42:55 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/ap-as-regional-and-global-powers-decry-nigers-coup-the-countrys-future-remains-uncertain/ |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/a-childrens-book-author-recommends-books-to-keep-your-kids-busy-this-summer | 2023-07-30T14:42:56 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/a-childrens-book-author-recommends-books-to-keep-your-kids-busy-this-summer |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/a-drone-attack-on-moscow-briefly-shut-one-of-its-airports-and-injured-one | 2023-07-30T14:43:02 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/a-drone-attack-on-moscow-briefly-shut-one-of-its-airports-and-injured-one |
BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes Sunday in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon left five people dead and seven others wounded, Palestinian officials said.
The officials, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said the fighting broke out after an unknown gunman tried to assassinate Islamist militant Mahmoud Khalil, killing a companion of his instead.
Later, Islamist militants assassinated a Palestinian military general from the Fatah group and three escorts, another Palestinian official told the AP.
Factions used assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the overcrowded Ein el-Hilweh camp as ambulances zoomed through its narrow streets to take the wounded to the hospital. Several residents fled the crossfire.
Palestinian factions in the camp for years have cracked down on militant Islamist groups and fugitives seeking shelter in the camp’s overcrowded neighborhoods. In 2017, Palestinian factions engaged in almost a week of fierce clashes with a militant organization affiliated with the extremist Islamic State group.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two children were among those wounded.
The clashes stopped for several hours in the morning, though state media said there was still sporadic sniper fire. But they began again after the killing of the Palestinian general and his escorts.
The Lebanese Army in a statement said a mortar shell landed in a military barracks outside the camp wounding one soldier, whose condition is stable.
Ein el-Hilweh is notorious for its lawlessness and violence is not uncommon. The U.N. says it is home to some 55,000 people.
It was established in 1948 to host Palestinians displaced by Israeli forces during the establishment of Israel. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-1-killed-6-wounded-in-overnight-clashes-in-crowded-palestinian-refugee-camp-in-lebanon/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:01 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-1-killed-6-wounded-in-overnight-clashes-in-crowded-palestinian-refugee-camp-in-lebanon/ |
Rihanna's approach to beauty will lift you up.
The multi-hyphenate, who is expecting her second child with A$AP Rocky, hasn't let her new role as a mother affect her style choices. In fact, when she was pregnant with her son RZA, who she welcomed in May 2022, she was praised for revolutionizing the meaning of maternity fashion, wearing everything from a sexy lingerie set to a graphic T-shirt with the phrase "use a condom" written in bold white letters.
And while the "Love on the Brain" singer has remained true to herself, there's one area that she's changed since becoming a mother, according to her makeup artist Priscilla Ono.
"I've definitely seen her evolve with her skin regimen," Priscilla told E! News in an exclusive interview. "When I first started with her, she was cool about skincare. She always took care of her face—more than a lot of others—but I've seen her go even further now."
As for why Rihanna kicked things into high gear? Well, she noticed a difference in her skin texture.
"After pregnancy, you're not as hydrated anymore," the Global Makeup Artist for Fenty Beauty noted, "So, Rihanna's always thinking of ways to take care of her skin."
Motherhood has also slightly changed Rihanna's beauty routine when it comes to her eye area. Because, yes, even the superstar gets uninterrupted sleep.
"Rihanna has said she needs something to cover up that no-sleep," Priscilla shared. "She loves the Pro Filt'r Concealer—that's all we use. And I think that's her number one issue when it comes to complexion is under-eye circles."
But the key to faking a good night's sleep goes beyond applying concealer, as the makeup artist noted setting it is just as important.
"We use Invisimatte, a blotting powder, as an under-eye setting powder before putting any loose powder," Priscilla explained. "It sets it, but also smooths and blurs, so you're not using as much of the other powder, which usually looks cakey. It makes your under eyes look so smooth and refined."
She continued, "Riri can't leave without her Invisimatte. She must have about 50 in her room because every time I do her makeup, I give her one for her touch-up bag."
And while Rihanna has made minor tweaks to her glam process after joining the mom club, she'll never shy away from pushing the boundaries with her style.
"She's always taken risks," Priscilla said. "Nothing's changed. With her makeup, she wants to have fun and she's always going to have that out-of-the-box mentality. And the great thing about working with Rihanna is she doesn't like to do the same look twice. She's always going to pressure me to do something different."
