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MY STORY: Trout came to Cbhs as a stray. AGE: Approximately 10 weeks. Hi there. My name is Trout! Arent... View on PetFinder
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Cedar Falls' Owen Sawyer won the amateur tournament at the 90th Waterloo Open with a little advice from his dad.
The senator told the sheriff he wouldn't move. "I advised him he needed to move on otherwise he would be going to jail. He advised me to arrest him."
He attacked a store employee, knocking him to the floor and stomping on him, before fleeing
The Creston, Mount Ayr and Winterset communities reeled from the loss. | https://wcfcourier.com/trout/article_a464db11-c399-5129-8e58-35408e247d59.html | 2023-07-31T00:26:04 | 0 | https://wcfcourier.com/trout/article_a464db11-c399-5129-8e58-35408e247d59.html |
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — African leaders have left 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.”
African leaders also called clearly for peace.
“This war must end and it can only end on the basis of justice and reason,” said the head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat. “The disturbances that it causes in the supply of energy and grain must cease immediately” for the benefit of all, especially Africans.
Putin 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.
But African nations need more concrete results from such meetings, the AU Commission head told the summit.
“The trade balance between Russia and Africa, very unbalanced in favor of the first party, must be improved,” Mahamat said. At the first Russia-Africa Summit in 2019, Putin vowed to double Russia’s trade with the continent within five years. Instead, it has stalled at around $18 billion a year.
In addition, “the strengthening of cooperation on peace and security and the fight against terrorism calls for more deeds and fewer declarations of intent,” Mahamat said, while he and other African leaders were rushing to respond to a coup in Niger that could upend the regional response to a growing threat from Islamic extremist groups.
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.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-african-leaders-leave-russia-summit-without-grain-deal-or-a-path-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:03 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-african-leaders-leave-russia-summit-without-grain-deal-or-a-path-to-end-the-war-in-ukraine/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades.
Median rent rose just 0.5% in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years.
A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. Renters in cities such as Cincinnati and Indianapolis are still getting hit with increases of 5% or more. Much of the new construction is located in just a few metro areas, and many of the new units are luxury apartments, which rent for well north of $2,000.
Median U.S. rent has risen to $2,029 this June from $1,629 in June 2019, according to rental listings company Rent, which tracks rents in 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Demand for apartments exploded during the pandemic as people who could work remotely sought more space or decided to relocate to another part of the country.
The steep rent increases have left tenants like Melissa Lombana, a high school teacher who lives in the South Florida city of Miramar, with progressively less income to spend on other needs.
The rent on her one-bedroom apartment jumped 13% last year to $1,700. It climbed another 6% to $1,800 this month when she renewed her lease.
“Even the $1,700 was a stretch for me,” said Lombana, 43, who supplements her teaching income with a side job doing educational testing. “In a year, I will not be able to afford living here at all.”
Lombana’s rent is now gobbling up nearly half her monthly income. That puts her in a category referred to as “cost-burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, denoting households that pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Last year, the average rent-to-income ratio per household rose to 30%. This March, it was 29.6%.
Lombana hasn’t had any luck finding a more affordable apartment. While South Florida is one of the metropolitan areas seeing a rise in apartment construction, the units are mostly high-end and not a viable option.
That scenario is playing out across the nation. Developers are rushing to complete projects that were green-lit during the pandemic-era surge in demand for rentals or left in limbo by delays in supplies of fixtures and building materials. Nearly 1.1 million apartments are currently under construction, according to the commercial real estate tracker CoStar, a pace not seen since the 1970s.
Increasing the supply of apartments tends to moderate rent increases over time and can give tenants more options on where to live. But more than 40% of the new rentals to be completed this year will be concentrated in about 10 high job growth metropolitan areas, including Austin, Nashville, Denver, Atlanta and New York, according to Marcus & Millichap. In many areas, the boost to overall inventory will be barely noticeable.
Even within metros where there’ll be a notable increase in available apartments, such as Nashville, most of it will be in the luxury category, where rents average $2,270, nationally. Some 70% of the new rental inventory will be the luxury class, said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.
That will leave most tenants unlikely to see a big enough reduction in rent to make a difference, industry experts and economists say.
“I think we’re in a period of rent flattening for 12 or 18 months, but it’s certainly not a big rent decline,” said Hessam Nadji, CEO of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap.
“We’re building a multi-decade record number of units,” Nadji said. “It’s going to cause some softening and some pockets of overbuilding, but it’s not going to fundamentally resolve the housing shortage or the affordability problem for renters across the U.S.”
The surge in rents has made it difficult for workers to keep up with inflation despite solid wage gains the past few years and exacerbated a long-term trend. Between 1999 and 2022, U.S. rents soared 135%, while income grew 77%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
Realtor.com is forecasting that rents will drop an average of 0.9% this year. But while down nationally, rents are still rising in many markets around the country, especially those where hiring remains robust.
In the New York metro area, the median rent climbed 4.7% in June from a year earlier to $2,899, according to Realtor.com. In the Midwest, rents surged 5.6% in the Cincinnati metro area to $1,188, and 6.9% to $1,350 in the Indianapolis metro area.
The current spike in apartment construction alone isn’t going to be enough to address how costly renting has become for many Americans.
“For the rest of the 2020s rents will continue to grow because millennials are such a big generation and we’re very much in the hole in terms of building housing for that generation,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “It will take many good years of new construction to build adequate housing for millennials.”
The bigger challenge is building more work force housing, because the cost of land, labor and navigating the government approval process incentivize developers to put up luxury apartments buildings.
Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.
Despite the overall pullback in U.S. rents, Joey Di Girolamo, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, worries that he’ll face more sharp rent increases in coming years.
Last year, the web designer left a two-bedroom, two-bath townhome he rented for $2,200 a month to avoid a $600 a month increase. This year, his rent went up by $200, a nearly 10% jump.
“That blew me away,” said Di Girolamo, 50. “I’m just kind of dreading what it’s going to be like next year, but especially 3 or 4 years from now.” | https://www.kron4.com/news/national/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:08 | 0 | https://www.kron4.com/news/national/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ |
MY STORY: Tubby came to CBHS a owner surrender. AGE: Approximately 8 years old. Hi there. My name is Tubby!... View on PetFinder
Tubby
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With NDSU and SDSU rumored to be looking at a move to the Mountain West, Ethan Petrik offers options should the Missouri Valley Football Confe…
Cedar Falls' Owen Sawyer won the amateur tournament at the 90th Waterloo Open with a little advice from his dad.
The senator told the sheriff he wouldn't move. "I advised him he needed to move on otherwise he would be going to jail. He advised me to arrest him."
The showing is 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sunday at the fire department building, 641 Seventh St.
He attacked a store employee, knocking him to the floor and stomping on him, before fleeing | https://wcfcourier.com/tubby/article_78f63317-6e57-5da6-a439-7f453c94d320.html | 2023-07-31T00:26:10 | 0 | https://wcfcourier.com/tubby/article_78f63317-6e57-5da6-a439-7f453c94d320.html |
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.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-constitutional-referendum-to-remove-presidential-term-limits-divides-central-african-republic/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:10 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-constitutional-referendum-to-remove-presidential-term-limits-divides-central-african-republic/ |
MY STORY: Urchin came to CBHS as a stray AGE: Approximately 1 year old. Hi there. My name is Urchin.... View on PetFinder
Urchin
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With NDSU and SDSU rumored to be looking at a move to the Mountain West, Ethan Petrik offers options should the Missouri Valley Football Confe…
Cedar Falls' Owen Sawyer won the amateur tournament at the 90th Waterloo Open with a little advice from his dad.
The senator told the sheriff he wouldn't move. "I advised him he needed to move on otherwise he would be going to jail. He advised me to arrest him."
He attacked a store employee, knocking him to the floor and stomping on him, before fleeing
The Creston, Mount Ayr and Winterset communities reeled from the loss. | https://wcfcourier.com/urchin/article_45a7b4ac-eba5-5d62-88f9-299e6f8f4680.html | 2023-07-31T00:26:16 | 0 | https://wcfcourier.com/urchin/article_45a7b4ac-eba5-5d62-88f9-299e6f8f4680.html |
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.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-frances-le-maire-presses-china-on-market-access-and-lobbies-for-electric-car-investment/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:16 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-frances-le-maire-presses-china-on-market-access-and-lobbies-for-electric-car-investment/ |
Hot temperatures are predicted today. It looks to reach a warm 87 degrees. Expect a drastic drop in temperatures though, with a low reaching 59 degrees. We'll see sunshine today, but also cloud cover at times. The sunshine will be intense today; high UV indexes are forecasted. Be careful outside, especially during late morning through mid-afternoon. If your shadow is shorter than you, seek shade and wear protective clothing and generously apply sunscreen on exposed skin. The area will see gentle winds today, with winds only reaching 11 miles per hour, coming from the North. This report is created automatically with weather data provided by TownNews.com. Visit wcfcourier.com for more weather updates.
Here is today's weather outlook for Jul. 29, 2023 in Waterloo, IA
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Waterloo folks should be prepared for high temperatures. The forecast calls for it to be a warm 89 degrees. We'll see a low temperature of 64 …
Hot temperatures are predicted today. Temperatures are projected to be a scorcher today with temperatures reaching a high of 95 though it will…
Hot temperatures are predicted today. Temperatures are projected to be a quite blistering high of 98. Today has the makings of a perfect day t…
Waterloo folks should be prepared for high temperatures. Temperatures are projected to be a quite blistering high of 99. Today has the makings…
Hot temperatures are predicted today. Temperatures are projected to be a scorcher today with temperatures reaching a high of 97 though it will… | https://wcfcourier.com/weather/here-is-todays-weather-outlook-for-jul-29-2023-in-waterloo-ia/article_3559a51d-771b-57e5-807f-52d044c9ab89.html | 2023-07-31T00:26:18 | 1 | https://wcfcourier.com/weather/here-is-todays-weather-outlook-for-jul-29-2023-in-waterloo-ia/article_3559a51d-771b-57e5-807f-52d044c9ab89.html |
SANTA MARIA DE JESUS, Guatemala (AP) — Presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo stood before a few hundred residents of this small Indigenous community on the slopes of the Agua Volcano and told them they could be the seeds of a brighter, more corruption-free spring in Guatemala.
The metaphor fits neatly with his political party, the Seed Movement, and allows the 64-year-old academic and former diplomat to riff on themes of renewal and growth.
But it also alludes to Guatemala’s “democratic spring,” considered a more inclusive period in the country’s history during the presidency in the 1940s and early 1950s of his late father, Juan José Arévalo.
Bernardo Arévalo won just 11% of the vote in the presidential election’s first round June 25, but it was enough to give him the surprise second slot in the Aug. 20 runoff ballot. He will face Sandra Torres, a conservative and former first lady who was the leading vote-getter in the first round and is making her third bid for the presidency.
Arévalo’s recent speech in Santa Maria de Jesus was similar to those he has given in Guatemala’s capital, but the imagery could be especially important in rural Indigenous communities as he seeks to rapidly expand his largely urban, youthful base before the runoff.
He won in Guatemala City and other important cities, including Sacatepequez and Quetzaltenango. It remains to be seen whether he can convince people in rural communities that he can address their daily problems.
The delayed certification of the first round results shortened the already small window that Arévalo has to reintroduce himself to much of the country as his opponents rush to paint their own negative picture.
“Do you feel what is happening?” Arévalo told the crowd in Santa Maria de Jesus. “The new spring is arriving, that’s what you feel, and you all are the seeds of that new spring.”
“A new spring that is going to bring us well-being, the water we lack, the education they owe us, the health that they have denied us thanks to those corrupt contracts that serve few,” Arévalo said, standing in front of an old, damaged Roman Catholic church, in a wide-brimmed hat and untucked shirt against the tropical heat.
Among those listening was Juana Orón, a 67-year-old homemaker of the Kaqchikel people. She is one of the older voters who remember hearing about Arévalo’s father, one of only two leftist presidents in Guatemala’s democratic era.
The elder Arévalo, who governed from 1945 to 1951, is credited with establishing key social programs that remain in place today, including Guatemala’s labor code and social security. Guatemala’s democratic spring was cut short in 1954 by the CIA-backed overthrow of his successor, President Jacobo Arbenz.
Under Juan José Arévalo, the state advocated for rights for Indigenous peoples and others beyond the country’s small elite.
“I remember I was little and (my parents) said he had done good things,” said Orón whose first language as a child was Kaqchikel. If his father was good, Arévalo could be a good president, too, she said.
Opponents have tried to frame Arévalo’s candidacy as a step toward some of the region’s more notorious leftist regimes, such as Cuba and Nicaragua. They warn that the progressive candidate will bring expropriations, abortion and same-sex marriage to the conservative country.
Arévalo has been the election’s surprise.
In the days before the June 25 vote, he was polling below 3% and trailing at least seven of the other 21 candidates. But his anti-corruption message resonated in the country where gains against corruption have been erased and the justice system reoriented to pursue the prosecutors and judges who formerly led that fight.
In the month since that initial result, the Attorney General’s Office announced an investigation into his party and had a judge suspend its legal status until the Constitutional Court stepped in to block that move.
In Santa Maria de Jesus, people wanted to compare Arévalo in person to what they were hearing about him. Some handed him flowers, posed for photos or reached out to touch him as he made his way through the throng.
Arévalo pushed back against attempts to frame him as a left-wing radical — he has said private property rights are not up for discussion — and pounded the issue of corruption.
“Let us work, let us get ahead on our own effort, let’s get rid of the corrupt once and for all,” he said.
For Francisco Jiménez, a political scientist at Rafael Landivar University, Arévalo will need concrete proposals to make inroads with the base of Torres, who has spent two decades assembling it.
“He will have to make governing proposals with a social agenda, where the people see that he is going to have an impact on their lives and communities,” Jiménez said. “The other part is continuing to present himself as the different model. That has been his success, someone totally different from the other candidates.”
Evangelical churches in Guatemala have painted Arévalo as an existential threat to the family.
Gladys Sunun, a 35-year-old Kaqchikel vendor from an evangelical family, said she came to hear Arévalo for herself. She said she had heard that Arévalo would convert Guatemala into another Cuba or Nicaragua, but left feeling that might not be true, though she wants to investigate more.
“He came to tell us not to worry,” she said. “It sounds real, but we don’t know.”
Her sister July Sunun said she wanted to hear more about Arévalo’s positions on gender ideology. “As a mother I’m afraid, because we’ve grown up with a Christian background. I don’t want to marry my daughter with another woman,” she said.
July Sunun acknowledged that Arévalo said he would respect the identities and decisions of the people, “but what he hasn’t said is that he won’t allow (same-sex marriage) to happen here.” | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-guatemala-presidential-candidate-rushes-to-expand-base-beyond-urban-youth/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:22 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-guatemala-presidential-candidate-rushes-to-expand-base-beyond-urban-youth/ |
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Salvage crews started towing a burning cargo ship loaded with thousands of cars to a temporary anchorage location off the northern Dutch coast on Sunday after smoke pouring from the stricken vessel eased, authorities said.
On Saturday night, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management had said the Fremantle Highway was unlikely to be moved because of a southeasterly wind blowing smoke from the days-old fire over tugboats.
But that changed Sunday.
“The smoke from the cargo ship subsided considerably this afternoon and the salvage combination Multraship/Smit Salvage immediately made use of this,” the ministry said in a statement referring to two salvage companies involved in the operation.
The ship was being slowly towed by two tugs to a temporary anchor point about 16 kilometers (10 miles) north of the Dutch islands of Schiermonnikoog and Ameland.
Experts are continuously monitoring the ship’s stability and a specialized boat used to clean up oil is nearby in case there is a spill, the ministry added.
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 crews on Saturday attached a second towing cable to the ship, which was transporting 3,783 new vehicles, including 498 electric vehicles, from the German port of Bremerhaven to Singapore.
The ship has been burning since Tuesday. Firefighters decided not to douse the flames with water for fear of making the nearly 200-meter (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.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-high-winds-stall-efforts-to-tow-a-burning-cargo-ship-packed-with-cars-off-northern-dutch-coast/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:30 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-high-winds-stall-efforts-to-tow-a-burning-cargo-ship-packed-with-cars-off-northern-dutch-coast/ |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia will host a Ukrainian-organized peace summit in early August seeking to find a way to start negotiations over Russia’s war on the country, officials said Sunday.
The summit will be held in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, said one official, who spoke early Sunday on condition of anonymity as no authorization had been given to publicly discuss the summit. Russia was not invited, the official added.
Hours later, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, confirmed the talks would be held in Saudi Arabia, without naming Jeddah as the location.
“The Ukrainian Peace Formula contains 10 fundamental points, the implementation of which will not only ensure peace for Ukraine, but also create mechanisms to counter future conflicts in the world,” Yermak said in a statement. “We are deeply convinced that the Ukrainian peace plan should be taken as a basis, because the war is taking place on our land.”
Yermak;s statement described the 10 points as being “discussed individually and in groups with representatives of more than 50 countries on an almost weekly basis.”
Previously, Ukraine has described the 10-point peace formula as including the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Other peace plans have been floated amid the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin just finished meetings in St. Petersburg with African leaders about their own proposed plan. China and Pope Francis also been working separately on their own. No details of those plans have been released.
Saudi Arabia did not acknowledge the upcoming summit Sunday and did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Those taking part in the summit will include Ukraine, Brazil, India, South Africa and several other countries, the official who spoke to AP said. A high-level official from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration also is expected to attend the event, which is being planned by Kyiv, the official said.
Details remain in flux and the official did not offer dates for the talks, nor did Yermak.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the summit citing “diplomats involved in the discussion,” said the talks would take place Aug. 5 and 6, with some 30 countries attending. News of the summit comes after U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan visited the kingdom Thursday.
The official who spoke to AP said the summit would be the next step after talks that took place in Copenhagen in June.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended an Arab League summit in Jeddah in May to press those nations to back Kyiv.
Arab nations largely have remained neutral since Russia launched the war on Ukraine in February 2022, in part over their military and economic ties to Moscow.
Saudi Arabia also has maintained a close relationship with Russia as part of the OPEC+ group. The organization’s oil production cuts, even as Moscow’s war on Ukraine boosted energy prices, have angered Biden and American lawmakers.
But hosting such talks also help raise the profile of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has sought to reach a détente with Iran and push for a peace in the kingdom’s yearslong war in Yemen.
Ties remain strained between Riyadh and the West over the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, which U.S. intelligence agencies say was ordered by Prince Mohammed.
For Ukraine, the talks coincide with its efforts to beef up its security posture.
Yermak also said Sunday that Ukraine will begin talks with the United States next week on a bilateral agreement on security guarantees. He said the talks stem from a declaration by leaders of the Group of 7 nations earlier this month laying the groundwork for each nation to negotiate agreements to help Ukraine bolster its military.
Yermak said Ukraine is looking for “specific and long-term commitments that will ensure Ukraine’s ability to win now and deter Russian aggression in the future.”
U.S. officials had not confirmed the negotiations.
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Madhani reported from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Associated Press writer Andrew Katell in New York contributed to this report. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-official-tells-ap-that-saudi-arabia-will-host-ukrainian-organized-peace-summit-in-august/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:37 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-official-tells-ap-that-saudi-arabia-will-host-ukrainian-organized-peace-summit-in-august/ |
Ukraine brought the war far from the front line into the heart of Russia again Sunday in drone penetrations that Russian authorities said damaged two office buildings a few miles (kilometers) from the Kremlin and a pig breeding complex on the countries’ border.
The attacks, which Ukraine didn’t acknowledge in keeping with its security policy, reflected a pattern of more frequent and deeper cross-border strikes the Kyiv government has launched since starting a counteroffensive against Russian forces in June. A precursor and the most dramatic of the strikes happenned in May on the Kremlin itself, the seat of power in the capital, Moscow.
Sunday’s was the fourth such strike on the capital region this month and the third this week, showing Moscow’s vulnerability as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its 18th month.
The Russian Defense Ministry said three drones targeted the city in an “attempted terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime.” Air defenses shot down one drone in Odintsovo in the surrounding Moscow region, while two others were jammed and crashed into the Moscow City business district.
Photos and video showed that a drone had ripped off part of the facade of a modern skyscraper, IQ-Quarter, located 7.2 kms (4.5 miles) from the Kremlin. When the drone hit, sparks, flames and smoke spewed from the building, with debris falling on the sidewalk and street. Windows were blown out, and metal window frames were mangled. A security guard was injured, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials. Russia’s Ria-Novosti news agency reported the building’s tenants included several government agencies.
Flights were temporarily suspended at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, and the airspace over Moscow and the outlying regions was temporarily closed.
President Vladimir Putin, who was in his hometown of St. Petersburg at the time of the attempted attacks for meetings with African leaders and a naval celebration, was briefed, his spokesman said.
Ukrainian officials didn’t acknowledge the attacks but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address: “Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia — to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”
A Ukrainian air force spokesman also didn’t claim responsibility but said the Russian people were seeing the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“All of the people who think the war ‘doesn’t concern them’ — it’s already touching them,” spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told journalists Sunday.
“There’s already a certain mood in Russia: that something is flying in, and loudly,” he said. “There’s no discussion of peace or calm in the Russian interior any more. They got what they wanted.”
Ihnat also referenced an early Sunday drone attack on Crimea, Ukrainian territory which Russia occupied and illegally annexed in 2014. The Russian Defense Ministry announced it had shot down 16 Ukrainian drones and neutralized eight others through electronic jamming. No casualties were reported.
Zelenskyy has vowed to take back all land Russian forces have occupied, including Crimea, and his efforts have been strengthened by the receipt and deployment of increasingly advanced Western weapons.
In the earlier attacks on Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported shooting down a Ukrainian drone outside the city on Friday. Four days earlier, two drones struck the Russian capital, 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 air defenses downed four drones on Moscow’s outskirts and jammed a fifth that was forced down.
Russia has also blamed Ukrainian forces for attacking border areas, and on Sunday, the governor of one such region, Bryansk, said a Ukrainian strike damaged a pig breeding complex and injured three people.
In Ukraine, the air force reported Sunday it had destroyed four Russian drones above the Kherson and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Information on the attacks could not be independently verified.
Meanwhile, a Russian missile strike late Saturday killed two people and wounded 20 in the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine. A four-story vocational college building was hit, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said. Local authorities said that dormitories and teaching buildings were damaged in the blast and a fire that followed.
While the attacks continued on the war front, so did the war of words. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, issued his latest nuclear war threat in a Telegram post Sunday. In it, he claimed Russian forces were preventing a nuclear war. He contended that if Ukraine, with NATO countries’ support, succeeded in its counteroffensive, including if “they seized part of our land,” then Russia would “go for the use of nuclear weapons.” Western leaders have repeatedly warned of the dangers of making such statements.
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Associated Press writer Andrew Katell in New York contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-overnight-drone-attack-on-moscow-injures-1-prompts-temporary-airport-closure/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:44 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-overnight-drone-attack-on-moscow-injures-1-prompts-temporary-airport-closure/ |
CAIRO (AP) — Palestinian factions met Sunday in Egypt to discuss reconciliation efforts as violence in the occupied West Bank surged between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The main groups, Hamas and Fatah, have been split since 2007 and repeated reconciliation attempts having failed, so expectations for the one-day meeting were low.
Participants at the closed-door meeting gave no indication of what was discussed. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who initiated the session in the Egyptian city of el-Alamein on the Mediterranean Sea, said at its conclusion only that the meeting was a “first and significant step” in efforts to end the long-running division.
It came amid soaring violence in the West Bank, where Abbas and his Fatah group are based and exert limited self-rule. Israel has been staging near-nightly raids in Palestinian areas of the territory in what it says is an attempt to stamp out militancy, especially in areas where Abbas’ security forces have less of a foothold.
Those raids have led to some of the worst fighting in nearly two decades in the West Bank. Palestinians also say the Israeli raids undermine their own security forces and weaken their leadership.
The meeting in Egypt was chaired by Abbas, presenting the aging and longtime Palestinian leader with a chance to portray an image of control and statesmanship to both Palestinians and the international community at a time when he is deeply unpopular at home and his room for maneuver is constrained by the Israeli incursions.
The meeting was attended by other Palestinian leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. Fatah and Hamas have been rivals since Hamas violently routed forces loyal to Abbas in Gaza in 2007, taking over the impoverished coastal enclave. Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on the territory.
For Hamas, joining the meeting was an opportunity to show Gazans that it is making an effort to mend the rift, even if nothing changes as a result.
Another key group playing a central role in the fighting with Israel, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, boycotted the gathering to protest the detentions by the Palestinian Authority of its members, said to the group’s leader, Ziyad al-Nakhala.
Egypt has for years acted as a mediator in trying to end the infighting between Palestinian factions. It also helped broker truces in multiple rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-palestinian-factions-meet-in-egypt-to-try-to-reconcile-as-violence-surges-in-the-west-bank/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:50 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-palestinian-factions-meet-in-egypt-to-try-to-reconcile-as-violence-surges-in-the-west-bank/ |
PAVLIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — The summer winds carried the smell of burned grain across the southern Ukrainian steppe and away from the shards of three Russian cruise missiles that struck the unassuming metal hangars.
The agricultural company Ivushka applied for accreditation to export grain this year, but the strike in mid-July destroyed a large portion of the stock, days after Russia abandoned the grain deal that would have allowed the shipments across the Black Sea without fear of attack.
Men shirtless and barefoot, with blackened soles from ash, swept unburnt grain into piles and awaited the loader, whose driver deftly steered around twisted metal shrapnel, bits of missile and craters despite his shattered windshield.
They hoped to beat the next rain to rescue what was left of the crop. According to the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Russia struck the facility July 21 with three Kalibr- and Onyx-class cruise missiles.
“We don’t have a clue why they did it,” explained Olha Romanova, the head of Ivushka. Romanova, who worked in the debris alongside the others, wore a red headscarf and an exhausted expression and was too frazzled to even estimate her losses.
She cannot comprehend why the Russians targeted Ivushka, as there are no nearby military facilities and the frontlines are far from the village in the Odesa region.
“They spent so much money on us,” she said, puzzled. The missiles that ruined the silos are worth millions of dollars — far more than the crop they destroyed.
But Ivushka wasn’t the only target in Odesa. The main port also was struck, leaving Black Sea shipping companies that relied upon the grain deal to keep them safe and food supplies flowing to the world at a standstill.
The Black Sea handled about 95% of Ukrainian grain exports before Russia’s invasion and the U.N.-brokered initiative allowed Ukraine to ship much of what farmers harvested in 2021 and 2022, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Ukraine, a major supplier of corn, wheat, barley and vegetable oil, shipped 32.9 million metric tons (36.2 million U.S. tons) of grain under the nearly yearlong deal designed to ease a global food crisis. It has been able to export an additional 2 million to 2.5 million metric tons (2.2 to 2.7 million U.S. tons) monthly by the Danube River, road and rail through Europe.
Those are now the only routes to ship grain, but have stirred divisions among nearby European countries and generated higher costs to be absorbed by Ukrainian farmers, said Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russian missiles strikes against the Danube port last Monday also raised questions about how much longer that route will remain viable.
That’s a disincentive to keep planting fields already threatened by missiles and strewn with explosive mines. Corn and wheat production in agriculture-dependent Ukraine is down nearly 40% this year from prewar levels, analysts say.
From the first of July last year until June 30 this year, Ukraine exported 68 million tons of grain, according to data from Mykola Horbachov, the president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Ukrainian farmers shipped 11.2 million tons via railways, 5.5 million tons by road transport and around 18 million tons through Danube ports. Additionally, nearly half of the total exported grain, 33 million tons, was delivered through seaports under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
Ihor Osmachko, the general director of Agroprosperis Group, was unsurprised by Russia’s withdrawal from the deal leading to its collapse. His company had never considered it a reliable or permanent solution during wartime.
He said Russians frequently stymied the deal, even while it was functioning, by delaying ship inspections until the cargos were sent back, leading to $30 million in losses for his company alone. Now, they are once again forced to pay to reroute 100,000 tons of grain trapped in ports that are no longer safe, Osmachko said.
“We have been preparing for this whole time,” Osmachko said. “We haven’t stopped. We are moving forward.”
Osmachko estimated around 80% to 90% of the approximately 3.2 million tons of grain Agroprosperis exported to China, Europe and African countries during the past year went through the grain corridor.
“The most significant problem today is the cost of logistics,” explained Mykola Horbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Before the war, farmers paid approximately $20 to $25 per ton to transport grain to the Odesa ports. Now, logistics costs have tripled as they are forced to pay more than $100 to transport a single ton via alternative routes through the Danube port to Constanta, Romania.
“If we were to go on the Danube with the grain corridor closed, practically all our production would be unprofitable,” Osmachko said.
The Danube ports can’t handle the same volume as seaports. The most Agroprosperis has sent through this route is 75,000 tons per month, compared with a monthly average of 250,000 tons through Black Sea ports.
The Ukrainian harvest this year is the lowest in a decade, according to a July report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Horbachov said shipping costs to export around the world and uncertainty about the length of the war will last could quickly make new planting unprofitable for Ukrainian farmers.
Ukraine currently produces three times more grain than it consumes, while global prices will inevitably rise if the country’s exports decrease.
“I think you’re looking at a diminished Ukraine for at least the next couple of years and maybe longer,” said Glauber, the former U.S. agricultural official. “That’s something the rest of the world just needs to make up.”
The war from all sides poses risks for Agroprosperis.
In the Sumy region on the Russian border, farmers harvest their crops wearing body armor. Sometimes they must stop their combines in the middle of the wheat fields to pick up shrapnel from Russian projectiles.
“It can get tough at times,” Osmachko acknowledged. “But there are responsibilities — some have duties on the front. Some must grow food and ensure the country’s and world’s security.”
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Volodymyr Yurchuk in Lviv, Ukraine, and Courtney Bonnell in London contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-for-ukrainian-farmers-looking-to-export-grain/ | 2023-07-31T00:26:56 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-for-ukrainian-farmers-looking-to-export-grain/ |
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish government researchers said Sunday they had identified 357 foreign fighters who went missing during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the conflict that foreshadowed World War II.
Researchers confirmed the names of 212 fighters from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a statement from the government Sunday. Some 102 are of German origin, 70 Austrian and 40 Dutch. It gave no information on how many people of other nationalities had been identified.
The identified combatants fought within the International Brigades, military units set up by the Communist International to fight against General Francisco Franco’s fascist forces. Some 40,000 foreign men and women joined up as volunteers, fighting alongside the forces of the democratic Second Spanish Republic and against the rise of fascism in Europe in late 1930s.
The findings are based on a year of research in records held in documentary archives in Spain and Russia. Researchers combed through the daily lists of casualties and missing soldiers compiled by officers in the International Brigades.
The names of private soldiers were frequently omitted from the lists, making the research process more difficult. These lists are held in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, in Moscow. Researchers also dipped into the main archives on the Spanish Civil War located in Spain.
By cross-referencing documents, researchers were also able to identify the likely area where the soldiers died or were badly wounded. It is an important step toward locating their remains inside mass graves scattered across the country.
This research provides “very valuable information that gives us the opportunity to contact the families of the missing combatants and, in the future, to intervene in the mass graves that have been located,” said Alfons Aragoneses, head of the project.
All those identified were part of the Thälmann Brigade, a Communist unit made up largely of anti-Nazi Germans. The battalion was active on the Ebro River front in northeastern Spain between March and September 1938, the site of the longest and deadliest battle of the war.
The research is ongoing and it is funded by Catalan regional government, with the aim of contributing to the country’s historical memory. The second phase of the project will try to identify missing militiamen from Great Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States. The final step would require opening the graves in search of bodies.
Historians estimate nearly 10,000 foreign volunteers died in combat on Spanish soil during the war. How many are still unidentified, buried inside graves, remains unknown.
The Spanish Civil War served as a testing ground for Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy prior to World War II. This triggered an international outcry to try to save the Republic’s democratic government, which eventually succumbed to Franco in 1939. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-spain-identifies-212-german-austrian-and-dutch-fighters-who-went-missing-during-spanish-civil-war/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:04 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-spain-identifies-212-german-austrian-and-dutch-fighters-who-went-missing-during-spanish-civil-war/ |
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Several thousand people briefly took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday to protest chronic power outages and difficult living conditions, providing a rare public show of discontent with the territory’s Hamas government. Hamas security forces quickly dispersed the gatherings.
Marches took place in Gaza City, the southern town of Khan Younis and other locations, chanting “what a shame” and in one place burning Hamas flags, before police moved in and broke up the protests.
Police destroyed mobile phones of people who were filming in Khan Younis, and witnesses said there were several arrests. Dozens of young supporters and opponents of Hamas briefly faced off, throwing stones at one another.
The demonstrations were organized by a grassroots online movement called “alvirus alsakher,” or “the mocking virus.” It was not immediately known who is behind the movement.
Hamas rules Gaza with an iron fist, barring most demonstrations and quickly stamping out public displays of dissent.
The Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007 from the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose a crippling blockade on the territory. Israel says the closure is needed to prevent Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, from building up its military capabilities.
The closure has devastated Gaza’s economy, sent unemployment skyrocketing and led to frequent power outages. During the current heat wave, people have been receiving four to six hours of power a day due to heavy demand.
“Where is the electricity and where is the gas?” the crowds shouted in Khan Younis. “What a shame. What a shame.”
Protesters also criticized Hamas for deducting a roughly $15 fee from monthly $100 stipends given to Gaza’s poorest families by the wealthy Gulf state of Qatar.
There was no immediate comment from the Hamas authorities. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-thousands-take-to-streets-in-gaza-in-rare-public-display-of-discontent-with-hamas/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:11 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/international/ap-thousands-take-to-streets-in-gaza-in-rare-public-display-of-discontent-with-hamas/ |
MUNCIE, Ind. (WXIN) — A street party in Muncie, Indiana, turned into the scene of a deadly shooting early Sunday morning.
One man died and nearly two dozen others were injured. Of those wounded, 19 were treated at Ball Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, and four were taken to other hospitals. Thirteen victims remained hospitalized in stable condition Sunday afternoon.
After the mass shooting, police announced that there was no further danger to the general public.
”Stranger comes up and decides to take it personal on somebody he knows in the crowd,” said one anonymous man who claimed his nephew was the block party’s disc jockey. “And you can’t fight against an AR. He let loose in the crowd. Everywhere in the crowd.”
The Delaware County coroner identified the deceased victim as 30-year-old Joseph Bonner. There’s no indication if Bonner played an active role in the shooting, whether any other victims are suspected of firing guns, or if any firearms were recovered.
A witness at IU/Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie described a scene of emergency department chaos with more than 100 people descending on the facility — many of whom were victims that were taken to the hospital by private vehicles.
Officers from several agencies — including a Muncie-based FBI agent — secured the crime scene and collected evidence while doctors and nurses treated the wounded from the mass casualty event.
By midday, detectives were still walking the debris-strewn street and parking lot with brown bags filled with collected evidence. A tow truck was also seen hauling away a bullet-riddled red Buick that appeared to have crashed during an attempt to leave the scene.
The Muncie Homecoming Festival committee said the street party where the shooting happened was not part of the official MHF celebration going on this week.
Muncie Parks Superintendent Carl Malone told Nexstar’s WXIN he chaired a neighborhood crime watch meeting last Thursday, and residents expressed fear that this weekend could turn volatile.
”We was a little concerned about violence that we thought might happen,” said Malone, who described Muncie Homecoming as a city-wide welcome home celebration held once every four years for former residents and family members to reconnect with their hometown. ”You had a lot of people congregating in one area, just hanging out and wanting to be part of the neighborhood activities. And then, at that point at time, it got into late night, and when you get into late nights, you usually have some sort of curfew violations, alcohol, guns and drugs seem to be a problem.”
Malone said Muncie has not had a community-wide gun violence initiative since 2015.
”We’ve always had concerns about this area and teenagers involved with handguns,” said Malone, whose niece attended the party. ”She just got out of surgery. She’s doing well. She’s whole. And then my godson was being treated out at Ball Hospital.”
Malone said he will meet with the city’s police leadership Monday morning to review the shooting and plans for keeping Muncie streets safe the rest of the summer.
”The mayor knows my push for gun violence, the lack of gun violence education, the lack of gun violence awareness, the lack of how to report gun violence in and out of our homes,” Malone said. “There’s a way to report crime, there’s a way to report guns, and we just have to report guns in and out of our backpacks and homes.”
Muncie is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The city is home to about 65,000 people. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:17 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ |
8 police dogs die after AC breaks down during 2-hour traffic delay
The response was so 'overwhelming' that civilians intervened to help the dogs
At least eight dogs died from heat-related injuries after an AC unit that was being used to keep them cool failed during a 2-hour traffic delay.
The dogs that died were among 18 shepherds that were being transported to a K-9 training facility from O’Hare Airport to Michigan City, Indiana on Thursday, Lake Station police said.
During the transport, the driver became stuck in a traffic jam and the AC unit failed. The temperature rose inside the vehicle, causing the canines to go into heat-related medical distress.
The driver wasn’t aware at first of the AC unit failure because the cargo area was separated. He only became aware of what was happening upon hearing the dogs barking.
DISTURBING FOOTAGE SHOWS PLANE NOSEDIVE, BURST INTO FIREBALL DURING WILDFIRE TRAGEDY
The driver stopped the vehicle at the Road Ranger on Ripley Street and began removing the canines that were crated.
Officials from the Lake Station Fire Department and EMS, as well as the Lake Station Police Department, responded to the scene.
FIRST POOCH COMMANDER BIDEN IN THE DOG HOUSE AS TRAINERS CALL FOR HIS MUZZLING
Police said the response from both agencies was so "overwhelming" that civilians stopped to help where they could.
"The scene was chaotic and took an emotional toll on all that were involved in trying to save as many canines as possible," the Lake Station Police Department wrote in a press release. "Any loss of life is tragic and thoughts and prayers are with all those that were affected by this ‘freak event.’"
After speaking with the driver involved, police determined that the incident was not an act of animal cruelty or neglect, but a mechanical failure of the AC unit that was being used in the cargo area.
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The incident came amid a record-breaking heatwave that has walloped the United States in recent weeks. Scientists have calculated that July will be the hottest month worldwide on record.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | https://www.foxnews.com/us/8-police-dogs-die-ac-breaks-down-2-hour-traffic-delay | 2023-07-31T00:27:22 | 0 | https://www.foxnews.com/us/8-police-dogs-die-ac-breaks-down-2-hour-traffic-delay |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades.
Median rent rose just 0.5% in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years.
A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. Renters in cities such as Cincinnati and Indianapolis are still getting hit with increases of 5% or more. Much of the new construction is located in just a few metro areas, and many of the new units are luxury apartments, which rent for well north of $2,000.
Median U.S. rent has risen to $2,029 this June from $1,629 in June 2019, according to rental listings company Rent, which tracks rents in 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Demand for apartments exploded during the pandemic as people who could work remotely sought more space or decided to relocate to another part of the country.
