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Putin vows war will continue as Russian troops mount in east
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.
Thwarted in their push toward the capital, Kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern region of Donbas, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
WARNING: Images and videos contain graphic content.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated there were no serious injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, which has been pummeled by weeks of Russian assaults.
Western leaders warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a grievous breach of international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide” and said “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report but reiterated U.S. concerns about Russia using chemical agents. Britain, meanwhile, has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorus bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorus munitions to illuminate targets or to produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to fumes could breach the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former laboratory head at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it becomes banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said the Biden administration was preparing yet another package of military aid for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. Delivery is due to be completed this week of $800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago.
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around Kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Zelenskyy said evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, including alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 720 people were killed in Kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and over 200 were considered missing, the Interior Ministry said early Wednesday.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said Tuesday it was also looking into events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. It said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a basement in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces were believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to leave by car from the village of Peremoha in the Brovary district, killing four people including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed including two children when a car was fired upon, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake.” Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some of whom had their hands bound and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Speaking at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s far east, in his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began, Putin also said the West would fail to isolate Russia and its economy has withstood sanctions.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, he said Moscow was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” to “achieve the planned goals while minimizing the losses.”
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Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ | 2022-04-13T04:35:04 | 0 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ |
MOORE — Ten minutes, 40 seconds.
That was the difference at Southmoore Tuesday night, where the SaberCats needed about 25 percent of the game to do 80 percent of their damage and knock off the Norman High girls 5-4.
From the 36:53 mark to the 26:13 mark of the first half, Southmoore, aided by a gale force wind blowing south to north across the pitch, scored four times, turning a one-goal deficit into a 4-1 lead.
Still, it was just enough to get out with a victory, and only just enough because the SaberCats managed a single second-half tally into the gale.
Only just enough, as well, because the Tigers threatened to score two twice in the final 46 seconds, but could only put one of them across.
“They don’t quit,” NHS coach Kevin Chesley said of his team’s charges. “I mean, we had a chance with 20 seconds to tie it up.”
Before offering that thought for publication, Chesley spent most of his postgame talk with his team offering the same thought.
Tempering his disappointment at the onslaught NHS suffered early was the fact he’d had to take his most experienced defender, Maddie Reinke, and put her in the goal with his original keeper, Harper Schindler, waiting to be cleared from concussion protocol.
“Tonight I started four freshmen on the back line, and one who had never really played center back,” Chesley said.
Eventually, that back line collected itself and offered stingier resistance. Yet, before the happened, it was caught ball-watching again and again, allowing Southmoore, despite a numbers disadvantage, to deftly pass the ball through it.
NHS’ Kaylin Simmons opened the scoring two minutes into the game, controlling the ball past Southmoore keeper Kayln Brandt before getting her shot off into the empty net while a SaberCat defender rode her shoulder.
The game turned 67 seconds later, when Eli Silva redirected a Makala Johnson cross past Reinke 36:53 before the half. At the 34:46 mark, it was Silva setting up Johnson and Southmoore had the lead.
Reinke made a couple huge saves to keep it close right after that, yet soon enough Southmoore made it 3-1 at the 26:46 mark on a volley from Johnson. Only 33 second later, Silva set up Hannah Montoya and it was 4-1.
The second half was similar, only in reverse.
The Tigers moved within 4-2 when Aniya Facen headed in a throw-in from Chloe Almond with 32:48 remaining, and moved within a goal when Chloe Soto bent a corner kick directly into the net at the 22:05 mark.
Montoya responded less than minute later to put Southmoore on top 5-3, setting up the Tigers’ furious finish.
Soto connected again, this time from 36 yards on a free kick, tucking the ball under the crossbar with 45.7 seconds remaining.
About 30 seconds later, she got another chance on another free kick from 41 yards. That one was on goal, too and appeared to fool Southmoore keeper Olivia Riggs, who was late off her mark. Still, she stopped it on a short hop and time ran out.
The loss dropped the Tigers to 7-5 overall and 2-2 in District 6A-1.
Despite the setback, NHS has still won seven of nine after beginning the season with three losses.
Southmoore improved to 8-2 overall and 2-1 in the district, which appears to have three teams — Southmoore, Yukon, Norman — vying for the last two playoff spots in the loop.
NHS has district games remaining against Putnam City, at Deer Creek and at Yukon.