If anything, the "Take a Bow" singer's knack for challenging the status quo has made Priscilla step outside of her own comfort zone. As the pro put it, "She definitely helps with setting a bar and outdoing myself because she's pushing me to come up with new things." | https://www.eonline.com/news/1380728/how-rihanna-s-beauty-routine-changed-after-motherhood-according-to-her-makeup-artist-priscilla-ono?cmpid=rss-syndicate-genericrss-us-top_stories | 2023-07-30T14:43:05 | 0 | https://www.eonline.com/news/1380728/how-rihanna-s-beauty-routine-changed-after-motherhood-according-to-her-makeup-artist-priscilla-ono?cmpid=rss-syndicate-genericrss-us-top_stories |
KHAR, Pakistan — A powerful bomb ripped through a rally by supporters of a hard-line cleric and political leader in the country's northwestern Bajur district that borders Afghanistan on Sunday, police and health officials said. At least 35 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.
Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the workers convention of Maulana Fazlur Rehman's Jamiat Ulema Islam party was taking place on the outskirts of Khar, the capital of Bajur district, when the explosion took place.
Initially police said 10 people were killed but later more bodies were moved to a hospital bringing the death toll to 35. He said some of the wounded were taken to the city's main hospital in critical condition and the death toll could increase.
Azam Khan, head of the emergency room at Khar's main hospital, said 35 bodies were brought to the hospital and some were taken back by relatives while the number of wounded was now more than 100 as those who earlier went to near small clinics for medical aid consequently brought to the main government hospital.
Government administrator Mohibullah Khan Yousufzai also said death toll rose to 35 and the number of wounded was well over 100. He said the serious wounded people were being airlifted to provincial capital, Peshawar, for better medical care.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but the Islamic State group operates across the border in Afghanistan.
Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman's party, was among the dead. Senator Abdur Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin was also on the stage but escaped unhurt. Party officials said Rehman was not in the rally.
Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad. It is not known whether Rehman was present. Meetings are being organized across the country to mobilize supporters for the coming elections.
Bajur, once used to be a tribal region but now a district, has been a safe haven for Islamic militants until recent years when Pakistani military carried out massive operations to eliminate militancy from the tribal region. Militants still strike attacking security forces and civilians often.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kanw.com/npr-news/2023-07-30/a-bombing-at-a-political-rally-in-pakistan-has-killed-at-least-35-people | 2023-07-30T14:43:05 | 1 | https://www.kanw.com/npr-news/2023-07-30/a-bombing-at-a-political-rally-in-pakistan-has-killed-at-least-35-people |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook | 2023-07-30T14:43:08 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/acclaimed-persian-american-chef-nasim-alikhani-has-published-her-first-cookbook |
MOSCOW (AP) — Ten people — including three children — died after high winds tore through central Russia, emergency services and a local official reported Sunday.
Eight of the dead were part of a group of tourists camping close to Lake Yalchik in the Mari-El region when the storm hit Saturday, Russia’s emergencies ministry said.
The strong winds caused a large number of trees to fall in the area, including where the group’s tents had been pitched on a stretch of wild beach inside the Mariy Chodra National Park, regional leader Yuri Zaitsev wrote on social media. He said that three children were among the dead. Russia’s investigative committee has opened a criminal case to determine whether unsafe or sub-standard services provided by the park’s management company contributed to the deaths.
Across the wider Volga Federal District, 76 people were injured in the storm, with thousands of households losing power, emergency services said. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-9-die-including-3-children-as-strong-winds-hit-tourist-camp-in-central-russia-officials-say/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:09 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-9-die-including-3-children-as-strong-winds-hit-tourist-camp-in-central-russia-officials-say/ |
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 unusual 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.kanw.com/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health | 2023-07-30T14:43:11 | 1 | https://www.kanw.com/npr-news/npr-news/2023-07-30/this-ivy-league-researcher-says-spirituality-is-good-for-our-mental-health |
An archeological dig in Turkey has uncovered artifacts dating back 1,000 years By Peter Kenyon Published July 30, 2023 at 7:02 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 3:27 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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/an-archeological-dig-in-turkey-has-uncovered-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years | 2023-07-30T14:43:14 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/an-archeological-dig-in-turkey-has-uncovered-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years |
KHAR, Pakistan (AP) — A powerful bomb ripped through a rally by supporters of a hard-line cleric and political leader in the country’s northwestern Bajur district that borders Afghanistan on Sunday, police and health officials said. At least 40 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.
Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the workers convention of Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema Islam party was taking place on the outskirts of Khar, the capital of Bajur district, when the explosion took place.
AP video showed wounded people being carried from the scene in the chaotic aftermath of the explosion.
Adam Khan, 45, was hit by splinters in his leg and both hands. He said it was around 4 p.m. when the the explosion knocked him to the ground.