The steep rent increases have left tenants like Melissa Lombana, a high school teacher who lives in the South Florida city of Miramar, with progressively less income to spend on other needs.
The rent on her one-bedroom apartment jumped 13% last year to $1,700. It climbed another 6% to $1,800 this month when she renewed her lease.
“Even the $1,700 was a stretch for me,” said Lombana, 43, who supplements her teaching income with a side job doing educational testing. “In a year, I will not be able to afford living here at all.”
Lombana’s rent is now gobbling up nearly half her monthly income. That puts her in a category referred to as “cost-burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, denoting households that pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Last year, the average rent-to-income ratio per household rose to 30%. This March, it was 29.6%.
Lombana hasn’t had any luck finding a more affordable apartment. While South Florida is one of the metropolitan areas seeing a rise in apartment construction, the units are mostly high-end and not a viable option.
That scenario is playing out across the nation. Developers are rushing to complete projects that were green-lit during the pandemic-era surge in demand for rentals or left in limbo by delays in supplies of fixtures and building materials. Nearly 1.1 million apartments are currently under construction, according to the commercial real estate tracker CoStar, a pace not seen since the 1970s.
Increasing the supply of apartments tends to moderate rent increases over time and can give tenants more options on where to live. But more than 40% of the new rentals to be completed this year will be concentrated in about 10 high job growth metropolitan areas, including Austin, Nashville, Denver, Atlanta and New York, according to Marcus & Millichap. In many areas, the boost to overall inventory will be barely noticeable.
Even within metros where there’ll be a notable increase in available apartments, such as Nashville, most of it will be in the luxury category, where rents average $2,270, nationally. Some 70% of the new rental inventory will be the luxury class, said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.
That will leave most tenants unlikely to see a big enough reduction in rent to make a difference, industry experts and economists say.
“I think we’re in a period of rent flattening for 12 or 18 months, but it’s certainly not a big rent decline,” said Hessam Nadji, CEO of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap.
“We’re building a multi-decade record number of units,” Nadji said. “It’s going to cause some softening and some pockets of overbuilding, but it’s not going to fundamentally resolve the housing shortage or the affordability problem for renters across the U.S.”
The surge in rents has made it difficult for workers to keep up with inflation despite solid wage gains the past few years and exacerbated a long-term trend. Between 1999 and 2022, U.S. rents soared 135%, while income grew 77%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
Realtor.com is forecasting that rents will drop an average of 0.9% this year. But while down nationally, rents are still rising in many markets around the country, especially those where hiring remains robust.
In the New York metro area, the median rent climbed 4.7% in June from a year earlier to $2,899, according to Realtor.com. In the Midwest, rents surged 5.6% in the Cincinnati metro area to $1,188, and 6.9% to $1,350 in the Indianapolis metro area.
The current spike in apartment construction alone isn’t going to be enough to address how costly renting has become for many Americans.
“For the rest of the 2020s rents will continue to grow because millennials are such a big generation and we’re very much in the hole in terms of building housing for that generation,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “It will take many good years of new construction to build adequate housing for millennials.”
The bigger challenge is building more work force housing, because the cost of land, labor and navigating the government approval process incentivize developers to put up luxury apartments buildings.
Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.
Despite the overall pullback in U.S. rents, Joey Di Girolamo, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, worries that he’ll face more sharp rent increases in coming years.
Last year, the web designer left a two-bedroom, two-bath townhome he rented for $2,200 a month to avoid a $600 a month increase. This year, his rent went up by $200, a nearly 10% jump.
“That blew me away,” said Di Girolamo, 50. “I’m just kind of dreading what it’s going to be like next year, but especially 3 or 4 years from now.” | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-a-boom-in-apartment-construction-is-helping-to-curb-rents-but-not-all-renters-will-benefit/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:23 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-a-boom-in-apartment-construction-is-helping-to-curb-rents-but-not-all-renters-will-benefit/ |
NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Thousands of people backing the coup in Niger marched through the streets of the capital denouncing France, the country’s former colonial power, waving Russian flags, and setting a door at the French Embassy ablaze on Sunday before the army broke up the crowd.
Demonstrators in Niger are openly resentful of France, and Russia is seen by some as a powerful alternative. The nature of Russia’s involvement in the rallies, if any, isn’t clear but some protesters have carried Russian flags, along with signs reading “Down with France” and supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian mercenary group Wagner is operating in neighboring Mali, and under Putin Russia has expanded its influence in West Africa. The new junta’s leaders have not said whether they intend to ally themselves with Moscow or stick with Niger’s Western partners.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that attacks on France and its interests would not be tolerated and anyone who attacks French citizens will see an immediate response.
Niger, a French colony until 1960, had been seen as the West’s last reliable partner battling jihadists in Africa’s Sahel region. 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.
At an emergency meeting Sunday, the West African bloc known as ECOWAS said that it was suspending relations with Niger, and authorized the use of force if President Mohamed Bazoum is not reinstated within a week. The African Union has issued its own 15-day ultimatum to the junta in Niger to reinstall the democratically elected government.
Shortly after the ECOWAS meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, Chadian President Mahamat Deby arrived in Niger to lead mediation efforts, according to the Chad state radio station.
ECOWAS has struggled to make a definitive impact on the region’s political crises in the past but Bazoum was democratically elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence from France in 1960.
Members of the Niger military announced on Wednesday that they had deposed Bazoum and on Friday named Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani as the country’s new leader, adding Niger to a growing list of military regimes in West Africa’s Sahel region.
Some leaders of the mutiny said they overthrew Bazoum because he wasn’t able to secure the nation against growing jihadi violence. But some analysts and Nigeriens say that was a pretext for a takeover driven by internal power struggles.
“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, Tchiani. Tchiani, who also goes by Omar, was loyal to Bazoum’s predecessor, and that sparked the problems, Boubacar said.
Niger’s dire security situation is not as bad as that in neighboring Burkina Faso or Mali, which have also been battling an Islamic insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Last year, Niger was the only one of the three to see a decline in violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
Some taking part in Sunday’s rally warned outside bodies to stay away.
“I would like also to say to the European Union, African Union and ECOWAS, please, please stay out of our business,” Oumar Barou Moussa said 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.”
Niger has the most at stake of any country in the Sahel if it turns away from the West, given the millions of dollars of military assistance it has received from abroad.
On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the continued security and economic cooperation with the U.S. hinges on the release of Bazoum — who remains under house arrest — and “the immediate restoration of the democratic order in Niger.”
Macron said he’d spoken to Bazoum and his predecessor on Sunday. On Saturday France suspended all development and financial aid to Niger.
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.
While the bloc has struggled to have much impact, the measures placed on Niger Sunday show the gravity of the situation, said Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute.
“The strenuous measures they have put in place or threatened to put in place show not only how seriously they are taking this crisis, but also the urgency the regional body and larger international community feel in trying to force a return to normal that will likely prove elusive,” he said.
The response from the bloc towards Niger differs from how it dealt with recent coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, which did not involve the threat of force if constitutional rule wasn’t reinstated.
In the last few decades it has sent troops into member countries a handful of times.
In the 1990s, ECOWAS intervened in Liberia during its civil war. 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.
Economic sanctions could have a deep impact on Nigeriens, who live in the third-poorest country in the world, according to the latest U.N. data. The country relies on imports from Nigeria for up to 90% of its power, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. The sanctions would suspend all commercial and financial transactions between ECOWAS member states and Niger.
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.
“Tensions with the military are still ongoing. There could be another coup after this one, or a stronger intervention from ECOWAS, potentially military force,” 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.”
___
Associated Press reporters Angela Charlton in Paris and Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria and Edouard Takadji in N’Djamena, Chad contributed. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-as-regional-and-global-powers-decry-nigers-coup-the-countrys-future-remains-uncertain/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:29 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-as-regional-and-global-powers-decry-nigers-coup-the-countrys-future-remains-uncertain/ |
Record heat waves illuminate plight of poorest Americans who suffer without air conditioning
DENVER (AP) — As Denver neared triple-digit temperatures, Ben Gallegos sat shirtless on his porch swatting flies off his legs and spritzing himself with a misting fan to try to get through the heat. Gallegos, like many in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, doesn’t have air conditioning.
The 68-year-old covers his windows with mattress foam to insulate against the heat and sleeps in the concrete basement. He knows high temperatures can cause heat stroke and death, and his lung condition makes him more susceptible. But the retired brick layer, who survives on about $1,000 a month largely from Social Security, says air conditioning is out of reach.
“Take me about 12 years to save up for something like that,” he said. “If it’s hard to breathe, I’ll get down to emergency.”
As climate change fans hotter and longer heat waves, breaking record temperatures across the U.S. and leaving dozens dead, the poorest Americans suffer the hottest days with the fewest defenses. Air conditioning, once a luxury, is now a matter of survival.
As Phoenix weathered its 27th consecutive day above 110 degrees (43 Celsius) Wednesday, the nine who died indoors didn’t have functioning air conditioning, or it was turned off. Last year, all 86 heat-related deaths indoors were in uncooled environments.
“To explain it fairly simply: Heat kills,” said Kristie Ebi, a University of Washington professor who researches heat and health. “Once the heat wave starts, mortality starts in about 24 hours.”
It’s the poorest and people of color, from Kansas City to Detroit to New York City and beyond, who are far more likely to face grueling heat without air conditioning, according to a Boston University analysis of 115 U.S. metros.
“The temperature differences ... between lower-income neighborhoods, neighborhoods of color and their wealthier, whiter counterparts have pretty severe consequences,” said Cate Mingoya-LaFortune of Groundwork USA, an environmental justice organization. “There are these really big consequences like death. ... But there’s also ambient misery.”
Some have window units that can offer respite, but “in the dead of heat, it don’t do nothing,” said Melody Clark, who stopped Friday to get food at a nonprofit in Kansas City, Kansas, as temperatures soared to 101, and high humidity made it feel like 109. When the central air conditioning at her rental house went on the fritz, her landlord installed a window unit. But it doesn’t do much during the day.
So the 45-year-old wets her hair, cooks outside on a propane grill and keeps the lights off indoors. She’s taken the bus to the library to cool off. At night she flips the box unit on, hauling her bed into the room where it’s located to sleep.
As far as her two teenagers, she said: “They aren’t little bitty. We aren’t dying in the heat. ... They don’t complain.”
While billions in federal funding have been allocated to subsidize utility costs and the installation of cooling systems, experts say they often only support a fraction of the most vulnerable families and some still require prohibitive upfront costs. Installing a centralized heat pump system for heating and cooling can easily reach $25,000.
President Joe Biden announced steps on Thursday to defend against extreme heat, highlighting the expansion of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which funnels money through states to help poorer households pay utility bills.
While the program is critical, said Michelle Graff, who studies the subsidy at Cleveland State University, only about 16% of the nation’s eligible population is actually reached. Nearly half of states don’t offer the federal dollars for summer cooling.
“So people are engaging in coping mechanisms, like they’re turning on their air conditioners later and leaving their homes hotter,” Graff said.
While frigid temperatures and high heating bills birthed the term “heat or eat,” she said, “we can now transition to AC or eat, where people are going to have to make difficult decisions.”
As temperatures rise, so does the cost of cooling. And temperatures are already hotter in America’s low-income neighborhoods like Gallegos’ Denver suburb of Globeville, where people live along stretches of asphalt and concrete that hold heat like a cast-iron skillet. Surface temperatures there can be roughly 8 degrees hotter than in Denver’s wealthier neighborhoods, where a sea of vegetation cools the area, according to the environmental advocacy group American Forests.
This disparity plays out nationwide. Researchers at the University of San Diego analyzed 1,056 counties and in over 70%, the poorest areas and those with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations were significantly hotter.
About one in 10 U.S. households have no air conditioning, a disparity compounded for marginalized groups, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Less than 4% of Detroit’s white households don’t have air conditioning; it’s 15% for Black households.
At noon on Friday, Katrice Sullivan sat on the porch of her rented house on Detroit’s westside. It was hot and muggy, but even steamier inside the house. Even if she had air conditioning, Sullivan said she’d choose her moments to run it to keep her electricity bill down.
The 37-year-old factory worker pours water on her head, freezes towels to put around her neck, and sits in her car with the air conditioner on. “Some people here spend every dollar for food, so air conditioning is something they can’t afford,” she said.
Shannon Lewis, 38, lived in her Detroit home for nearly 20 years without air conditioning. Lewis’s bedroom was the only place with a window unit, so she’d squeeze her teenager, 8-year-old and 3-year-old-twins into her queen-size bed to sleep, eat meals and watch television.
“So it was like cool in one room and a heat stroke in another,” Lewis said. For the first time, Lewis now has air conditioning through a local non-profit, she said. “We don’t have to sleep or eat in the same room, we are able to come out, sit at the dining room table, eat like a family.”
After at least 54 died during a 2021 heat wave, mostly elderly people without air conditioning, in the Portland area, Oregon passed a law prohibiting landlords from placing blanket bans on air conditioning units. By and large, however, states don’t have laws requiring landlords to provide cooling.
In the federal Inflation Reduction Act, billions were set aside for tax credits and rebates to help families install energy-efficient cooling systems, but some of those are yet to be available. For people like Gallegos, who doesn’t pay taxes, the available credits are worthless.
The law also offers rebates, the kind of state and federal point-of-sale discounts that Amanda Morian has looked into for her 640-square-foot home.
Morian, who has a 13-week-old baby susceptible to hot weather, is desperate to keep her house in Denver’s Globeville suburb cool. She bought thermal curtains, ceiling fans and runs a window unit. At night she tries to do skin-to-skin touch to regulate the baby’s body temperature. When the back door opens in the afternoon, she said, the indoor temperature jumps a degree.
“All of those are just to take the edge off, it’s not enough to actually make it cool. It’s enough to keep us from dying,” she said.
She got estimates from four different companies for installing a cooling system, but every project was between $20,000 and $25,000, she said. Even with subsidies she can’t afford it.
“I’m finding that you have to afford the project in the first place and then it’s like having a bonus coupon to take $5,000 off of the sticker price,” she said.
Lucy Molina, a single mom in Commerce City, one of Denver’s poorest areas, said her home has reached 107 degrees without air conditioning. Nearby, Molina’s two teenage children slurped popsicles to cool off, lingering in front of the open freezer.
For Molina, who bustled around her kitchen on a recent day when temperatures reached 99 degrees outdoors, it’s hard to see any path to a cooling respite.
“We’re just too poor,” she said.
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Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Kansas, and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.
——
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/07/30/record-heat-waves-illuminate-plight-poorest-americans-who-suffer-without-air-conditioning/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:33 | 1 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/07/30/record-heat-waves-illuminate-plight-poorest-americans-who-suffer-without-air-conditioning/ |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The discovery of four dead women in a drainage ditch just outside Atlantic City was shocking news in 2006.
International media flocked to the seaside gambling resort. More than 100 detectives and prosecutors were assigned to investigate. Casino guests worried about safety, and the victims’ fellow sex workers began carrying hidden knives.
But as the years passed, the public’s attention and fear faded, and the case of the “Eastbound Strangler” – so named for the direction the victims’ heads were facing – remained unsolved.
The arrest earlier this month of a man charged with killing three women whose remains were found on a Long Island beach in 2010 has breathed fresh life into another long-dormant case with obvious parallels; the Gilgo Beach serial killings involve a total of 11 victims, most of whom were young, female sex workers. Yet the recent breakthrough, and the rekindling of public interest, only highlights a painful truth: Many similar cases – like the one in Atlantic City — remain open.
The FBI would not say how many killings of sex workers in the U.S. remain unsolved. Media accounts and statements from local authorities show a long trail of open cases, from nine women whose bodies were found along highways in Massachusetts, to 11 found dead in New Mexico, and eight more found amid the crawfish farms and swamps of southern Louisiana. The killings of other sex workers in Chicago, New Haven, Connecticut and Ohio, among other places, also remain mysteries.
From the days of London’s Jack The Ripper in the 1880s, serial killers, particularly those preying on sex workers, have often gotten away with it, in part because their victims were easy targets living on the margins of society.
Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River killer convicted of 49 killings in Washington state, said at during a 2003 court hearing in which he pleaded guilty that he chose sex workers as victims because he knew they would not be missed quickly, if at all.
“I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught,” he said.
Two women were out for an afternoon walk near Atlantic City in November 2006 when they found a body in a ditch. They called police, who quickly found three others nearby.
The $15-a-night motel in Egg Harbor Township behind which the four bodies were found is long gone. It was torn down in an attempt to clear a seedy area known for crime, drugs and disturbances – and the murders of Barbara Breidor, 42, Molly Jean Dilts, 20, Kim Raffo, 35, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23.
Because it is near the ocean, like Gilgo Beach, the location has prompted much speculation by amateur detectives about a single killer, but some other online sleuths have pointed out that oceanside areas are often the remotest locations after hours on the densely packed East Coast. Gilgo Beach is about 3.5 hours drive from Atlantic City.
Gone in New Jersey are the four small wooden crosses someone erected on the site, along with the folded-up paper note bearing a Biblical quote promising justice that someone left there on one of the anniversaries of the discovery of the bodies.
For families left behind, each new day without word in the case of their loved one brings fresh pain.
“I kind of lost hope that anyone was even searching for the killer anymore,” said Joyce Roberts, whose daughter Tracy Ann was one of the four Atlantic City-area victims. “The first six months, the prosecutor did get on the phone with me and told me they were working on it.
“Then it just fell off the radar,” she said. “It was like nobody cared anymore.”
That is a sentiment echoed by Phoenix Calida, a former sex worker from Chicago who now advocates for them through the Sex Workers Outreach Project.
“Police departments often refer to it as an ‘NHI’ case: No humans involved,” she said. ”You feel like the only way you’ll be remembered is when they catch the serial killer who killed you, and then they’ll make five movies about him and no one will remember your name.”
Massachusetts State Police are investigating “nine unsolved homicides possibly committed by the same person,” said David Procopio, a spokesperson for the agency. He said two additional missing persons cases may be homicides related to the other nine.
Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said the New Mexico cases remain actively investigated, with “multiple detectives” working them. The 11 victims were all involved in drugs and prostitution, police said.
A reward of $100,000 has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case, which involved two victims who were just 15 years old.
Despite the decade-long efforts of a local, state and federal task force, Louisiana has at least eight unsolved apparent homicide cases involving sex workers between the ages of 17 and 30. Their bodies were found in marshy areas in Jennings, a small town in the area known as Cajun Country, between 2005 and 2009.
Prosecutors in New York’s Suffolk County investigating the Gilgo Beach cases have been in touch with multiple law enforcement agencies, but District Attorney Ray Tierney would not say which ones.
“Everything is being examined and looked at, and this is an active investigation,” said Anthony Carter, Suffolk County’s deputy police commissioner. He would not say if his agency was investigating any connection between Heuermann and the Atlantic City murders.
Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds said the four cases from the drainage ditch outside Atlantic City remain active, with detectives assigned to them, but would not say how many. He declined comment on the Long Island case “as we are not involved.”
Joyce Roberts, the victim’s mother, said no one from law enforcement has called her since the arrest was made in the Long Island cases.
Police in Las Vegas, where Heuermann owns a time share, said they are investigating whether Heuermann may be involved in cases involving the killings of sex workers there.
In the months immediately after the bodies’ discovery near Atlantic City, the local prosecutor’s office and a dozen other law enforcement agencies had 140 people assigned to the cases, Ted Housel, who was prosecutor at the time, said in 2008. By the first anniversary, the total had fallen to 85, and those investigators were also working other cases.
Calida, the former sex worker from Chicago, said women involved the sex trade are frequently robbed by people who know they’re carrying cash, and are sometimes coerced into sexual activity by police in return for not being arrested.
She said an attacker “knows you can’t or won’t report it. You’re an easy target and they know it.”
Three of her friends who were also sex workers in Chicago also turned up dead.
“You see someone, you become friends with them and then one day they’re suddenly just not there,” she said. “We’d all go out asking around and looking for them, and then a few days later a body would be found. There’s always this specific fear that it’s a serial killer. Sometimes we never even get a body back to bury. And we wonder: Will law enforcement take it seriously because it’s ‘just another sex worker?’”
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AP writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; Julie Walker and Robert Bumsted in Suffolk County, New York; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this story.
Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-breakthrough-in-long-island-serial-killings-shines-light-on-the-many-unsolved-murders-of-sex-workers/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:36 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-breakthrough-in-long-island-serial-killings-shines-light-on-the-many-unsolved-murders-of-sex-workers/ |
Remains of WWII veteran killed in Romania identified, laid to rest
NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio (WOIO/Gray News) - The remains of a missing U.S. Army Lieutenant were laid to rest with full military honors on Saturday.
According to WOIO, First Lieutenant Army Air Corps George “Bud” Julius Reuter was buried at Sunset Memorial Park in North Olmsted, Ohio.
Reuter, who was 25 years old at the time, was killed in action on August 1, 1943 near Ploiesti, Romania.
Reuter’s remains were identified January 10, 2023 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
After the war, many airmen were interred by Romanian citizens in the Bolovan Cemetery in Ploiesti. The American Graves Registration Command exhumed many unknown remains to identify U.S. veterans who went missing. The organization eventually reinterred the remains that could not be identified.
Reuter was laid to rest near his parents John George and Elizabeth Theodocia Reuter.
A memorial service was held for the lieutenant which included the presentation of four military medals: the Silver Star, Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Air Medal for conspicuous gallantry in action against the enemy.
Copyright 2023 WOIO via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/07/30/remains-wwii-veteran-killed-romania-identified-laid-rest/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:40 | 1 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/07/30/remains-wwii-veteran-killed-romania-identified-laid-rest/ |
MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. (AP) — A massive wildfire burning out of control in California’s Mojave National Preserve was spreading rapidly amid erratic winds, while firefighters reported progress against another major blaze to the southwest that prompted evacuations.
The York Fire that erupted Friday near the remote Caruthers Canyon area of the vast wildland preserve crossed the state line into Nevada on Sunday and sent smoke further east into the Las Vegas Valley.
Wind-driven flames 20 feet (6 meters) high in some spots charred more than 110 square miles (284 square kilometers) of desert scrub, juniper and Joshua tree woodland, according to an incident update.
“The dry fuel acts as a ready ignition source, and when paired with those weather conditions it resulted in long-distance fire run and high flames, leading to extreme fire behavior,” the update said. No structures were threatened. There was zero containment.
To the southwest, the Bonny Fire was holding steady at about 3.4 square miles (8.8 square kilometers) in rugged hills of Riverside County. More than 1,300 people were ordered to evacuate their homes Saturday near the community of Aguanga that is home to horse ranches and wineries.
Gusty winds and the chance of thunderstorms into Monday will heighten the risk of renewed growth, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a statement.
One firefighter was injured in the blaze, which was 5% contained. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-erratic-winds-challenge-firefighters-battling-two-major-california-blazes/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:43 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-erratic-winds-challenge-firefighters-battling-two-major-california-blazes/ |
Russian missile attacks leave few options for Ukrainian farmers looking to export grain
(AP) -PAVLIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — The summer winds carried the smell of burned grain across the southern Ukrainian steppe and away from the shards of three Russian cruise missiles that struck the unassuming metal hangars.
The agricultural company Ivushka applied for accreditation to export grain this year, but the strike in mid-July destroyed a large portion of the stock, days after Russia abandoned the grain deal that would have allowed the shipments across the Black Sea without fear of attack.
Men shirtless and barefoot, with blackened soles from ash, swept unburnt grain into piles and awaited the loader, whose driver deftly steered around twisted metal shrapnel, bits of missile and craters despite his shattered windshield.
They hoped to beat the next rain to rescue what was left of the crop. According to the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Russia struck the facility July 21 with three Kalibr- and Onyx-class cruise missiles.
“We don’t have a clue why they did it,” explained Olha Romanova, the head of Ivushka. Romanova, who worked in the debris alongside the others, wore a red headscarf and an exhausted expression and was too frazzled to even estimate her losses.
She cannot comprehend why the Russians targeted Ivushka, as there are no nearby military facilities and the frontlines are far from the village in the Odesa region.
“They spent so much money on us,” she said, puzzled. The missiles that ruined the silos are worth millions of dollars — far more than the crop they destroyed.
But Ivushka wasn’t the only target in Odesa. The main port also was struck, leaving Black Sea shipping companies that relied upon the grain deal to keep them safe and food supplies flowing to the world at a standstill.
The Black Sea handled about 95% of Ukrainian grain exports before Russia’s invasion and the U.N.-brokered initiative allowed Ukraine to ship much of what farmers harvested in 2021 and 2022, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Ukraine, a major supplier of corn, wheat, barley and vegetable oil, shipped 32.9 million metric tons (36.2 million U.S. tons) of grain under the nearly yearlong deal designed to ease a global food crisis. It has been able to export an additional 2 million to 2.5 million metric tons (2.2 to 2.7 million U.S. tons) monthly by the Danube River, road and rail through Europe.
Those are now the only routes to ship grain, but have stirred divisions among nearby European countries and generated higher costs to be absorbed by Ukrainian farmers, said Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russian missiles strikes against the Danube port last Monday also raised questions about how much longer that route will remain viable.
That’s a disincentive to keep planting fields already threatened by missiles and strewn with explosive mines. Corn and wheat production in agriculture-dependent Ukraine is down nearly 40% this year from prewar levels, analysts say.
From the first of July last year until June 30 this year, Ukraine exported 68 million tons of grain, according to data from Mykola Horbachov, the president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Ukrainian farmers shipped 11.2 million tons via railways, 5.5 million tons by road transport and around 18 million tons through Danube ports. Additionally, nearly half of the total exported grain, 33 million tons, was delivered through seaports under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
Ihor Osmachko, the general director of Agroprosperis Group, was unsurprised by Russia’s withdrawal from the deal leading to its collapse. His company had never considered it a reliable or permanent solution during wartime.
He said Russians frequently stymied the deal, even while it was functioning, by delaying ship inspections until the cargos were sent back, leading to $30 million in losses for his company alone. Now, they are once again forced to pay to reroute 100,000 tons of grain trapped in ports that are no longer safe, Osmachko said.
“We have been preparing for this whole time,” Osmachko said. “We haven’t stopped. We are moving forward.”
Osmachko estimated around 80% to 90% of the approximately 3.2 million tons of grain Agroprosperis exported to China, Europe and African countries during the past year went through the grain corridor.
“The most significant problem today is the cost of logistics,” explained Mykola Horbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Before the war, farmers paid approximately $20 to $25 per ton to transport grain to the Odesa ports. Now, logistics costs have tripled as they are forced to pay more than $100 to transport a single ton via alternative routes through the Danube port to Constanta, Romania.
“If we were to go on the Danube with the grain corridor closed, practically all our production would be unprofitable,” Osmachko said.
The Danube ports can’t handle the same volume as seaports. The most Agroprosperis has sent through this route is 75,000 tons per month, compared with a monthly average of 250,000 tons through Black Sea ports.
The Ukrainian harvest this year is the lowest in a decade, according to a July report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Horbachov said shipping costs to export around the world and uncertainty about the length of the war will last could quickly make new planting unprofitable for Ukrainian farmers.
Ukraine currently produces three times more grain than it consumes, while global prices will inevitably rise if the country’s exports decrease.
“I think you’re looking at a diminished Ukraine for at least the next couple of years and maybe longer,” said Glauber, the former U.S. agricultural official. “That’s something the rest of the world just needs to make up.”
The war from all sides poses risks for Agroprosperis.
In the Sumy region on the Russian border, farmers harvest their crops wearing body armor. Sometimes they must stop their combines in the middle of the wheat fields to pick up shrapnel from Russian projectiles.
“It can get tough at times,” Osmachko acknowledged. “But there are responsibilities — some have duties on the front. Some must grow food and ensure the country’s and world’s security.”
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Volodymyr Yurchuk in Lviv, Ukraine, and Courtney Bonnell in London contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/07/30/russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-ukrainian-farmers-looking-export-grain/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:47 | 0 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/07/30/russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-ukrainian-farmers-looking-export-grain/ |
MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — A “mass 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.
Many police officers from the nearby town of Eaton were among those who provided assistance, according to a post on the department’s Facebook page. Eaton Police Chief Jay Turner called the incident a “mass shooting.”
Police did not say how many people were injured, but officials at Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie told The Associated Press that 19 victims were treated in their emergency department for injuries related to the shooting, and 13 remained at the hospital in stabilized condition Sunday morning. Criswell said some victims sustained critical injuries and were transferred by medical helicopter to other facilities.
Delaware County Coroner Gavin Greene identified the man who died as 30-year-old Joseph E. Bonner III, The Star Press reported. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-one-person-is-dead-and-multiple-were-wounded-in-indiana-shooting-police-say/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:50 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-one-person-is-dead-and-multiple-were-wounded-in-indiana-shooting-police-say/ |
- Innovative Relay Event Introduces Korean Ginseng Across to the East and West Coast
- with Billboard Ads Featuring Hollywood Stars Arden Cho and Kieu Chin
- HSW Brand expanding its lineup with Two New Sparkling Beverages Designed to Beat the Summer Heat: Recharge and Calm
LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK, July 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Korea Ginseng Corp., the world's number one ginseng brand and leading next-generation global herbal brand, is spreading the word about its new beverage product, HSW, which reflects the health functional food's major trend keyword, 'Food as Medicine,' in a guerilla marketing campaign in key areas of the United States.
Korea Ginseng Corp., unveiled a brand advertisement on a billboard in Times square, Manhattan in the past month. Building on this momentum, Korea Ginseng Corp. has recently announced their plans for a relay guerilla marketing campaign, starting from the K-week event held at the Rockefeller center in New York. The event showcased their newest product, HSW, and featured traditional Korean games like Yut-nori and Dddakji-chiji, capturing the attention of American K-Culture fans. Building on the success of this first event, the brand is currently holding relay events across the city.
On the West Coast, Korea Ginseng Corp. will send its new mobile Ginseng Museum Café to this year's editions of the 626 Night Market, the largest night market in the United States, and to the Moon Festival, which celebrates LA's booming Asian street food scene. To draw attention to their one-of-a-kind trailer café, KGC will be running a fun social media awareness campaign and hosting on-the-spot game events and interactive samplings.
HSW is Korea Ginseng Corp.'s latest beverage offering, a contemporary twist on its best-selling energy tonic, Hong Sam Won. The new product is very much in sync with the hottest health food trend – 'Food as Medicine' – and caters to consumers seeking healthy, natural beverage options. With less than 40 calories per serving and zero caffeine, HSW is a light and guilt-free indulgence for the diet-conscious. In addition, Korea Ginseng Corp. is expanding its lineup with 'Recharge' and 'Calm,' two sparkling beverages designed for this year's hot summer season.
Rian Heung Sil Lee, a representative of Korea Ginseng Corp. U.S., notes, "Korean culture is being embraced by Americans, and interest in Korean health foods is at all-time high. We will be redoubling our efforts to make Korean red ginseng's unparalleled role as a food-as-medicine better known."
Korea Ginseng Corp.'s U.S. expansion began in 2002 and reached a new high point in 2021 with the opening of its flagship Ginseng Museum Café, in Manhattan. Since then, the global brand has introduced a new American-specific product line, KORESELECT, and has broadened its appeal with new distribution channels, including Amazon and Costco. Over the past three years, sales have more than doubled, confirming the impressive potential of the American market.
Leveraging its new American R&D Center, the company is committed to a proactive localization strategy and is planning to launch even more new products with the major marketing support of Korea's aT Center for Globalizing Korean Foods.
About Korea Ginseng Corp.
Korea Ginseng Corp.(KGC) is the world's number one ginseng brand and herbal dietary company. Established in 1899, it is one of the most proven and trusted herbal dietary supplement manufacturers, providing the highest quality, traditionally harvested Korean Red Ginseng products to support health and well-being. KGC runs four regional headquarters in the United States, China, Japan, and Taiwan, in addition to South Korea, and exports products to over 40 countries. With over 40% world market share, its presence spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East region and the U.S. KGC's family of brands include KORESELECT, CheongKwanJang, Good Base, and Donginbi. The KGC brands, inclusive of over 250 products, use the most exceptional ginseng combined with the finest herbs and ingredients to deliver superior products to meet everyone's needs.
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SOURCE KGC (Korea Ginseng Corp.) | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/prnewswire/2023/07/30/expanding-global-presence-korea-ginseng-corp-leads-guerrilla-marketing-new-york-times-square-rockefeller-center-la-street-fair-taking-lead-capturing-us-herbal-market/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:53 | 0 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/prnewswire/2023/07/30/expanding-global-presence-korea-ginseng-corp-leads-guerrilla-marketing-new-york-times-square-rockefeller-center-la-street-fair-taking-lead-capturing-us-herbal-market/ |
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Voting rights activists are returning to court to fight Alabama’s redrawn congressional districts, saying state Republicans failed to follow federal court orders to create a district that is fair to Black voters.
Plaintiffs in the high-profile redistricting case filed a written objection Friday to oppose Alabama’s new redistricting plan. They accused state Republicans of flouting a judicial mandate to create a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it” and enacting a map that continues to discriminate against Black voters in the state.
A special three-judge panel in 2022 blocked use of the the state’s existing districts and said any new congressional map should include two districts where “Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority” or something close. That panel’s decision was appealed by the state but upheld in June in a surprise ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which concurred that having only one Black-majority district out of seven — in a state where more than one in four residents is Black — likely violated federal law.
The plaintiffs in the case, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and other groups, asked the three-judge panel to step in and draw new lines for the state.
“Alabama’s new congressional map ignores this court’s preliminary injunction order and instead perpetuates the Voting Rights Act violation that was the very reason that the Legislature redrew the map,” lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the case wrote.
The new map enacted by the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature maintained one-majority Black district but boosted the percentage of Black voters in the majority-white 2nd Congressional District, now represented by Republican Rep. Barry Moore, from about 30% to 39.9%
Lawyers representing plaintiffs in the case wrote Friday that the revamped district “does not provide Black voters a realistic opportunity to elect their preferred candidates in any but the most extreme situations.” They accused state Republicans of ignoring the courts’ directive to prioritize a district that would stay under GOP control “pleasing national leaders whose objective is to maintain the Republican Party’s slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Alabama has maintained the new plan complies with the Voting Rights Act, and state leaders are wagering that the panel will accept their proposal or that the state will prevail in a second round of appeals to the Supreme Court. Republicans argued that the map meets the court’s directive and draws compact districts that comply with redistricting guidelines.
The state must file its defense of the map by Aug. 4. The three judges have scheduled an Aug. 14 hearing in the case as the fight over the map shifts back to federal court.
The outcome could have consequences across the country as the case again weighs the requirements of the Voting Rights Act in redistricting. It could also impact the partisan leanings of one Alabama congressional district in the 2024 elections with control of the U.S House of Representatives at stake.
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement that Alabama’s new map is a “brazen defiance” of the courts.
“The result is a shameful display that would have made George Wallace—another Alabama governor who defied the courts—proud,” Holder said in a statement. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-plaintiffs-in-voting-rights-case-urge-judges-to-toss-alabamas-new-congressional-map/ | 2023-07-31T00:27:57 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-plaintiffs-in-voting-rights-case-urge-judges-to-toss-alabamas-new-congressional-map/ |
Lynx vs. Sun Prediction & Picks: Line, Spread, Over/Under - August 1
The Connecticut Sun (18-7) host the Minnesota Lynx (13-13) one game after DeWanna Bonner scored 31 points in the Sun's 87-83 loss to the Lynx. This contest airs on ESPN at 7:00 PM ET on Tuesday, August 1, 2023.
The matchup has no set line.
Rep your team with officially licensed Lynx gear! Head to Fanatics to find jerseys, shirts, and much more.
Lynx vs. Sun Game Info & Odds
- When: Tuesday, August 1, 2023 at 7:00 PM ET
- Where: Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut
- TV: ESPN
Check out the latest odds and place your bets on the Sun or Lynx with BetMGM Sportsbook. Use our link for the best new user offer, no promo code required!
Lynx vs. Sun Score Prediction
Prediction: Sun 88 Lynx 75
Spread & Total Prediction for Lynx vs. Sun
- Computer Predicted Spread: Connecticut (-12.7)
- Computer Predicted Total: 163.6
Lynx vs. Sun Spread & Total Insights
- Minnesota is 13-12-0 against the spread this season.
- Minnesota has played 26 games this season, and 14 of them have gone over the total.
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Lynx Performance Insights
- The Lynx are eighth in the WNBA in points scored (80.5 per game) and second-worst in points allowed (85.3).
- Minnesota is fifth in the WNBA in rebounds per game (34.5) and sixth in rebounds conceded (34.6).
- In terms of turnovers, the Lynx are sixth in the WNBA in committing them (13.3 per game). They are ninth in forcing them (12.7 per game).
- Beyond the arc, the Lynx are ninth in the WNBA in 3-pointers made per game (6.6). They are third-worst in 3-point percentage at 31.4%.
- Defensively, the Lynx are worst in the WNBA in 3-pointers conceded per game at 9.2. They are ninth in 3-point percentage allowed at 35.4%.
- In 2023, Minnesota has taken 30.9% percent of its shots from behind the 3-point line, and 69.1% percent from inside it. In terms of made shots, 22.3% of Minnesota's baskets have been 3-pointers, and 77.7% have been 2-pointers.
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© 2023 Data Skrive. All rights reserved. | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/sports/betting/2023/08/01/lynx-sun-wnba-picks-predictions/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:00 | 1 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/sports/betting/2023/08/01/lynx-sun-wnba-picks-predictions/ |
DENVER (AP) — As Denver neared triple-digit temperatures, Ben Gallegos sat shirtless on his porch swatting flies off his legs and spritzing himself with a misting fan to try to get through the heat. Gallegos, like many in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, doesn’t have air conditioning.
The 68-year-old covers his windows with mattress foam to insulate against the heat and sleeps in the concrete basement. He knows high temperatures can cause heat stroke and death, and his lung condition makes him more susceptible. But the retired brick layer, who survives on about $1,000 a month largely from Social Security, says air conditioning is out of reach.
“Take me about 12 years to save up for something like that,” he said. “If it’s hard to breathe, I’ll get down to emergency.”
As climate change fans hotter and longer heat waves, breaking record temperatures across the U.S. and leaving dozens dead, the poorest Americans suffer the hottest days with the fewest defenses. Air conditioning, once a luxury, is now a matter of survival.
As Phoenix weathered its 27th consecutive day above 110 degrees (43 Celsius) Wednesday, the nine who died indoors didn’t have functioning air conditioning, or it was turned off. Last year, all 86 heat-related deaths indoors were in uncooled environments.
“To explain it fairly simply: Heat kills,” said Kristie Ebi, a University of Washington professor who researches heat and health. “Once the heat wave starts, mortality starts in about 24 hours.”
It’s the poorest and people of color, from Kansas City to Detroit to New York City and beyond, who are far more likely to face grueling heat without air conditioning, according to a Boston University analysis of 115 U.S. metros.