Southmoore has district games remaining at Yukon, against Edmond Memorial and Northwest Classen, and at Lawton. | https://www.normantranscript.com/sports/high-school-gsoccer-furious-tiger-comeback-falls-one-goal-short/article_72db08e2-bad2-11ec-ba0e-c701864ccab3.html | 2022-04-13T04:37:33 | 0 | https://www.normantranscript.com/sports/high-school-gsoccer-furious-tiger-comeback-falls-one-goal-short/article_72db08e2-bad2-11ec-ba0e-c701864ccab3.html |
MOORE — The wins keep coming for coach Gordon Drummond and the Norman High boys.
Tuesday night at Southmoore, 11 days since claiming his and the program’s 400th victory over Northwest Classen, Drummond and the Tigers made it 403, knocking off the SaberCats in a gale, 1-0.
The victory was an important one, moving the Tigers to 9-3 overall and a perfect 4-0 in District 6A-1. Southmoore, which has lost several games to inclement weather, fell to 4-2 and 1-2.
It’s been a long time since the Tigers won a district crown and, though difficult games remain against Putnam City West (7-4, 2-2), at Deer Creek (9-2, 4-0) and at Yukon (6-3, 2-2), they’re clearly in the running.
The wind in its favor in the first half, NHS took advantage to score the game’s only goal when, off a long throw in, Kaleb Merriman, who began with his back to the goal, wheeled on the ball and attempting to cross it left to right with his right foot. The wind, however, had other ideas.
“I was trying to cross it,” Merriman said. “I just turned and booted it and the wind just took it.”
Drummond didn’t mind a goal like that being the difference.
“We knew things like that,” he said, “we’re going to happen.”
Post intermission, the wind was at Southmoore’s back. The SaberCats created pressure, but could not put the ball past Tiger keeper Rafael Trinidad.
“I thought Rafy was exceptional,” Drummond said.
• North girls pile up goals: To keep games from getting horrendously out of hand, a mercy rule is imposed when one side reaches a 10-goal advantage. The rule, though, cannot be imposed before the half.
That’s how the Norman North girls moved past Capitol Hill 13-0.
Playing at home, the Timberwolves got three goals from Becca Tweedy, two from Narissa Fults, two from Londyn Furnish and one each from Presslee Amick, Rylie Goodman, Abby Sonne, McKenna Adams, Lennon Park and Cassie Coffman.
The victory moved North to 10-2 and 4-0 in District 6A-2. Capitol Hill moved to 2-11 and 0-5.
The T-Wolves have games remaining at Putnam City North and at home against Moore and Mustang.
• North boys roll: The T-Wolves made it three straight wins, rolling over Capitol Hill 7-0, thereby putting themselves in a strong position to finish no lower than fourth in District 6A-2, the requirement to reach the playoffs.
North moved to 5-4 and 3-1 in the district, putting it well clear of both U.S. Grant and Putnam City North, which still have playoff hopes, though remain on the outside looking in with 2-3 marks in the loop.
North picked up two goals from Bond Blackman, a goal and two assists from Bostyn Carroll, single goals from Jose Cardenas, Jake Padlock, Luke Wheeler and Carlos Vara, two assists from Owen Whitman and single assists from Benito Velasco and Gabe Angle. | https://www.normantranscript.com/sports/high-school-soccer-roundup-nhs-boys-beat-southmoore-in-low-scoring-game/article_a72be1f4-badf-11ec-bce8-d38f5c045565.html | 2022-04-13T04:37:39 | 0 | https://www.normantranscript.com/sports/high-school-soccer-roundup-nhs-boys-beat-southmoore-in-low-scoring-game/article_a72be1f4-badf-11ec-bce8-d38f5c045565.html |
Facing two strikes and two outs with the bases loaded, Norman High’s Dax Noles slapped an outside pitch just over the second baseman’s glove.
The bases-clearing single came just half an inning after the Tigers watched their three-run lead evaporate in the top of the sixth. After picking up two quick outs, Mustang walked two batters in a row before hitting the third to load up the bases.
Noles’ blooper was just the fifth hit of the day for Norman High, but the offense was able to do just enough to hang on to a 6-3 win.
“Mustang’s a good team and they’re always a good team,” NHS head coach Cody Merrell said. “We didn’t play the way we wanted to yesterday and the guys wanted to come out and show that we can play and we can hang. They just didn’t give up, they didn’t back down.”
Merrell said he was preparing to pull starting pitcher Connor Goodson from the game and bring in a relief pitcher to close out the final inning. However, the Tigers’ late rally reenergized the home dugout, and Merrell said Goodson approached him and asked to be put back in the game.