“There was all dust and smoke around and I was under the some injured people from where I hardly (could stand) up but only to see chaos and some scattered limbs,” he said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State group operates across the border in Afghanistan.
Initially, police said 10 people were killed but later more bodies arrived at a local hospital bringing the death toll to 40. Khan said some of the wounded were in critical condition and the death toll could rise.
The JUI workers convention was arranged in a hall close to a market but later tents were added because of the large number of supporters who turned out. The venue was being guarded by party volunteers dressed in camel-colored traditional garb called Shalwar Qameez and holding batons.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police chief Akhtar Hayat Gandapur said an initial investigation suggested a suicide bomber sneaked into the venue despite the security provided by party volunteers. He said explosives experts were combing the scene to preserve evidence.
District health officer Dr. Faisal Khan said 40 bodies and 150 wounded from the blast were at Khar’s main hospital. Some of the wounded were in critical condition and were being transferred to a facility in Peshawar and the adjoining district of Dir.
Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif, President Arif Alvi and other leaders condemned the attack and asked officials to provide all possible assistance to the wounded and the bereaved families.
Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman’s party, was among the dead. Senator Abdur Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin were also on the stage but escaped unhurt. Party officials said Rehman was not at the rally.
Rasheed, the regional chief of the party, said the attack was an attempt to remove JUI from the field before parliament elections in November but he said such tactics will not work.
Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad. Meetings are being organized across the country to mobilize supporters for the coming elections.
“Many of our fellows lost lives and many more wounded in this incident. I will ask the federal and provincial administrations to fully investigate this incident and provide due compensation and medical facilities to the affected ones,” he said.
Mohammad Wali said he was listening to a speaker address the crowd when the huge explosion temporarily deafened him.
“I was near the water dispenser to fetch a glass of water when the bomb exploded throwing me away to the ground,” he said. “We came to the meeting with enthusiasm but ended up at the hospital seeing crying wounded people and sobbing relatives taking bodies of their loved ones.”
Bajur, once used to be a tribal region but now a district, has been a safe haven for Islamic militants until recent years when Pakistani military carried out massive operations to eliminate militancy from the tribal region. Militants still strike attacking security forces and civilians often.
___
Riaz Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-a-bomb-at-a-political-rally-in-northwest-pakistan-kills-10-people-and-wounds-more-than-50/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:16 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-a-bomb-at-a-political-rally-in-northwest-pakistan-kills-10-people-and-wounds-more-than-50/ |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs | 2023-07-30T14:43:20 | 0 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/auto-companies-are-making-big-profits-but-still-stumbling-when-it-comes-to-evs |
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — African leaders are leaving two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin with little to show for their requests to resume a deal that kept grain flowing from Ukraine and to find a path to end the war there.
Putin in a press conference late Saturday following the Russia-Africa summit said Russia’s termination of the grain deal earlier this month caused a rise in grain prices that benefits Russian companies. He added that Moscow would share some of those revenues with the “poorest nations.”
That commitment, with no details, follows Putin’s promise to start shipping 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain for free to each of six African nations in the next three to four months — an amount dwarfed by the 725,000 tons shipped by the U.N. World Food Program to several hungry countries, African and otherwise, under the grain deal. Russia plans to send the free grain to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea and Central African Republic.
Fewer than 20 of Africa’s 54 heads of state or government attended the Russia summit, while 43 attended the previous gathering in 2019, reflecting concerns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine even as Moscow seeks more allies on the African continent of 1.3 billion people. Putin praised Africa as a rising center of power in the world, while the Kremlin blamed “outrageous” Western pressure for discouraging some African countries from showing up.
The presidents of Egypt and South Africa were among the most outspoken on the need to resume the grain deal.
“We would like the Black Sea initiative to be implemented and that the Black Sea should be open,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said. “We are not here to plead for donations for the African continent.”
Putin also said Russia would analyze African leaders’ peace proposal for Ukraine, whose details have not been publicly shared. But the Russian leader asked: “Why do you ask us to pause fire? We can’t pause fire while we’re being attacked.”
The next significant step in peace efforts instead appears to be a Ukrainian-organized peace summit hosted by Saudi Arabia in August. Russia is not invited.
Africa’s nations make up the largest voting bloc at the United Nations and have been more divided than any other region on General Assembly resolutions criticizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Delegations at the summit in St. Petersburg roamed exhibits of weapons, a reminder of Russia’s role as the top arms supplier to the African continent.