“The temperature differences … between lower-income neighborhoods, neighborhoods of color and their wealthier, whiter counterparts have pretty severe consequences,” said Cate Mingoya-LaFortune of Groundwork USA, an environmental justice organization. “There are these really big consequences like death. … But there’s also ambient misery.”
Some have window units that can offer respite, but “in the dead of heat, it don’t do nothing,” said Melody Clark, who stopped Friday to get food at a nonprofit in Kansas City, Kansas, as temperatures soared to 101, and high humidity made it feel like 109. When the central air conditioning at her rental house went on the fritz, her landlord installed a window unit. But it doesn’t do much during the day.
So the 45-year-old wets her hair, cooks outside on a propane grill and keeps the lights off indoors. She’s taken the bus to the library to cool off. At night she flips the box unit on, hauling her bed into the room where it’s located to sleep.
As far as her two teenagers, she said: “They aren’t little bitty. We aren’t dying in the heat. … They don’t complain.”
While billions in federal funding have been allocated to subsidize utility costs and the installation of cooling systems, experts say they often only support a fraction of the most vulnerable families and some still require prohibitive upfront costs. Installing a centralized heat pump system for heating and cooling can easily reach $25,000.
President Joe Biden announced steps on Thursday to defend against extreme heat, highlighting the expansion of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which funnels money through states to help poorer households pay utility bills.
While the program is critical, said Michelle Graff, who studies the subsidy at Cleveland State University, only about 16% of the nation’s eligible population is actually reached. Nearly half of states don’t offer the federal dollars for summer cooling.
“So people are engaging in coping mechanisms, like they’re turning on their air conditioners later and leaving their homes hotter,” Graff said.
While frigid temperatures and high heating bills birthed the term “heat or eat,” she said, “we can now transition to AC or eat, where people are going to have to make difficult decisions.”
As temperatures rise, so does the cost of cooling. And temperatures are already hotter in America’s low-income neighborhoods like Gallegos’ Denver suburb of Globeville, where people live along stretches of asphalt and concrete that hold heat like a cast-iron skillet. Surface temperatures there can be roughly 8 degrees hotter than in Denver’s wealthier neighborhoods, where a sea of vegetation cools the area, according to the environmental advocacy group American Forests.
This disparity plays out nationwide. Researchers at the University of San Diego analyzed 1,056 counties and in over 70%, the poorest areas and those with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations were significantly hotter.
About one in 10 U.S. households have no air conditioning, a disparity compounded for marginalized groups, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Less than 4% of Detroit’s white households don’t have air conditioning; it’s 15% for Black households.
At noon on Friday, Katrice Sullivan sat on the porch of her rented house on Detroit’s westside. It was hot and muggy, but even steamier inside the house. Even if she had air conditioning, Sullivan said she’d choose her moments to run it to keep her electricity bill down.
The 37-year-old factory worker pours water on her head, freezes towels to put around her neck, and sits in her car with the air conditioner on. “Some people here spend every dollar for food, so air conditioning is something they can’t afford,” she said.
Shannon Lewis, 38, lived in her Detroit home for nearly 20 years without air conditioning. Lewis’s bedroom was the only place with a window unit, so she’d squeeze her teenager, 8-year-old and 3-year-old-twins into her queen-size bed to sleep, eat meals and watch television.
“So it was like cool in one room and a heat stroke in another,” Lewis said. For the first time, Lewis now has air conditioning through a local non-profit, she said. “We don’t have to sleep or eat in the same room, we are able to come out, sit at the dining room table, eat like a family.”
After at least 54 died during a 2021 heat wave, mostly elderly people without air conditioning, in the Portland area, Oregon passed a law prohibiting landlords from placing blanket bans on air conditioning units. By and large, however, states don’t have laws requiring landlords to provide cooling.
In the federal Inflation Reduction Act, billions were set aside for tax credits and rebates to help families install energy-efficient cooling systems, but some of those are yet to be available. For people like Gallegos, who doesn’t pay taxes, the available credits are worthless.
The law also offers rebates, the kind of state and federal point-of-sale discounts that Amanda Morian has looked into for her 640-square-foot home.
Morian, who has a 13-week-old baby susceptible to hot weather, is desperate to keep her house in Denver’s Globeville suburb cool. She bought thermal curtains, ceiling fans and runs a window unit. At night she tries to do skin-to-skin touch to regulate the baby’s body temperature. When the back door opens in the afternoon, she said, the indoor temperature jumps a degree.
“All of those are just to take the edge off, it’s not enough to actually make it cool. It’s enough to keep us from dying,” she said.
She got estimates from four different companies for installing a cooling system, but every project was between $20,000 and $25,000, she said. Even with subsidies she can’t afford it.
“I’m finding that you have to afford the project in the first place and then it’s like having a bonus coupon to take $5,000 off of the sticker price,” she said.
Lucy Molina, a single mom in Commerce City, one of Denver’s poorest areas, said her home has reached 107 degrees without air conditioning. Nearby, Molina’s two teenage children slurped popsicles to cool off, lingering in front of the open freezer.
For Molina, who bustled around her kitchen on a recent day when temperatures reached 99 degrees outdoors, it’s hard to see any path to a cooling respite.
“We’re just too poor,” she said.
____
Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Kansas, and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.
——
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-record-heat-waves-illuminate-plight-of-poorest-americans-who-suffer-without-air-conditioning/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:03 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-record-heat-waves-illuminate-plight-of-poorest-americans-who-suffer-without-air-conditioning/ |
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 is it “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.” | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-us-mother-daughter-reported-kidnapped-in-haiti-people-warned-not-to-travel-there/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:09 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/national/ap-us-mother-daughter-reported-kidnapped-in-haiti-people-warned-not-to-travel-there/ |
At 24, Alberto Rodriguez has grandparents younger than Joe Biden. But he’s more interested in the 80-year-old president’s accomplishments than his age.
“People as young as me, we’re all focusing on our day-to-day lives and he has done things to help us through that,” Rodriguez, a cook at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, said of Biden’s support among young voters. Rodriguez pointed specifically to federal COVID-19 relief payments and government spending increases on infrastructure and other social programs.
Voters like him were a key piece of Biden’s winning 2020 coalition, which included majorities of young people as well as college graduates, women, urban and suburban voters and Black Americans. Maintaining their support will be critical in closely contested states such as Nevada, where even small declines could prove consequential to Biden’s reelection bid.
His 2024 campaign plans to emphasize messages that could especially resonate with young people in the coming weeks as the anniversary of the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act approaches in mid-August. That legislation includes provisions that the White House will embrace to argue that Biden has done more than any other president to combat climate change.
Such efforts, however, could collide with Biden’s personal reality — like when he recalled that, while attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade at age 14, he appeared in a photo with President Harry S. Truman.
“Purely by accident — I assume it was an accident — the photographer from the newspaper got a picture of me making eye contact with Harry Truman,” Biden said to chuckles last week at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium in Washington.
In 2020, 61% of voters under age 30 — and 55% of those between 30 and 44 — supported Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the electorate.
It’s an age group with which Republicans hope to make inroads. Former President Donald Trump, who is the early front-runner in the GOP presidential primary and is only 3 1/2 years younger than Biden, said Friday, “We are hitting the young person’s market like nobody’s ever seen before.”
Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign, referred to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement in arguing that “young people are acutely impacted by the issues front and center in this election, driven by the extreme MAGA agenda.” He said that included inaction on climate change, gun violence and student debt.
“We will meet younger Americans where they are and turn their energy into action,” Munoz said in a statement.
That might not defuse questions about age, though, when it comes to Biden or Trump.
“There’s a frustration and exhaustion that they feel with the rematch,” Terrance Woodbury, co-founder & CEO of the Democratic polling firm HIT Strategies, said of young voters.
“That’s more of a problem than either of those two candidates individually, is that a system can just keep reproducing,” Woodbury added. “And I think a lot of people just find that untenable.”
An April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 25% of Democrats under 45 said they would definitely support Biden in a general election, compared with 56% of older Democrats. A majority of Democrats across age groups said they would probably support him as the party’s nominee, however.
Biden’s campaign is relying heavily on the Democratic National Committee, which during last year’s midterms, hired campus organizers in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and other battleground states and offered weekly youth coordinating meetings to encourage in-class contacts and “dormstorms.” The DNC sees young people as some of the most critical voters it will need to reach in 2024 and promises “significant investments” to mobilize them. Plans are underway to expand on its work last cycle, including trainings it held on how best to turn out voters.
The Republican National Committee is trying to use Biden’s age against him, posting online videos of Biden seeming frail or making verbal gaffes, such as when he declared in June “God save the queen,” nearly nine months after the death of England’s Queen Elizabeth II.
Rodriguez shrugged off online attacks, “People can make all the hit pieces and memes and TikToks all they want.”
A starker contrast might be between the president and rising Democrats such as 46-year-old California Rep. Ro Khanna and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 41, one of Biden’s primary rivals in 2020. Neither seriously entertained running for the White House in 2024 and have backed Biden’s reelection.
“The only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job,” Buttigieg, who was 37 when he launched his 2020 presidential bid, said recently on CNN. Khanna told Fox News Channel that age will “obviously” be a 2024 factor, but suggested that Biden’s staff “overprotects” him and “the more he’s out there, the better.”
Other top young Democrats have lined up to back Biden. Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, who was elected to Congress last year at 26, is on the Biden campaign’s advisory board, as is Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, 44. New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, 33, recently endorsed Biden.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive who says strong turnout among young voters helped him win a runoff election this spring, said Biden’s policies transcend his age. Johnson noted that the president’s work “around climate justice speaks not just to this generation, but generations to come.”
“The excitement that I believe that we’re going to have is going to speak to the incredible work and organizing that we are committed to doing as a party,” said Johnson, 47. “And we’re looking forward to working with the president over the course of his next four years.”
Still, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, acknowledged that even the president’s supporters understand how demanding the White House can be.
“People worry about Joe Biden. They worry like you would worry about a beloved father or grandfather,” said Weingarten, 65. “What you normally hear from Democrats is this sense of, ‘OK, I just want him to be OK.’ And you’re hearing just the consternation of, ’This is a hard job.’”
Biden said he “took a hard look” at his age while deciding to seek a second term. But he’s also tried to suggest his age and experience are assets rather than liabilities by joking repeatedly about them. That’s a departure from 2020, when Biden called himself a “transition candidate” and pledged to be a “bridge” to younger Democrats.
Santiago Mayer, the founder of Voters of Tomorrow, which has 20-plus chapters nationwide and works to increase political engagement among young voters, argues that Biden is not defying his past promise by running for reelection, but keeping it.
“He just needs more time,” said Mayer, who graduated from California State University at Long Beach in May. “I think the second term is a very important part of that pledge. He’s building a progressive future for young people and he can’t actually pass the baton until that’s done.”
One key policy piece of Biden’s efforts to appeal to young voters, providing student debt relief, was recently struck down by the Supreme Court. The White House has launched a new effort, but it will take longer.
“Of course it’s going to dampen some of that because people are disappointed,” Weingarten said of the ruling’s effect on enthusiasm for Biden. But she said the decision could also motivate young Biden supporters anxious show their support for the president’s alternative plan.
“It is also about the fight,” Weingarten said “not just about the results.”
___
AP polling director Emily Swanson in Washington contributed to this report. | https://www.localsyr.com/news/your-local-election-hq/ap-joe-biden-americas-oldest-sitting-president-needs-young-voters-to-win-again-will-his-age-matter/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:16 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/your-local-election-hq/ap-joe-biden-americas-oldest-sitting-president-needs-young-voters-to-win-again-will-his-age-matter/ |
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — With less than a month to go until the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 campaign, seven candidates say they have met qualifications for a spot on stage in Milwaukee.
But that also means that about half the broad GOP field is running short on time to make the cut.
To qualify for the Aug. 23 debate, candidates needed to satisfy polling and donor requirements set by the Republican National Committee: at least 1% in three high-quality national polls or a mix of national and early-state polls, between July 1 and Aug. 21, and a minimum of 40,000 donors, with 200 in 20 or more states.
A look at who’s in, who’s (maybe) out and who’s still working on making it:
DONALD TRUMP
The current front-runner long ago satisfied the polling and donor thresholds. But he is considering boycotting and holding a competing event.
Campaign advisers have said the former president has not made a final decision about the debate. One noted that “it’s pretty clear,” based on Trump’s public and private statements, that he is unlikely to appear with the other candidates.
“If you’re leading by a lot, what’s the purpose of doing it?” Trump asked on Newsmax.
In the meantime, aides have discussed potential alternative programming if Trump opts for a rival event. One option Trump has floated is an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now has a program on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
RON DESANTIS
The Florida governor has long been seen as Trump’s top rival, finishing a distant second to him in a series of polls in early-voting states, as well as national polls, and raising an impressive amount of money.
But DeSantis’ campaign has struggled in recent weeks to live up to the sky-high expectations that awaited him when he entered the race. He let go of more than one-third of his staff as federal filings showed his campaign was burning through cash at an unsustainable rate.
If Trump is absent, DeSantis may be the top target on stage at the debate.
TIM SCOTT
The South Carolina senator has been looking for a breakout moment. The first debate could be his chance.
A prolific fundraiser, Scott enters the summer with $21 million cash on hand.
In one debate-approved poll in Iowa, Scott joined Trump and DeSantis in reaching double digits. The senator has focused much of his campaign resources on the leadoff GOP voting state, which is dominated by white evangelical voters.
NIKKI HALEY
She has blitzed early-voting states with campaign events, walking crowds through her electoral successes ousting a longtime incumbent South Carolina lawmaker, then becoming the state’s first woman and first minority governor. Also serving as Trump’s U.N. ambassador for about two years, Haley frequently cites her international experience, arguing about the threat China poses to the United States.
The only woman in the GOP race, Haley has said transgender students competing in sports is “the women’s issue of our time” and has drawn praise from a leading anti-abortion group, which called her “uniquely gifted at communicating from a pro-life woman’s perspective.”
Bringing in $15.6 million since the start of her campaign, Haley’s campaign says she has “well over 40,000 unique donors” and has satisfied the debate polling requirements.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY
The biotech entrepreneur and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” is an audience favorite at multicandidate events and has polled well despite not being nationally known when he entered the race.
Ramaswamy’s campaign says he met the donor threshold earlier this year. He recently rolled out “Vivek’s Kitchen Cabinet” to boost his donor numbers even more, by letting fundraisers keep 10% of what they bring in for his campaign.
CHRIS CHRISTIE
The former New Jersey governor opened his campaign by portraying himself as the only candidate ready to take on Trump. Christie called on the former president to “show up at the debates and defend his record.”
Christie will be on that stage, even if Trump isn’t, telling CNN this month that he surpassed “40,000 unique donors in just 35 days.” He also has met the polling requirements.
DOUG BURGUM
Burgum, a wealthy former software entrepreneur now in his second term as North Dakota’s governor, has been using his fortune to boost his campaign.
He announced a program this month to give away $20 gift cards — “Biden Relief Cards,” as a critique of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy — to as many as 50,000 people in exchange for $1 donations. Critics have questioned whether the offer violated campaign finance law.
Within about a week of launching that effort, Burgum announced he had surpassed the donor threshold. Ad blitzes in the early-voting states also helped him meet the polling requirements.
MIKE PENCE
Trump’s vice president has met the polling threshold but has yet to amass a sufficient number of donors, raising the possibility that he might not qualify for the party’s first debate.
Pence and his advisers have expressed confidence he will do so, noting that most other Republican hopefuls took a month or two of being active candidates to meet the mark. Pence entered the race on June 7, the same day as Burgum and one day after Christie.
“We’re making incredible progress toward that goal. We’re not there yet,” Pence told CNN in a recent interview. “We will make it. I will see you at that debate stage.”
ASA HUTCHINSON
According to his campaign, the former two-term Arkansas governor has met the polling requirements but is working on satisfying the donor threshold. As of Wednesday, Hutchinson marked more than 11,000 unique donors.
Hutchinson is running in the mold of an old-school Republican and has differentiated himself from many of his GOP rivals in his willingness to criticize Trump. He has posted pleas on Twitter for $1 donations to help secure his slot.
FRANCIS SUAREZ
The Miami mayor has been one of the more creative candidates in his efforts to boost his donor numbers. He offered up a chance to see Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi’s debut as a player for Inter Miami, saying donors who gave $1 would be entered in a chance to get front-row tickets.
Still shy of the donor threshold, he took a page from Burgum’s playbook by offering a $20 “Bidenomics Relief Card” in return for $1 donations. A super political action committee supporting Suarez launched a sweepstakes for a chance at up to $15,000 in tuition, in exchange for a $1 donation to Suarez’s campaign.
Suarez’s campaign did not return a message seeking details on his number of donors or qualifying polls.
LARRY ELDER
The conservative radio host wrote in an op-ed that the RNC “has rigged the rules of the game by instituting a set of criteria that is so onerous and poorly designed that only establishment-backed and billionaire candidates are guaranteed to be on stage.”
His campaign last week declined to detail its number of donors, saying only that there had been “a strong increase the last few weeks.” He has not met the polling requirements.
PERRY JOHNSON
Johnson, a wealthy but largely unknown businessman from Michigan, said in a recent social media post that he had notched 23,000 donors and was “confident” he would make the debate stage. He added that all donors were “eligible to attend my free concert in Iowa featuring” country duo Big & Rich next month.
Johnson, who has reached 1% in one qualifying poll, has also offered to give copies of his book “Two Cents to Save America” to anyone who donated to his campaign.
WILL HURD
The former Texas congressman — the last candidate to enter the race, on June 22 — has said repeatedly that he would not pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee, a stance that would keep him off the stage even if he had the qualifying donor and polling numbers.
___
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP | https://www.localsyr.com/news/your-local-election-hq/ap-whos-in-whos-out-a-look-at-which-candidates-have-qualified-for-the-1st-gop-presidential-debate/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:23 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/news/your-local-election-hq/ap-whos-in-whos-out-a-look-at-which-candidates-have-qualified-for-the-1st-gop-presidential-debate/ |
Rare Beauty products by Selena Gomez are going viral
Since its debut in 2019, Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty company has taken the makeup industry by storm, mostly by dominating social media. The brand offers tinted moisturizer, bronzer, highlighter, setting powder, blush and other facial products; eye makeup such as eyeshadow, mascara and eyebrow pencils; products to enhance the lips, including lipstick, lip liner, lip oil and more. We researched the trendiest, most popular products from this celebrity-owned beauty brand worth adding to your makeup routine.
Shop this article: Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Liquid Blush, Rare Beauty Liquid Touch Brightening Concealer, and Rare Beauty Perfect Strokes Universal Volumizing Mascara
About Rare Beauty
Selena Gomez’s vision for Rare Beauty breaks down unrealistic standards of perfection in the makeup industry. The brand’s mission is to help wearers celebrate the rarity that is their individuality, the main objective being “to create a safe, welcoming space in beauty — and beyond — that supports mental well-being across age, gender identity, sexual orientation, rare, cultural background, physical or mental ability and perspective,” according to the Rare Beauty site.
Rare Beauty products are cruelty-free, meaning they were developed without experimentation on animals. Depending on the product type, they’re also ophthalmologist- and/or dermatologist-tested. Many of the products have noncomedogenic ingredients that won’t clog or block pores, and there are various options for sensitive skin. Rare Beauty has a selection of vegan products, as well. They’re a skin-friendly, self-aware brand that wants to make the world a better place.
Top Rare Beauty products, according to customers
Rare Beauty Kind Words Matte Lipstick
This buttery matte lipstick comes in 10 pigment-rich shades ranging from natural to bold. Suitable for sensitive skin, the creamy formula lasts all day while keeping lips soft and moisturized throughout wear.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Kind Words Matte Lip Liner
This creamy, waterproof lip liner defines and shapes the lips while staying put all day — it’s perfect for outlining the lips or coloring them in. The lightweight formula keeps the lips feeling soft and won’t smudge. It features a built-in sharpener and comes in the same 10 shades as the Kind Words Matte Lipstick for effortless color matching.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Liquid Blush
This lush liquid blush is Rare Beauty’s top-seller, having received Allure’s Best of Beauty award in 2022. The lightweight, buildable formula gives you a soft flush of color with long-lasting pigments for all-day wear. It’s suitable for sensitive skin and has 13 beautiful matte and dewy finishes.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Liquid Touch Brightening Concealer
This medium-coverage concealer hides blemishes, dark circles, redness and fine lines while evening out skin texture. It’s made with botanical ingredients that soothe and nourish the skin. The creamy formula is lightweight, buildable and sweat-resistant, with 48 shades to match virtually every skin tone.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation
This liquid foundation feels like a serum with a layerable, medium-coverage formula and a blend of botanical ingredients that soothe and nourish the skin. It’s best used with normal and combination skin types, available in 48 shades that accommodate nearly every skin tone.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Positive Light Liquid Luminizer
This silky liquid highlighter feels like a second skin, creating a dewy, healthy-looking glow with superfine, light-catching pearls. Botanical ingredients have a soothing and nourishing effect on the skin. It layers well over makeup and provides all-day coverage with seven luminous shades.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Warm Wishes Effortless Bronzer Stick
This cream bronzer gives you a sun-kissed glow and adds gentle warmth to the skin with its natural finish. The formula is buildable, water-resistant and won’t clog your pores. It features Rare Beauty’s signature botanical ingredients for a calming and hydrating effect on the skin. The brand sells seven natural-looking shades, and the stick application makes it easy to use.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Always an Optimist Soft Radiance Setting Powder
This loose setting powder smooths skin texture, blurring the look of pores and controlling shine for a radiant yet natural finish. It helps makeup stay in place all day and is especially useful for those who struggle with oily skin. The container has a locking sifter for keeping the application process and storage mess-free. This setting powder comes in five sheer shades.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Perfect Strokes Universal Volumizing Mascara
This volumizing mascara was created for all lash types, featuring castor oil that conditions and nourishes your lashes. The unique curvy brush design combines long bristles that add length and short bristles for increasing volume. It’s an ultra-black, buildable, water-resistant formula that performs well all day. This mascara is safe for those with sensitive eyes and contact lenses.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Positive Light Under Eye Brightener
If you struggle with dark circles or discoloration under the eyes, this liquid brightener will visibly brighten and smooth out the under-eye area for a refreshed look. The lightweight formula is enriched by hydrating white peony and vitamin E extracts. It’s easy to blend and layer using your fingertip, with six shades covering various skin tones.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Positive Light Tinted Moisturizer
This tinted moisturizer blurs and evens skin tone while minimizing the look of pores and fine lines. It offers glowy, light to medium coverage, with a hydrating formula containing vitamin E and SPF 20 broad-spectrum sunscreen. The long-lasting moisturizer is nongreasy and comes in 24 flexible shades.
Sold by Sephora
Rare Beauty Always an Optimist 4-In-1 Mist
This unique facial mist contains a layer of water-based active ingredients and another with nourishing oils that work together to hydrate, prime and set the skin. The refreshing mist boosts the foundation’s performance, and the natural, radiant finish won’t feel greasy. Suitable for sensitive skin, this versatile product comes in 0.12- and 2.87-fluid-ounce bottles.
Sold by Sephora
Worth checking out
- With a glossy finish and gentle plumping effect on the lips, the Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Tinted Lip Oil is a beauty-lover favorite.
- If you prefer using a powder highlighter, the Rare Beauty Positive Light Silky Touch Highlighter is an excellent option for a soft, natural-looking glow.
- The award-winning Rare Beauty Stay Vulnerable Melting Blush offers a natural satin finish with a subtle blurring effect.
- The Rare Beauty Perfect Strokes Longwear Gel Eyeliner is a waterproof product that will stay in place — even on the waterline — with a built-in sharpener for precise application.
- The waterproof Rare Beauty Brow Harmony Precision Pencil is another stellar pick among fans for fuller-looking, more defined brows.
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Amy Evans writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/beauty-personal-care-br/makeup-palettes-sets-br/these-are-the-most-popular-rare-beauty-products/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:30 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/beauty-personal-care-br/makeup-palettes-sets-br/these-are-the-most-popular-rare-beauty-products/ |
Bouldering equipment for beginners
Bouldering is gaining in popularity throughout the world. It’s an exciting and rewarding way to strengthen your muscles, increase flexibility and improve coordination. It lets you explore new locations and meet new people. Though it may seem intimidating when starting out, one of the best aspects of bouldering is the minimal equipment required. By investing in a few core pieces of climbing gear, you can tackle your next adventure and work your way up a challenging route.
Shop this article: La Sportiva Men’s TarantuLace Climbing Shoe, Black Diamond Circuit Crash Pad and Sukoa Chalk Bag
Bouldering vs. rope climbing: what’s the difference?
There are a few main differences between bouldering and traditional rock climbing. Most importantly, bouldering doesn’t require the use of any ropes since most routes are less than 15 feet in height. If you do happen to fall, you land on either a cushioned gym floor or a crash pad in outdoor situations. Traditional climbing requires the use of ropes, a harness, carabiners and often a partner to help belay while you make your ascent.
Bouldering also often uses different techniques and climbing moves compared to big wall climbs. It can be a great way for beginner climbers to build up their stamina and endurance before attempting longer routes or “boulder problems.”
Bouldering tips to get started
Here are five tips for bouldering.
- Know the scales: Most bouldering routes have a rating that corresponds to their difficulty. The two most common grading scales are V-scale and Font scale. V-scale is the system most commonly used in the United States and grades the difficulty on a scale of V0 to V16. While V0 is usually considered the easiest, you may sometimes encounter a route rated as VB, meaning it is for beginners.
- Start slow: As with most new sports or athletic activities, it’s always a good idea to start off slow and work your way up as you gain strength and experience. While it may seem tempting to tackle a hard boulder problem right out of the gate, overdoing it can lead to an increased risk of injury.
- It’s fine to fall: Always take all safety precautions seriously and always use proper safety gear, such as a crash pad when bouldering outdoors. However, the occasional fall while attempting a climb is only natural. As long as you have the proper safety equipment, each fall can be a learning experience, helping you improve your climbing abilities.
- Practice different moves: Don’t get stuck climbing in one style. Trying out different moves and varying your grip can help improve your skills. This is especially important for beginners starting out in a gym setting before transitioning to outdoor climbs.
- Legs are important: It may seem like bouldering is all about arm strength for beginners, but that isn’t the case. Your legs and core muscles are equally important. Your legs can help tightly grip footholds and push your body upwards without relying solely on arm strength.
Beginner bouldering gear
The three main pieces of gear you need to start bouldering are climbing shoes, a crash pad and a chalk bag to keep your hands dry. Besides the big three, there are several accessories that can improve your bouldering experience.
Best climbing shoes
La Sportiva Men’s TarantuLace Climbing Shoe
These bouldering shoes are perfect for both beginner and intermediate climbers. The high-traction Frixion sole means you can grip the rock face with confidence. The quick-lacing system provides a comfortable fit.
Sold by Amazon
Scarpa Origin Women’s Climbing Shoe
These women’s climbing shoes are a great beginner option. They use a flat last and heel system that reduces pressure and tension so they aren’t painful on your feet after a full day spent bouldering.
Sold by Backcountry
Best crash pads
Black Diamond Circuit Crash Pad
This crash pad is great for transporting to your favorite bouldering spot without being too heavy or bulky. The closed-cell PE foam is ideal for cushioning falls from various heights. It has backpack straps and easy-to-carry handles.
Sold by Amazon
This protective crash pad features 5 inches of padding and can even serve as a comfortable chair when not in use. You can choose between several fun colors.
Sold by Amazon
Best chalk bags and chalk
This budget-friendly chalk bag is great for beginners. It features two built-in pockets, letting you store important items while bouldering. The main compartment uses water-resistant materials. It’s spacious enough to accommodate larger hands.
Sold by Amazon
This simple chalk bag with a drawstring closure makes it easy to access your chalk with one hand. It is also available in several color options.
Sold by Amazon
This non-toxic chalk prevents any type of moisture from interfering with your climb, keeping your hands dry and your mind focused.
Sold by Amazon
Best climbing accessories
Using climbing tape can be helpful when getting your fingers and hands used to rough rock surfaces. This tape uses durable cotton and can prevent painful scrapes and scratches while building up callouses.
Sold by Amazon
Metolius Simulator 3D Training Board
An at-home training board can help you practice your grips on days when the weather isn’t cooperating, and you can’t make it to the gym. This Metolius model can be installed above your door frame and features a variety of holds in different sizes.
Sold by Amazon
PETZL Unisex Boreo Climbing Helmet
Not all people who boulder choose to wear a helmet, but they can help prevent a serious head injury in the event of an unexpected fall. This helmet has ventilation holes for breathability and sports a soft, comfortable headband.
Sold by Backcountry
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Matthew Young writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/camping-outdoors-br/gear-br/beginners-guide-to-bouldering-equipment-what-you-need-to-get-started/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:37 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/camping-outdoors-br/gear-br/beginners-guide-to-bouldering-equipment-what-you-need-to-get-started/ |
Which product helps prevent thigh chafing best?
Do you find your sense of style forever or athletic endeavors in conflict with the possibility of uncomfortable thigh chafing? You’re not alone. Sometimes a great outfit can be rendered completely unusable because you know your thighs will be left feeling red and raw after a little while. The same goes for people who do a lot of running or swimming. Fortunately, you no longer have to choose between what you want to do or wear and the toll it will take on your skin. There are creams, clothes and even creative accessories designed to soothe skin and prevent thigh chafing so you can live your life comfortably.
Shop this article: Monistat Care Chafing Relief Powder Gel, Body Glide Skin Glide Anti-Friction Cream and Undersummers by CarrieRae Women’s Shortlette
What causes thigh chafing?
The friction produced between the thighs when they rub together causes thigh chafing. It can make the skin red and cause irritation or even pain. Chafing, in general, is often considered an athlete concern, but it can be especially problematic for anyone during seasons when skirts and dresses are popular. Long pants usually lessen friction by providing a barrier of fabric between your thighs, which is why it’s often less of a problem when temperatures drop. Though inconvenient and uncomfortable, you can address thigh chafing and lessen or prevent it in a variety of ways.
What solutions are available?
These days, there are a few preventative measures you can take to avoid thigh chafing. There are rub-in creams or roll-on palms designed to do the trick, but if you’d prefer something wearable, there are shorts and bands that serve the same purpose.
Best rub-in thigh chafing preventatives
Monistat Care Chafing Relief Powder Gel
This is a non-greasy, fragrance-free formula that’s gentle on sensitive skin and combines the best of lotion and powder care. It protects skin, relieves irritation and is reliable for everyday use. It can be used for thigh chafing as well as underarm or breast chafing.
Sold by Amazon
Body Glide Skin Glide Anti-Friction Cream
This hypoallergenic hydrating cream doesn’t leave a greasy residue and creates a smooth barrier that protects sensitive skin. It won’t clog pores and washes off easily in the bath or shower. The cream prevents thigh chafing in both humid and dry climates.
Sold by Amazon
Though Aquaphor is mostly used for cracked skin, chapped lips and even tattoo care, it also makes for an excellent thigh chafing preventative. It’s incredibly nourishing for sensitive skin and it’s fragrance-free. A little goes a long way, and so a large jar like this one will last a while.
Sold by Amazon
Chamois Butt’r Original Anti-Chafe Cream
This anti-chafe cream is great for athletes or anyone experiencing uncomfortable thigh chafing. It’s gluten-free, paraben-free and has no artificial fragrances or colors in it. It also rubs into the skin smoothly and evenly.
Sold by Amazon
Blue Steel Sports Anti-Chafe Cream
This anti-chafing cream is called a “sports” cream but is made for anyone and includes natural tea tree oil. It’s water/sweat resistant, making it great for those planning on swimming or even just walking around on a hot day. It’s not greasy and won’t stain your clothes either.
Sold by Amazon
Best stick/roll-on thigh chafing preventatives
Vaseline All Over Body Balm Jelly Stick
This anti-friction jelly stick really nourishes dry skin. It can prevent chafing before it happens or soothes skin already sore from it. You can even use it on chapped lips or dry, cracked hands.
KT Tape KT Performance+ Anti-Chafing Stick
Here is a gel stick that is sweat-resistant, water-resistant and made to last up to 24 hours. It’s not sticky and holds up in both humid and dry climates. There are no sulfates, parabens, petroleum or dyes included in this formula.
Sold by Amazon
Zone Naturals Chub Rub All Natural Anti-Chafing Stick
This anti-chafing stick is made with all-natural ingredients that include coconut oil, Shea butter and aloe. It helps to protect and hydrate skin with the bonus of being paraben-free and fragrance-free.
Sold by Amazon
Squirrel’s Nut Butter All Natural Anti Chafe Salve Stick Applicator
Here is a salve popular with men and women for dry/sensitive skin. It’s in stick applicator form and great at preventing thigh chafing but can also be used for eczema, dry skin, diaper rash, razor burn and tattoo recovery.
Sold by Amazon
This anti-friction stick is designed specifically for thighs but you can use it anywhere to prevent chafing. It is made with aloe, pomegranate seed extract, Vitamin E and other natural ingredients. It’s sulfate, aluminum, paraben and phthalates-free.
Sold by Ulta Beauty
Best wearable thigh chafing preventatives
Hanes Men’s Comfort Flex Fit Total Support Pouch 3-Pack
Available in long leg or regular leg sizes, this package comes with three comfortable and breathable boxer briefs in assorted colors. They are made from a polyester/spandex blend and won’t ride up the thigh even after going through the washing machine.
Sold by Amazon
Wirarpa Women’s Anti Chafing Cotton Underwear
This set of three comes available in several color combinations and provides a comfortable fit for chafe-free thighs. The underwear is made from a cotton/spandex blend and it’s machine washable (though you should hang dry).
Sold by Amazon
Bandelettes Patented Trademarked Original Elastic Anti-Chafing Thigh Bands
Available in several colors and styles, this set of nylon/spandex blend bands is perfect for those who want their thighs protected but don’t want to wear long underwear or shorts beneath their clothes. They look delicate and flirty but are hand-wash only and line dry.
Sold by Amazon
Undersummers by CarrieRae Women’s Shortlette
This stretchy polyester/spandex shortlette protects thighs without causing extra friction that can be painful to the skin. It doesn’t ride up and comes in three colors (ecru, beige and black).
Sold by Amazon
Chicky Chaps Stretch-Mesh Breathable Thigh Bands
These mesh and lace thigh bands clip onto underwear to not fall and come in seven colors and styles. They aren’t the most durable chafe preventative, but if you’re looking for something sexier that looks like lingerie, these bands fit the bill. They are hand-wash only and line dry.
Sold by Amazon
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Emily Verona writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
BestReviews spends thousands of hours researching, analyzing and testing products to recommend the best picks for most consumers.
Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/health-wellness-br/medical-supplies-equipment-br/15-products-that-help-prevent-thigh-chafing/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:43 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/health-wellness-br/medical-supplies-equipment-br/15-products-that-help-prevent-thigh-chafing/ |
Smart thermostats
Smart thermostats save you time, money and energy by creating heating and cooling schedules and monitoring your usage. You can even make adjustments from your phone. But these aren’t the only features of smart thermostats.
Shop this article: Honeywell Home Wi-Fi Thermostat, Ecobee SmartSensor Two-Pack and Nest Thermostat Wall Plate
How does a smart thermostat work?
Smart thermostats use Wi-Fi connectivity to connect to your smart home network. They can also connect to your smartphone, laptop, tablet or smartwatch. This lets you use those devices to monitor, make adjustments to and set schedules for the temperature in your home. This is usually through a smart thermostat’s companion app. They can also adjust temperatures with algorithms that track your routines, lifestyle and the weather.
For example, a smart thermostat can learn that you come home at 5 p.m. every day. It can then adjust your heating, ventilation and air conditioning system to ensure your home is at a comfortable temperature when you arrive. Some smart thermostats can also turn off your heat or AC when you depart each day.
How can a smart thermostat save me money?
Some manufacturers claim their smart thermostats can save you up to 25% on utility bills. This is partly accomplished by improving your heating, ventilation and AC system’s performance and reducing energy consumption. Another way is by letting you monitor and make adjustments to temperature settings remotely. If you forget to turn off your heat before leaving, for example, you could use your smart thermostat’s companion app to turn it off without returning. Being able to set schedules and take advantage of algorithmic learning also helps.
Many smart thermostats, such as the Nest Learning Thermostat or Honeywell Home Wi-Fi Thermostat, also generate reports on energy usage and heating and cooling patterns. By reviewing your usage data you can make informed decisions about how you consume energy.
What do I need to consider when choosing a smart thermostat?
Existing heating, ventilation and AC system
The smart thermostat you buy must be compatible with your home’s existing heating, ventilation and AC system. Many popular smart thermostat models include compatibility checkers on their websites. Smart thermostats also often require a C-wire, enabling the continuous flow of power to the thermostat. This is necessary for features like Wi-Fi connectivity and touch screens. Some thermostat ports aren’t equipped with C-wires because many older thermostats don’t need them.
If you don’t have a C-wire, you can hire an electrician to install one. You can also choose a smart thermostat designed to work without a C-wire, such as the Emerson Sensi. Alternatively, you can buy a C-wire adapter to install near your heating, ventilation and AC system’s control board.
Compatibility with your existing smart home system
If you already have smart home devices, select a smart thermostat that is compatible with your system. If you use Apple HomeKit, for example, select a model you can control from the platform such as the Carrier Cor or the Hive. For an IFTTT smart home system, consider the Google Nest Learning Thermostat.
What you need to buy to go with your smart thermostat
These sensors work with the Ecobee Smart Thermostat to detect motion to adjust the temperature in rooms that are in use.
Sold by Amazon
Match your Nest Thermostat to the other design elements of your living space. Wall plates come in a variety of colors including white, silver, black and bronze.
Sold by Amazon
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Evelyn Waugh writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/home-br/heating-cooling-air-quality-br/how-do-smart-thermostats-work/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:51 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/home-br/heating-cooling-air-quality-br/how-do-smart-thermostats-work/ |
LACY LAKEVIEW, Texas — After 13 years of service, the Lacy Lakeview Fire Department is wishing a fond farewell to Fire Chief Patty Byars-Faulkner.
The department said congratulations and farewell to Byars-Faulkner on Friday, July 28.
Byars-Faulkner had served as the City's Fire Chief since 2013, after having already served as Fire Marshal since 2010.
According to the City, Byars-Faulkner began her career with the Dallas Fire Department in 1989. She earned her paramedic patch in 1991, joined the ranks as the first woman on the High Angle Rescue Team before being promoted to Driver/Engineer and completed her tri-certification by attending Basic Police Academy in 2009.
Byars-Faulkner is a graduate of the Texas Fire Chiefs Academy, the Inaugural class for Fire Executive Management Training and the SFFMA Fire Chief Academy.
Lacy Lakeview FD said Byars-Faulkner was also a recipient of the WA Neel Firefighter of the year for McLennan County Fire Protection Association, served as a faculty CPR instructor and taught fire classes through the Texas A&M system with TEEX since 2014.