Goodson came out strong in the final frame to strike out the first batter and retire the final two on ground balls.
“He had that adrenaline going,” Merrell said.
The senior allowed four hits and three runs while striking out seven batters in the win. Norman High took an early lead in the second inning behind a double from Jack Poarch that scored Ben Huntley. The Broncos walked eight NHS batters.
In the fourth, Clayton Moore grounded out with a runner on third and Nate Wilson was able to score on error by the Broncos.
“Yesterday they had a good pitcher going and today they had a good pitcher going and whenever you can get a run, you’ll take it,” Merrell said.
The Tigers were handed an 11-6 loss to Mustang on the road on Monday after allowing 12 hits with five errors. Norman High had 11 hits of its own, but ended up leaving seven batters on base.
By evening the two-game series the Tigers remain in a good position in the 6A-2 standings at third place with a game separating them from the Broncos for second. Norman High has won four of its last five games.
The Tigers will be back in action on Friday in a road game against Westmoore at 6:30 p.m. | https://www.normantranscript.com/sports/norman-high-baseball-tigers-comes-up-with-big-plays-late-to-knock-off-broncos/article_f4eb9182-bac6-11ec-a9c5-9fa5655a57c2.html | 2022-04-13T04:37:46 | 0 | https://www.normantranscript.com/sports/norman-high-baseball-tigers-comes-up-with-big-plays-late-to-knock-off-broncos/article_f4eb9182-bac6-11ec-a9c5-9fa5655a57c2.html |
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Durham Police are investigating after a man on a scooter was shot near a BP gas station, one of several incidents of gun violence in the Bull City on Tuesday night.
It happened at the corner of Holloway Street and Alston Avenue.
An electric scooter was lying on the sidewalk as Durham police officers descended on the scene.
Eyewitnesses said they saw a man riding that scooter being chased by several people who opened fire on him.
The shooting remains under investigation.
The shooting came a day after Durham Mayor Elaine O'Neal discussed the surge in gun violence in the Bull City.
Durham residents say they are weary of the senseless violence and hope for solutions.
But there seems to be no relief from the carnage.
Also on Tuesday night, two other people were found shot in the vicinity of Alston Avenue and Juniper Street, police said. The victims were taken to a hospital with what appeared to be life-threatening injuries.
And in the 500 block of Carver Street, just before 10 p.m., a woman was shot. Her condition was not immediately known.
See breaking news? Tell us about it here.
Multiple shootings keep Durham police busy on a violent night in the Bull City
By Joel Brown | https://abc11.com/durham-shooting-holloway-street-alston-avenue-bp-station/11743180/ | 2022-04-13T04:49:02 | 0 | https://abc11.com/durham-shooting-holloway-street-alston-avenue-bp-station/11743180/ |
Several tornadoes confirmed by the National Weather Service left 23 people injured and caused widespread damage Tuesday afternoon in Central Texas north of Austin, officials said.
Of those hurt, 12 were transported to area hospitals, including one in critical condition, County Judge David Blackburn said late Tuesday. The other 11 either did not go to the hospital or were treated and already released.
No one has been reported killed from the storm.
One of those tornadoes swept near the historic village of Salado about 6 p.m. Tuesday, damaging homes in rural areas of Bell County between Waco and Austin, Blackburn said. It traveled approximately 7 miles on the ground.
Blackburn said there was "not much left" along the path the tornado cut.
"Trees, large trees uprooted, overturned, stripped. Buildings really reduced to rubble in many locations. Powerlines, power poles scattered all over the place. It’s pretty devastating," he said.
Photos on social media showed grapefruit-size hail associated with that storm.
U.S. & World
The storm was part of a system of severe storms extending from Austin to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/23-people-injured-as-central-texas-tornadoes-cause-widespread-damage/3643435/ | 2022-04-13T04:49:02 | 0 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/23-people-injured-as-central-texas-tornadoes-cause-widespread-damage/3643435/ |
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Hazim Dahir was in New York with his family for Spring Break for four days.
On the last day, chaos erupted on the subway in Brooklyn.
"We went on the subway many times," said Hazim, and he noted that he took the same train line that first responders rushed to Tuesday.
They had also gone to Brooklyn to catch a boat around the New York Harbor to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
"I honestly woke up this morning telling the kids, 'Let's see what tragedy is unfolding today,'" he said.
These types of mass casualty tragedies are getting new focus with Tuesday's incident in Brooklyn and the shooting in downtown Sacramento that killed six people.