Putin in his remarks on Saturday also downplayed his absence from the BRICS economic summit in South Africa next month amid a controversy over an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court. His presence there, Putin said, is not “more important than my presence here, in Russia.” | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-african-leaders-leave-russia-summit-without-grain-deal-or-a-path-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:22 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-african-leaders-leave-russia-summit-without-grain-deal-or-a-path-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine/ |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-our-infrastructure-needs-changes-too | 2023-07-30T14:43:26 | 0 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/battling-extreme-heat-isnt-just-personal-our-infrastructure-needs-changes-too |
BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — The Central African Republic went to the polls Sunday in a highly anticipated vote on a new constitution, which would remove presidential term limits.
President Faustin Archange Touadera wants to extend presidential terms from five to seven years and remove the previous two-term limit, enabling him to run again in 2025.
The new constitution would replace the one adopted at Touadera’s inauguration in 2016, when the country was in a civil war and 80% of it was not under state control. If the new constitution is passed, it could entrench the ruling party’s power indefinitely, analysts say.
“This referendum basically confirms the fears of authoritarian drift (in CAR),” said Enrica Picco, Central Africa project director with the International Crisis Group. The new constitution would weaken checks on the executive by opposition parties, closing the space for Central Africans to participate in democratic decision-making, she said.
The proposed changes also would lift requirements that executive decisions be debated by the legislative and permit Central Africans with dual nationalities to vote.
The mineral-rich but impoverished nation has faced intercommunal fighting since 2013, when predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power and forced then-President Francois Bozize from office. Mostly Christian militias later fought back, also targeting civilians in the streets. The United Nations, which has a peacekeeping mission in the country, estimates the fighting had killed thousands and displaced over a million people, one fifth of the country’s population.
When Touadera won re-election in 2020, barely a third of Central Africans made it to the polls, largely due to threats of violence by rebel groups. Touadera’s government has relied on support from UN peacekeepers, soldiers from neighboring Rwanda and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group to keep rebels out of the capital Bangui.
“Now that there is peace … the time has come for us to take action,” said Fidel Gouandjika, a presidential advisor.
Opposition groups accuse the ruling party of making a draft of the new constitution publicly available too late for people to make informed decisions, less than three weeks before the referendum, said Picco.
Together with opposition parties they are calling on Central Africans to vote against the proposed constitution, or abstain from the referendum.
“Touadera wants to see himself as an emperor, and he wants to make our country what he wants, not what Central Africans want,” said former Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-constitutional-referendum-to-remove-presidential-term-limits-divides-central-african-republic/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:29 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-constitutional-referendum-to-remove-presidential-term-limits-divides-central-african-republic/ |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/cardiac-issues-among-young-athletes-are-rare-but-there-are-precautions-to-take | 2023-07-30T14:43:32 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/cardiac-issues-among-young-athletes-are-rare-but-there-are-precautions-to-take |
BEIJING (AP) — The French finance minister said Sunday he pressed Chinese leaders to open their markets wider to foreign companies and lobbied for investment in France’s electric car industry, as the European Union’s second-largest economy followed Washington in reviving post-COVID economic talks amid tension over Beijing’s surging trade surpluses.
Bruno Le Maire also defended Paris’s controls on foreign access to technology after authorities said two Chinese citizens are under investigation for what news reports say is possible smuggling of French-made processor chips with military uses to China and Russia.
Le Maire met Saturday with Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing’s top envoy on economic issues. He followed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who visited Beijing on July 9-10 as part of U.S. efforts to revive frosty relations with China.
Chinese officials gave Le Maire and Yellen a warm welcome as part of efforts to reverse an economic slump by reviving foreign investor interest. But Beijing has given no indication of possible changes in technology and other policies that its trading partners say violate Chinese market-opening commitments.
Officials of the 27-nation European Union are trying to narrow a trade deficit with China that swelled to 396 billion euros ($432 billion) last year. Le Maire cited cosmetics, aerospace and agriculture as possible areas for more French exports.
“There is a need to improve access to the Chinese market. I think that it was at the core of our discussions,” Le Maire said in an interview at the French Embassy. “We want to have a stronger economic relationship between Europe and China, between France and China, which means to get access for all European goods.”
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government has looked to Europe as an alternative market and source of technology since Washington tightened controls on access to U.S. processor chips and other high-tech goods and hiked tariffs on imports from China in a feud over its industry development ambitions.
Le Maire and Chinese officials pledged to cooperate on climate change, financing for developing countries and nuclear power. They announced plans to set up a group to settle a dispute over access to China’s market for cosmetics, a major French export.