In a post on social media, Lacy Lakeview FD thanked Byars-Faulkner for her service and wished her the best in her retirement.
More local stories from 6 News: | https://www.kcentv.com/article/life/people/lacy-lakeview-fire-chief-retires-13-years-department/500-c042616d-a0f1-432d-a28d-e11b422a52e1 | 2023-07-31T00:28:51 | 1 | https://www.kcentv.com/article/life/people/lacy-lakeview-fire-chief-retires-13-years-department/500-c042616d-a0f1-432d-a28d-e11b422a52e1 |
Russian missile attacks leave few options for Ukrainian farmers looking to export grain
(AP) -PAVLIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — The summer winds carried the smell of burned grain across the southern Ukrainian steppe and away from the shards of three Russian cruise missiles that struck the unassuming metal hangars.
The agricultural company Ivushka applied for accreditation to export grain this year, but the strike in mid-July destroyed a large portion of the stock, days after Russia abandoned the grain deal that would have allowed the shipments across the Black Sea without fear of attack.
Men shirtless and barefoot, with blackened soles from ash, swept unburnt grain into piles and awaited the loader, whose driver deftly steered around twisted metal shrapnel, bits of missile and craters despite his shattered windshield.
They hoped to beat the next rain to rescue what was left of the crop. According to the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Russia struck the facility July 21 with three Kalibr- and Onyx-class cruise missiles.
“We don’t have a clue why they did it,” explained Olha Romanova, the head of Ivushka. Romanova, who worked in the debris alongside the others, wore a red headscarf and an exhausted expression and was too frazzled to even estimate her losses.
She cannot comprehend why the Russians targeted Ivushka, as there are no nearby military facilities and the frontlines are far from the village in the Odesa region.
“They spent so much money on us,” she said, puzzled. The missiles that ruined the silos are worth millions of dollars — far more than the crop they destroyed.
But Ivushka wasn’t the only target in Odesa. The main port also was struck, leaving Black Sea shipping companies that relied upon the grain deal to keep them safe and food supplies flowing to the world at a standstill.
The Black Sea handled about 95% of Ukrainian grain exports before Russia’s invasion and the U.N.-brokered initiative allowed Ukraine to ship much of what farmers harvested in 2021 and 2022, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Ukraine, a major supplier of corn, wheat, barley and vegetable oil, shipped 32.9 million metric tons (36.2 million U.S. tons) of grain under the nearly yearlong deal designed to ease a global food crisis. It has been able to export an additional 2 million to 2.5 million metric tons (2.2 to 2.7 million U.S. tons) monthly by the Danube River, road and rail through Europe.
Those are now the only routes to ship grain, but have stirred divisions among nearby European countries and generated higher costs to be absorbed by Ukrainian farmers, said Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russian missiles strikes against the Danube port last Monday also raised questions about how much longer that route will remain viable.
That’s a disincentive to keep planting fields already threatened by missiles and strewn with explosive mines. Corn and wheat production in agriculture-dependent Ukraine is down nearly 40% this year from prewar levels, analysts say.
From the first of July last year until June 30 this year, Ukraine exported 68 million tons of grain, according to data from Mykola Horbachov, the president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Ukrainian farmers shipped 11.2 million tons via railways, 5.5 million tons by road transport and around 18 million tons through Danube ports. Additionally, nearly half of the total exported grain, 33 million tons, was delivered through seaports under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
Ihor Osmachko, the general director of Agroprosperis Group, was unsurprised by Russia’s withdrawal from the deal leading to its collapse. His company had never considered it a reliable or permanent solution during wartime.
He said Russians frequently stymied the deal, even while it was functioning, by delaying ship inspections until the cargos were sent back, leading to $30 million in losses for his company alone. Now, they are once again forced to pay to reroute 100,000 tons of grain trapped in ports that are no longer safe, Osmachko said.
“We have been preparing for this whole time,” Osmachko said. “We haven’t stopped. We are moving forward.”
Osmachko estimated around 80% to 90% of the approximately 3.2 million tons of grain Agroprosperis exported to China, Europe and African countries during the past year went through the grain corridor.
“The most significant problem today is the cost of logistics,” explained Mykola Horbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Before the war, farmers paid approximately $20 to $25 per ton to transport grain to the Odesa ports. Now, logistics costs have tripled as they are forced to pay more than $100 to transport a single ton via alternative routes through the Danube port to Constanta, Romania.
“If we were to go on the Danube with the grain corridor closed, practically all our production would be unprofitable,” Osmachko said.
The Danube ports can’t handle the same volume as seaports. The most Agroprosperis has sent through this route is 75,000 tons per month, compared with a monthly average of 250,000 tons through Black Sea ports.
The Ukrainian harvest this year is the lowest in a decade, according to a July report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Horbachov said shipping costs to export around the world and uncertainty about the length of the war will last could quickly make new planting unprofitable for Ukrainian farmers.
Ukraine currently produces three times more grain than it consumes, while global prices will inevitably rise if the country’s exports decrease.
“I think you’re looking at a diminished Ukraine for at least the next couple of years and maybe longer,” said Glauber, the former U.S. agricultural official. “That’s something the rest of the world just needs to make up.”
The war from all sides poses risks for Agroprosperis.
In the Sumy region on the Russian border, farmers harvest their crops wearing body armor. Sometimes they must stop their combines in the middle of the wheat fields to pick up shrapnel from Russian projectiles.
“It can get tough at times,” Osmachko acknowledged. “But there are responsibilities — some have duties on the front. Some must grow food and ensure the country’s and world’s security.”
___
Volodymyr Yurchuk in Lviv, Ukraine, and Courtney Bonnell in London contributed.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.weau.com/2023/07/30/russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-ukrainian-farmers-looking-export-grain/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:51 | 0 | https://www.weau.com/2023/07/30/russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-ukrainian-farmers-looking-export-grain/ |
HARKER HEIGHTS, Texas — A woman is dead after an alleged shooting in Harker Heights, according to the Harker Heights Police Department.
The department stated officers responded to the 2500 block of Red Fern Drive around 2:51 p.m. on Sunday, July 30. When officers arrived, they reportedly found a 30-year-old woman inside a home with a gunshot wound to the head.
Police said the woman was airlifted to Baylor Scott & White Hospital where she later died.
The woman's name has not been released as next of kin are notified.
Harker Heights PD said they believe the shooting to be an isolated incident, and said there is no threat to the public.
The case is reportedly being investigated by Detectives with the Harker Heights Police Department Criminal Investigations Division.
No further information has been given at this time.
More local stories from 6 News: | https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/crime/one-dead-harker-heights-shooting-police/500-ae62ce76-5e2b-4f7c-9bf9-0a2fc8b0fe64 | 2023-07-31T00:28:53 | 0 | https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/crime/one-dead-harker-heights-shooting-police/500-ae62ce76-5e2b-4f7c-9bf9-0a2fc8b0fe64 |
- Innovative Relay Event Introduces Korean Ginseng Across to the East and West Coast
- with Billboard Ads Featuring Hollywood Stars Arden Cho and Kieu Chin
- HSW Brand expanding its lineup with Two New Sparkling Beverages Designed to Beat the Summer Heat: Recharge and Calm
LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK, July 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Korea Ginseng Corp., the world's number one ginseng brand and leading next-generation global herbal brand, is spreading the word about its new beverage product, HSW, which reflects the health functional food's major trend keyword, 'Food as Medicine,' in a guerilla marketing campaign in key areas of the United States.
Korea Ginseng Corp., unveiled a brand advertisement on a billboard in Times square, Manhattan in the past month. Building on this momentum, Korea Ginseng Corp. has recently announced their plans for a relay guerilla marketing campaign, starting from the K-week event held at the Rockefeller center in New York. The event showcased their newest product, HSW, and featured traditional Korean games like Yut-nori and Dddakji-chiji, capturing the attention of American K-Culture fans. Building on the success of this first event, the brand is currently holding relay events across the city.
On the West Coast, Korea Ginseng Corp. will send its new mobile Ginseng Museum Café to this year's editions of the 626 Night Market, the largest night market in the United States, and to the Moon Festival, which celebrates LA's booming Asian street food scene. To draw attention to their one-of-a-kind trailer café, KGC will be running a fun social media awareness campaign and hosting on-the-spot game events and interactive samplings.
HSW is Korea Ginseng Corp.'s latest beverage offering, a contemporary twist on its best-selling energy tonic, Hong Sam Won. The new product is very much in sync with the hottest health food trend – 'Food as Medicine' – and caters to consumers seeking healthy, natural beverage options. With less than 40 calories per serving and zero caffeine, HSW is a light and guilt-free indulgence for the diet-conscious. In addition, Korea Ginseng Corp. is expanding its lineup with 'Recharge' and 'Calm,' two sparkling beverages designed for this year's hot summer season.
Rian Heung Sil Lee, a representative of Korea Ginseng Corp. U.S., notes, "Korean culture is being embraced by Americans, and interest in Korean health foods is at all-time high. We will be redoubling our efforts to make Korean red ginseng's unparalleled role as a food-as-medicine better known."
Korea Ginseng Corp.'s U.S. expansion began in 2002 and reached a new high point in 2021 with the opening of its flagship Ginseng Museum Café, in Manhattan. Since then, the global brand has introduced a new American-specific product line, KORESELECT, and has broadened its appeal with new distribution channels, including Amazon and Costco. Over the past three years, sales have more than doubled, confirming the impressive potential of the American market.
Leveraging its new American R&D Center, the company is committed to a proactive localization strategy and is planning to launch even more new products with the major marketing support of Korea's aT Center for Globalizing Korean Foods.
About Korea Ginseng Corp.
Korea Ginseng Corp.(KGC) is the world's number one ginseng brand and herbal dietary company. Established in 1899, it is one of the most proven and trusted herbal dietary supplement manufacturers, providing the highest quality, traditionally harvested Korean Red Ginseng products to support health and well-being. KGC runs four regional headquarters in the United States, China, Japan, and Taiwan, in addition to South Korea, and exports products to over 40 countries. With over 40% world market share, its presence spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East region and the U.S. KGC's family of brands include KORESELECT, CheongKwanJang, Good Base, and Donginbi. The KGC brands, inclusive of over 250 products, use the most exceptional ginseng combined with the finest herbs and ingredients to deliver superior products to meet everyone's needs.
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SOURCE KGC (Korea Ginseng Corp.) | https://www.weau.com/prnewswire/2023/07/30/expanding-global-presence-korea-ginseng-corp-leads-guerrilla-marketing-new-york-times-square-rockefeller-center-la-street-fair-taking-lead-capturing-us-herbal-market/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:53 | 0 | https://www.weau.com/prnewswire/2023/07/30/expanding-global-presence-korea-ginseng-corp-leads-guerrilla-marketing-new-york-times-square-rockefeller-center-la-street-fair-taking-lead-capturing-us-herbal-market/ |
Make your own pasta at home
Making pasta by hand looks impressive, but the truth is, homemade pasta is surprisingly simple to create. You can get started with just three ingredients you likely already have in your kitchen. Even if the only tools you have are a rolling pin and a chef’s knife, you can feed your family and friends a satisfying and delicious meal made entirely from scratch. All you’ll need is a recipe, a couple of hours, and just a little bit of practice.
Shop this article: Fox Run Polished Marble Rolling Pin with Wooden Cradle, Spring Chef Bench Scraper and OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Egg Separator
Is homemade pasta better?
You won’t just get a sense of accomplishment from making your own pasta — it tastes better, too. Fresh pasta has a more tender texture and a more pronounced eggy flavor than commercial-dried pasta. The pasta’s springiness holds up equally well, whether it goes into lasagna or straight onto the plate with some butter. You can even try making pasta dough with unusual ingredients like spinach or saffron for an extra-special meal.
How to get started making pasta
Hamilton Beach Stack & Snap Food Processor
Making the pasta dough
There are as many fresh pasta recipes as there are people who make pasta, but to get started, it’s best to stick with a simple pasta dough that uses just a few ingredients: unbleached all-purpose flour, eggs, and a bit of salt.
If you want, you can use semolina durum flour, which is a more authentic pasta flour with a higher protein content and a coarser texture that helps sauces stick. However, if all-purpose flour is all you have in your pantry, it’ll turn into wonderful pasta.
Place 10 ounces of flour on a clean work surface and make a well. Add two eggs plus four egg yolks to the well and gently start incorporating the flour using a fork, gradually scraping in flour from the sides of the well. Switch to a bench scraper when it becomes too difficult to use a fork and mix until it’s fully combined by scraping and folding over the dough, turning it 45 degrees each time.
Kneading and rolling the pasta dough
You’ll know the dough is ready for kneading when it stops sticking to your hands and holds its shape when rolled into a ball. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it’s smooth and satiny, then shape it into a ball. Let it rest, wrapped in plastic wrap, for 30 to 60 minutes to let gluten develop.
Use the bench scraper to cut the ball into four equal portions and cover them with a towel to keep them from drying out. Working with one portion at a time, roll out the dough into an oblong shape between a quarter-inch and half-inch thick.
Making pasta by hand vs. using a stand mixer
If your arms aren’t up to the task of all that kneading, you can use a powerful food processor or a stand mixer. Simply place all the ingredients in the work bowl and run the machine (using a dough hook if you’re using a stand mixer) until a large, smooth ball forms.
How to shape homemade pasta
CucinaPro Pasta Maker Deluxe Set
Making pasta shapes with a pasta machine
Roll out your dough by hand or use a pasta maker. Some pasta machines can create extruded shapes like penne, while others deliver smooth sheets and strands of lasagna or fettuccine. Following the manufacturer’s instructions for the type of pasta you want to make, feed your rolled-out dough between the rollers until it reaches the right thickness.
At this point, you can trim it by hand to make filled pasta or lasagna or run it through the pasta machine to cut it into strands. As the cut pasta strands emerge from the machine, carefully catch them, dust them with flour, shape them into nests, and keep them covered until you’re ready to cook or dry them.
A stand mixer offers another advantage here: after you’ve whipped up a batch of pasta dough in the bowl, use the mixer’s pasta-making attachment to roll out, cut, or shape pasta.
How to make filled pasta
For filled pasta, make sure your filling is relatively dry so you can seal up your pasta and avoid leaking or soggy dough. Avoid the temptation to overload your pasta — follow your recipe’s guidance for the amount of filling to use in each pasta shape.
Depending on the type of stuffed pasta you’re making, you can use a pasta stamp, a pastry wheel, biscuit cutters, or even a chef’s knife to create rounds or squares. Seal the pasta by brushing the edges with a little water, then using gentle pressure to close the shapes. Make sure the filling is fully enclosed and that no air is trapped inside.
How to cook homemade pasta
Weston Bamboo Pasta Drying Rack
Cooking fresh pasta
Homemade pasta cooks very quickly — depending on the shape, it will need only two to four minutes in boiling water, and slightly longer for stuffed pasta. Salt your cooking water generously to amplify your pasta’s flavor, especially if your dough recipe doesn’t call for salt. Serve it immediately.
How to dry fresh pasta
Alternatively, you can dry your uncooked pasta to serve at a future date. Leaving egg-based food out in the open can feel counterintuitive, but when properly dried and stored, there should be no moisture remaining to encourage bacteria.
Toss the pasta shapes in flour, then lay the strands in a single layer on a drying rack or on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let the pasta dry uncovered and away from heat and sunlight, or use a food dehydrator for more consistency, especially if it’s a humid day. When the pasta snaps instead of bending, it’s ready for storage. Keep it in a dry, airtight container in your pantry or freezer.
FAQ
Q. How long does homemade pasta last?
A. Homemade pasta has a much shorter shelf life than commercially made pasta. Uncooked pasta can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge for just one day. Properly dried homemade pasta can be stored in your pantry for up to six weeks. Alternatively, before you cut your pasta shapes, you can wrap the dough in plastic wrap and freeze it for up to one month.
Q. What sauces go with homemade pasta?
A. How you serve your pasta may come down to personal preference, but the shape of the pasta is a contributing factor. Pair fettuccine or tagliatelle with a homemade alfredo sauce or pesto. Wider pasta like pappardelle is great with slow-simmered meat sauces. You can also highlight the flavor of your fresh pasta (especially ravioli) by simply tossing it in browned butter and high-quality Parmesan.
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Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/kitchen-br/utensils-gadgets-br/how-to-make-homemade-pasta/ | 2023-07-31T00:28:57 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/kitchen-br/utensils-gadgets-br/how-to-make-homemade-pasta/ |
Can you fertilize a lawn in the summer?
Few things can add or detract as much from a home’s curb appeal as the landscaping, and your grass is a significant aspect of that. Healthy and well-manicured grass gives a home a welcoming feeling, while a dead or overgrown yard makes everything look unkempt.
Fertilizing is vital to keeping your lawn looking its best, but it must be done correctly and at the right time of the year. Many people often wonder if they can fertilize their yard in the summer. To clear up that confusion once and for all, we’ve put together this handy guide that covers everything you need to know.
Shop this article: Scott’s Natural Lawn Food, Scotts EdgeGuard Mini Broadcast Spreader and Flexzilla Garden Hose
What is the best time to fertilize your lawn?
You should be fertilizing your lawn at least twice a year. However, if you pick the wrong season or the wrong fertilizer, you can cause excessive weed growth or even burn the grass. Part of knowing when to fertilize your yard is about knowing what type of grass you have. You should fertilize your lawn when it is actively growing. If you have cool-season grass, early spring, when the temperatures are between 60-75 degrees is the optimal time for the first feeding.
Warm-season grasses tend to start sending up green shoots a bit later in the spring when the temperatures reach 80 degrees or higher. When you see this start happening, it’s time to sprinkle your fertilizer.
You should also fertilize both cool- and warm-season grasses in the fall. This helps ensure healthy roots during the winter months, which results in healthier, greener grass the following spring.
How often should you fertilize your lawn in the summer?
While the most important times to fertilize your lawn are the spring and fall, these shouldn’t necessarily be the only times. For both types of grasses, a second feeding should follow about six weeks after the first. Depending on the date of your first round of fertilizing, this might be very late spring or early summer. However, make sure to read the manufacturer’s guidelines on the fertilizer you use, as the recommended interval between feedings may be longer or shorter.
It is usually best to avoid fertilizing during the hottest months, but if you have to do it, make sure to use the correct fertilizer type.
Choosing the right fertilizer
Synthetic fertilizers come in slow- and fast-release formulas. In addition to the essential nutrients of nitrogen, potassium and phosphate, they may also contain calcium, magnesium, sulfur and other ingredients.
While synthetic fertilizers are a good choice for spring and fall use, you should avoid them during the summer. This is because they typically have a very high nutrient content and are likely to burn the grass.
Organic fertilizers are made from fish meal, compost, manure and other natural ingredients. It has a lower nutrient content, which makes it gentler and ideal for summer use. Organic fertilizer tends to break down slowly too, so it will continue feeding the grass for months after application.
Fertilizing your lawn in the summer heat
Prepare your yard in advance
To get the best results, mow your lawn a day or two before you plan on applying the fertilizer. This helps ensure the fertilizer spreads evenly and falls to the soil, rather than sitting atop the blades of grass where it can potentially burn them. After the mowing, heavily water your lawn to saturate the soil thoroughly.
Do it at the right time of day
Later afternoon or early evening is the best time to apply fertilizer. Never do it in the middle of the day under direct sun, or you may burn the grass.
Use the right equipment
It is essential to spread fertilizer evenly across the yard. Too little in one place, and it won’t grow as well as the rest of the lawn. Too much in one spot, and it can harm or even kill the grass. The best way to ensure an even spread is by using a broadcast spreader.
Water after fertilizing
After applying fertilizer, lightly water your lawn. This is to wash any fertilizer that may have landed on the blades of grass down to the soil. Make sure not to overly saturate the soil, though, as you want to give it some time to absorb the nutrients. If you water it too heavily, you run the risk of washing the fertilizer away.
What you need to buy for fertilizing
This all-natural fertilizer is safe to use around kids and pets and is suitable for all grass types and seasons. A single bag covers a 4000-square-foot lawn.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Scotts EdgeGuard Mini Broadcast Spreader
A reliable and reasonably-priced model, this broadcaster spreader is a good choice for many homeowners. It offers easy-to-use rate control and doesn’t require any assembly.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Scotts Wizz Hand-held Spreader
If your yard is too small for a wheeled broadcast spreader, or you simply find a handheld model to be more convenient, the Wizz is a suitable option. It is lightweight and features 23 flow-rate settings.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
The Flexzilla garden hose comes in several lengths ranging from 10-100 feet, so there is certainly one that will perfectly fit your needs. It retains its flexibility in all weather conditions and has a rugged build that should last through many seasons.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Luster Leaf 1601 Rapitest Test Kit for Soil
Though unnecessary for fertilizing your lawn, having a soil test kit like this is a brilliant idea. It helps you identify what nutrients your soil is lacking, or has an excess of, so you can make sure to buy the right fertilizer.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
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Brett Dvoretz writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/lawn-garden-br/fertilizers-br/should-i-fertilize-my-lawn-in-the-summer/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:04 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/lawn-garden-br/fertilizers-br/should-i-fertilize-my-lawn-in-the-summer/ |
Become a lawn master
Knowing how to plant a new lawn is a useful skill to have, no matter if you’re moving into a new house, sprucing up your current one, or you just want to develop your green thumb. A lush green lawn is often the first thing people notice about your home, and well-manicured grass can greatly increase the value of your property. With a few personal touches, you can make it your own.
While it may seem like a daunting task at first, planting or renovating your lawn is relatively simple when broken down into a few easy-to-follow steps.
Shop this article: Tillers, Fertilizers and Lawn Rollers
Sod vs. seed
First, you must decide whether you want to use grass seed or sod on your lawn.
Let’s start with sod, as grass seed is relatively self-explanatory. Sod, also known as instant lawn or turf grass, is rolled grass that offers several benefits over grass seed. The most obvious is that it’s much faster to establish and gives the look of a finished lawn instantly. In addition, quality sod has few or no weed seeds present, which can save major headaches (and backaches) down the road. Also, because it’s heartier than young grass, sod can be installed nearly any time of year, so long as the ground isn’t frozen or exposed to extreme heat. However, it’s not without disadvantages.
Due to its convenience, sod is initially more expensive than grass seed and requires labor to install. Your grass choices are restricted as well, because most sod farmers grow their products in full sun. That means if your lawn is shaded by houses or large trees, sod may not thrive as well as seed designed for those environments. Shade blend sod is available in some areas, but it’s not always easy to find.
By contrast, grass seed is simpler, cheaper, less labor-intensive at the onset, and offers more choice when it comes to grass variety. It requires more consistent maintenance, though, and the chance for weed contamination is higher. Perhaps the most notable drawback is this method has a defined window for success, as extreme temperatures can lead to patchy results or complete seed failure.
How to prepare lawn for new grass
No matter which method you choose to grow your new lawn, the initial preparation is relatively consistent. Follow these steps:
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First, remove debris and any existing vegetation, i.e. weeds and grass. You can do this physically, with a flame torch, using a home remedy, or with a non-selective herbicide. If you use chemicals, remember to wait for the compounds to become inert before planting (check product labels for this info).
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Repeat the first step, till the soil, and check it again to make sure all remaining seeds are gone. Doing this will ensure a weed-free lawn in the long term.
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Once the area is free of vegetation, you are ready to plant.
How to plant a lawn with sod
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Till the first two inches of soil with a tiller or rake. If needed, add seeding soil to the top of your existing soil.
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Level soil. Any dips or bumps could stay there for years and can look unsightly.
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If you do not use seeding soil (these generally have starter fertilizer mixed in), apply a starter fertilizer, water, and till in.
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Roll out sod. Keep edges snug against each other but don’t overlap them.
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Use a lawn roller to smooth out and firm the sod, connecting it with the ground below and facilitating root contact. Keep sod moist for the first two weeks after application to further assist root growth.
How to plant a lawn with seed
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Till the first two inches of soil with a tiller or rake. If needed, add seeding soil to the top of your existing soil.
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Level soil. Any dips or bumps could stay there for years and can look unsightly.
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If you do not use seeding soil (these generally have starter fertilizer mixed in), apply a starter fertilizer, water, and till in.
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Divide your seed into two equal portions. Spread one half going one direction, with the other half going at a right angle in the other direction. This crisscross pattern guarantees even coverage across your lawn. For higher accuracy, use a drop spreader.
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Tamp seed down with a lawn roller. For added protection, cover the seeds with 1/4 inch of peat moss or compost. This prevents the seeds from washing away, stops birds from eating them, and also holds in moisture.
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Gently soak the soil about six inches deep after seeding, and keep the seeds moist until grass has germinated. This should take approximately two weeks. Continue to lightly water three to four times a day until the grass is about a half-inch high, then maintain as normal.
How to take care of new grass
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A watering rule of thumb: Once the grass is high enough to mow, water at approximately one inch per week.
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Water your lawn early in the morning. Doing it at night keeps the water stagnant, which raises the risk for mold and fungus, and watering midday increases evaporation risk. In addition, water deeply and infrequently as opposed to lightly and more often, as this improves root health.
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Keep your mower blades sharp, and don’t cut more than a third of the grass blade at a time to prevent shocking the grass.
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Fertilize every four to six weeks with lawn fertilizer.
Lawn care shopping list
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Planting a new lawn is incredibly rewarding, but it takes a toll on your hands. Invest in some high-quality gardening gloves to stay safe from thorns, sharp sticks, sunlight, and abrasions.
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A sturdy rake or cultivator will help you till your lawn before planting. This is a necessary step to remove unwanted vegetation, loosen up dirt, and aerate the soil.
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A lawn roller is the most efficient way to both tamp down new grass seeds and secure sod to the soil below. Fill your lawn roller with water if more weight is needed to finish the job. Choose between tow models that hook up to powered equipment or simple push/pull versions.
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Drop spreaders are extremely helpful in evenly distributing grass seed over an area. Available in rolling and handheld versions, these spreaders are adjustable for different drop rates. Great for grass seed or fertilizer!
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Fertilizer is necessary to keep a lawn healthy and full. Lawn fertilizers are typically rich in nitrogen, which is very water-soluble and promotes green, leafy growth.
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Your lawn won’t survive without water, and an adjustable rotating sprinkler helps it stay irrigated at the seedling stage as well as when it’s fully developed. Interested in even more control? Consider a multi-zone irrigation controller.
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Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/lawn-garden-br/lawn-care-br/how-to-plant-a-new-lawn/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:10 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/lawn-garden-br/lawn-care-br/how-to-plant-a-new-lawn/ |
Senate GOP leaders didn’t want it to get to this point.
They tried and tried to get Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to lift the holds he’s placed on hundreds of military promotions — which have opened Republicans up to attacks from the Biden administration.
But their efforts have failed, and they are now in a situation where the earliest a resolution might be found is September — when lawmakers will also be busy trying to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month.
“It’s hung around for a while. I support his goals,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican. “The challenge obviously is the mechanism he used to get to the result has created some challenges. We want to figure out a way to resolve it and address that.”
“There are conversations now going on, which is good — between him and the military and others. We’ll have some time in August to work on a path forward, and hopefully we’ll find it,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been among those trying to find a resolution, Thune said. Tuberville said he and McConnell discussed the holds Wednesday, hours after the GOP leader froze and felt lightheaded in front of reporters.
“At this point, everybody’s engaged trying to figure out how to solve this,” Thune added.
Tuberville began his holds in early March to protest a new Defense Department policy to reimburse service members who must travel to seek an abortion for those travel expenses.
Six months later, the list of holds has grown to 300. Senate Republicans were hoping to find a solution before leaving Washington for five weeks — five additional weeks during which those military officers will remain in limbo, fueling Democratic attacks and frustrating the Pentagon.
One Senate Republican said finding an offramp agreeable to both Tuberville and those opposed to the holds has become a “recurring discussion” in the Senate GOP conference, and that McConnell has been personally involved in that quest.
“There’s not a lunch that goes by that we don’t talk about it,” the senator said, but added there’s “no chance of a resolution” any time soon.
Aside from the potential political and national security implications of the holds, McConnell is worried about the institutional implications.
The longtime GOP leader recently told reporters at a press conference that he is concerned this could lead to a renewed Democratic effort to change the chamber’s rules.
Despite disagreeing with Tuberville’s tactic, however, he says he recognizes it is the prerogative of any single senator to place a hold on a nominee.
Senators on both sides of the aisle for months have been musing publicly and privately about what it would take to get the Alabama Republican to set his hold aside, but have come up empty at every turn.
Initially, there had been hope that a vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would reverse the abortion travel policy could do the trick, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) led the effort.
But more recently, Tuberville has maintained that not only does any vote have to be standalone, but that the Pentagon would have to reverse its policy before any vote could be taken.
Trying to bridge that gap for lawmakers has become a herculean challenge no one has been able to complete.
Tuberville didn’t comment on efforts by Senate GOP leaders to seek a remedy, but he criticized the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for their lack of outreach in trying to strike a deal. He also hasn’t had any further conversations with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin since their July 17 call and said that the initial series of calls didn’t yield anything productive.
“There’s no conversation from the other side. It’s ‘our way or the highway.’ … How does that help?” Tuberville said. “They’re not worried about it, I guess. … I hate it, for the promotions and all that.”
He added that he has yet to talk to Schumer, who has refused to use up floor time moving the nominees through regular order because he believes it is the Senate GOP’s job to figure a way out of the maze of military holds.
“This is the responsibility of the Republican Senate caucus. … It’s up to them. I think in August, pressure will mount on Tuberville, and I think the Republicans are feeling that heat,” Schumer said late Thursday. “He’s boxing himself into a corner.”
But Democrats are trying to increase that pressure, with President Biden on Thursday night laying into the Alabama Republican and arguing his holds are harming military readiness and creating instability within the ranks of the armed forces.
“This partisan freeze is already harming military readiness, security and leadership, and troop morale,” Biden said in remarks at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium in Washington. “Freezing pay, freezing people in place. Military families who have already sacrificed so much, unsure of where and when they change stations, unable to get housing or start their kids in the new school.”
Senate Democrats also took to the floor before and after the NDAA vote Thursday to criticize their GOP colleague. Since the hold was put into place, Democratic senators have made 12 attempts to move the military promotions in bloc via unanimous request.
Perhaps adding to the difficulty, Tuberville has received a boost in support from voters at home and from conservative corners of the Senate GOP conference who believe he is making the right call, albeit a difficult one.
They also argue that if Senate Democrats truly want to move on some of the nominations, they can start to do so via regular order — a move Democrats have avoided in order to not set precedent.
“Democrats think they have a winning political thing on this. I don’t think they do, and I think Sen. Tuberville morally is in the right position with regard to the issue of abortion,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “The [Defense] Department has just as much of a responsibility to find a path forward as any single member does, and I’m not seeing the Department try to work in any fashion other than to simply put pressure on Sen. Tuberville.”
“They’re not trying to find a path forward. They think this is one of those items where if they keep putting pressure on him, he’ll cave, and I don’t think he will,” Rounds continued. “On the issue, he’s correct.” | https://www.yourbasin.com/hill-politics/gop-leaders-strike-out-on-getting-tuberville-to-bend/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:13 | 0 | https://www.yourbasin.com/hill-politics/gop-leaders-strike-out-on-getting-tuberville-to-bend/ |
Tips and tricks for protecting your home from the elements
If you like learning new skills and having a to-do list that never ends, there’s no better investment than purchasing a home. But becoming a homeowner isn’t just the biggest financial commitment you’ll ever make, it’s also a pledge to take care of something, for better or worse, as long as you both shall live. Or at least until you decide it’s time to move.
Along with the bills, repairs, and perpetual upkeep, one of the biggest tasks you face as a homeowner is your never-ending battle with Mother Nature. Just when you think you’ve reshingled your last roof and can rest easy when it comes to leaks, you find a small pond in the basement after the latest storm. This list will walk you through everything you need to know in order to best protect your home from the elements.
But first, it’s important to review your insurance policy so you are aware of what is and isn’t covered. Your homeowner’s insurance policy might not cover floods and damage caused by the elements. Take a few minutes, read over your policy, call your agent and make the needed changes to get the peace of mind you deserve.
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What are the elements?
It’s not just water — which causes mold and rot — that you have to worry about. Wind, snow, hail, cold and heat can also do substantial damage to your home. Here are just a few examples of the havoc the elements can wreak on your home.
Wind
A gentle breeze is refreshing, but a gale-force wind? Anything over 50 or 60 mph can be devastating. From hurling projectiles and prying loose shingles to stripping away siding and shearing off the entire roof, strong winds can dismantle a house in a matter of minutes.
Snow
It’s pristine, and it twinkles as if infused by magic. Snow is beautiful. But it’s also heavy. On average, a square foot of snow weighs a little over 12 pounds. If you have a house that’s 2,000 square feet and it snows 12 inches, that’s roughly an extra 24,000 pounds — 12 tons — on your roof. See how this could cause a little trouble? Especially if the snow is resting on large tree branches or that evergreen that’s already leaning toward your house.
Hail
Hail is Mother Nature’s mischievous child. They enjoy causing trouble. Got cracked shingles? Divots in the lawn? Broken windows? Dents in your car? Damaged outdoor furniture? You’ve got hail!
Cold
Cold is the silent destroyer of homes. If you’ve ever had a pipe burst, you already know this. But beyond that, cold can create ice dams in your gutters that force water beneath your shingles, thereby ruining the items under your roof. And if water gets into any tiny crack, be it in your driveway or your foundation, it will expand when it freezes, turning that tiny crack into a crevasse.
Heat
Excessive moist heat can warp hardwood floors and accelerate deterioration in other areas, such as your attic and roof. Excessive dry heat can suck the moisture out of the ground, making it shrink and taking away some much-needed support from your home’s foundation.
Best strategies for keeping your home safe
Indeed, the elements can be devastating to your home. Thankfully, there are a number of quick and easy things you can do to protect it from the elements. Following is a list of the best (and most effortless) strategies.
Strategy 1: Bring items inside
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Lawn chairs, watering cans, bicycles, scooters, patio umbrellas, and other loose items that you keep outside need to be brought inside before a storm. After all, the wind can turn anything that’s not fastened down into a destructive projectile.
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Strategy 2: Close the curtains
If anything flies into your window during a storm, having your blinds drawn and your drapes closed can help block some of the broken glass and other debris from entering your home.
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Strategy 3: Use your garage
If you don’t want dings in your car, put your vehicle in the garage before all hail breaks loose — along with anything else that could be damaged should the sky begin to pelt ice at your property. If your garage is full of clutter, however, this might not be as simple as it is supposed to be. Take time to organize and store your tools before the storm, and you could be thanking yourself later.
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Strategy 4: Rake the roof
When snow piles up on your house, it can get beneath your shingles as it melts, damaging your roof. When it’s safe to do so, grab a roof rake and clear your roof so melting snow can flow away without much damage. Note: always leave a thin layer of snow on your roof, because too much scraping could damage your shingles.
Strategy 5: Seal your driveway
Those tiny cracks in your driveway become bigger cracks when they fill with water which then freezes. Be proactive and seal your driveway — or at the very least, fill those cracks in with gravel — before winter arrives.
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Strategy 6: Run a dehumidifier
All that humidity in the summer can really mess with the wood in your house. It can also make everything feel quite sticky. To remedy the situation (and save your hardwood floors), turn on a dehumidifier and let it work its magic.
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Strategy 7: Use a sprinkler
During those hot, rainless periods of summer when the ground dries up and pulls away from your house, weakening its foundation, don’t fret. Instead, turn on your sprinkler and put some moisture back into the soil. Don’t add too much, though, because excess water near your home’s foundation has a way of seeping into your basement or crawlspace.
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Extra tips for protecting your home from weather damage
The following tips involve a little more than a quick fix, but they are much cheaper than full-blown repairs.
Anchor down your large items
If you have a storage shed, a grill, trash cans, or any large item that doesn’t have a permanent foundation or isn’t securely fastened, anchor it down. You can use straps, anchors, or bolts. In strong winds, this will help minimize dangerous projectiles. In a flood, it will help keep your valuables from drifting away.
Remove trees that pose a threat
Rain can make the ground soggy, allowing trees to lean. Once tilted, wet snow or strong winds can be all it takes to topple even the mightiest oak. Consider having any trees within striking distance of your home taken down before the next storm.
Bring in the reinforcements
A home is only as safe as its weakest spots. If you live in an area prone to severe weather, you need to do something about those spots. Get a professional out to reinforce your garage door, and consider installing storm shutters over your windows and glass doors.
The elements can be brutal on your home. From minor inconveniences to major repairs, Mother Nature really knows how to dish out the damage. But you aren’t helpless. Your best defense is a strong offense. Stay vigilant, smart, and proactive, and your home will be able to weather any storm.
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Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/lawn-garden-br/tools-br-lawn-garden-br/safety-equipment-br/how-to-protect-your-home-from-harsh-weather/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:16 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/lawn-garden-br/tools-br-lawn-garden-br/safety-equipment-br/how-to-protect-your-home-from-harsh-weather/ |
MUNCIE, Ind. (WXIN) — A street party in Muncie, Indiana, turned into the scene of a deadly shooting early Sunday morning.
One man died and nearly two dozen others were injured. Of those wounded, 19 were treated at Ball Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, and four were taken to other hospitals. Thirteen victims remained hospitalized in stable condition Sunday afternoon.
After the mass shooting, police announced that there was no further danger to the general public.
”Stranger comes up and decides to take it personal on somebody he knows in the crowd,” said one anonymous man who claimed his nephew was the block party’s disc jockey. “And you can’t fight against an AR. He let loose in the crowd. Everywhere in the crowd.”
The Delaware County coroner identified the deceased victim as 30-year-old Joseph Bonner. There’s no indication if Bonner played an active role in the shooting, whether any other victims are suspected of firing guns, or if any firearms were recovered.
A witness at IU/Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie described a scene of emergency department chaos with more than 100 people descending on the facility — many of whom were victims that were taken to the hospital by private vehicles.
Officers from several agencies — including a Muncie-based FBI agent — secured the crime scene and collected evidence while doctors and nurses treated the wounded from the mass casualty event.
By midday, detectives were still walking the debris-strewn street and parking lot with brown bags filled with collected evidence. A tow truck was also seen hauling away a bullet-riddled red Buick that appeared to have crashed during an attempt to leave the scene.
The Muncie Homecoming Festival committee said the street party where the shooting happened was not part of the official MHF celebration going on this week.
Muncie Parks Superintendent Carl Malone told Nexstar’s WXIN he chaired a neighborhood crime watch meeting last Thursday, and residents expressed fear that this weekend could turn volatile.
”We was a little concerned about violence that we thought might happen,” said Malone, who described Muncie Homecoming as a city-wide welcome home celebration held once every four years for former residents and family members to reconnect with their hometown. ”You had a lot of people congregating in one area, just hanging out and wanting to be part of the neighborhood activities. And then, at that point at time, it got into late night, and when you get into late nights, you usually have some sort of curfew violations, alcohol, guns and drugs seem to be a problem.”
Malone said Muncie has not had a community-wide gun violence initiative since 2015.
”We’ve always had concerns about this area and teenagers involved with handguns,” said Malone, whose niece attended the party. ”She just got out of surgery. She’s doing well. She’s whole. And then my godson was being treated out at Ball Hospital.”
Malone said he will meet with the city’s police leadership Monday morning to review the shooting and plans for keeping Muncie streets safe the rest of the summer.
”The mayor knows my push for gun violence, the lack of gun violence education, the lack of gun violence awareness, the lack of how to report gun violence in and out of our homes,” Malone said. “There’s a way to report crime, there’s a way to report guns, and we just have to report guns in and out of our backpacks and homes.”
Muncie is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The city is home to about 65,000 people. | https://www.yourbasin.com/news/national-news/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:19 | 0 | https://www.yourbasin.com/news/national-news/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ |
TORONTO (AP) — Los Angeles Angels outfielder Taylor Ward was placed on the 10-day injured list with facial fractures on Sunday, a day after he was hit by a 91 mph pitch from Blue Jays right-hander Alek Manoah.
Ward was taken to a Toronto hospital after being struck in the fifth inning of Saturday’s 6-1 loss. He was released from hospital Saturday evening.
Before Sunday’s game, Angels manager Phil Nevin said Ward did not have vision damage. Surgery is an option for Ward, but no decision has been made. It was not clear when Ward would be able to return to California. The Angels play a three-game series at Atlanta this week before returning home Thursday to host Seattle.
To replace Ward, the Angels selected the contract of infielder Kevin Padlo from Triple-A Salt Lake.
Batting with the bases loaded, Ward was hit by a 2-0 pitch from Manoah. The ball appeared to strike Ward next to his next left eye, knocking off his batting helmet.
Plate umpire Andy Fletcher motioned to the Angels’ dugout for the trainer as Ward went down, blood running down his face. Angels staff rushed to the plate and held a towel to Ward’s face. After a couple of minutes, Ward got to his feet and left the field on a cart. His left eye appeared to be swollen shut.
A six-year veteran who has spent his entire career with the Angels, Ward is batting .253 with 14 home runs and 47 RBI in 97 games.
___
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-angels-outfielder-taylor-ward-placed-on-il-with-facial-fractures-after-being-hit-in-head/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:22 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-angels-outfielder-taylor-ward-placed-on-il-with-facial-fractures-after-being-hit-in-head/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades.
Median rent rose just 0.5% in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years.
A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. Renters in cities such as Cincinnati and Indianapolis are still getting hit with increases of 5% or more. Much of the new construction is located in just a few metro areas, and many of the new units are luxury apartments, which rent for well north of $2,000.
Median U.S. rent has risen to $2,029 this June from $1,629 in June 2019, according to rental listings company Rent, which tracks rents in 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Demand for apartments exploded during the pandemic as people who could work remotely sought more space or decided to relocate to another part of the country.
The steep rent increases have left tenants like Melissa Lombana, a high school teacher who lives in the South Florida city of Miramar, with progressively less income to spend on other needs.
The rent on her one-bedroom apartment jumped 13% last year to $1,700. It climbed another 6% to $1,800 this month when she renewed her lease.
“Even the $1,700 was a stretch for me,” said Lombana, 43, who supplements her teaching income with a side job doing educational testing. “In a year, I will not be able to afford living here at all.”
Lombana’s rent is now gobbling up nearly half her monthly income. That puts her in a category referred to as “cost-burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, denoting households that pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Last year, the average rent-to-income ratio per household rose to 30%. This March, it was 29.6%.
Lombana hasn’t had any luck finding a more affordable apartment. While South Florida is one of the metropolitan areas seeing a rise in apartment construction, the units are mostly high-end and not a viable option.
That scenario is playing out across the nation. Developers are rushing to complete projects that were green-lit during the pandemic-era surge in demand for rentals or left in limbo by delays in supplies of fixtures and building materials. Nearly 1.1 million apartments are currently under construction, according to the commercial real estate tracker CoStar, a pace not seen since the 1970s.
Increasing the supply of apartments tends to moderate rent increases over time and can give tenants more options on where to live. But more than 40% of the new rentals to be completed this year will be concentrated in about 10 high job growth metropolitan areas, including Austin, Nashville, Denver, Atlanta and New York, according to Marcus & Millichap. In many areas, the boost to overall inventory will be barely noticeable.
Even within metros where there’ll be a notable increase in available apartments, such as Nashville, most of it will be in the luxury category, where rents average $2,270, nationally. Some 70% of the new rental inventory will be the luxury class, said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.
That will leave most tenants unlikely to see a big enough reduction in rent to make a difference, industry experts and economists say.
“I think we’re in a period of rent flattening for 12 or 18 months, but it’s certainly not a big rent decline,” said Hessam Nadji, CEO of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap.
“We’re building a multi-decade record number of units,” Nadji said. “It’s going to cause some softening and some pockets of overbuilding, but it’s not going to fundamentally resolve the housing shortage or the affordability problem for renters across the U.S.”
The surge in rents has made it difficult for workers to keep up with inflation despite solid wage gains the past few years and exacerbated a long-term trend. Between 1999 and 2022, U.S. rents soared 135%, while income grew 77%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
Realtor.com is forecasting that rents will drop an average of 0.9% this year. But while down nationally, rents are still rising in many markets around the country, especially those where hiring remains robust.
In the New York metro area, the median rent climbed 4.7% in June from a year earlier to $2,899, according to Realtor.com. In the Midwest, rents surged 5.6% in the Cincinnati metro area to $1,188, and 6.9% to $1,350 in the Indianapolis metro area.
The current spike in apartment construction alone isn’t going to be enough to address how costly renting has become for many Americans.
“For the rest of the 2020s rents will continue to grow because millennials are such a big generation and we’re very much in the hole in terms of building housing for that generation,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “It will take many good years of new construction to build adequate housing for millennials.”
The bigger challenge is building more work force housing, because the cost of land, labor and navigating the government approval process incentivize developers to put up luxury apartments buildings.
Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.
Despite the overall pullback in U.S. rents, Joey Di Girolamo, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, worries that he’ll face more sharp rent increases in coming years.
Last year, the web designer left a two-bedroom, two-bath townhome he rented for $2,200 a month to avoid a $600 a month increase. This year, his rent went up by $200, a nearly 10% jump.
“That blew me away,” said Di Girolamo, 50. “I’m just kind of dreading what it’s going to be like next year, but especially 3 or 4 years from now.” | https://www.yourbasin.com/news/national-news/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:25 | 1 | https://www.yourbasin.com/news/national-news/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ |
FUKUOKA, Japan (AP) — Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh should be a star at next year’s Paris Olympics, and she showed why Sunday on the closing day of the swimming world championships in Japan.
The 16-year-old McIntosh won her second gold of the event, taking the 400-meter individual medley after winning the 200 butterfly gold on Friday.
That made up for a slow start for the young Canadian, who finished fourth in the 400 free, where she held the world record until Australia’s Ariarne Titmus took it back. She also took bronze in the 200 free, at least getting a medal.
“Going into tonight I just wanted to see how hard I could push myself,” McIntosh said.
She did just that. Her time of 4 minutes, 27.11 seconds was the third fastest ever, not far off her world record of 4:25.87. She was also the defending world champion. American Katie Grimes took the silver in 4:31.41, with Jenna Forrester of Australia picking up the bronze in 4:32.30.
“It was definitely motivating,” McIntosh said of her first few days. “I try to turn everything that goes wrong into motivation somehow.”
Asked about Paris, she replied: “Right now I’m just thinking about a little break.”
McIntosh should be joined by other young stars in Paris like 21-year-old Frenchman Leon Marchand and Australia’s 22-year-old Kaylee McKeown. Marchand and McKeown each won three individual golds.
The Americans also closed fast.
After winning only four gold medals during the first seven days, they picked up three on the eighth and final day for a total of seven golds and 38 overall. The gold total is still their lowest in a worlds going back for around 20 years. They won only eight in the 2015 worlds.
Australia finished with 13 gold and 20 overall, and China had five gold and 16 overall.
“This is the cherry on top,” said American Regan Smith, part of the winning 4×100 women’s medley relay. “I love racing with these girls and I love relays so much and brining home a gold in the last event for Team USA means so much to me and all of us.”
The Americans finished in 3:52.08, followed by Australia (3:53.37) and Canada (3:54.12).
The United States also won the men’s 4×100 medley in 3:27.20, ahead of China (3:29.00) and Australia (3:29.62), and added another gold with Hunter Armstrong in the 50-meter backstroke (24.05).
Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden made history with her victory in the women’s 50-meter freestyle. The gold gave Sjostrom 21 medals in individual races in the world championships, surpassing Michael Phelps who had 20.
Sjostrom, who set the world record in the semifinals on Saturday, powered home in the final 25 meters for the win, clocking 23.62. Shayna Jack of Australia picked up the silver in 24.10, while Zhang Yufei of China earned the bronze in 24.15.
Ruta Meilutyte of Lithuania set a world record on the way to winning gold in the women’s 50-meter breaststroke in 29.16. She equaled the old world mark of 29.30 the night before in the semifinals.
Meilutyte grabbed the early lead and was never challenged. American Lilly King claimed the silver in 29.94, while Benedetta Pilato of Italy picked up the bronze in 30.04. She shared the old record of 29.30 with Meilutyte.
Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia added the men’s 1,500-meter free gold to the 800 free he won earlier in the worlds, prevailing in an epic battle with American Bobby Finke that went down to the wire.
The 20-year-old Hafnaoui, the defending 400 free Olympic champion, captured the gold in 14:31.54, with Finke clocking 14:31.59 for silver. Sam Short of Australia rounded out the podium with the bronze in 14:37.28.
The mark was just off the world record by Sun Yang of China, 14:31.02, set in 2012. Sun has been suspended for a doping violation.
“Bobby (Finke) is so fast at the end of the race. he pushed us to do the 14.31,” Hafnaoui said. “It was so close to the world record. I mean I enjoyed the race and thanks Bobby for pushing me.”
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-canadian-summer-mcintosh-16-gets-second-gold-medal-at-swimming-worlds-in-japan/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:30 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-canadian-summer-mcintosh-16-gets-second-gold-medal-at-swimming-worlds-in-japan/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — A week later, the “Barbenheimer” boom has not abated.
Seven days after Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” conspired to set box office records, the two films held unusually strongly in theaters. “Barbie” took in a massive $93 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Oppenheimer” stayed in second with a robust $46.2 million. Sales for the two movies dipped 43% and 44%, respectably — well shy of the usual week-two drops.
“Barbenheimer” has proven to be not a one-weekend phenomenon but an ongoing box-office bonanza. The two movies combined have already surpassed $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore, call it “a touchstone moment for movies, moviegoers and movie theaters.”
“Having two movies from rival studios linked in this way and both boosting each other’s fortunes — both box-office wise and it terms of their profile — I don’t know if there’s a comp for this in the annals of box-office history,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s really no comparison for this.”
Following its year-best $162 million opening, the pink-infused pop sensation of “Barbie” saw remarkably sustained business through the week and into the weekend. The film outpaced Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” to have the best first 11 days in theaters of any Warner Bros. release ever.
“Barbie” has rapidly accumulated $351.4 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, a rate that will soon make it the biggest box-office hit of the summer. Every day it’s played, “Barbie” has made at least $20 million.
And the “Barbie” effect isn’t just in North America. The film made $122.2 million internationally over the weekend. Its global tally has reached $775 million. It’s the kind of business that astounds even veteran studio executives.
“That’s a crazy number,” said Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros. “There’s just a built-in audience that wants to be part of the zeitgeist of the moment. Wherever you go, people are wearing pink. Pink is taking over the world.”
Amid the frenzy, “Barbie” is already attracting a lot of repeat moviegoers. Goldstein estimates that 12% of sales are people going back with friends or family to see it again.
For a movie industry that has been trying to regain its pre-pandemic footing — and that now finds itself largely shuttered due to actors and screenwriters strikes — the sensations of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have showed what’s possible when everything lines up just right.
“Post-pandemic, there’s no ceiling and there’s no floor,” Goldstein said. “The movies that miss really miss big time, and the movies that work really work big time.”
Universal Pictures’ “Oppenheimer,” meanwhile, is performing more like a superhero movie than a three-hour film about scientists talking.
Nolan’s drama starring Cillian Murphy as atomic bomb physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer has accrued $174.1 million domestically thus far. With an additional $72.4 million in international cinemas, “Oppenheimer” has already surpassed $400 million globally.
Showings in IMAX have typically been sold out. “Oppenheimer” has made $80 million worldwide on IMAX. The large-format exhibitor said Sunday that it will extend the film’s run through Aug. 13.
The week’s top new release, Walt Disney Co.’s “Haunted Mansion,” an adaptation of the Disney theme park attraction, was easily overshadowed by the “Barbenheimer” blitz. The film, which cost about $150 million, debuted with $24 million domestically and $9 million in overseas sales. “Haunted Mansion,” directed by Justin Simien (“Dear White People,” “Bad Hair”) and starring an ensemble of LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Rosario Dawson, struggled to overcome mediocre reviews.
“Talk to Me,” the A24 supernatural horror film, fared better. It debuted with $10 million. The film, directed by Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou and starring Sophie Wilde, was a midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and received terrific reviews from critics (95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). It was made for a modest $4.5 million.
While theaters being flush with moviegoers has been a huge boon to the film industry, it’s been tougher sledding for Tom Cruise, the so-called savior of the movies last summer with “Top Gun: Maverick.” “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I,” which debuted the week before the arrival of “Barbenheimer,” grossed $10.7 million in its third weekend. The film starring Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, has grossed $139.2 million domestically and $309.3 million oveseas.
Instead, the sleeper hit “Sound of Freedom” has been the best performing non-“Barbenheimer” release in theaters. The Angel Studios’ release, which is counting crowdfunding pay-it-forward sales in its box office totals, made $12.4 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its haul thus far to nearly $150 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Barbie,” $93 million.
2. “Opppenheimer,” $46.2 million.
3. “Haunted Mansion,” $24.2 million.
4. “Sound of Freedom,” $12.4 million.
5. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” $10.7 million.
6. “Talk to Me,” $10 million.
7. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $4 million.
8. “Elemental,” $3.4 million.
9. “Insidious: The Red Door,” $3.2 million.
10. “Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani,” $1.6 million. | https://www.yourbasin.com/news/national-news/while-barbie-bonanza-continues-at-the-box-office-oppenheimer-holds-no-2-spot/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:31 | 1 | https://www.yourbasin.com/news/national-news/while-barbie-bonanza-continues-at-the-box-office-oppenheimer-holds-no-2-spot/ |
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Chris Buescher pulled away on a restart with three laps to go to win at Richmond Raceway on Sunday and snag one of the final spots in NASCAR’s playoff field.
Buescher led 88 laps and was ahead by nearly six seconds when a caution came out with under 10 laps to go. That erased his lead over Virginia native Denny Hamlin, who was booed by his hometown crowd in pre-race.
But Hamlin got a poor final restart and Buescher easily pulled away for his first Cup Series win of the season, third of his career.
“I knew that last restart was going to be tough, but I knew we had the speed in this thing,” Buescher said.
He and RFK Racing teammate Brad Keselowski led a combined 190 of the 400 laps in their Fords. Keselowski, now a part owner of the team, led 102 laps on the 0.75-mile oval.
Buescher started 26th and had to drive the field for the win that locked him into the 16-driver playoff field with four races remaining in the regular season. Buescher became the 13th race winner this year and there are three playoff spots up for grabs over the next month.
It was the 139th Cup win for primary team owner Jack Roush, second since Keselowski joined the ownership group.
Ford now has 723rd wins in NASCAR’s top Cup Series.
“Everybody at RFK Racing who has worked so hard to get us to this point,” said Buescher.
Hamlin, winner last week at Pocono, finished second in a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Kyle Busch was third in a Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing, followed by the Fords of Joey Logano from Team Penske and Ryan Preece of Stewart-Haas Racing.
“One win is good, but you get three or four or five and then you feel a lot better,” said Keselowski. “It sure beats not having any at all, but we want to keep going. It’s nice to have one car locked in the playoffs. We need to get both cars locked in the playoffs. We have a good points gap, but we want wins and this is where we need to be.”
Keselowski, despite being winless this season, is still mathematically in contention for the playoffs.
The race was slowed just three times by caution flags, with the final yellow sending the leaders to pit road for four tires with eight laps to go. When the green flag was shown again, Buescher used the inside line to pull away for his third career victory.
Hamlin’s bid for the victory ended on the second lap of the final sprint when he drove in too deep in the first turn and slid up the track. He finished 0.549-seconds behind Buescher.
“I got a bad restart,” Hamlin said. “I had to recover too much ground from what I lost on the frontstretch. Almost got to the outside, and then in turn four, almost got to the outside again, and then in turn one, I was like ‘I’m just going to ship it in there and try to get to the outside one more time’ and I just carried way too much speed and locked up the left front tires.”
LARSON-HAMLIN
Kyle Larson, angered last week when Hamlin caused him to hit the wall while leading while Hamlin went on to win, was running a few laps down when he nudged Hamlin out of the way with 70 laps to go during Sunday’s race.
Larson, who won at Richmond in April, finished 19th.
“I think he was having a frustrating day,” Hamlin said. “It’s all good.”
SCORCHER
With temperatures in the mid-80s, it was about 15 degrees cooler than Saturday, when the temperature approached 100 and the heat index was at least 105.
Nevertheless, points leader Martin Truex Jr. still struggled.
“It was definitely really, really hot,” he said. “It felt longer than 400 laps. I’ll be honest, when we got to the end of stage two —– I thought there was no way. I thought that was the checkered flag. It just felt really, really long.”
Truex finished seventh.
CLEAN RACE
All 36 cars that started the race were still running at the end.
UP NEXT
The series moves to Michigan where Kevin Harvick, winless so far in this his final season, is the defending champion.
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-chris-buescher-wins-at-richmond-and-secures-spot-in-nascar-playoffs/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:37 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-chris-buescher-wins-at-richmond-and-secures-spot-in-nascar-playoffs/ |
Missouri Man walking cross county for mental health
JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) - Dalton Mack is a veteran who is walking across the country to raise awareness for men’s mental health.
The Campbell, Missouri native served seven years in the Marine Corps Infantry. When he got back home, he saw how the lack of mental health resources was affecting other veterans.
“A lot of guys get out and end up making some rough choices. It’s hard to adjust because they go from being told ‘nobody cares’ to trying to be a normal person again,” he said.
Mack added that he knows a few who have died by suicide and said many of his friends who served in the military also know of others who have died by suicide.
The website “Stop Soldier Suicide” states suicide is the second leading cause of death in veterans under the age of 45.
“I wanted to do something crazy enough to get attention to the cause,” Mack said on his decision to walk to raise awareness.
He wears an orange shirt on his journey. The front says, “Coast 2 Coast 4 Men’s Mental Health”. The back of the shirt says, “60 men commit suicide per hour. 76 percent of all suicides are men. I walk for all men. #callyourbros”.
He started walking from Oceanside, California on April 23. He carries a stroller with him, with snacks, water, a tent, and a sleeping bag. Since starting this journey, Mack did not expect to go through three strollers.
He explained how he was not expecting so many people to open up to him throughout his walk across the country.
Mack said some are still staying in touch with him, and others pour their heart out to him when they see what he’s walking for.
“I didn’t expect people to come up and be so personal, I kind of expected people to say, ‘that’s cool’ or just surface-level conversations,” he said. “I stopped at a gas station where I thought I was going to grab a quick drink and ended up there for two hours talking to the same person.”
Mack is traveling to Oklahoma to resume his walk, and he plans on visiting Little Rock during his journey. He said he’s not sure where his path will go after that, but the destination will be Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Throughout that journey, Mack wants to continue to spread his message.
“I want men to realize that you don’t have to carry the whole world on your shoulders. You should be able to reach out to somebody and if you can’t, you can find me on social media and reach out to me. If nobody else is willing to talk or you don’t think anyone else cares, I will absolutely talk to you.”
Copyright 2023 KAIT. All rights reserved. | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/31/missouri-man-walking-cross-county-mental-health/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:41 | 1 | https://www.kait8.com/2023/07/31/missouri-man-walking-cross-county-mental-health/ |
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The fight itself didn’t match the hype, but Terence Crawford’s performance exceeded it.
He knocked down Errol Spence Jr. three times Saturday night before finally ending the fight at 2:32 of the ninth round on a technical knockout to cement himself as one of the greatest welterweights in history.
The fight, the most-anticipated boxing match in several years, made Crawford the first undisputed champion in the 147-pound division in the four-belt era that began in 2004.
Crawford (40-0, 31 knockouts) already owned the WBO belt, and took the WBC, WBA and IBF titles from Spence (28-1). Crawford also ran his KO streak to 11 matches, the second-longest active stretch.
Crawford, 35, has won titles at super lightweight and lightweight in addition to welterweight, capturing the latter after moving up in 2018. The Omaha, Nebraska, fighter became the first male boxer to become the undisputed champion in two divisions in the four-belt era.
“I only dreamed of being a world champion,” Crawford said. “I’m an over-achiever. Nobody believed in me when I was coming up, but I made everybody a believer. I want to thank Spence and his team because without him none of this would have been possible.”
A big fight night on the Strip still brings out the stars, with recording artist Andre 3000 of Outkast, NBA star Damian Lillard and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones at T-Mobile Arena. They were among the celebrities that also included former boxing champions such as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.
Eminem introduced Crawford and his song “Lose Yourself” played as he walked into the ring before a sellout crowd of 19,990 at T-Mobile Arena.
Spence was the aggressor early on, but Crawford sent him to the floor with a right hand with 20 seconds left in the second round. Then Crawford went after Spence, but time ran out before he could finish him off.
Crawford, a minus-154 favorite, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, then took control of the fight, landing several major blows, often on counters. But Crawford also picked his spots to go after Spence, his punching power taking a heavy toll.
“He was just better tonight,” Spence said. “I make no excuses. He was throwing a harder jab. He was timing with his jab, and he had his timing down on point.”
In the seventh round, Crawford knocked down Spence twice — with a short right at 1:02 and with another right with just a second left.
The fight was essentially over at that point, though Crawford backed off in the eighth round. He came roaring back in the ninth to end it for sure.
Crawford didn’t waste the chance to gloat afterward, directly responding to his critics.
“They said I wasn’t good enough and I couldn’t beat these welterweights,” Crawford said. “I just kept my head to the sky and kept praying to God that I would get the opportunity to show the world how great Terence Crawford is. Tonight, I believe I showed how great I am.”
Spence, however, said he would be up for a rematch, but wants to move up to the 154-pound division.
“We’ve got to do it again,” Spence said. “I would be a lot better.”
Crawford said he would have no problem moving up a weight class.
“I’m in the hurt business,” Crawford said. “Forty-seven is kind of hard for me, too. I was already talking about moving up in weight and challenging (champion Jermell) Charlo.”
The 33-year-old Spence, who lives in DeSoto, Texas, won the IBF title in 2017, claimed the WBC championship in 2019 and took the WBA championship last year.
In the co-main event, Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz (25-2-1) of Mexico beat Chicago resident Giovanni Cabrera (21-1) by split decision in a WBC and WBA lightweight match. Judges Benoit Roussel (114-113) and Don Trella (115-112) scored the fight in favor of Cruz, and Glenn Feldman gave Cabrera the fight by a 114-113 score. Cruz had a point deducted because of a head butt.
Also, Alexandro Santiago (28-3-5) of Mexico won the vacant WBC bantamweight title with a 115-113, 116-112, 116-12 decision over Nonito Donaire (42-8), who lives in Las Vegas.
___
AP boxing: https://apnews.com/hub/boxing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-crawford-unifies-welterweight-division-with-9th-round-tko-in-dominant-performance-over-spence/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:43 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-crawford-unifies-welterweight-division-with-9th-round-tko-in-dominant-performance-over-spence/ |
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Dalvin Cook got an up-close view of Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets while watching practice from the sideline Sunday.
The free agent running back has to see if he’ll spend the rest of training camp in their backfield — or elsewhere.
Cook spent Sunday meeting with the Jets as he ponders the next stop of his playing career. The four-time Pro Bowl selection was released by the Vikings on June 8 for salary cap savings, according to a person familiar with Minnesota’s decision.
The Jets are the first team Cook has officially visited as a free agent, with his hometown Miami Dolphins also among possible suitors. New York also must consider whether to make him an offer before he leaves the team’s practice facility.
Cook, who turns 28 on Aug. 10, was greeted by chants of “Dal-vin Cooook! Sign that contract!” from fans in the stands as he walked onto the field. He later responded to the post on X, formerly known as Twitter, with a green heart emoji.
Several Jets players, including Rodgers, greeted Cook and he spent a few moments chatting with owner Woody Johnson.
“He’s a good young man, a very good young man,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said. “We didn’t interact too much. There’s a lot of stuff going on, especially when it’s open to the public. But it was good to say hello.”
Cook has talked up the Jets in TV interviews in recent days, telling NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” on Friday they “are right at the top of the list” and the odds of him signing with them were “pretty high.”
“It’s a unique situation because I think they’re building something special over there,” Cook told “Good Morning Football” during the interview. “When you look at it, you always want to be around a great QB, you always want to be around somebody you can pick his brain and just learn from. A-Rod is a four-time MVP. So, just being around a guy like that you can learn a lot more and just develop as a player.
“That’s what I’m looking to do.”
He reiterated those comments Saturday during an interview with ESPN, saying he thinks “the coaching staff, I think everything about what they got going on, just says winning.”
But Cook, a former Florida State star, also said in the interview he was interested in the Dolphins and it would be “a Cinderella story” to play for his hometown team.
He was the guest of the Jets on Sunday, though. And now they have to wait to see if they offer Cook a deal and he accepts — or explores his options.
Both sides have expressed interest, and the Jets wanted Cook to take a physical to be sure his surgically repaired shoulder is healthy.
“That’s pretty much it,” Saleh said. “Call it a meet and greet.”
Cook, who has run for at least 1,000 yards in each of the past four seasons, was scheduled to count more than $14.1 million against the Vikings’ salary cap before he was released. He’s third on Minnesota’s career rushing list with 5,993 yards in six seasons.
With the Jets, Cook could give New York some insurance in the backfield with Breece Hall working his way back from a knee injury that cut short a promising rookie season. New York also has Michael Carter, Zonovan Knight, Damarea Crockett, fifth-round draft pick Israel Abanikanda and undrafted free agent Travis Dye at the position.
NOTES: Saleh said WR Garrett Wilson has a lower right ankle injury and the Jets are being cautious by holding him out of practice. Wilson appeared to have a slight limp and his right ankle was wrapped. … WR Corey Davis remains out with an illness, but Saleh said he could return to practice Monday. … WR Randall Cobb was activated from the physically unable to perform list and participated in practice. … Saleh said the starters aren’t expected to play Thursday night in the Hall of Fame game against Cleveland in Canton, Ohio. Among those players who will play include QB Zach Wilson and OT Mekhi Becton.
___
AP Pro Football Writers Dave Campbell and Rob Maaddi contributed.
___
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-dalvin-cook-visits-with-the-jets-and-watches-practice-as-he-considers-his-options/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:50 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-dalvin-cook-visits-with-the-jets-and-watches-practice-as-he-considers-his-options/ |
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Frank Clark has reunited with Russell Wilson in Denver and now the outside linebacker has former teammate Patrick Mahomes in his sights instead.
The 30-year-old outside linebacker signed with Denver after being jettisoned by the Kansas City Chiefs in a cost-cutting move this offseason and the Broncos are counting on him to add some oomph to their pass rush.
Still in the AFC West, Clark gets two opportunities at beating his former team this season, something the Broncos haven’t done since 2015. Their 15-game skid against the Chiefs is the fourth longest by one team to a single opponent in NFL history.
Unlike his reunion with Wilson, revenge and rivalry aren’t top of mind for Clark as he embraces his fresh start in the Rocky Mountains.
“I wouldn’t call it a rivalry. A rivalry is competitive,” Clark interjected in his first public comments since signing a one-year, $5.5 million deal with Denver last month. “I’m (with) the Broncos now. I’ve been on the other side. We didn’t call it a rivalry then.”
And before anyone around Denver can call it that the Broncos will have to beat Mahomes, something they have a better shot at doing with Clark on their side.
The Chiefs parted ways with Clark just a year after signing him to a two-year, $30 million extension. The Broncos haven’t had a fearsome pass rush since trading Von Miller two years ago. And with Baron Browning sidelined by a knee injury and Randy Gregory coming off an injury-filled debut season in Denver, first-year head coach Sean Payton eagerly welcomed the veteran with 58 1/2 sacks.
Clark had 23 1/2 sacks in four seasons in Kansas City and another 10 1/2 in the playoffs, helping the Chiefs go 10-2 in the postseason and make three trips to the Super Bowl.
“What we did in Kansas City was special,” Clark said. “Four-year run, two Super Bowl (rings), three AFC titles. It was fun, but at the end of the day all good things come to an end.”
Bad things, too, he hopes. Such as Denver’s 15-game skid to the Chiefs.
One thing Clark insists isn’t nearing the finish line in his proclivity for getting after the passer even though his five sacks in 2022 and two-game suspension for gun possession incidents a year earlier meant an end to his three-year run as a Pro Bowler.
“I wouldn’t say it was the end” in Kansas City last season, Clark said. “It’s never the end when you get the job finished.”
Now he aims to help the Broncos and Wilson bounce back in 2023.
“He’s still dangerous. Don’t get it twisted,” Clark said of Wilson, whom he played with in Seattle from 2015-18. “Russ is a veteran. He’s a guy that’s won on multiple levels. … I was a part of Seahawks teams that were successful; I was a part of teams where we didn’t make the playoffs. But it was the same Russ.
“So don’t think a bad season’s going to shake a guy like Russ,” Clark added. “Naw, bro, we start fresh every year. Every summer’s a fresh start.”
___
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-ex-chiefs-linebacker-frank-clark-reunites-with-russell-wilson-in-denver/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:56 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-ex-chiefs-linebacker-frank-clark-reunites-with-russell-wilson-in-denver/ |
Senate GOP leaders didn’t want it to get to this point.
They tried and tried to get Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to lift the holds he’s placed on hundreds of military promotions — which have opened Republicans up to attacks from the Biden administration.
But their efforts have failed, and they are now in a situation where the earliest a resolution might be found is September — when lawmakers will also be busy trying to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month.
“It’s hung around for a while. I support his goals,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican. “The challenge obviously is the mechanism he used to get to the result has created some challenges. We want to figure out a way to resolve it and address that.”
“There are conversations now going on, which is good — between him and the military and others. We’ll have some time in August to work on a path forward, and hopefully we’ll find it,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been among those trying to find a resolution, Thune said. Tuberville said he and McConnell discussed the holds Wednesday, hours after the GOP leader froze and felt lightheaded in front of reporters.
“At this point, everybody’s engaged trying to figure out how to solve this,” Thune added.
Tuberville began his holds in early March to protest a new Defense Department policy to reimburse service members who must travel to seek an abortion for those travel expenses.
Six months later, the list of holds has grown to 300. Senate Republicans were hoping to find a solution before leaving Washington for five weeks — five additional weeks during which those military officers will remain in limbo, fueling Democratic attacks and frustrating the Pentagon.
One Senate Republican said finding an offramp agreeable to both Tuberville and those opposed to the holds has become a “recurring discussion” in the Senate GOP conference, and that McConnell has been personally involved in that quest.
“There’s not a lunch that goes by that we don’t talk about it,” the senator said, but added there’s “no chance of a resolution” any time soon.
Aside from the potential political and national security implications of the holds, McConnell is worried about the institutional implications.
The longtime GOP leader recently told reporters at a press conference that he is concerned this could lead to a renewed Democratic effort to change the chamber’s rules.
Despite disagreeing with Tuberville’s tactic, however, he says he recognizes it is the prerogative of any single senator to place a hold on a nominee.
Senators on both sides of the aisle for months have been musing publicly and privately about what it would take to get the Alabama Republican to set his hold aside, but have come up empty at every turn.
Initially, there had been hope that a vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would reverse the abortion travel policy could do the trick, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) led the effort.
But more recently, Tuberville has maintained that not only does any vote have to be standalone, but that the Pentagon would have to reverse its policy before any vote could be taken.
Trying to bridge that gap for lawmakers has become a herculean challenge no one has been able to complete.
Tuberville didn’t comment on efforts by Senate GOP leaders to seek a remedy, but he criticized the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for their lack of outreach in trying to strike a deal. He also hasn’t had any further conversations with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin since their July 17 call and said that the initial series of calls didn’t yield anything productive.
“There’s no conversation from the other side. It’s ‘our way or the highway.’ … How does that help?” Tuberville said. “They’re not worried about it, I guess. … I hate it, for the promotions and all that.”
He added that he has yet to talk to Schumer, who has refused to use up floor time moving the nominees through regular order because he believes it is the Senate GOP’s job to figure a way out of the maze of military holds.
“This is the responsibility of the Republican Senate caucus. … It’s up to them. I think in August, pressure will mount on Tuberville, and I think the Republicans are feeling that heat,” Schumer said late Thursday. “He’s boxing himself into a corner.”
But Democrats are trying to increase that pressure, with President Biden on Thursday night laying into the Alabama Republican and arguing his holds are harming military readiness and creating instability within the ranks of the armed forces.
“This partisan freeze is already harming military readiness, security and leadership, and troop morale,” Biden said in remarks at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium in Washington. “Freezing pay, freezing people in place. Military families who have already sacrificed so much, unsure of where and when they change stations, unable to get housing or start their kids in the new school.”
Senate Democrats also took to the floor before and after the NDAA vote Thursday to criticize their GOP colleague. Since the hold was put into place, Democratic senators have made 12 attempts to move the military promotions in bloc via unanimous request.
Perhaps adding to the difficulty, Tuberville has received a boost in support from voters at home and from conservative corners of the Senate GOP conference who believe he is making the right call, albeit a difficult one.
They also argue that if Senate Democrats truly want to move on some of the nominations, they can start to do so via regular order — a move Democrats have avoided in order to not set precedent.
“Democrats think they have a winning political thing on this. I don’t think they do, and I think Sen. Tuberville morally is in the right position with regard to the issue of abortion,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “The [Defense] Department has just as much of a responsibility to find a path forward as any single member does, and I’m not seeing the Department try to work in any fashion other than to simply put pressure on Sen. Tuberville.”
“They’re not trying to find a path forward. They think this is one of those items where if they keep putting pressure on him, he’ll cave, and I don’t think he will,” Rounds continued. “On the issue, he’s correct.” | https://www.kark.com/hill-politics/gop-leaders-strike-out-on-getting-tuberville-to-bend/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:58 | 1 | https://www.kark.com/hill-politics/gop-leaders-strike-out-on-getting-tuberville-to-bend/ |
Senate GOP leaders didn’t want it to get to this point.
They tried and tried to get Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to lift the holds he’s placed on hundreds of military promotions — which have opened Republicans up to attacks from the Biden administration.
But their efforts have failed, and they are now in a situation where the earliest a resolution might be found is September — when lawmakers will also be busy trying to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month.
“It’s hung around for a while. I support his goals,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican. “The challenge obviously is the mechanism he used to get to the result has created some challenges. We want to figure out a way to resolve it and address that.”
“There are conversations now going on, which is good — between him and the military and others. We’ll have some time in August to work on a path forward, and hopefully we’ll find it,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been among those trying to find a resolution, Thune said. Tuberville said he and McConnell discussed the holds Wednesday, hours after the GOP leader froze and felt lightheaded in front of reporters.
“At this point, everybody’s engaged trying to figure out how to solve this,” Thune added.
Tuberville began his holds in early March to protest a new Defense Department policy to reimburse service members who must travel to seek an abortion for those travel expenses.
Six months later, the list of holds has grown to 300. Senate Republicans were hoping to find a solution before leaving Washington for five weeks — five additional weeks during which those military officers will remain in limbo, fueling Democratic attacks and frustrating the Pentagon.
One Senate Republican said finding an offramp agreeable to both Tuberville and those opposed to the holds has become a “recurring discussion” in the Senate GOP conference, and that McConnell has been personally involved in that quest.
“There’s not a lunch that goes by that we don’t talk about it,” the senator said, but added there’s “no chance of a resolution” any time soon.
Aside from the potential political and national security implications of the holds, McConnell is worried about the institutional implications.
The longtime GOP leader recently told reporters at a press conference that he is concerned this could lead to a renewed Democratic effort to change the chamber’s rules.
Despite disagreeing with Tuberville’s tactic, however, he says he recognizes it is the prerogative of any single senator to place a hold on a nominee.
Senators on both sides of the aisle for months have been musing publicly and privately about what it would take to get the Alabama Republican to set his hold aside, but have come up empty at every turn.
Initially, there had been hope that a vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would reverse the abortion travel policy could do the trick, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) led the effort.
But more recently, Tuberville has maintained that not only does any vote have to be standalone, but that the Pentagon would have to reverse its policy before any vote could be taken.
Trying to bridge that gap for lawmakers has become a herculean challenge no one has been able to complete.
Tuberville didn’t comment on efforts by Senate GOP leaders to seek a remedy, but he criticized the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for their lack of outreach in trying to strike a deal. He also hasn’t had any further conversations with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin since their July 17 call and said that the initial series of calls didn’t yield anything productive.
“There’s no conversation from the other side. It’s ‘our way or the highway.’ … How does that help?” Tuberville said. “They’re not worried about it, I guess. … I hate it, for the promotions and all that.”
He added that he has yet to talk to Schumer, who has refused to use up floor time moving the nominees through regular order because he believes it is the Senate GOP’s job to figure a way out of the maze of military holds.
“This is the responsibility of the Republican Senate caucus. … It’s up to them. I think in August, pressure will mount on Tuberville, and I think the Republicans are feeling that heat,” Schumer said late Thursday. “He’s boxing himself into a corner.”
But Democrats are trying to increase that pressure, with President Biden on Thursday night laying into the Alabama Republican and arguing his holds are harming military readiness and creating instability within the ranks of the armed forces.
“This partisan freeze is already harming military readiness, security and leadership, and troop morale,” Biden said in remarks at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium in Washington. “Freezing pay, freezing people in place. Military families who have already sacrificed so much, unsure of where and when they change stations, unable to get housing or start their kids in the new school.”
Senate Democrats also took to the floor before and after the NDAA vote Thursday to criticize their GOP colleague. Since the hold was put into place, Democratic senators have made 12 attempts to move the military promotions in bloc via unanimous request.
Perhaps adding to the difficulty, Tuberville has received a boost in support from voters at home and from conservative corners of the Senate GOP conference who believe he is making the right call, albeit a difficult one.
They also argue that if Senate Democrats truly want to move on some of the nominations, they can start to do so via regular order — a move Democrats have avoided in order to not set precedent.