Le Maire also lobbied for investment from China’s fast-growing electric car industry. He was due to fly to the southern city of Shenzhen to meet Wang Chuanfu, founder of BYD Auto, one of the world’s biggest electric vehicle producers. BYD Auto and other Chinese brands are starting to sell in developed markets including Europe and Japan. Chinese battery supplier CATL has set up a factory in Germany to supply automaker BMW.
“We want China to make investments in France in electric vehicles,” Le Maire said. “In the climate transition, there is a place for Chinese investment in France, which allows us to reinforce our economic relations and also speed up action against global warming.”
The talks were overshadowed by Russia’s war against Ukraine and complaints China might be helping Moscow evade Western sanctions, but Le Maire said he didn’t discuss the war with Chinese officials. However, he said it was in Beijing’s interest to end the 17-month-old war. President Emmanuel Macron’s security adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, said this month China was delivering “military equipment” to Russia but gave no details.
“I want to make very clear that we want this war to go to an end as soon as possible,” Le Maire said. “Indeed, (it is) in the interest of China, it is in the interests of the global growth to have peace as soon as possible.”
Le Maire also defended French controls on technology exports and foreign investment in high-tech industry. French authorities are investigating two Chinese citizens associated with chip producer Ommic who the newspaper Le Parisien said face possible charges of exporting chips to a Chinese armaments maker using forged documents.
French counter-espionage officials believe a Chinese investor who bought control of Ommic in 2018 was trying to transfer chip manufacturing technology to China, according to the newspaper. The ruling Communist Party is trying to develop its own chip industry, but Washington has blocked access to advanced manufacturing tools and persuaded allies Japan and the Netherlands to impose their own restrictions.
Chinese authorities complain their companies are unfairly targeted by restrictions on access to foreign technology. They have warned curbs on access to semiconductors will disrupt smartphone and other industries.
“Everybody can understand that France wants to protect its key technologies,” Le Maire said. “We don’t want any foreign country to get access to those French sovereign technologies.” | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-frances-le-maire-presses-china-on-market-access-and-lobbies-for-electric-car-investment/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:37 | 1 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-frances-le-maire-presses-china-on-market-access-and-lobbies-for-electric-car-investment/ |
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with director D. Smith about her new documentary. "Kokomo City" highlights the experiences of trans sex workers.
Copyright 2023 NPR
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with director D. Smith about her new documentary. "Kokomo City" highlights the experiences of trans sex workers.
Copyright 2023 NPR | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/d-smith-on-her-new-documentary-kokomo-city-that-follows-four-trans-sex-workers | 2023-07-30T14:43:39 | 1 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/d-smith-on-her-new-documentary-kokomo-city-that-follows-four-trans-sex-workers |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy | 2023-07-30T14:43:44 | 0 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/do-recent-positive-developments-qualify-as-a-soft-landing-for-the-economy |
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — High winds blowing across the North Sea are delaying efforts to tow a burning cargo ship loaded with thousands of new cars to safety off the Dutch coast, the government said Sunday.
The Fremantle Highway was unlikely to be moved Sunday because of the southwesterly wind, according to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.
“The wind will continue to blow from the southwest for the next few days. The towing of the Fremantle Highway to the new temporary location may therefore still take several days to start,” the ministry said in an update Saturday night.
“The smoke from the fire and the wind direction mean that during the towing operation of the ship smoke is blowing over the tugboat,” it added.
Salvage crews on Saturday attached a second towing cable to the ship, which is transporting 3,783 new vehicles, including 498 electric vehicles, from the German port of Bremerhaven to Singapore. The salvage teams ultimately want to tow the stricken ship to a port but it is not yet clear where or when that will happen.
The ship has been burning since Tuesday. Firefighters decided not to douse the flames with water for fear of making the nearly 200-meters (219-yard) ship unstable as it floats close to North Sea shipping lanes and a world-renowned migratory bird habitat.
One crew member died and others were injured after the fire broke out. The crew was evacuated in the early hours of Wednesday.
The cause of the fire has not been determined. | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-high-winds-stall-efforts-to-tow-a-burning-cargo-ship-packed-with-cars-off-northern-dutch-coast/ | 2023-07-30T14:43:43 | 0 | https://www.conchovalleyhomepage.com/news/international/ap-high-winds-stall-efforts-to-tow-a-burning-cargo-ship-packed-with-cars-off-northern-dutch-coast/ |
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.kbia.org/2023-07-30/george-brown-of-kool-the-gang-on-celebrating-the-bands-long-career | 2023-07-30T14:43:50 | 0 | https://www.kbia.org/2023-07-30/george-brown-of-kool-the-gang-on-celebrating-the-bands-long-career |