“Democrats think they have a winning political thing on this. I don’t think they do, and I think Sen. Tuberville morally is in the right position with regard to the issue of abortion,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “The [Defense] Department has just as much of a responsibility to find a path forward as any single member does, and I’m not seeing the Department try to work in any fashion other than to simply put pressure on Sen. Tuberville.”
“They’re not trying to find a path forward. They think this is one of those items where if they keep putting pressure on him, he’ll cave, and I don’t think he will,” Rounds continued. “On the issue, he’s correct.” | https://cw33.com/hill-politics/gop-leaders-strike-out-on-getting-tuberville-to-bend/ | 2023-07-31T00:29:58 | 1 | https://cw33.com/hill-politics/gop-leaders-strike-out-on-getting-tuberville-to-bend/ |
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Justin Gaethje knocked out Dustin Poirier with a head kick one minute into the second round to win the main event lightweight bout at UFC 291 on Saturday night.
The third-ranked Gaethje (26-4) celebrated his victory by climbing to the top of the Octagon fence and doing a backflip off it. His perfectly timed headshot helped him avenge a loss to Poirier in 2018 when he suffered a fourth-round technical knockout via strikes.
“This chance at redemption was amazing,” Gaethje said. “It drove me to work harder to be ready.”
It was Gaethje’s 20th win by knockout or TKO and his seventh victory in his last nine fights. He also scored his first knockout win since UFC 249 in 2020.
“I was surprised by myself and how good I fought,” Gaethje said.
Second-ranked Poirier (29-8) entered the rematch between the two former interim lightweight champions as a minus-152 favorite according to FanDuel. He matched Gaethje blow for blow in the first round – earning a 10-9 advantage on two of three scorecards – before being quickly dispatched in the second.
The decisive high kick from one former champ caught the other by surprise because it wasn’t a move that he expected to see from Gaethje.
“I thought I had four more rounds,” Poirier said. “I didn’t know I had two more minutes.”
With the victory, Gaethje earned a BMF belt – the second UFC fighter to be awarded that belt.
Beating Poirier opens the door for Gaethje to have a potential title bout against the winner of Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira, who are set to square off at UFC 294 in October.
Gaethje’s BMF win over Poirier headlined five main card bouts.
Alex Pereira defeated Jan Blachowicz by split decision in a light heavyweight bout billed as the co-main event for his eighth win in his last nine fights.
Pereira (8-2), ranked second as a middleweight, made his debut in the light heavyweight division at UFC 291 after losing the middleweight title belt via knockout to Israel Adesanya at UFC 287 in April. Blachowicz (29-10-1) did not make the transition in weight class a smooth one for the former champion.
He weathered early takedowns in the first two rounds and rallied in the third round.
Derrick Lewis earned a record 14th knockout win over Marcos Rogerio de Lima just 33 seconds into the first round of the heavyweight bout. The No.10-ranked Lewis (27-11) scored an immediate takedown with a flying knee and pummeled 15th-ranked Rogerio de Lima (21-10-1) with repeated punches to score the early finish. He celebrated snapping a three-fight slide by stripping off his shorts and dancing around the Octagon.
“The win means a lot to me,” Lewis said. “I had a lot of pressure on me coming into this fight and I just wanted to prove to everyone I’m still one of the best fighters in the world.”
Bobby Green beat Tony Ferguson by submission via choke with six seconds left in the third round of the lightweight bout. Green (30-14-1) dominated the final two rounds to earn his second career submission, scoring takedowns in both rounds while raining repeated blows that left his opponent battered. He denied Ferguson (26-9) a shot at earning his first UFC victory since 2019, sending the 39-year-old fighter home with his sixth straight loss.
Kevin Holland made quick work of Michael Chiesa to win the welterweight bout. Holland (25-9) beat the 12th-ranked Chiesa — fighting for the first time following a two-year hiatus — by submission at 2:39 in the first round. He used his length and striking abilities to trap Chiesa (18-7) in a D’arce choke, forcing a quick tap out.
Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith, Jazz coach Will Hardy, and former Jazz stars Deron Williams and Karl Malone were among those in attendance at the second UFC pay-per-view event in 11 months in the Beehive State.
UFC reported a live gate of $6.5 million, breaking the previous venue record set at UFC 278 in August 2022. A sellout crowd of 18,467 was in attendance.
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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-gaethje-knocks-out-poirier-in-second-round-to-win-ufc-291-lightweight-bout/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:02 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-gaethje-knocks-out-poirier-in-second-round-to-win-ufc-291-lightweight-bout/ |
MUNCIE, Ind. (WXIN) — A street party in Muncie, Indiana, turned into the scene of a deadly shooting early Sunday morning.
One man died and nearly two dozen others were injured. Of those wounded, 19 were treated at Ball Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, and four were taken to other hospitals. Thirteen victims remained hospitalized in stable condition Sunday afternoon.
After the mass shooting, police announced that there was no further danger to the general public.
”Stranger comes up and decides to take it personal on somebody he knows in the crowd,” said one anonymous man who claimed his nephew was the block party’s disc jockey. “And you can’t fight against an AR. He let loose in the crowd. Everywhere in the crowd.”
The Delaware County coroner identified the deceased victim as 30-year-old Joseph Bonner. There’s no indication if Bonner played an active role in the shooting, whether any other victims are suspected of firing guns, or if any firearms were recovered.
A witness at IU/Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie described a scene of emergency department chaos with more than 100 people descending on the facility — many of whom were victims that were taken to the hospital by private vehicles.
Officers from several agencies — including a Muncie-based FBI agent — secured the crime scene and collected evidence while doctors and nurses treated the wounded from the mass casualty event.
By midday, detectives were still walking the debris-strewn street and parking lot with brown bags filled with collected evidence. A tow truck was also seen hauling away a bullet-riddled red Buick that appeared to have crashed during an attempt to leave the scene.
The Muncie Homecoming Festival committee said the street party where the shooting happened was not part of the official MHF celebration going on this week.
Muncie Parks Superintendent Carl Malone told Nexstar’s WXIN he chaired a neighborhood crime watch meeting last Thursday, and residents expressed fear that this weekend could turn volatile.
”We was a little concerned about violence that we thought might happen,” said Malone, who described Muncie Homecoming as a city-wide welcome home celebration held once every four years for former residents and family members to reconnect with their hometown. ”You had a lot of people congregating in one area, just hanging out and wanting to be part of the neighborhood activities. And then, at that point at time, it got into late night, and when you get into late nights, you usually have some sort of curfew violations, alcohol, guns and drugs seem to be a problem.”
Malone said Muncie has not had a community-wide gun violence initiative since 2015.
”We’ve always had concerns about this area and teenagers involved with handguns,” said Malone, whose niece attended the party. ”She just got out of surgery. She’s doing well. She’s whole. And then my godson was being treated out at Ball Hospital.”
Malone said he will meet with the city’s police leadership Monday morning to review the shooting and plans for keeping Muncie streets safe the rest of the summer.
”The mayor knows my push for gun violence, the lack of gun violence education, the lack of gun violence awareness, the lack of how to report gun violence in and out of our homes,” Malone said. “There’s a way to report crime, there’s a way to report guns, and we just have to report guns in and out of our backpacks and homes.”
Muncie is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The city is home to about 65,000 people. | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:04 | 1 | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ |
OSHKOSH, Wis. (WFRV) – Four people are dead and two are hospitalized after two separate crashes on Saturday. Both incidents are connected to an annual air show in Wisconsin, according to officials.
The first crash happened shortly after 9 a.m. A T-6 Texan aircraft crashed into Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh, where the Experimental Aircraft Association is holding its annual fly-in convention, EAA AirVenture.
Both people aboard the aircraft died, according to EAA officials.
A few hours later, a Rotorway 162F helicopter and ELA 10 Eclipse gyrocopter collided in mid-air at the south end of the EAA AirVenture flight line at Wittman Regional Airport, killing two and injuring two others. Both of the injured are in stable condition, according to EAA.
The Oshkosh Fire Department said one of the aircraft landed on top of a parked plane, but did not clarify which.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating both accidents and has not provided a cause for either.
“Naturally, with the mid-air collision, somebody was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” EAA director of communications Dick Knapinski said. “How that occurred and why that occurred is what the NTSB will investigate and, from then, lessons will be learned as to what aviators can do to keep themselves safer.”
The investigation will likely take months to reach its conclusion.
“NTSB investigations typically take between a full year to 18 months to complete,” Knapinski explained. “They will have a preliminary investigation within the next week or so and then put out those findings. But the probable cause will probably take a year or more to determine by the board.”
The factors the NTSB will examine in its investigations include weather conditions, pilot experience, aircraft condition, flight pattern, and communication between ground and flight operations to determine the cause, which could be pilot error, a mechanical issue, or another reason, according to Knapinski. He described the weather as “mild” and likely not a contributing factor.
“Having accidents like this in the singular is very rare,” he said. “Having two fatal accidents take place on the same day is exceedingly rare.”
These are not the first incidents regarding aircraft at or en route to EAA this week. On Thursday, a single-engine plane bound for EAA AirVenture crash-landed in a cornfield in Green Lake County, hospitalizing two people.
On Tuesday, Knapinski said there was a “forced landing” east of the north/south runway at EAA AirVenture. The pilot was the only person onboard and was not injured.
Last Saturday, a single-engine ERCO Ercoupe headed to EAA AirVenture crashed in Fond du Lac County, injuring the pilot.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | https://www.kark.com/news/4-killed-in-2-separate-aircraft-crashes-near-wisconsin-air-show/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:04 | 1 | https://www.kark.com/news/4-killed-in-2-separate-aircraft-crashes-near-wisconsin-air-show/ |
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Aaron Rodgers is sticking by his offensive coordinator and firing his hardest throw of the summer at Sean Payton.
The Jets quarterback was bothered by critical comments Payton, the Denver Broncos’ head coach, recently made about offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. Payton told USA Today for a story published Thursday that Hackett’s 15-game stint with the Broncos last season ”was one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.″
Payton also said there were “20 dirty hands” around Russell Wilson’s career-worst season, and took some shots at the Jets — Hackett’s new team where he and Rodgers are reunited after enjoying success together in Green Bay.
“It made me feel bad that someone who has accomplished a lot in the league is that insecure that they have to take another man down to set themselves up for some sort of easy fall if it doesn’t go well for that team this year,” Rodgers told NFL Network on Sunday. “I think it was way out of line, inappropriate, and I think he needs to keep my coaches’ names out of his mouth.”
Rodgers, acquired by New York in April from Green Bay, said Hackett is “arguably my favorite coach I’ve ever had in the NFL.” The pair was together for two of Rodgers’ four NFL MVP awards in 2020 and 2021 with the Packers.
During the interview with USA Today’s Jarrett Bell, Payton also criticized the Jets being the latest NFL team “trying to win the offseason” — something he said the Broncos under Hackett tried to do and were “embarrassed.”
Jets coach Robert Saleh said Thursday “Hackett’s doing a phenomenal job here” when asked about Payton’s comments. He also said the Jets are just focused on themselves, but recognizes “there’s a lot of people that are hatin’ on us and a lot of people looking for us to fail.”
Payton on Friday said he regretted his comments in which he disparaged Hackett, and said he would reach out to Hackett and Saleh “at the right time” to do so.
“Listen, I had one of those moments where I still had my Fox hat on and not my coaching hat,” said Payton, who’s returning to the sideline this season after a year’s sabbatical during which he worked as a studio football analyst for Fox Sports following a 15-year stint with the New Orleans Saints.
Rodgers told NFL Network he thought Payton’s initial comments “were very surprising, for a coach to do that to another coach.”
Meanwhile, the back-and-forth made the Jets’ matchup in Denver in Week 5 on Oct. 8 a bit juicier. Payton acknowledged Friday his comments “certainly will bring more interest to the game when we play them, but that seems like years from now.”
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AP Pro Football Writer Arnie Stapleton in Englewood, Colorado, contributed.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-jets-aaron-rodgers-defends-nathaniel-hackett-and-fires-back-at-the-broncos-sean-payton/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:09 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-jets-aaron-rodgers-defends-nathaniel-hackett-and-fires-back-at-the-broncos-sean-payton/ |
DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) — The FBI has issued arrest warrants and released disturbing details in the armed home invasion and kidnapping of an elderly North Carolina couple and the theft of more than $150,000 of their cryptocurrency in April.
The incident took place at gunpoint at the couple’s home the morning of April 12 after thieves allegedly posed as construction workers and forced their way into the home, according to the Durham Police Department and the FBI.
According to an FBI criminal complaint obtained by Nexstar’s WNCN, the incident began when two men, dressed as construction workers, came to the victims’ home around 7:30 a.m. The duo claimed they would be inspecting pipes for damage and told the husband they would be “walking around the house.”
After a few minutes, the pair knocked on the door again and the wife answered the door. The suspects, who allegedly both had guns, then pushed their way inside.
“The men restrained and zip-tied the husband’s hands and the wife’s hands,” the FBI complaint said.
A man armed with a pink gun showed the wife it was loaded by opening the cylinder and then dragged her into a bathroom by her legs, the criminal complaint said.
The husband was taken to his Apple iMac and forced at gunpoint to log in and install a remote desktop application called AnyDesk. A person on the phone with a thief already knew “details about the account without being told,” the FBI complaint said.
The FBI believes the husband’s email account was compromised in the past, allowing the thieves to learn the details ahead of the trip to Durham and the home invasion.
The suspects were able to transfer $156,853 worth of cryptocurrency during the next 45 minutes, the FBI said. Before leaving, the thieves allegedly smashed the couple’s cellphones and the iMac.
The elderly couple managed to get out of their home and ask neighbors to call 911 for help. The pair suffered minor injuries and were transported to a nearby hospital, Durham police said.
The arrest warrants released Thursday for kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping indicate two West Palm Beach, Florida, men are wanted — Jarod Gabriel Seemungal and Remy Ra St. Felix.
According to the FBI criminal complaint filed the same day, the suspects began targeting retirees who had cryptocurrency as early as February. The accused men even had the license plate number for the husband’s car, authorities said. A third man is also named in the criminal complaint, but no arrest warrant was issued for him as of Thursday.
Messages sent between those involved identified actual cryptocurrency amounts and their locations, the criminal complaint said. One suspect had a photo of the husband’s North Carolina driver’s license in his email account, according to the FBI.
The two suspects also discussed in internet messages how potential victims “have so much” money in accounts that it would be “retirement licks” — the FBI explained in the complaint that “licks” is slang for a robbery.
The thieves apparently rented a car in Florida and visited the Millennium Hotel in Durham a couple of days before the actual robbery, according to the complaint. Video from a home near the victims’ showed the thieves’ BMW SUV “conducting surveillance” at the couple’s home each of the three days before the alleged kidnapping, the FBI said.
The FBI also noted that a person driving a similar vehicle purchased costumes — a clipboard, reflective vest, sunglasses and a pair of khaki pants — at a nearby Walmart that allowed the suspected thieves to get into the victims’ home. Both suspects were seen on surveillance video from the store.
Additional details about potential victims wasn’t immediately available. As of Sunday, authorities have not said whether either man is in custody. | https://www.kark.com/news/elderly-couple-bound-held-at-gunpoint-during-north-carolina-home-invasion-fbi-investigating/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:10 | 0 | https://www.kark.com/news/elderly-couple-bound-held-at-gunpoint-during-north-carolina-home-invasion-fbi-investigating/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades.
Median rent rose just 0.5% in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years.
A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. Renters in cities such as Cincinnati and Indianapolis are still getting hit with increases of 5% or more. Much of the new construction is located in just a few metro areas, and many of the new units are luxury apartments, which rent for well north of $2,000.
Median U.S. rent has risen to $2,029 this June from $1,629 in June 2019, according to rental listings company Rent, which tracks rents in 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Demand for apartments exploded during the pandemic as people who could work remotely sought more space or decided to relocate to another part of the country.
The steep rent increases have left tenants like Melissa Lombana, a high school teacher who lives in the South Florida city of Miramar, with progressively less income to spend on other needs.
The rent on her one-bedroom apartment jumped 13% last year to $1,700. It climbed another 6% to $1,800 this month when she renewed her lease.
“Even the $1,700 was a stretch for me,” said Lombana, 43, who supplements her teaching income with a side job doing educational testing. “In a year, I will not be able to afford living here at all.”
Lombana’s rent is now gobbling up nearly half her monthly income. That puts her in a category referred to as “cost-burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, denoting households that pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Last year, the average rent-to-income ratio per household rose to 30%. This March, it was 29.6%.
Lombana hasn’t had any luck finding a more affordable apartment. While South Florida is one of the metropolitan areas seeing a rise in apartment construction, the units are mostly high-end and not a viable option.
That scenario is playing out across the nation. Developers are rushing to complete projects that were green-lit during the pandemic-era surge in demand for rentals or left in limbo by delays in supplies of fixtures and building materials. Nearly 1.1 million apartments are currently under construction, according to the commercial real estate tracker CoStar, a pace not seen since the 1970s.
Increasing the supply of apartments tends to moderate rent increases over time and can give tenants more options on where to live. But more than 40% of the new rentals to be completed this year will be concentrated in about 10 high job growth metropolitan areas, including Austin, Nashville, Denver, Atlanta and New York, according to Marcus & Millichap. In many areas, the boost to overall inventory will be barely noticeable.
Even within metros where there’ll be a notable increase in available apartments, such as Nashville, most of it will be in the luxury category, where rents average $2,270, nationally. Some 70% of the new rental inventory will be the luxury class, said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.
That will leave most tenants unlikely to see a big enough reduction in rent to make a difference, industry experts and economists say.
“I think we’re in a period of rent flattening for 12 or 18 months, but it’s certainly not a big rent decline,” said Hessam Nadji, CEO of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap.
“We’re building a multi-decade record number of units,” Nadji said. “It’s going to cause some softening and some pockets of overbuilding, but it’s not going to fundamentally resolve the housing shortage or the affordability problem for renters across the U.S.”
The surge in rents has made it difficult for workers to keep up with inflation despite solid wage gains the past few years and exacerbated a long-term trend. Between 1999 and 2022, U.S. rents soared 135%, while income grew 77%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
Realtor.com is forecasting that rents will drop an average of 0.9% this year. But while down nationally, rents are still rising in many markets around the country, especially those where hiring remains robust.
In the New York metro area, the median rent climbed 4.7% in June from a year earlier to $2,899, according to Realtor.com. In the Midwest, rents surged 5.6% in the Cincinnati metro area to $1,188, and 6.9% to $1,350 in the Indianapolis metro area.
The current spike in apartment construction alone isn’t going to be enough to address how costly renting has become for many Americans.
“For the rest of the 2020s rents will continue to grow because millennials are such a big generation and we’re very much in the hole in terms of building housing for that generation,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “It will take many good years of new construction to build adequate housing for millennials.”
The bigger challenge is building more work force housing, because the cost of land, labor and navigating the government approval process incentivize developers to put up luxury apartments buildings.
Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.
Despite the overall pullback in U.S. rents, Joey Di Girolamo, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, worries that he’ll face more sharp rent increases in coming years.
Last year, the web designer left a two-bedroom, two-bath townhome he rented for $2,200 a month to avoid a $600 a month increase. This year, his rent went up by $200, a nearly 10% jump.
“That blew me away,” said Di Girolamo, 50. “I’m just kind of dreading what it’s going to be like next year, but especially 3 or 4 years from now.” | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:10 | 0 | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ |
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A man died at a Disney Resort in Orlando on Wednesday.
According to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, deputies received a call around 5:30 a.m. regarding an unresponsive person at Disney’s Contemporary Resort near Magic Kingdom.
The man, identified as 39-year-old Jeffrey Vanden Boom of Greendale, Wisconsin, was pronounced dead on the scene.
The Orange County Medical Examiner determined Vanden Boom fell from a hotel room balcony, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The fall was ruled as accidental.
Walt Disney World did not immediately respond to Nexstar’s request for comment.
The death remains an ongoing investigation.
Last fall, an 83-year-old man died after riding the Tomorrowland Authority PeopleMover at Disney World. Authorities said he experienced a “cardiac event,” and his death was “deemed natural” by medical officials.
Earlier this year, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against Disneyland, accusing park employees of laughing at a 66-year-old disabled woman who fell while getting off the Jungle Cruise ride in 2021 and later died. | https://www.kark.com/news/man-dies-at-disney-resort-deputies-investigating/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:16 | 1 | https://www.kark.com/news/man-dies-at-disney-resort-deputies-investigating/ |
AUSTIN (KXAN) — It’s no surprise that the summer heat can do significant damage to your vehicle. But as cities around the country continue to break temperature records and endure long heat waves, some car technicians are finding unusual vehicle issues.
Doc Watson, a national training manager with Bosch Diagnostics, said typical summertime issues include dead car batteries and flat tires. However, he said technicians in Texas and along the West Coast have also been recording more unusual vehicle complications due to the extensive heat waves.
In Texas, Arizona and California, technicians are reporting an emergence of “brake fade” cases in cars. When the temperature outside tops 100 degrees for extended periods of time, temperatures under the hood of vehicles during the summer can reach up to 230 degrees.
Brake fluids inside the cylinder under the hood of the car can absorb moisture, as the heat causes that moisture to expand within the fluid. When that happens, stepping on the brake pedal can feel “mushy.” That means the vehicle owner will need to take the car in for maintenance.
Both heat and humidity can add extra wear and tear to the windshield wiper blades, which have a typical lifespan between 12 and 18 months.
“People don’t stop to think about wiper blades — they don’t need them until it rains, right?” Watson said. “You’re driving around in 112-degree temperature, you’ve got heat reflecting off the glass, and that causes the rubber components of a wiper blade to break down.”
The plastic parts of the blades can also suffer.
“With these extreme temperatures that you guys are seeing, it’s the plastic breaking down off the wiper blade itself, and people not realizing that that’s happened until it’s too late,” he said. “The wiper blade breaks and then you’ve got this metal arm scratching the glass.”
Watson recommended car owners keep a checklist of key vehicle parts to monitor during the summer months. Those include:
- Car batteries: Traditionally, car batteries last between three and five years. Amid excessive heat spells, temperatures under the hood of a vehicle reach up to 230 degrees, which can lead to battery fluid evaporations and dead batteries. Watson suggests car owners have their batteries tested by a technician during the summer to get a condition status.
- Tires: Low tire pressure is exacerbated by hot asphalt on roadways. Watson encouraged car owners to purchase a tire pressure gauge and to test their vehicle’s tire pressure early in the morning while it’s still cool to ensure an accurate reading.
- Engine overflow tank: During the summer months, cooling an engine is critical. Watson said when car owners check underneath the hood, they’ll find a plastic overflow tank with a graduated scale. If it looks low, he suggested adding antifreeze to aid your engine.
- Wiper blades: Check wiper blades during dry spells (and before rain storms) to make sure they’re properly working and not deteriorating. If they show signs of wear and tear, replace them and make sure they’re upgraded every 12-18 months.
- Oil changes: Most newer vehicles require an oil change every 5,000 to 7,000 miles. However, remote starting a vehicle and running the air conditioning works the engine without adding any mileage to the vehicle. As a result, Watson suggested not waiting until you hit that 5,000 to 7,000-mile range if you often use remote start on your vehicle during the summer or winter months.
“People aren’t changing oil regularly like they think they are,” he said. “People need to pay more attention to them because these engines will go many miles — 200,000, 300,000 miles — as long as they’re maintained correctly. That’s big with this extreme heat.” | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/the-weird-car-issues-mechanics-are-seeing-during-heat-waves/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:16 | 0 | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/the-weird-car-issues-mechanics-are-seeing-during-heat-waves/ |
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — Megan Rapinoe is adjusting to her new role at the Women’s World Cup, even if it means she’s not on the field as much as she’d like to be.
The outspoken 38-year-old known for her eclectic hair colors and the iconic victory pose she struck at the 2019 World Cup is the oldest player on the team. She already announced that her fourth World Cup would be her last.
“Ultimately, we’re at the World Cup. This is where everybody wants to be, whether you’re playing 90 minutes, whether you’re a game changer, whatever,” she said Sunday. “I think it’s a lot similar to what I thought it would be — bringing all the experience that I can, all the experience that I have, and ultimately being ready whenever my number is called up.”
Rapinoe has played limited minutes so far, coming in as a substitute in the 3-0 victory over Vietnam in the tournament opener, which was her 200th career appearance for the team.
She was available but didn’t play in the disappointing 1-1 draw with the Netherlands on Thursday in Wellington. U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski made just one substitution in the match, bringing in midfielder Rose Lavelle after the first half.
“I think all of us on the bench, it’s like we think we should be on the field as much as the players on the field believe that they should be on the field,” Rapinoe said. “Every player on the field that starts the game thinks that they should play 90 minutes, and every player who doesn’t, who is a sub, thinks that they should be on at some point.”
The United States has won the last two World Cups, but the players find themselves in a more precarious position as they chase an unprecedented third consecutive title. The Americans need at least a draw going into the final group match against Portugal on Tuesday at Eden Park in Auckland.
The Americans top Group E, even on points with the Netherlands, but hold the edge because of goal difference. Portugal, which beat Vietnam, could send the United States home early with a win over the Americans.
“We’re unsatisfied with the way we played, but we know there are areas that we can be better and I think there’s some really simple fixes we can do to put ourselves in a better position to have more joy on the ball, especially in the final third,” Rapinoe said. “I think everybody’s looking at this like `Let’s go.’”
At the 2019 World Cup in France, Rapinoe scored six goals over the course of the tournament, including a penalty in a 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in the final. She also finished with three assists and claimed both the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball for the best overall player.
Rapinoe, who is engaged to former WNBA star Sue Bird, has been a leader on and off the field.
She made headlines during the 2019 tournament when she said she wouldn’t visit the White House if the United States won. Her decision was based on her disdain for then-President Donald Trump, and the team did not go to the White House after winning its second World Cup.
And in the midst of a dispute with U.S. Soccer over equal pay with the men’s national team, Rapinoe helped the women hold firm on their position.
“I just think back to 2019 in particular. We didn’t really talk about it a lot as a group but we were like, `Well, we have to win. This is kind of like a must-win World Cup for us.’ And I think it did give us confidence,” she said. “It pressured us, but I think we also knew that we could handle it and it was almost a mandatory upping of our level to be able to match everything that we were saying off the field. I think in so many ways we were betting on ourselves.”
Rapinoe has won two Women’s World Cup titles and an Olympic gold medal with the United States. She also took home the Ballon d’Or and the Best FIFA Women’s Player awards — the game’s top individual honors — for her play in 2019.
As a fierce advocate for social justice issues, including gender equity and LGBTQ rights, she was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Joe Biden last year.
The team also won a new contract that pays the players the same as their male counterparts.
“I’ve always tried to use whatever platform we have, and this platform was built long before I got here. We just continue to add to to it, to grow the game, to make the world a better place, to use our voices, to advocate for more,” she said.
At this World Cup, she’s passing that legacy on to younger generation. Fourteen of the U.S. players are playing in their first World Cup. In 2019, Carli Lloyd was in a similar role of a player who was also something of a coach who led by example.
Rapinoe is doing that now.
“Still every day in training I’m like, `I’m gonna try to bust your ass,’ and that makes them better, that makes me better,” she said. “That makes the whole team better. So I think it’s been really rewarding. And I think ultimately, and I think that this gets lost, but I get to play in another World Cup.”
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AP Women’s World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-megan-rapinoe-adjusts-to-new-role-at-womens-world-cup-while-still-savoring-final-days-in-spotlight/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:16 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-megan-rapinoe-adjusts-to-new-role-at-womens-world-cup-while-still-savoring-final-days-in-spotlight/ |
(The Hill) – A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee say a high-profile hearing on UFOs is just the start of their push for answers.
And they are threatening to use heavier handed tactics if the Pentagon and intelligence agencies stand in their way.
Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) want more information on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) — commonly referred to as UFOs — beginning with new laws, a classified hearing and the possible creation of a select committee.
The lawmakers said they are willing to use subpoena power if needed to get the answers they’re seeking from the federal government.
“If there’s not a cover up, the government and the Pentagon are sure spending a lot of resources to stop us from studying it,” Burchett told The Hill.
He added that they hope House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can aid them in setting up a select committee to study the issue of UAPs — as well as any government program that addresses them. If they don’t get leadership approval, they’ll “just start holding field hearings because the public is demanding that we have transparency,” Burchett said.
The effort comes after three former military officials earlier this week and under oath gave bombshell testimony on the unexplained aerial objects, telling lawmakers that for years they’ve been kept in the dark about the mysterious sightings and encounters.
David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, gave the most shocking testimony when he said he was told of a “multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program,” accusing the military of misdirecting funds to keep such operations secret.
The shocking testimony now has committee members questioning how Congress should begin to investigate the witness claims and demand more answers from the executive branch on programs it claims doesn’t exist.
Lawmakers hope to start with obtaining additional information and documents that Grusch said he submitted to the Pentagon’s inspector general after serving on two Defense Department task forces looking into UAPs.
To get the information from Grusch — who said he was unable to discuss specifics on what he told the Pentagon’s watchdog arm — lawmakers want to sit down with the former official in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to get additional information from him.
The group has been blocked, however, by officials that have informed them that Grusch doesn’t currently have security clearance to discuss the issues in a SCIF, according to Burchett.
“I think we’ll get there eventually, it’s just frustrating. I’m ready to go and the American public are ready to go,” he said.
Luna argued the SCIF with Grusch would help lawmakers better understand the type of legislation they need to write regarding UAPs. She said she supports legislation that would declassify information on the phenomena.
With a growing amount of bipartisan interest for more government transparency surrounding the issue, a need for reporting procedures for UAP’s both in the miliary and commercial airspace, and “stronger and stricter punishment for those that try to silence whistleblowers,” the topic is more important than ever, she said.
There is currently a provision in the Senate’s version of the annual defense authorization bill, inserted by Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), which would force federal government agencies to hand over UAP records to a review panel with the power to declassify them. The bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, was passed by the Senate on Thursday and now must be reconciled with the House’s version, so the initiative could still be stripped out.
Burchett also made an attempt to put an amendment into a Federal Aviation Administration bill to improve air travel, passed July 20, that would have required UAP sightings be reported to Congress. The initiative was blocked, which Luna said was an indication that “we clearly have a battle ahead of us.”
Another avenue for lawmakers should they not receive access to a SCIF would be invoking the Holman rule.
During Wednesday’s hearing Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) vowed to do just that, saying that he would “personally volunteer to initiate the Holman rule against any personnel, or any program, or any agency that denies access to Congress.”
The Holman rule is a House power through which they can strip the salary of a specific government position, fire civil servants or cut a particular program.
Ogles’s pledge came after Grusch told lawmakers that the federal government for decades has secretly funded a “UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program” and that he believes the government is in possession of non-human crafts, based on interviews with 40 witnesses.
Moskowitz told The Hill that while it’s too early to use the Holman rule — as Congress must first “figure out where these positions exist and then examine whether or not they should be funded” — he hopes that by discussing the rule it will create more transparency with the federal government.
“This is about government transparency. I’m all for protecting national security, but that can’t just be a shield to deny the American people the basics of what we know about UAPs,” he said.
And Burchett said if lawmakers “start getting stonewalled” by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, he will have “no hesitation,” to invoke the rule.
Luna, meanwhile, said whether lawmakers use the rule depends on the response they receive from various agencies, programs and appointees.
That process could start as soon as September when lawmakers consider the Defense Appropriations bill on the House floor.
“We know that enormous sums of money are being spent on UAP related activity, whether it’s retrieval/recovery, research and reverse engineering, or just security for whatever the government is hiding,” she told The Hill. “But none of that is on the books, so from a basic governance perspective, Congress needs to know where money is being misappropriated.”
The Hill’s Sarakshi Rai contributed reporting. | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/ufo-curious-lawmakers-brace-for-a-fight-over-government-secrets/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:22 | 1 | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/ufo-curious-lawmakers-brace-for-a-fight-over-government-secrets/ |
MUNCIE, Ind. (WXIN) — A street party in Muncie, Indiana, turned into the scene of a deadly shooting early Sunday morning.
One man died and nearly two dozen others were injured. Of those wounded, 19 were treated at Ball Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, and four were taken to other hospitals. Thirteen victims remained hospitalized in stable condition Sunday afternoon.
After the mass shooting, police announced that there was no further danger to the general public.
”Stranger comes up and decides to take it personal on somebody he knows in the crowd,” said one anonymous man who claimed his nephew was the block party’s disc jockey. “And you can’t fight against an AR. He let loose in the crowd. Everywhere in the crowd.”
The Delaware County coroner identified the deceased victim as 30-year-old Joseph Bonner. There’s no indication if Bonner played an active role in the shooting, whether any other victims are suspected of firing guns, or if any firearms were recovered.
A witness at IU/Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie described a scene of emergency department chaos with more than 100 people descending on the facility — many of whom were victims that were taken to the hospital by private vehicles.
Officers from several agencies — including a Muncie-based FBI agent — secured the crime scene and collected evidence while doctors and nurses treated the wounded from the mass casualty event.
By midday, detectives were still walking the debris-strewn street and parking lot with brown bags filled with collected evidence. A tow truck was also seen hauling away a bullet-riddled red Buick that appeared to have crashed during an attempt to leave the scene.
The Muncie Homecoming Festival committee said the street party where the shooting happened was not part of the official MHF celebration going on this week.
Muncie Parks Superintendent Carl Malone told Nexstar’s WXIN he chaired a neighborhood crime watch meeting last Thursday, and residents expressed fear that this weekend could turn volatile.
”We was a little concerned about violence that we thought might happen,” said Malone, who described Muncie Homecoming as a city-wide welcome home celebration held once every four years for former residents and family members to reconnect with their hometown. ”You had a lot of people congregating in one area, just hanging out and wanting to be part of the neighborhood activities. And then, at that point at time, it got into late night, and when you get into late nights, you usually have some sort of curfew violations, alcohol, guns and drugs seem to be a problem.”
Malone said Muncie has not had a community-wide gun violence initiative since 2015.
”We’ve always had concerns about this area and teenagers involved with handguns,” said Malone, whose niece attended the party. ”She just got out of surgery. She’s doing well. She’s whole. And then my godson was being treated out at Ball Hospital.”
Malone said he will meet with the city’s police leadership Monday morning to review the shooting and plans for keeping Muncie streets safe the rest of the summer.
”The mayor knows my push for gun violence, the lack of gun violence education, the lack of gun violence awareness, the lack of how to report gun violence in and out of our homes,” Malone said. “There’s a way to report crime, there’s a way to report guns, and we just have to report guns in and out of our backpacks and homes.”
Muncie is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The city is home to about 65,000 people. | https://www.kark.com/news/national-news/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:22 | 0 | https://www.kark.com/news/national-news/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ |
DUNEDIN, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand outshot Switzerland and even moved goalkeeper Victoria Esson into an attack position several times, but failed to break a 0-0 tie Sunday in the Women’s World Cup and became the first host nation to be eliminated in group play in tournament history.
The Football Ferns are co-hosting the World Cup with Australia, which must win Monday against Canada to avoid its own early elimination.
Switzerland advanced to the round of 16. The Swiss also played to a scoreless draw against Norway, but won the group with the draw against New Zealand, coupled with the Norwegians’ simultaneous 6-0 rout of the Philippines.
New Zealand controlled the pace for long stretches of the match and had its chances to score, outshooting Switzerland 12-3. Jacqui Hand knocked a shot off the right post in the 24th minute.
All 25,947 seats at Forsyth Barr Stadiums were filled — the only one of Dunedin’s six tournament matches to sell out. The raucous crowd stomped and cheered all night, to no avail.
The tournament began July 20 with New Zealand upsetting Norway 1-0, but the Ferns failed to score from the 48th minute of that match through two more games. They lost their previous match 1-0 against the Philippines.
KEY MOMENTS
Esson moved into an offensive position several times in the last minutes of the match as New Zealand pressed for a winner. She managed a header off a corner kick but was off target.
WHY IT MATTERS
Switzerland becomes one of two teams from Group A to advance to the round of 16. It’s only the team’s second time in the knockout round — the first was in the Swiss’ only previous Women’s World Cup in 2015.
The New Zealanders’ failure to score put an end to their Women’s World Cup run.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“Just gutted, I think. Obviously we talked and we were proud of ourselves and what we’ve been able to accomplish, but at the end of the day we wanted to get out of this group stage and we just didn’t. It’s just black and white. So, obviously gutted,” said New Zealand midfielder Malia Steinmetz of the elimination.
“We expected it to be really tough. New Zealand really tried everything they could, and I think we knew how to respond, especially defensively. We did a lot right,” said Inka Grings, Switzerland’s coach.
WHAT’S NEXT
Switzerland will play either Spain or Japan from Group C, pending a match between those teams on Monday to decide the top two places in that group.
New Zealand is done for the Women’s World Cup.
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Ellen McIntyre is a student in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.
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AP Women’s World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-new-zealand-out-of-womens-world-cup-following-0-0-draw-with-switzerland-as-swiss-advance/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:23 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-new-zealand-out-of-womens-world-cup-following-0-0-draw-with-switzerland-as-swiss-advance/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When viewed through a wide lens, renters across the U.S. finally appear to be getting some relief, thanks in part to the biggest apartment construction boom in decades.
Median rent rose just 0.5% in June, year over year, after falling in May for the first time since the pandemic hit the U.S. Some economists project U.S. rents will be down modestly this year after soaring nearly 25% over the past four years.
A closer look, however, shows the trend will likely be little comfort for many U.S. renters who’ve had to put an increasing share of their income toward their monthly payment. Renters in cities such as Cincinnati and Indianapolis are still getting hit with increases of 5% or more. Much of the new construction is located in just a few metro areas, and many of the new units are luxury apartments, which rent for well north of $2,000.
Median U.S. rent has risen to $2,029 this June from $1,629 in June 2019, according to rental listings company Rent, which tracks rents in 50 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Demand for apartments exploded during the pandemic as people who could work remotely sought more space or decided to relocate to another part of the country.
The steep rent increases have left tenants like Melissa Lombana, a high school teacher who lives in the South Florida city of Miramar, with progressively less income to spend on other needs.
The rent on her one-bedroom apartment jumped 13% last year to $1,700. It climbed another 6% to $1,800 this month when she renewed her lease.
“Even the $1,700 was a stretch for me,” said Lombana, 43, who supplements her teaching income with a side job doing educational testing. “In a year, I will not be able to afford living here at all.”
Lombana’s rent is now gobbling up nearly half her monthly income. That puts her in a category referred to as “cost-burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, denoting households that pay 30% or more of their income toward rent. Last year, the average rent-to-income ratio per household rose to 30%. This March, it was 29.6%.
Lombana hasn’t had any luck finding a more affordable apartment. While South Florida is one of the metropolitan areas seeing a rise in apartment construction, the units are mostly high-end and not a viable option.
That scenario is playing out across the nation. Developers are rushing to complete projects that were green-lit during the pandemic-era surge in demand for rentals or left in limbo by delays in supplies of fixtures and building materials. Nearly 1.1 million apartments are currently under construction, according to the commercial real estate tracker CoStar, a pace not seen since the 1970s.
Increasing the supply of apartments tends to moderate rent increases over time and can give tenants more options on where to live. But more than 40% of the new rentals to be completed this year will be concentrated in about 10 high job growth metropolitan areas, including Austin, Nashville, Denver, Atlanta and New York, according to Marcus & Millichap. In many areas, the boost to overall inventory will be barely noticeable.
Even within metros where there’ll be a notable increase in available apartments, such as Nashville, most of it will be in the luxury category, where rents average $2,270, nationally. Some 70% of the new rental inventory will be the luxury class, said Jay Lybik, national director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.
That will leave most tenants unlikely to see a big enough reduction in rent to make a difference, industry experts and economists say.
“I think we’re in a period of rent flattening for 12 or 18 months, but it’s certainly not a big rent decline,” said Hessam Nadji, CEO of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap.
“We’re building a multi-decade record number of units,” Nadji said. “It’s going to cause some softening and some pockets of overbuilding, but it’s not going to fundamentally resolve the housing shortage or the affordability problem for renters across the U.S.”
The surge in rents has made it difficult for workers to keep up with inflation despite solid wage gains the past few years and exacerbated a long-term trend. Between 1999 and 2022, U.S. rents soared 135%, while income grew 77%, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
Realtor.com is forecasting that rents will drop an average of 0.9% this year. But while down nationally, rents are still rising in many markets around the country, especially those where hiring remains robust.
In the New York metro area, the median rent climbed 4.7% in June from a year earlier to $2,899, according to Realtor.com. In the Midwest, rents surged 5.6% in the Cincinnati metro area to $1,188, and 6.9% to $1,350 in the Indianapolis metro area.
The current spike in apartment construction alone isn’t going to be enough to address how costly renting has become for many Americans.
“For the rest of the 2020s rents will continue to grow because millennials are such a big generation and we’re very much in the hole in terms of building housing for that generation,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “It will take many good years of new construction to build adequate housing for millennials.”
The bigger challenge is building more work force housing, because the cost of land, labor and navigating the government approval process incentivize developers to put up luxury apartments buildings.
Expanding the supply of modestly priced rentals would help alleviate the strain from so many new apartments targeting renters with high incomes, “although additional subsidies will be needed to make housing affordable to households with the lowest incomes,” researchers at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies wrote in a recent report.
Despite the overall pullback in U.S. rents, Joey Di Girolamo, in Pembroke Pines, Florida, worries that he’ll face more sharp rent increases in coming years.
Last year, the web designer left a two-bedroom, two-bath townhome he rented for $2,200 a month to avoid a $600 a month increase. This year, his rent went up by $200, a nearly 10% jump.
“That blew me away,” said Di Girolamo, 50. “I’m just kind of dreading what it’s going to be like next year, but especially 3 or 4 years from now.” | https://www.kark.com/news/national-news/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:28 | 0 | https://www.kark.com/news/national-news/renters-get-relief-from-rising-prices-except-in-certain-us-cities/ |
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 Erika Aguilar.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-26/colleges-are-ending-legacy-admissions-to-diversify-campuses-post-affirmative-action | 2023-07-31T00:30:29 | 0 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-26/colleges-are-ending-legacy-admissions-to-diversify-campuses-post-affirmative-action |
NEW YORK (AP) — A week later, the “Barbenheimer” boom has not abated.
Seven days after Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” conspired to set box office records, the two films held unusually strongly in theaters. “Barbie” took in a massive $93 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Oppenheimer” stayed in second with a robust $46.2 million. Sales for the two movies dipped 43% and 44%, respectably — well shy of the usual week-two drops.
“Barbenheimer” has proven to be not a one-weekend phenomenon but an ongoing box-office bonanza. The two movies combined have already surpassed $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore, call it “a touchstone moment for movies, moviegoers and movie theaters.”
“Having two movies from rival studios linked in this way and both boosting each other’s fortunes — both box-office wise and it terms of their profile — I don’t know if there’s a comp for this in the annals of box-office history,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s really no comparison for this.”
Following its year-best $162 million opening, the pink-infused pop sensation of “Barbie” saw remarkably sustained business through the week and into the weekend. The film outpaced Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” to have the best first 11 days in theaters of any Warner Bros. release ever.
“Barbie” has rapidly accumulated $351.4 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, a rate that will soon make it the biggest box-office hit of the summer. Every day it’s played, “Barbie” has made at least $20 million.
And the “Barbie” effect isn’t just in North America. The film made $122.2 million internationally over the weekend. Its global tally has reached $775 million. It’s the kind of business that astounds even veteran studio executives.
“That’s a crazy number,” said Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros. “There’s just a built-in audience that wants to be part of the zeitgeist of the moment. Wherever you go, people are wearing pink. Pink is taking over the world.”
Amid the frenzy, “Barbie” is already attracting a lot of repeat moviegoers. Goldstein estimates that 12% of sales are people going back with friends or family to see it again.
For a movie industry that has been trying to regain its pre-pandemic footing — and that now finds itself largely shuttered due to actors and screenwriters strikes — the sensations of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have showed what’s possible when everything lines up just right.
“Post-pandemic, there’s no ceiling and there’s no floor,” Goldstein said. “The movies that miss really miss big time, and the movies that work really work big time.”
Universal Pictures’ “Oppenheimer,” meanwhile, is performing more like a superhero movie than a three-hour film about scientists talking.
Nolan’s drama starring Cillian Murphy as atomic bomb physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer has accrued $174.1 million domestically thus far. With an additional $72.4 million in international cinemas, “Oppenheimer” has already surpassed $400 million globally.
Showings in IMAX have typically been sold out. “Oppenheimer” has made $80 million worldwide on IMAX. The large-format exhibitor said Sunday that it will extend the film’s run through Aug. 13.
The week’s top new release, Walt Disney Co.’s “Haunted Mansion,” an adaptation of the Disney theme park attraction, was easily overshadowed by the “Barbenheimer” blitz. The film, which cost about $150 million, debuted with $24 million domestically and $9 million in overseas sales. “Haunted Mansion,” directed by Justin Simien (“Dear White People,” “Bad Hair”) and starring an ensemble of LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Rosario Dawson, struggled to overcome mediocre reviews.
“Talk to Me,” the A24 supernatural horror film, fared better. It debuted with $10 million. The film, directed by Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou and starring Sophie Wilde, was a midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and received terrific reviews from critics (95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). It was made for a modest $4.5 million.
While theaters being flush with moviegoers has been a huge boon to the film industry, it’s been tougher sledding for Tom Cruise, the so-called savior of the movies last summer with “Top Gun: Maverick.” “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I,” which debuted the week before the arrival of “Barbenheimer,” grossed $10.7 million in its third weekend. The film starring Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, has grossed $139.2 million domestically and $309.3 million oveseas.
Instead, the sleeper hit “Sound of Freedom” has been the best performing non-“Barbenheimer” release in theaters. The Angel Studios’ release, which is counting crowdfunding pay-it-forward sales in its box office totals, made $12.4 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its haul thus far to nearly $150 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Barbie,” $93 million.
2. “Opppenheimer,” $46.2 million.
3. “Haunted Mansion,” $24.2 million.
4. “Sound of Freedom,” $12.4 million.
5. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” $10.7 million.
6. “Talk to Me,” $10 million.
7. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $4 million.
8. “Elemental,” $3.4 million.
9. “Insidious: The Red Door,” $3.2 million.
10. “Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani,” $1.6 million. | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/while-barbie-bonanza-continues-at-the-box-office-oppenheimer-holds-no-2-spot/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:28 | 1 | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/while-barbie-bonanza-continues-at-the-box-office-oppenheimer-holds-no-2-spot/ |
HOUSTON (AP) — Quarterback C.J. Stroud, taken second overall in this year’s draft, isn’t worried that the Panthers picked No. 1 selection Bryce Young as their starter on Day 1 of training camp while the Houston Texans are making him compete for the job.
“I’m happy for him, but his situation is his situation, and my situation is mine,” Stroud said Sunday. “So, I know that I’ve got to work on my end and do whatever I’ve got to do to make this team better. It’s not about the starter (or) who’s not the starter, it’s about getting better for Week 1 against Baltimore.”
Stroud is vying with Davis Mills to be the team’s quarterback. The Texans have split first-team snaps between the two in the first few days of camp.
Houston drafted Stroud after Mills struggled as the team’s starter for the past two years after Deshaun Watson sat out following a trade request before being shipped to Cleveland before last season.
Mills went 5-22-1 in 28 games, including 26 starts, as the Texans were among the NFL’s worst teams.
Stroud is just the third quarterback the Texans have drafted in the first round, joining Watson, taken 12th in 2017 and David Carr, the team’s first draft pick who was taken first overall in 2002.
After using such a high pick on Stroud it’s hard to imagine that he won’t end up as the team’s starter. But for now, new coach DeMeco Ryans is adamant that it’s an open competition between the former Ohio State star and Mills.
While Ryans won’t answer questions about what Stroud will have to do to win the job, he’s had plenty to say about the dedication the 21-year-old has shown since joining the team.
“What you see about C.J. is the work and preparation that he does when he’s not here,” Ryans said. “He’s a true football junkie. He loves football, always watching football, always asking for extra cut-ups from our coaches. I’m so impressed with the mental part of him and just how much he loves the game of football. When a guy has that much love for the game of football, he’s (only) going to continue to get better.”
Stroud was a two-year starter for Ohio State, where he threw for 8,123 yards with 85 touchdowns and just 12 interceptions as the Buckeyes went 21-4. His 85 touchdowns over two seasons broke a Big Ten record held by Drew Brees.
Despite competing with Mills for the job, the rookie said that he and fellow quarterback Case Keenum have both helped him a lot as he’s made the jump from college to the pros.
“I’ve learned everything from Davis,” Stroud said. “Davis and Case are great vets. And just because we may be competing against each other, doesn’t mean that we’re not going to learn from each other. I’ve had a really great time being in the room with those guys.”
Stroud certainly knows what’s at stake for him in this camp, but he’s trying not to let the competition change how he approaches his job day to day.
“I feel like when you try to have a different mindset you confuse yourself,” he said. “So, for me, I just try to keep my head down and I work — just try to work harder and harder every day. Just trying to … be the best person I can be on and off the field.”
As Stroud prepares for his first NFL season, he certainly has plenty of goals. However, his approach to goals has never been to list only lofty, far down the road ones.
“I have goals written down,” he said. “I did it in college and I’ll do it now. But I have a lot of things that I put down, like really small goals. I think the more you can accomplish small goals in your life, the big ones can come kind of natural. And they come as you get the small ones checked off.”
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-no-2-pick-stroud-competes-with-mills-for-starting-qb-job-with-houston-texans/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:30 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-no-2-pick-stroud-competes-with-mills-for-starting-qb-job-with-houston-texans/ |
A cold front moved across the state Saturday, giving us out 17th wet weekend of the year, and bringing in some drier air. Temperatures were warm on Sunday but lower humidity gave us a more comfortable day. The sunny, warm, less humid weather pattern will be with us to start the week. Temperatures and humidity will start to rise by Wednesday and our rain chance will increase to end the work week. Warmer temperatures, higher humidity and scattered storms will be in the forecast for Thursday and Friday as another storm system approaches. Behind our next cold front temperatures and humidity will lower for the weekend.
July was a very wet month for Indianapolis. We had measurable precipitation on 13 of 31 days of the month for a total of 6.06″ of rain, 1.64″ above average. For comparison sake, we had 6.27″ of rain during the combines months of April, May and June. July was also a mild month with near average temperatures. We only had three days of 90° heat, seven is average. We did however, have some extreme heat, during the last week of the month when the heat index was near 100°
The 30-day outlook for August is calling for near average temperatures and above average precipitation so our mild, wet trend is expected to continue through the rest of the summer.
Monday will be a sunny, warm day.
July was a mild, wet month and this will be a warm week.
August will be a mild, wet month. | https://fox59.com/news/a-mild-dry-end-to-july-august-starts-with-temperatures-and-humidity-gradually-rising/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:34 | 0 | https://fox59.com/news/a-mild-dry-end-to-july-august-starts-with-temperatures-and-humidity-gradually-rising/ |
FAYETTEVILLE, Ar. (KNWA/KFTA) – On this weeks’ Hog Hoops Report, our Evan Kamikow is joined by hogs hoops insider Kevin McPherson to talk the latest on the state of Arkansas basketball.
From the addition of Denijay Harris to the roster, an official visit from K. Annor Boateng, and the upcoming Arkansas and Purdue exhibition match, the guys cover it all. | https://www.kark.com/pig-trail-nation/hog-hoops-report-with-kevin-mcpherson-breakdown-of-hogs-commit-denijay-harris-2024-target-annor-boateng-and-more/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:34 | 0 | https://www.kark.com/pig-trail-nation/hog-hoops-report-with-kevin-mcpherson-breakdown-of-hogs-commit-denijay-harris-2024-target-annor-boateng-and-more/ |
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.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-26/a-mississippi-law-limits-who-can-help-mail-in-voters-a-federal-court-struck-it-down | 2023-07-31T00:30:35 | 1 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/national-world-news/2023-07-26/a-mississippi-law-limits-who-can-help-mail-in-voters-a-federal-court-struck-it-down |
(The Hill) – Northwestern is the latest in a long line of universities to come under public scrutiny due to a scandal over hazing, a practice that has refused to go extinct in colleges and high schools despite multiple concerted efforts to end it.
Hazing, which in rare instances has proven fatal, in particular plagues sports teams and Greek Life.
Experts say education on the issue and increased consequences are needed to create a real change, although they are skeptical the dangerous practice will exit school life anytime soon.
“Hazing has always been prevalent in society, not just in colleges. It’s anywhere that you see a different power dynamic between people who are trying to join a group [and] people who are in the group,” said Todd Shelton, executive director of the Hazing Prevention Network. “There’s research that shows that hazing starts long before college and in those younger ages. It’s especially prevalent in athletic teams camps, performing arts groups.”
The latest high-profile hazing incident comes from Northwestern University, where the head football coach was recently let go and a barrage of lawsuits have fallen on the school.
One of the reported rituals of hazing on the school’s football team was younger players getting restrained in the locker room by older ones while others dry humped the individual. Another incident described in a lawsuit against the school was a ritual called “carwash” where players were forced to rub themselves against a line of naked men in the showers.
“Certainly, it is typical hazing activities that we’ve seen before and it’s not unusual that they’re shrouded with secrecy. So I applaud the people who came forward and reported because that’s — that’s key for institutions to be able to make changes,” Shelton said. “I think those acts are horrible and examples of how hazing can quickly escalate from what individuals think is something that’s mild and or funny, to quickly being something that’s dangerous, either mentally or physically, to the victims.”
Experts say preventing hazing incidents has to start by educating people about its warning signs and dangers.
A study in 2008 showed 73 percent of students who have been in a sorority or fraternity said they experienced behaviors that meet the definition of hazing, such as being forced into drinking games or getting screamed at by other members.
The same study showed 74 percent of athletes in athletic programs also experienced behaviors that amount to hazing.
“Hazing is specific to that group context where someone is seeking inclusion or a sense of belonging in a club, team or organization. They’re a newcomer typically coming into this group situation, and because of that group dynamic there can be an incredible amount of peer pressure and sometimes a coercive environment. And so that can impede or be a barrier to recognizing and or reporting hazing because there can be a lot of fear,” Elizabeth Allan, a professor at the University of Maine, said.
These rituals and desires to be part of the in-group have led to some deadly consequences for young people.
In 2019, five Penn State University students were sentenced to jail after a 19-year-old student at a Beta Theta Pi fraternity house died at a party after hazing-based binge drinking.
While most hazing incidents don’t result in incarceration, there are other consequences for students who are caught for the crime.
“Financial, monetary damages. People have lost their jobs. People have gone to jail or had, criminal penalties, fines and so forth. Let’s say sometimes when it’s a student organization or a team so with a student organization, they’re often suspended or lose their recognition with the campus for a period of time, and with an athletic team sometimes a portion of the season is put on hold or canceled entirely sometimes at the high school level, we’ve seen that recently.” Allan, who also leads the organization Stop Hazing, said.
And yet, even as schools ramp up their efforts, hazing persists.
Allan says a multifaceted strategy is needed to tackle the problem, and her group has developed a “Hazing Prevention Framework” for schools to follow.
“They can use it to also do some strategic planning and set some goals for the improvements they want to make, and all this is really … based on a public health approach to organizational change and promoting healthy behaviors in a community setting,” Allan said.
Shelton said his group also advocates for hazing to be treated as a felony, whereas many states look at it as a misdemeanor.
“The problem is it’s not taken seriously in the law, and we’ve seen a lot of hazing cases, even when there’s been a death… [where] prosecutors don’t consider it hazing or don’t consider hazing to be a serious crime to go through the measures of prosecuting,” Shelton said. “And so that’s why we’ve been working hard to strengthen those state laws.” | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/why-is-hazing-so-hard-to-eliminate/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:36 | 0 | https://cw33.com/news/nexstar-media-wire/why-is-hazing-so-hard-to-eliminate/ |
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) — Sophie Roman Haug’s hat trick kick-started Norway’s dormant offense and sparked a 6-0 blowout win over the Philippines on Sunday that moved the Norwegians into to the knockout stage of the Women’s World Cup.
The Philippines’ debut run in the tournament came to an end as Norway scored early and often, netting three goals in the first 31 minutes.
Norway’s spot in the round of 16 was secured when Switzerland and New Zealand simultaneously played to a 0-0 draw and the Norwegians. Norway and New Zealand were tied in Group A but Norway advanced on goal differential. New Zealand became the first host country to be eliminated in the group stage in tournament history.
Before the game, Norway had not scored in three consecutive Women’s World Cup matches dating to the quarterfinals of the 2019 tournament.
But Roman Haug one-timed a ball into the net in the sixth minute, and scored again 11 minutes later. Caroline Graham Hansen added a long-distance shot in the 31st minute.
Roman Haug completed the hat trick in injury time.
In the second half, an Alicia Barker own goal in the 48th minute and Guro Reiten’s penalty kick in the 53rd minute extended Norway’s lead to 5-0. Filipina defender Sofia Harrison received a red card in the 67th minute for using excessive force, and the Philippines played the rest of the match a player down.
Eden Park was turned into a makeshift home match for the Philippines, as the Filipina fans screamed in unison any time the Philippines touched the ball, even as the deficit grew.
The Philippines were fresh off of a historic 1-0 win over co-host New Zealand that marked the first Women’s World Cup win for the debutantes.
KEY MOMENTS
Roman Haug got the Norwegians off to a hot start. The first of her two goals was a left-footed volley from inside the six-yard box in the sixth minute. Eleven minutes later, Roman Haug scored a header delivered by a Vilde Boe Risa cross. Roman Haug’s header flew over the reach of Philippines goalkeeper Olivia McDaniel.
Graham Hansen scored on a long-distance strike that curled into the bottom left corner in the 31st minute to give Norway its third goal of the half.
From that point on, Norway was in control.
WHY IT MATTERS
The win advances Norway to the knockout stage after the Norwegians found themselves in last place in Group A heading into the Philippines match.
The Norwegians had yet to score in 2023 before their six-goal eruption.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“They showed some of their class today with their skill. They picked us apart and won a couple of battles in the air in the box early. We really released the pressure early and allowed them to, sort of, be a little more creative as the game went on,” Philippines head coach Alen Stajcic said.
“We’ve been talking quite a bit about having the first goal, then it will give us energy. We know in our attack, we are strong and have good combination play both on the right side and left side. Today was the day that, when we had the first one, we knew there could be more,” Norway head coach Hege Riise said.
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WHAT’S NEXT
Norway will play either Japan or Spain in the round of 16 next Saturday, depending on the results of a game between those Group C teams on Monday.
The inaugural tournament run ends for the Philippines, who needed at least a draw to have a chance of moving on.
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Zach Allen is a student in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.
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AP Women’s World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-norway-moves-into-the-knockout-round-at-womens-world-cup-with-6-0-rout-over-the-philippines/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:37 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-norway-moves-into-the-knockout-round-at-womens-world-cup-with-6-0-rout-over-the-philippines/ |
MUNCIE, Ind. (WXIN) — A street party in Muncie, Indiana, turned into the scene of a deadly shooting early Sunday morning.
One man died and nearly two dozen others were injured. Of those wounded, 19 were treated at Ball Memorial Hospital’s emergency room, and four were taken to other hospitals. Thirteen victims remained hospitalized in stable condition Sunday afternoon.
After the mass shooting, police announced that there was no further danger to the general public.
”Stranger comes up and decides to take it personal on somebody he knows in the crowd,” said one anonymous man who claimed his nephew was the block party’s disc jockey. “And you can’t fight against an AR. He let loose in the crowd. Everywhere in the crowd.”
The Delaware County coroner identified the deceased victim as 30-year-old Joseph Bonner. There’s no indication if Bonner played an active role in the shooting, whether any other victims are suspected of firing guns, or if any firearms were recovered.
A witness at IU/Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie described a scene of emergency department chaos with more than 100 people descending on the facility — many of whom were victims that were taken to the hospital by private vehicles.
Officers from several agencies — including a Muncie-based FBI agent — secured the crime scene and collected evidence while doctors and nurses treated the wounded from the mass casualty event.
By midday, detectives were still walking the debris-strewn street and parking lot with brown bags filled with collected evidence. A tow truck was also seen hauling away a bullet-riddled red Buick that appeared to have crashed during an attempt to leave the scene.
The Muncie Homecoming Festival committee said the street party where the shooting happened was not part of the official MHF celebration going on this week.
Muncie Parks Superintendent Carl Malone told Nexstar’s WXIN he chaired a neighborhood crime watch meeting last Thursday, and residents expressed fear that this weekend could turn volatile.
”We was a little concerned about violence that we thought might happen,” said Malone, who described Muncie Homecoming as a city-wide welcome home celebration held once every four years for former residents and family members to reconnect with their hometown. ”You had a lot of people congregating in one area, just hanging out and wanting to be part of the neighborhood activities. And then, at that point at time, it got into late night, and when you get into late nights, you usually have some sort of curfew violations, alcohol, guns and drugs seem to be a problem.”
Malone said Muncie has not had a community-wide gun violence initiative since 2015.
”We’ve always had concerns about this area and teenagers involved with handguns,” said Malone, whose niece attended the party. ”She just got out of surgery. She’s doing well. She’s whole. And then my godson was being treated out at Ball Hospital.”
Malone said he will meet with the city’s police leadership Monday morning to review the shooting and plans for keeping Muncie streets safe the rest of the summer.
”The mayor knows my push for gun violence, the lack of gun violence education, the lack of gun violence awareness, the lack of how to report gun violence in and out of our homes,” Malone said. “There’s a way to report crime, there’s a way to report guns, and we just have to report guns in and out of our backpacks and homes.”
Muncie is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis. The city is home to about 65,000 people. | https://fox59.com/news/national-world/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:40 | 0 | https://fox59.com/news/national-world/1-dead-23-wounded-after-street-party-shooting-in-indiana/ |
BENTON, Ark. – The Benton Police Department has announced that they have received funding from the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership and will be forming a new Overdose Response Team that will begin training in August.
Thanks to the funding, the team is now approved for the Naloxone Hero Program, which will enable naloxone dissemination and training for families and community members.
Peer Recovery Specialist Sean Willits said that the program equips community members to act in moments of life and death.
“We will begin the training in August,” Willits said. “Equipping community members with the knowledge and capacity to act in moments of life and death is an invaluable part of the Overdose Response Team’s efforts. We are committed to saving lives and helping resolve the issues around substance use disorder.”
Willits said more details, including official dates and times, will be forthcoming. If you know anyone struggling with substance use who is wanting help, please reach out to Willits at 501-239-2147 (office) or 501-326-5222 (cell).
For more information regarding ARORP, visit www.arorp.org. | https://www.kark.com/savingargeneration/benton-police-department-receives-funding-for-naloxone-training-dissemination/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:40 | 1 | https://www.kark.com/savingargeneration/benton-police-department-receives-funding-for-naloxone-training-dissemination/ |
SYDNEY (AP) — Some of the biggest names in soccer have yet to show up at the Women’s World Cup.
That’s literally been the case of Australian star Sam Kerr, who missed the first two games with a calf injury.
Kerr has recovered in time to play for Australia in a crucial final Group B game against Canada on Monday. The Matildas need to beat the Canadians to ensure they advance to the knockout round, and the Chelsea striker’s return to the lineup brings needed energy to the team.
“Mentally, it’s massive. It brings so much to our team and obviously also a lot to the opposition knowing that we have Sam available for this game,” Australia defender Ellie Carpenter said.
Kerr’s injury on the eve of Australia’s opening game against Ireland set the tone for a tournament that hasn’t been kind to some of its biggest stars. She was the face of co-host Australia’s preparations for the tournament, which is also being staged in New Zealand.
She dominated the covers of magazines across newsstands, while the autobiography she released late last year chronicled her rise to become arguably the best player in the women’s game right now. Kerr’s popularity transcends women’s soccer and she is considered a national icon.
So the disappointment was palpable when news broke about an hour before the opening match that Kerr was going to be sidelined at least two games in this tournament.
Kerr’s absence was felt in the 3-2 loss to Nigeria in Australia’s second game, a loss that put the Matildas in danger of elimination. It is not known what her role will be against Canada, but Australia needs Kerr to deliver in the final game of group play.
“I’m definitely going to be available, but how we decide to use that is not to be given to the opposition,” said Kerr.
The World Cup is supposed to be a showcase for the finest talent and biggest names, but injuries have always robbed the tournament of some its star players.
Norway forward Ada Hegerberg has had her playing time curtailed. Often referred to as “the Lionel Messi of women’s soccer,” Hederberg was part of a Norway’s 1-0 upset loss to New Zealand in the opening game of the World Cup.
It got worse for the 2018 Ballon d’Or winner when she suffered a groin injury in the warm-up ahead of Norway’s game against Switzerland, and she’s been ruled out of the final Group A game against the Philippines.
Keira Walsh of England suffered a knee injury against Denmark that will sidenline her for the Lionesses’ final Group D game against China. Described as irreplaceable, it is not known how much she will be able to play.
Even for some stars who have seen plenty of playing time, it has been difficult to make an impact.
American icon Alex Morgan has underwhelmed so far at her fourth World Cup, where she is hoping to help the United States to an unprecedented third consecutive title.
Morgan, the co-leading scorer at the last World Cup, has yet to score at this year’s event and missed a penalty in the 3-0 win against Vietnam. U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski said Morgan was adapting to playing in a forward line with Sophia Smith and Trinity Rodman.
“I think it’s not hard to realize that Alex’s role is slightly different than the Alex that we’re used to maybe in the past,” Andonovski said. “She does set up the other two forwards a lot more. It’s not that she’s not capable of scoring goals or getting behind crosses, but we can also see her playing balls to Trinity and Soph, but also getting crosses for them as well.”
Morgan, at 34, is now one of the older players at the tournament.
Christine Sinclair of Canada is also searching for first goal of the tournament. Sinclair is highest scorer in international soccer — men or women — with 190 goals.
Like Morgan, she also missed a penalty, in a 0-0 draw with Nigeria that could still prove costly. She was benched for Canada’s second game against Ireland before coming in as a substitute at halftime as the gold medalist from the Tokyo Olympics logged a come-from-behind 2-1 win.
At 40 years old, Sinclair is having to accept a more limited role for Canada.
Brazil great Marta, at 37, has also been used sparingly in her sixth World Cup.
Her teammate, Debinha, who is also an iconic figure to Brazil fans, has been one of the standout players for her country so far. But she wasn’t able to stop a 2-1 loss to France on Saturday despite scoring in that match.
The gap appears to be closing in the women’s game, with underdogs proving more of a test for the more established nations. That’s one reason some of the big name stars have yet to impress in tournament.
One of the few standouts who has not disappointed so far has been Alexandra Popp, who scored twice in Germany’s 6-0 rout of Morocco.
Major tournaments are traditionally a mix of rising talents coming to the surface, while established stars have the chance to confirm their status among the greats.
Linda Caicedo of Colombia, Lauren James of England and Melchie Dumornay of Haiti have proven their worth as some of the brightest prospects in the game. But as the second round of games nears its completion, it feels like the tournament is still waiting for many of its big hitters to make an impact.
___
James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
___
More AP Women’s World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-some-of-soccers-biggest-stars-are-struggling-to-make-an-impact-at-the-womens-world-cup/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:44 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-some-of-soccers-biggest-stars-are-struggling-to-make-an-impact-at-the-womens-world-cup/ |
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Jewell Loyd scored 26 points with eight assists, Jordan Horston made 7 of 11 from the field and finished with 15 points to help the Seattle Storm beat the Indiana Fever, 85-62, on Sunday.
Seattle (6-19), which snapped a franchise-record 10-game losing streak with a 97-74 win Friday over the Chicago Sky, has won back-to-back games for the first time this season.
Indiana (6-19) has lost four games in a row and 12 of its last 13 to fall into a tie with the Storm for last in the WNBA standings — a half-game behind the Phoenix Mercury.
Loyd made 4 of 6 from the field, 3 of 4 from 3-point range, and 4 of 4 from the free-throw line in the first half and had 15 points and four assists as the Storm took a 47-27 lead into halftime. Indiana went scoreless for six-plus minutes in the second quarter as Seattle scored 15 points to open its biggest lead of the game at 44-19 with 2:32 left in the first half.
Kelsey Mitchell hit a 3-pointer to cap a 9-2 spurt that trimmed Indiana’s deficit to 57-51 late in the third quarter, but Loyd answered with a three-point play and then hit two free throws and the Fever trailed by double figures throughout the fourth.
The Storm had 23 assists on 31 made field goals and shot 53.4% from the field, made 12 of 24 from behind the arc and hit 11 of 13 from the free-throw line. Indiana was 25-of-66 (38%) shooting and made just 4 of 16 from 3-point range.
Mitchell hit three 3s and led the Fever with 19 points. Aliyah Boston added 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting. | https://fox59.com/sports/jewell-loyd-scores-26-as-seattle-storm-cruise-by-indiana-fever/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:46 | 1 | https://fox59.com/sports/jewell-loyd-scores-26-as-seattle-storm-cruise-by-indiana-fever/ |
TONIGHT: A few showers and storms will be possible across the state before midnight. After that, we will see partly cloudy skies and temperatures cooling into the upper 70s. Northeast wind 5 mph.
MONDAY: A complex of showers and thunderstorms will enter northern Arkansas Monday morning. It will move into the Little Rock metro around noon and impact southern Arkansas during the afternoon. There is a very low risk of severe weather. Folks that see rain will enjoy cooler temperatures! East wind around 5 mph.
TUESDAY: There is a lower chance of showers and storms Tuesday morning. I think most of the activity will stay in Northeast Arkansas. It will be very hot with temperatures in the upper 90s and low 100s. Feels like temperatures will be near 110°. Southeast wind 5-10 mph.
EXTENDED OUTLOOK: The hottest temperatures of the year will arrive mid to late week. Temperatures will be in the low 100s and feels like temperatures will be over 110°.
– Meteorologist Alex Libby
Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram | https://www.kark.com/weather/weather-forecasts/arkansas-storm-team-forecast-less-hot-and-stormy-to-start-the-week/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:46 | 1 | https://www.kark.com/weather/weather-forecasts/arkansas-storm-team-forecast-less-hot-and-stormy-to-start-the-week/ |
SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium (AP) — Defending Formula One champion Max Verstappen enters the mid-season break in unstoppable form, after emphatically winning the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday for an eighth straight win and 10th overall of a crushingly dominant season.
Despite starting from sixth place he finished 22.3 seconds ahead of teammate Sergio Perez to give Red Bull an easy 1-2. It moved Verstappen ominously closer to a third straight world title and his own F1 record of 15 wins from last year.
Verstappen is 125 points ahead of Perez after just 12 races, and his next target is matching Sebastian Vettel’s F1 record of nine straight wins with a victory at the Dutch GP when the lopsided season resumes on Aug. 27.
“I just want to have a nice time now, have a bit of time with family and friends,” Verstappen said.
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc finished in third spot for a third podium of the season, with Lewis Hamilton in fourth for Mercedes ahead of Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.
George Russell was sixth for Mercedes, with Lando Norris (McLaren), Esteban Ocon (Alpine), Lance Stroll (Aston Martin), and Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) completing the top 10.
Leclerc started on pole ahead of Perez, with Hamilton and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. behind them. McLaren rookie Oscar Piastri was on the next row alongside Verstappen — who was fastest in Friday’s qualifying but took a five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change and had to avoid early traffic.
“It was just about surviving turn one. I could see it was all getting really tight,” Verstappen said. “I’ve been in that position before myself so I am just going to stay out of that and it worked out. From there onwards I made the right overtakes.”
Last year Verstappen won from 14th, and once he overtook Perez on Lap 17 of 44 his 45th career win was seemingly inevitable.
“Really enjoyable to drive once I got in the lead,” Verstappen said. “It was again a great race.“
Red Bull extended its record to 13 straight wins, including the final race of last season.
Hamilton came in on the penultimate lap for a tire change and the move paid off as he took the bonus point for fastest lap from Verstappen — a very minor blip for the dominant Dutchman.
It was yet another stellar weekend for Verstappen, who also won Saturday’s sprint race. The only issue was some more bickering with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase over radio, as they continued their spat from Friday’s qualifying.
“Don’t forget Max, use your head, please,” Lambiase told Verstappen when he questioned why Perez was making his first tire change on Lap 14.
Verstappen defused any talk of tension with Lambiase.
“It’s fine. We know each other very well and we have a very good relationship,” he said. “I think it’s really important.”
With some rain forecast, Verstappen boxed on the next lap and came out about 2 seconds behind Perez. Just minutes later he cruised past Perez and, as so often this season, the rest was just about control.
Perez, meanwhile, pledged to stay on the podium for the rest of the season.
“It’s been a bit of a rough patch,” the 33-year-old Mexican said. “I really need this summer break, it’s been really intense. I’ll come back really strong for Zandvoort.”
Conditions were dry for the race start, in stark contrast to the two previous days, which were impacted by heavy rain at the 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) Spa-Francorchamps circuit.
Leclerc, who won his first F1 race here in 2019, made a solid start but Perez’s extra pace soon put him in front.
“I knew it was quite crucial for my race to get Charles on Lap 1,” Perez said.
Verstappen rose two places to fourth after Sainz bumped into Piastri on the first corner.
Piastri had to retire, while Verstappen overtook Hamilton on Lap 6, Leclerc three laps later and made short work of Perez just before some rain fell briefly.
Some good overtaking from Ocon moved the Frenchman up from 10th to eighth in the closing stages.
It was an early end for Piastri, who had impressed with a second place in Saturday’s sprint race.
A bad day for Sainz saw him retiring on Lap 25 and Leclerc moving above him in the standings.
“Of course the race was good on my side, a shame for Carlos as we had good pace,” Leclerc said. “When you look at the Red Bulls we still have a lot of work to do … This was the best we could achieve today, no doubt.”
After the F1 break there will be 10 races left, but most of the competition for places will be behind Verstappen.
Alonso is one point ahead of Hamilton in third overall, with Leclerc and Russell level and Sainz seven points behind them.
___
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-verstappen-wins-belgian-gp-to-extend-huge-f1-lead-red-bull-teammate-perez-2nd/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:51 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/sports-news/ap-verstappen-wins-belgian-gp-to-extend-huge-f1-lead-red-bull-teammate-perez-2nd/ |
Russian missile attacks leave few options for Ukrainian farmers looking to export grain
(AP) -PAVLIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — The summer winds carried the smell of burned grain across the southern Ukrainian steppe and away from the shards of three Russian cruise missiles that struck the unassuming metal hangars.
The agricultural company Ivushka applied for accreditation to export grain this year, but the strike in mid-July destroyed a large portion of the stock, days after Russia abandoned the grain deal that would have allowed the shipments across the Black Sea without fear of attack.
Men shirtless and barefoot, with blackened soles from ash, swept unburnt grain into piles and awaited the loader, whose driver deftly steered around twisted metal shrapnel, bits of missile and craters despite his shattered windshield.
They hoped to beat the next rain to rescue what was left of the crop. According to the Odesa Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Russia struck the facility July 21 with three Kalibr- and Onyx-class cruise missiles.
“We don’t have a clue why they did it,” explained Olha Romanova, the head of Ivushka. Romanova, who worked in the debris alongside the others, wore a red headscarf and an exhausted expression and was too frazzled to even estimate her losses.
She cannot comprehend why the Russians targeted Ivushka, as there are no nearby military facilities and the frontlines are far from the village in the Odesa region.
“They spent so much money on us,” she said, puzzled. The missiles that ruined the silos are worth millions of dollars — far more than the crop they destroyed.
But Ivushka wasn’t the only target in Odesa. The main port also was struck, leaving Black Sea shipping companies that relied upon the grain deal to keep them safe and food supplies flowing to the world at a standstill.
The Black Sea handled about 95% of Ukrainian grain exports before Russia’s invasion and the U.N.-brokered initiative allowed Ukraine to ship much of what farmers harvested in 2021 and 2022, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Ukraine, a major supplier of corn, wheat, barley and vegetable oil, shipped 32.9 million metric tons (36.2 million U.S. tons) of grain under the nearly yearlong deal designed to ease a global food crisis. It has been able to export an additional 2 million to 2.5 million metric tons (2.2 to 2.7 million U.S. tons) monthly by the Danube River, road and rail through Europe.
Those are now the only routes to ship grain, but have stirred divisions among nearby European countries and generated higher costs to be absorbed by Ukrainian farmers, said Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russian missiles strikes against the Danube port last Monday also raised questions about how much longer that route will remain viable.
That’s a disincentive to keep planting fields already threatened by missiles and strewn with explosive mines. Corn and wheat production in agriculture-dependent Ukraine is down nearly 40% this year from prewar levels, analysts say.
From the first of July last year until June 30 this year, Ukraine exported 68 million tons of grain, according to data from Mykola Horbachov, the president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Ukrainian farmers shipped 11.2 million tons via railways, 5.5 million tons by road transport and around 18 million tons through Danube ports. Additionally, nearly half of the total exported grain, 33 million tons, was delivered through seaports under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
Ihor Osmachko, the general director of Agroprosperis Group, was unsurprised by Russia’s withdrawal from the deal leading to its collapse. His company had never considered it a reliable or permanent solution during wartime.
He said Russians frequently stymied the deal, even while it was functioning, by delaying ship inspections until the cargos were sent back, leading to $30 million in losses for his company alone. Now, they are once again forced to pay to reroute 100,000 tons of grain trapped in ports that are no longer safe, Osmachko said.
“We have been preparing for this whole time,” Osmachko said. “We haven’t stopped. We are moving forward.”
Osmachko estimated around 80% to 90% of the approximately 3.2 million tons of grain Agroprosperis exported to China, Europe and African countries during the past year went through the grain corridor.
“The most significant problem today is the cost of logistics,” explained Mykola Horbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. Before the war, farmers paid approximately $20 to $25 per ton to transport grain to the Odesa ports. Now, logistics costs have tripled as they are forced to pay more than $100 to transport a single ton via alternative routes through the Danube port to Constanta, Romania.
“If we were to go on the Danube with the grain corridor closed, practically all our production would be unprofitable,” Osmachko said.
The Danube ports can’t handle the same volume as seaports. The most Agroprosperis has sent through this route is 75,000 tons per month, compared with a monthly average of 250,000 tons through Black Sea ports.
The Ukrainian harvest this year is the lowest in a decade, according to a July report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Horbachov said shipping costs to export around the world and uncertainty about the length of the war will last could quickly make new planting unprofitable for Ukrainian farmers.
Ukraine currently produces three times more grain than it consumes, while global prices will inevitably rise if the country’s exports decrease.
“I think you’re looking at a diminished Ukraine for at least the next couple of years and maybe longer,” said Glauber, the former U.S. agricultural official. “That’s something the rest of the world just needs to make up.”
The war from all sides poses risks for Agroprosperis.
In the Sumy region on the Russian border, farmers harvest their crops wearing body armor. Sometimes they must stop their combines in the middle of the wheat fields to pick up shrapnel from Russian projectiles.
“It can get tough at times,” Osmachko acknowledged. “But there are responsibilities — some have duties on the front. Some must grow food and ensure the country’s and world’s security.”
___
Volodymyr Yurchuk in Lviv, Ukraine, and Courtney Bonnell in London contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kmvt.com/2023/07/30/russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-ukrainian-farmers-looking-export-grain/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:57 | 1 | https://www.kmvt.com/2023/07/30/russian-missile-attacks-leave-few-options-ukrainian-farmers-looking-export-grain/ |
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) – Did you like how Sunday felt? If so, you are going to love the first part of the week! The details are below…
It was a damp start to the weekend, but how much rain fell across Central New York Saturday? Click here to find out.
Despite a good deal of sunshine Sunday in CNY, temperatures only managed to warm into the mid to upper 70s Sunday afternoon which was only the third time we haven’t warmed to at least 80 degrees in Syracuse this month! The last time Syracuse felt a high below 80 degrees was all the way back on July 10th when the high only made it to 69 due to the rain and clouds that day.
Comfy for snoozing, but any rain tonight?
After a beauty of a day Sunday, tonight is nice and comfortably cool with a spotty shower or two possible near and after midnight. Otherwise, it’s a quiet night ahead for CNY. Lows drop into the 50s to near 60 again.
Stays refreshing to end July & start August
It looks like this change to cooler and less humid air is going to last right through the majority of the upcoming week. There is another cold front coming through on Monday with a few showers and perhaps a thunderstorm, but much of the day is looking dry.
Highs to start the new week are near 75 with a breeze and not humid too as we round out July.
In the wake of this front is another pleasant, even slightly cooler air mass taking us into the beginning of August on Tuesday with more sun and highs only reaching the low to mid 70s.
Winning Wednesday!
High pressure crests overhead midweek and produces an incredible Wednesday for the region under lots of sun, low humidity and comfortably warm air. Highs warm to between 75 and 80 after a cool start to Wednesday within a few degrees of 50!
80s with more humidity return late week
More warmth, 80s, and humidity will be making a return for the last half of the week as winds shift to the southwest. This southwest flow will bring the summer-like feel back into the northeast and an increased chance for some showers and storms mainly come Friday.
Keep checking the latest 7-day forecast. | https://www.localsyr.com/weather/another-comfortable-mainly-quiet-night-ahead/ | 2023-07-31T00:30:58 | 0 | https://www.localsyr.com/weather/another-comfortable-mainly-quiet-night-ahead/ |
Hayden Fire managers expect critical fire weather for the next few days
As of Sunday, July 30, the wildfire is still 0% contained
Leadore, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — The Hayden Fire, which is burning 18 miles west of Leadore has now burned 17,531 acres and is 0% contained and has over 700 fire personnel working together to get ahead of the blaze that started on July 19th.
Poor humidity overnight and continued windy conditions that are predicted over the next couple of days will put crews into critical fire weather.
Saturday, the increase cloud cover in the region played a significant role in slowing the fire behavior. Fire crews also made progress and strengthened primary control lines on the eastern portion of the blaze.
Currently, Stage 1 fire restrictions are in effect for the Salmon-Challis National Forest and within the Idaho Department of Lands and Bureau of Land Management areas.
There are also road closures in place and evacuation plans in place through the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office and information and alerts can be found on the Salmon-Challis National Forest Facebook page.
Copyright 2023 KMVT. All rights reserved. | https://www.kmvt.com/2023/07/31/hayden-fire-managers-expect-critical-fire-weather-next-few-days/ | 2023-07-31T00:31:03 | 0 | https://www.kmvt.com/2023/07/31/hayden-fire-managers-expect-critical-fire-weather-next-few-days/ |
To reduce wildfire risk, PG&E will be conducting aerial patrols in San Luis Obispo County starting tomorrow.
Scheduled helicopter patrols are part of the company's vegetation management program to detect dead or dying trees.
Patrols will occur along several electric distribution lines for several days in Cambria, Paso Robles, lake Nacimiento, heritage ranch, San Miguel, Parkfield, Creston, Santa Margarita, and rural areas of eastern San Luis Obispo County.
Depending on the weather conditions, foresters will fly to and from Paso Robles Municipal Airport between the hours of 9:00 AM. and 5:00 PM | https://www.ksby.com/homepage-showcase/pg-e-aerial-patrols-begin-tomorrow | 2023-07-31T00:31:05 | 0 | https://www.ksby.com/homepage-showcase/pg-e-aerial-patrols-begin-tomorrow |
- Innovative Relay Event Introduces Korean Ginseng Across to the East and West Coast
- with Billboard Ads Featuring Hollywood Stars Arden Cho and Kieu Chin
- HSW Brand expanding its lineup with Two New Sparkling Beverages Designed to Beat the Summer Heat: Recharge and Calm
LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK, July 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Korea Ginseng Corp., the world's number one ginseng brand and leading next-generation global herbal brand, is spreading the word about its new beverage product, HSW, which reflects the health functional food's major trend keyword, 'Food as Medicine,' in a guerilla marketing campaign in key areas of the United States.
Korea Ginseng Corp., unveiled a brand advertisement on a billboard in Times square, Manhattan in the past month. Building on this momentum, Korea Ginseng Corp. has recently announced their plans for a relay guerilla marketing campaign, starting from the K-week event held at the Rockefeller center in New York. The event showcased their newest product, HSW, and featured traditional Korean games like Yut-nori and Dddakji-chiji, capturing the attention of American K-Culture fans. Building on the success of this first event, the brand is currently holding relay events across the city.
On the West Coast, Korea Ginseng Corp. will send its new mobile Ginseng Museum Café to this year's editions of the 626 Night Market, the largest night market in the United States, and to the Moon Festival, which celebrates LA's booming Asian street food scene. To draw attention to their one-of-a-kind trailer café, KGC will be running a fun social media awareness campaign and hosting on-the-spot game events and interactive samplings.
HSW is Korea Ginseng Corp.'s latest beverage offering, a contemporary twist on its best-selling energy tonic, Hong Sam Won. The new product is very much in sync with the hottest health food trend – 'Food as Medicine' – and caters to consumers seeking healthy, natural beverage options. With less than 40 calories per serving and zero caffeine, HSW is a light and guilt-free indulgence for the diet-conscious. In addition, Korea Ginseng Corp. is expanding its lineup with 'Recharge' and 'Calm,' two sparkling beverages designed for this year's hot summer season.
Rian Heung Sil Lee, a representative of Korea Ginseng Corp. U.S., notes, "Korean culture is being embraced by Americans, and interest in Korean health foods is at all-time high. We will be redoubling our efforts to make Korean red ginseng's unparalleled role as a food-as-medicine better known."
Korea Ginseng Corp.'s U.S. expansion began in 2002 and reached a new high point in 2021 with the opening of its flagship Ginseng Museum Café, in Manhattan. Since then, the global brand has introduced a new American-specific product line, KORESELECT, and has broadened its appeal with new distribution channels, including Amazon and Costco. Over the past three years, sales have more than doubled, confirming the impressive potential of the American market.
Leveraging its new American R&D Center, the company is committed to a proactive localization strategy and is planning to launch even more new products with the major marketing support of Korea's aT Center for Globalizing Korean Foods.
About Korea Ginseng Corp.
Korea Ginseng Corp.(KGC) is the world's number one ginseng brand and herbal dietary company. Established in 1899, it is one of the most proven and trusted herbal dietary supplement manufacturers, providing the highest quality, traditionally harvested Korean Red Ginseng products to support health and well-being. KGC runs four regional headquarters in the United States, China, Japan, and Taiwan, in addition to South Korea, and exports products to over 40 countries. With over 40% world market share, its presence spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East region and the U.S. KGC's family of brands include KORESELECT, CheongKwanJang, Good Base, and Donginbi. The KGC brands, inclusive of over 250 products, use the most exceptional ginseng combined with the finest herbs and ingredients to deliver superior products to meet everyone's needs.
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE KGC (Korea Ginseng Corp.) | https://www.kmvt.com/prnewswire/2023/07/30/expanding-global-presence-korea-ginseng-corp-leads-guerrilla-marketing-new-york-times-square-rockefeller-center-la-street-fair-taking-lead-capturing-us-herbal-market/ | 2023-07-31T00:31:09 | 1 | https://www.kmvt.com/prnewswire/2023/07/30/expanding-global-presence-korea-ginseng-corp-leads-guerrilla-marketing-new-york-times-square-rockefeller-center-la-street-fair-taking-lead-capturing-us-herbal-market/ |
Six straight days of 12-hour driving. Single digit paychecks. The complaints come from workers in vastly different industries: UPS delivery drivers and Hollywood actors and writers.
But they point to an underlying factor driving a surge of labor unrest: The cost to workers whose jobs have changed drastically as companies scramble to meet customer expectations for speed and convenience in industries transformed by technology.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated those changes, pushing retailers to shift online and intensifying the streaming competition among entertainment companies. Now, from the picket lines, workers are trying to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a show that can be binged any time or get dog food delivered to their doorstep with a phone swipe.
Overworked and underpaid employees is an enduring complaint across industries — from delivery drivers to Starbucks baristas and airline pilots — where surges in consumer demand have collided with persistent labor shortages. Workers are pushing back against forced overtime, punishing schedules or company reliance on lower-paid, part-time or contract forces.
At issue for Hollywood screenwriters and actors staging their first simultaneous strikes in 40 years is the way streaming has upended entertainment economics, slashing pay and forcing showrunners to produce content faster with smaller teams.
“This seems to happen to many places when the tech companies come in. Who are we crushing? It doesn’t matter,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a screenwriter and showrunner on the negotiating team for the Writers Guild of America, whose members have been on strike since May. Earlier this month, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the writers’ union on the picket line.
Actors and writers have long relied on residuals, or long-term payments, for reruns and other airings of films and televisions shows. But reruns aren’t a thing on streaming services, where series and films simply land and stay with no easy way, such as box office returns or ratings, to determine their popularity.
Consequently, whatever residuals streaming companies do pay often amount to a pittance, and screenwriters have been sharing tales of receiving single digit checks.
Adam Shapiro, an actor known for the Netflix hit “Never Have I Ever," said many actors were initially content to accept lower pay for the plethora of roles that streaming suddenly offered. But the need for a more sustainable compensation model gained urgency when it became clear streaming is not a sideshow, but rather the future of the business, he said.
"Over the past 10 years, we realized: ‘Oh, that’s now how Hollywood works. Everything is streaming,’” Shapiro said during a recent union event.
Shapiro, who has been acting for 25 years, said he agreed to a contract offering 20% of his normal rate for “Never Have I Ever” because it seemed like "a great opportunity, and it’s going to be all over the world. And it was. It really was. Unfortunately, we’re all starting to realize that if we keep doing this we’re not going to be able to pay our bills.”
Then there's the rising use of “mini rooms,” in which a handful of writers are hired to work only during pre-production, sometimes for a series that may take a year to be greenlit, or never get picked up at all.
Sanchez-Witzel, co-creator of the recently released Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest,” said television shows traditionally hire robust writing teams for the duration of production. But Netflix refused to allow her to keep her team of five writers past pre-production, forcing round-the-clock work on rewrites with just one other writer.
“It's not sustainable and I'll never do that again,” she said.
Sanchez-Witzel said she was struck by the similarities between her experience and those of UPS drivers, some of whom joined the WGA for protests as they threatened their own potentially crippling strike. UPS and the Teamsters last week reached a tentative contract staving off the strike.
Jeffrey Palmerino, a full-time UPS driver near Albany, New York, said forced overtime emerged as a top issue during the pandemic as drivers coped with a crush of orders on par with the holiday season. Drivers never knew what time they would get home or if they could count on two days off each week, while 14-hour days in trucks without air conditioning became the norm.
“It was basically like Christmas on steroids for two straight years. A lot of us were forced to work six days a week, and that is not any way to live your life,” said Palmerino, a Teamsters shop steward.
Along with pay raises and air conditioning, the Teamsters won concessions that Palmerino hopes will ease overwork. UPS agreed to end forced overtime on days off and eliminate a lower-paid category of drivers who work shifts that include weekends, converting them to full-time drivers. Union members have yet to ratify the deal.
The Teamsters and labor activists hailed the tentative deal as a game-changer that would pressure other companies facing labor unrest to raise their standards. But similar outcomes are far from certain in industries lacking the sheer economic indispensability of UPS or the clout of its 340,000-member union.
Efforts to organize at Starbucks and Amazon stalled as both companies aggressively fought against unionization.
Still, labor protests will likely gain momentum following the UPS contract, said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, which released a report this year that found the number of labor strikes rose 52% in 2022.
“The whole idea that consumer convenience is above everything broke down during the pandemic. We started to think, ‘I’m at home ordering, but there is actually a worker who has to go the grocery store, who has to cook this for me so that I can be comfortable,’” Campos-Medina said. | https://www.ksby.com/news/national-news/customers-want-instant-gratification-workers-say-its-pushing-them-to-the-brink | 2023-07-31T00:31:11 | 1 | https://www.ksby.com/news/national-news/customers-want-instant-gratification-workers-say-its-pushing-them-to-the-brink |
A massive wildfire burning out of control in California's Mojave National Preserve was spreading rapidly Sunday amid erratic winds, while firefighters reported progress against another major blaze to the south that prompted evacuations.
The York Fire that erupted Friday near the remote Caruthers Canyon area of the preserve was sending up a huge plume of smoke visible nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) away across the state line in Nevada.
Flames 20 feet (6 meters) high in some spots have charred more than 110 square miles (284 square kilometers) of desert scrub, juniper and Joshua tree woodland, according to a Sunday incident update.
“The dry fuel acts as a ready ignition source, and when paired with those weather conditions it resulted in long-distance fire run and high flames, leading to extreme fire behavior,” the update said. No structures were threatened. There was no containment.
To the southwest, the Bonny Fire was holding steady at about 3.4 square miles (8.8 square kilometers) in rugged hills of Riverside County. More than 1,300 people were ordered to evacuate their homes Saturday near the remote community of Aguanga.
Windy conditions and the chance of thunderstorms into Monday will heighten the risk of renewed growth, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.
One firefighter was injured in the blaze, which was 5% contained Sunday. | https://www.ksby.com/news/national-news/erratic-winds-challenge-firefighters-battling-two-major-california-blazes | 2023-07-31T00:31:17 | 1 | https://www.ksby.com/news/national-news/erratic-winds-challenge-firefighters-battling-two-major-california-blazes |
A week later, the “Barbenheimer” boom has not abated.
Seven days after Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” conspired to set box office records, the two films held unusually strongly in theaters. “Barbie” took in a massive $93 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Oppenheimer” stayed in second with a robust $46.2 million. Sales for the two movies dipped 43% and 44%, respectably — well shy of the usual week-two drops.
“Barbenheimer” has proven to be not a one-weekend phenomenon but an ongoing box-office bonanza. The two movies combined have already surpassed $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore, call it “a touchstone moment for movies, moviegoers and movie theaters.”
“Having two movies from rival studios linked in this way and both boosting each other's fortunes — both box-office wise and it terms of their profile — I don't know if there's a comp for this in the annals of box-office history," said Dergarabedian. “There's really no comparison for this.”
Following its year-best $162 million opening, the pink-infused pop sensation of “Barbie” saw remarkably sustained business through the week and into the weekend. The film outpaced Nolan's “The Dark Knight" to have the best first 11 days in theaters of any Warner Bros. release ever.
“Barbie” has rapidly accumulated $351.4 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, a rate that will soon make it the biggest box-office hit of the summer. Every day it’s played, “Barbie" has made at least $20 million.
And the “Barbie” effect isn't just in North America. The film made $122.2 million internationally over the weekend. Its global tally has reached $775 million. It's the kind of business that astounds even veteran studio executives.
“That's a crazy number,” said Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros. “There's just a built-in audience that wants to be part of the zeitgeist of the moment. Wherever you go, people are wearing pink. Pink is taking over the world."
Amid the frenzy, “Barbie” is already attracting a lot of repeat moviegoers. Goldstein estimates that 12% of sales are people going back with friends or family to see it again.
For a movie industry that has been trying to regain its pre-pandemic footing — and that now finds itself largely shuttered due to actors and screenwriters strikes — the sensations of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have showed what's possible when everything lines up just right.
“Post-pandemic, there's no ceiling and there's no floor," Goldstein said. "The movies that miss really miss big time, and the movies that work really work big time."
Universal Pictures' “Oppenheimer,” meanwhile, is performing more like a superhero movie than a three-hour film about scientists talking.
Nolan’s drama starring Cillian Murphy as atomic bomb physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer has accrued $174.1 million domestically thus far. With an additional $72.4 million in international cinemas, “Oppenheimer” has already surpassed $400 million globally.
Showings in IMAX have typically been sold out. “Oppenheimer” has made $80 million worldwide on IMAX. The large-format exhibitor said Sunday that it will extend the film's run through Aug. 13.
The week’s top new release, Walt Disney Co.’s “Haunted Mansion,” an adaptation of the Disney theme park attraction, was easily overshadowed by the “Barbenheimer” blitz. The film, which cost about $150 million, debuted with $24 million domestically and $9 million in overseas sales. “Haunted Mansion,” directed by Justin Simien (“Dear White People,” “Bad Hair”) and starring an ensemble of LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Rosario Dawson, struggled to overcome mediocre reviews.
“Talk to Me,” the A24 supernatural horror film, fared better. It debuted with $10 million. The film, directed by Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou and starring Sophie Wilde, was a midnight premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and received terrific reviews from critics (95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). It was made for a modest $4.5 million.
While theaters being flush with moviegoers has been a huge boon to the film industry, it’s been tougher sledding for Tom Cruise, the so-called savior of the movies last summer with “Top Gun: Maverick.” “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I,” which debuted the week before the arrival of “Barbenheimer,” grossed $10.7 million in its third weekend. The film starring Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, has grossed $139.2 million domestically and $309.3 million oveseas.
Instead, the sleeper hit “Sound of Freedom” has been the best performing non-“Barbenheimer” release in theaters. The Angel Studios’ release, which is counting crowdfunding pay-it-forward sales in its box office totals, made $12.4 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its haul thus far to nearly $150 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Barbie,” $93 million.
2. “Opppenheimer,” $46.2 million.
3. “Haunted Mansion,” $24.2 million.
4. “Sound of Freedom,” $12.4 million.
5. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” $10.7 million.
6. “Talk to Me,” $10 million.
7. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $4 million.
8. “Elemental,” $3.4 million.
9. “Insidious: The Red Door,” $3.2 million.
10. “Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani,” $1.6 million. | https://www.ksby.com/news/national-news/the-barbie-bonanza-continues-at-the-box-office-oppenheimer-holds-the-no-2-spot | 2023-07-31T00:31:24 | 0 | https://www.ksby.com/news/national-news/the-barbie-bonanza-continues-at-the-box-office-oppenheimer-holds-the-no-2-spot |
The Biden administration says it's hunting for destructive computer code or malware; it believes China has hidden deep inside networks controlling power grids, according to theNew York Times.
The discovery raises suspicions that hackers acting on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army have embedded malware designed to disrupt U.S. military operations in the event China were to invade Taiwan.
"So if it's not just localized and if it's a deep infiltration and it's utilized in that way, you can imagine the banking system or the power grid going down nationally or the water systems being ineffectual nationally, and that could obviously disrupt operations at home, not just for the purposes of slowing us down in response but actually taking us out of the game altogether, unable to resupply our forces and the like," said Jamil Jaffer, former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Earlier in May, tech giant Microsoft warned that hackers likely acting on behalf of China targeted U.S. military assets on the island of Guam, seeding harmful computer code in communications infrastructure.
SEE MORE: The evolution and future of the US-China relationship
"It was referred to as a vault typhoon. And obviously, this raises some concerns about how deep in are the Chinese in our systems. Are they in just military systems? Are they just in that region? Is it spread more broadly across the country, other military bases overseas, or in the United States?" said Jaffer.
The news about the malware adds tension to an increasingly fraught U.S.-China relationship, with clashes that include increasing threats towards Taiwan and American efforts to ban complex semi-conductor sales to China.
The U.S. has also blamed China for other major infrastructure computer hacks as well as accusing the foreign power of spying on the continental U.S. with school bus-sized balloons.
For its part, China accused the U.S. of hacking into its telecom giant, Huawei.
The U.S. recently reiterated its commitment to defending Taiwan, the island nation off the coast of mainland China. Taiwan recently held military exercises.
"With respect to Taiwan, you know, the capability that we are providing them is defensive capability, as you know, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act. We are committed to helping them get the capability they need to defend themselves. And so, this is no change from what we've done in the past," said Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
China regards Taiwan as a rogue province and a constant source of tension between the U.S. and China. Two nations that are trading partners and, at the same time, increasingly wary adversaries.
In response to the New York Times article, the Chinese embassy in Washington reacted with dismay, denying it engages in hacking and calling the United States a far bigger offender.
Trending stories at Scrippsnews.com | https://www.ksby.com/nyt-officials-fear-chinese-hackers-malware-could-disrupt-us-military | 2023-07-31T00:31:30 | 0 | https://www.ksby.com/nyt-officials-fear-chinese-hackers-malware-could-disrupt-us-military |
Hello, Central Coast! Happy Sunday.
We saw warmer conditions stick throughout the inland areas of the Central Coast on Saturday and Sunday, but we are expected to see temperatures shift this upcoming work week, as a cooling trend is on the way! Luckily, the National Weather Service is lifting the Heat Advisory for SLO and Santa Barbara County this evening. While the south coast is going to see very strong winds Sunday evening. Let's dive in!
The Heat Advisory that has been in place over the weekend for SLO County and Santa Barbara County is scheduled to end Sunday evening at 8 pm. Paso Robles saw a high temperature of 105 degrees this afternoon. While areas throughout the Santa Ynez Valley, like Solvang and Santa Ynez, saw temperatures in the 90s.
Areas closer to the coast remained out of the Heat Advisory since conditions were much cooler over the course of the weekend.
This evening wind gusts along the south coast region in areas like Gavitoa and Refugio will see wind gusts moving over 45 mph. A Wind Advisory is expected to be issued Sunday evening by the National Weather Service. Luckily, the strong wind gusts should be clearing out of the south coast by Monday.
If you have any loose objects around your home, please be sure to secure those items in a safe location. For anyone planning to drive throughout the Gaviota coastline this evening, be sure to drive with extra caution.
This evening, the marine clouds are expected possibly push as far across the Oxnard plain. While the far southeastern portion of Santa Barbara County may even see a bit of fog and low clouds in the forecast. The western portion of SB County is expected to remain clear tonight, due to locally gusty north winds along the Gaviota coastline.
On Monday, the cooling trend is expected to begin, as increased cloud cover, influenced by monsoonal moisture, will cut down some sunshine in the forecast. The cooling trend is expected to last until Wednesday. Temperatures are expected to increase on Thursday, as another warm weekend is shortly approaching us again.
By Monday afternoon, there is a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly over the southern coastal waters and along the eastern border of Los Angeles County. ⛈
We are NOT going to see any rain making its way to the Central Coast!
Have a wonderful Sunday, Central Coast!
Don't forget to download the KSBY Microclimate app for free in Google Play or the App Store for all your latest weather headlines throughout the Central Coast. | https://www.ksby.com/weather/a-cooling-trend-is-expected-to-drop-temperatures-this-week-throughout-the-central-coast | 2023-07-31T00:31:36 | 1 | https://www.ksby.com/weather/a-cooling-trend-is-expected-to-drop-temperatures-this-week-throughout-the-central-coast |
The Biden administration says it's hunting for destructive computer code or malware; it believes China has hidden deep inside networks controlling power grids, according to theNew York Times.
The discovery raises suspicions that hackers acting on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army have embedded malware designed to disrupt U.S. military operations in the event China were to invade Taiwan.
"So if it's not just localized and if it's a deep infiltration and it's utilized in that way, you can imagine the banking system or the power grid going down nationally or the water systems being ineffectual nationally, and that could obviously disrupt operations at home, not just for the purposes of slowing us down in response but actually taking us out of the game altogether, unable to resupply our forces and the like," said Jamil Jaffer, former counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Earlier in May, tech giant Microsoft warned that hackers likely acting on behalf of China targeted U.S. military assets on the island of Guam, seeding harmful computer code in communications infrastructure.
SEE MORE: The evolution and future of the US-China relationship
"It was referred to as a vault typhoon. And obviously, this raises some concerns about how deep in are the Chinese in our systems. Are they in just military systems? Are they just in that region? Is it spread more broadly across the country, other military bases overseas, or in the United States?" said Jaffer.
The news about the malware adds tension to an increasingly fraught U.S.-China relationship, with clashes that include increasing threats towards Taiwan and American efforts to ban complex semi-conductor sales to China.
The U.S. has also blamed China for other major infrastructure computer hacks as well as accusing the foreign power of spying on the continental U.S. with school bus-sized balloons.
For its part, China accused the U.S. of hacking into its telecom giant, Huawei.
The U.S. recently reiterated its commitment to defending Taiwan, the island nation off the coast of mainland China. Taiwan recently held military exercises.
"With respect to Taiwan, you know, the capability that we are providing them is defensive capability, as you know, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act. We are committed to helping them get the capability they need to defend themselves. And so, this is no change from what we've done in the past," said Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
China regards Taiwan as a rogue province and a constant source of tension between the U.S. and China. Two nations that are trading partners and, at the same time, increasingly wary adversaries.
In response to the New York Times article, the Chinese embassy in Washington reacted with dismay, denying it engages in hacking and calling the United States a far bigger offender.
Trending stories at Scrippsnews.com | https://www.wtvr.com/nyt-officials-fear-chinese-hackers-malware-could-disrupt-us-military | 2023-07-31T00:31:39 | 1 | https://www.wtvr.com/nyt-officials-fear-chinese-hackers-malware-could-disrupt-us-military |
Woman, Man, Dog, All Dead in Little Egg Harbor Murder Suicide
A gruesome discovery in a Whitemarsh Court home in Little Egg Harbor Township early Saturday morning: A man, a woman, and a dog were all shot. Authorities are calling in a murder-suicide.
Here's how events unfolded early Saturday.
Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer Little Egg Harbor Township Chief of Police James Hawkins announced that Little Egg Harbor Township Police received a 911 call at about 5:10am. The caller stated that she believed that someone was breaking into her apartment.
When officers arrived on the scene they found a dead 49-year-old women with an apparent gunshot to the face. They also found a dead dog in the apartment, with apparent gunshot wounds.
Finally, police found a 52-year-old man with an apparent gunshot wound to his head. He was still conscious and rushed to the hospital: AtlantiCare Medical Center in Atlantic City. Police say he later died from his injuries.
A news release states:
"Detectives from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crime Unit and Little Egg Harbor Township Police Department responded to the scene for purposes of conducting an investigation. Preliminary investigation indicates that the male shot the female victim, and the dog, before turning the gun on himself. The investigation remains active and ongoing."
No other information has been released in the case - that includes identities of the two people who are dead.
SOURCE: Ocean County Prosecutors Office. | https://catcountry1073.com/woman-man-dog-all-dead-in-little-egg-harbor-murder-suicide/ | 2023-07-31T00:31:55 | 0 | https://catcountry1073.com/woman-man-dog-all-dead-in-little-egg-harbor-murder-suicide/ |
Entertainment companies hiring AI specialists amid Hollywood strike
Concerns about the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the entertainment industry have played a significant role in the ongoing Hollywood strike by actors and writers. That hasn’t stopped companies with studios from staffing up with AI specialists.
While the strike by actors and writers reflects a broader set of concerns beyond the impact of AI on the entertainment industry, including pay and benefits, the threat posed by the emerging and increasingly sophisticated technology has raised alarm.
Actors have expressed fears about AI being used to replicate an actor’s image and likeness without the actor’s consent, while writers have pushed for limits on the use of AI to write or rewrite scripts.
At a rally in Times Square hosted by SAG-AFTRA this week, actor Bryan Cranston delivered remarks aimed at Disney CEO Bob Iger.
NETFLIX IN SWEET SPOT DESPITE HOLLYWOOD STRIKE
"We will not be having our jobs taken away and given to robots. … We will not have you take away our right to work and earn a decent living," Cranston said. "And, lastly and most importantly, we will not allow you to take away our dignity."
Despite concerns raised by the actors and writers on strike, the seemingly inexorable rise of AI and the need to stay on the cutting edge of emerging technology has resulted in entertainment studios continuing to seek out AI specialists against the backdrop of labor unrest. Several studios have active listings for AI and machine learning roles that have garnered attention amid the strike.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?
Netflix has several job postings related to AI and machine learning on its website, including a product manager role first noticed by The Intercept that lists a pay range of $300,000 to $900,000 annually.
The listing states that the product manager would "define the strategic vision" for Netflix’s machine learning platform and work to "increase the leverage" of that platform across the company.
One notable AI and machine learning listing from Disney’s careers website is for a senior vice president role related to postproduction and innovation for Disney Branded Television, which produces content for children and families.
The posting for the role, which offers a salary between $270,500 to $371,900, seeks applicants who can "champion the constant evolution of our tools and processes across all aspects of the development pipelines. Be on the leading edge of technology developments, like Artificial Intelligence, and work to deliver solutions to improve processes like speed-to-market, content quality, efficiency and cost."
A job posting at Sony spotted by The Hollywood Reporter seeks a senior research scientist and manager who specializes in AI ethics, specifically how they relate to fairness, transparency and accountability.
The role, which lists a salary range of $170,000 to $210,000, would help manage a multinational team of research scientists based in the U.S., Japan and Switzerland that executes "ambitious AI projects." The AI ethics manager would also "provide advice and consultation for business units on AI ethics, managing cross-functional stakeholder relationships."
Read more of this story from FOX Business. | https://www.fox13news.com/news/entertainment-companies-hiring-ai-specialists-amid-hollywood-strike | 2023-07-31T00:33:10 | 1 | https://www.fox13news.com/news/entertainment-companies-hiring-ai-specialists-amid-hollywood-strike |
Pakistan bombing kills at least 44 people and injures nearly 200
KHAR, Pakistan (AP) - A suicide bomber blew himself up at a political rally in a former stronghold of militants in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan on Sunday, killing at least 44 people and wounding nearly 200 in an attack that a senior leader said was meant to weaken Pakistani Islamists.
The Bajur district near the Afghan border was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban — a close ally of Afghanistan’s Taliban government — before the Pakistani army drove the militants out of the area. Supporters of hardline Pakistani cleric and political party leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, whose Jamiat Ulema Islam generally supports regional Islamists, were meeting in Bajur in a hall close to a market outside the district capital. Party officials said Rehman was not at the rally but organizers added tents because so many supporters showed up, and party volunteers with batons were helping control the crowd.
Officials were announcing the arrival of Abdul Rasheed, a leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, when the bomb went off in one of Pakistan’s bloodiest attacks in recent years.
Image depicts graphic content] Rescue team help wounded people at scene after a suicide bombing at a public rally in northwestern Pakistan, Bajaur, Khar on July 30, 2023. In an apparent suicide bombing, at least 40 people were killed and hundreds inj
Provincial police said in a statement that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosives vest close to the stage where several senior leaders of the party were sitting. It said initial investigations suggested the Islamic State group — which operates in Afghanistan and is an enemy of the Afghan Taliban — could be behind the attack, and officers were still investigating.
RELATED: Ted Kaczynski, known as the "Unabomber," died of suicide, AP reports
"There was dust and smoke around, and I was under some injured people from where I could hardly stand up, only to see chaos and some scattered limbs," said Adam Khan, 45, who was knocked to the ground by the blast around 4 p.m. and hit by splinters in his leg and both hands.
The Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, said in a statement sent to The Associated Press that the bombing was aimed at setting Islamists against each other. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that "such crimes cannot be justified in any way."
Image depicts graphic content] An ambulance after a suicide bombing at a public rally in northwestern Pakistan, Bajaur, Khar on July 30, 2023. In an apparent suicide bombing, at least 40 people were killed and hundreds injured ahead of a public rally
The Afghan Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 emboldened the TTP. They unilaterally ended a cease-fire agreement with the Pakistani government in November, and have stepped up attacks across the country.
The bombing came hours before the arrival of Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Islamabad, where he was to participate in an event to mark a decade of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a sprawling package under which Beijing has invested billions of dollars in Pakistan.
In recent months, China has helped Pakistan avoid a default on sovereign payments. However, some Chinese nationals have also been targeted by militants in northwestern Pakistan and elsewhere.
Feroz Jamal, the provincial information minister, told The Associated Press that so far 44 people had been "martyred" and nearly 200 wounded in the bombing.
The bombing was one of the four worst attacks in the northwest since 2014, when 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar. In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. n February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.
RELATED: 10 years after the Boston Marathon bombings: A timeline of events
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and President Arif Alvi condemned the attack and asked officials to provide all possible assistance to the wounded and the bereaved families. Sharif later, in a phone call to Rehman, the head of the JUI, conveyed his condolences to him and assured him that those who orchestrated the attack would be punished.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad also condemned the attack. In a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, it expressed its condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims killed in the attack..
Maulana Ziaullah, the local chief of Rehman’s party, was among the dead. JUI leaders Rasheed and former lawmaker Maulana Jamaluddin were also on the stage but escaped unhurt.
Rasheed, the regional chief of the party, said the attack was an attempt to remove JUI from the field before parliamentary elections in November, but he said such tactics would not work. The bombing drew nationwide condemnation, with the ruling and opposition parties extending condolences to the families of those who died in the attack.
RELATED: Man who killed 8 in NYC terrorist attack gets 10 life sentences plus 260 years
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 upcoming elections.
"Many of our fellows lost their 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," Rasheed said.
Mohammad Wali, another attendant at the rally, 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 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 the bodies of their loved ones."
Riaz Khan reported from Peshawar. Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad contributed from Islamabad. | https://www.fox13news.com/news/pakistan-bombing-kills-at-least-44-people-and-injures-nearly-200 | 2023-07-31T00:33:16 | 1 | https://www.fox13news.com/news/pakistan-bombing-kills-at-least-44-people-and-injures-nearly-200 |
Brandon Lowe, Josh Lowe lead Rays past Astros in 8-2 win
HOUSTON, ( AP) - Brandon Lowe hit a two-run homer and drove in three, Josh Lowe capped a four-run first with a three-run double and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Houston Astros 8-2 on Sunday.
Brandon Lowe, who finished with three hits, hit his homer to right in the sixth to increase Tampa Bay’s lead to 8-2. He also had an RBI single in the fourth.
Since the All-Star break, he has four home runs and nine RBIs.
Brandon Lowe, who came off the injured list July 4, credited his work while on the injured list for his resurgence at the plate.
"There were a few things we figured out on the IL," he said. "Just some subtle swing tips, just thought processes and things that I have to do off the field to make sure I stay in there. … All sorts of different things that really made my body feel good, and when you feel good, you play at your best."
The Rays got to Houston starter Brandon Bielak (5-6) for four runs in the first, with Yandy Díaz scoring on a fielding error by José Abreu before Josh Lowe hit his three-run double.
"It was something we needed early in the game there to get us started," Josh Lowe said. "More than that, I’m just glad we were able to keep it going throughout the game. It wasn’t like we had one big inning. We put up multiple runs in multiple innings, so that was really encouraging to see."
Díaz had an RBI single in the fourth as the Rays built a 6-0 lead.
"We had some big at-bats with some guys on base," Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said. "Probably none bigger than Josh’s. Coming up there, it could have been somewhat frustrating had we not capitalized in that moment, but Josh got a pitch he could drive and cleared the bases."
Zack Littell (1-2), making his fourth start of the season, yielded two runs on eight hits with four strikeouts in a career-high five innings.
Littell said mixing pitches played a role in his success.
"I tend to get a bit fastball happy," Littell said. "The goal today was to go out there and eat as many innings as I could. Mixing pitches and trying to keep them off-balance was the goal."
Houston got their runs in the fifth on an RBI double by Kyle Tucker and an RBI groundout by Alex Bregman. Jose Altuve had three hits.
Bielak allowed six runs — three earned — on eight hits with four strikeouts in five innings. Bielak, who also walked three, has allowed six runs in consecutive starts.
"It was a combination of walks, and that club over there, you can’t give them a whole bunch of walks and errors because they can score," Houston manager Dusty Baker said. "It was a pretty uneventful day for us. Things didn’t start off well, and they didn’t end well."
TRAINER’S ROOM
Rays: Zach Efflin (right knee discomfort) is scheduled to make his next start Tuesday after being injured Wednesday. "We need him to pitch," Cash said. "We don’t want to put him in harm’s way, but I think he’s checked a lot of boxes here. We are very encouraged with how he’s responded day-to-day, and he still has another day or two of rest."
Astros: RHP José Urquidy (right shoulder) allowed five runs on nine hits in five innings of a rehabilitation start with Double-A Corpus Christi on Sunday. Urquidy threw 76 pitches in his fourth rehab start. … OF Michael Brantley (right shoulder surgery) took batting practice on the field prior to Sunday’s game.
UP NEXT
Rays: RHP Tyler Glasnow (4-3, 3.36 ERA) starts Monday in the first of a three-game series at the Yankees.
Astros: Houston starts a three-game series against the Guardians on Monday, but the Astros have yet to announce their starter. | https://www.fox13news.com/sports/brandon-lowe-josh-lowe-lead-rays-past-astros-in-8-2-win | 2023-07-31T00:33:23 | 0 | https://www.fox13news.com/sports/brandon-lowe-josh-lowe-lead-rays-past-astros-in-8-2-win |