"It can happen," said Gerald Baker, sheriff of Wake County. "It doesn't have to be in the subway, we all know that. It's happening all over the country."
Baker did have to respond to a major incident late in 2020 when someone shot at the doors of the Wake County Justice Center.
Staffing shortages have challenged law enforcement departments nationwide, including Sheriff Baker's.
He said it won't stop him from his day-to-day and from training to be prepared for incidents like this.
"We're constantly keeping ourselves prepared so we can respond to anything that occurs in this county," Baker said.
Hazim meantime said he's grateful to be back in Raleigh
"We had a lot of fun," he said. "New York is amazing as long as you get to leave."
Raleigh family in New York as subway attacks occur
By Josh Chapin | https://abc11.com/new-york-subway-attack-shooting-raleigh-family-in-shooter/11742863/ | 2022-04-13T04:49:08 | 0 | https://abc11.com/new-york-subway-attack-shooting-raleigh-family-in-shooter/11742863/ |
Tuesday's NBA Play-in Tournament game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves had an unusual situation occur that made rounds on social media.
The Timberwolves were taking free throws with 3:34 remaining in the second quarter but played stopped when someone on the other end of the court was seen gluing herself to the floor.
Initial reports of the situation were unclear, but TNT sideline reporter Allie LaForce later got clarification that the woman was protesting Timberwolves majority owner Glen Taylor for an incident involving chickens at an egg farm he owns.
The woman, who appears to be animal rights activist Alicia Santurio of the grassroots group Direct Action Everywhere, appeared to be wearing a shirt that read "Glen Taylor Roasts Animals Alive."
Direct Action Everywhere issued a press release on the matter, which apparently involves the mass killing of 5.3 million chickens through ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+):
"The mass killing happened at Rembrandt Enterprises, an Iowa factory egg farm owned by billionaire Glen Taylor, who also owns the Minnesota Timberwolves. As of the afternoon of April 12, neither Rembrandt nor the Timberwolves have responded to queries nor made any public statement about the investigation. Rembrandt has, however, laid off over 200 employees in the weeks after the mass killing."
It appears this wasn't the first time an avian influenza outbreak occurred at a Taylor-owned farm. There was a similar situation in 2015, which was confirmed by Rembrandt Foods and the Iowa Department of Agriculture. | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/sports/woman-who-glued-herself-to-floor-protested-timberwolves-owner-glen-taylor/3643438/ | 2022-04-13T04:49:09 | 1 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/sports/woman-who-glued-herself-to-floor-protested-timberwolves-owner-glen-taylor/3643438/ |
AP source: DOJ denies panel details in Trump records probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department declined a request this week from the House oversight committee to disclose the contents of records that former President Donald Trump took to his Florida residence after leaving the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The move could serve as a setback for Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform as it was ramping up its investigation into Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. It remains unclear what implications the decision could have for the panel’s probe, which was announced in March.
The Justice Department’s decision is part of an effort to protect confidential information that may compromise an ongoing investigation, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The development was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The National Archives had referred the matter of Trump’s handling of those records to the Justice Department earlier this year. Because of that, the DOJ is asking the National Archives not to share information related directly to it, including the contents of the 15 boxes that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The notice to the committee comes days after its chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., accused the Justice Department of “obstructing” the panel’s expanded investigation by preventing the release of information from the National Archives.
The Justice Department has not formally announced it is investigating Trump’s handling of the records, but letters between the committee and the department seem to indicate that investigators are taking steps toward it.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined a request for comment Tuesday.
In addition, the FBI has taken steps to begin examining the potential mishandling of classified information related to the documents in the boxes, according to two other people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. It wasn’t clear exactly what work investigators had done so far or what additional steps they were planning to take.
In a letter to the National Archives last month, Maloney made a series of requests for information she said the committee needs to determine if Trump violated federal records laws over his handling of sensitive and even classified information. In response, the general counsel for the archivist wrote on March 28 that “based on our consultation with the Department of Justice, we are unable to provide any comment.”
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ | 2022-04-13T04:52:38 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ |
Biden: Russia war a ‘genocide,’ trying to ‘wipe out’ Ukraine
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — President Joe Biden said Russia’s war in Ukraine amounted to “genocide,” accusing President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
“Yes, I called it genocide,” he told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
At an earlier event in Menlo, Iowa, addressing spiking energy prices resulting from the war, Biden had implied that he thought Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine, but offered no details. Neither he nor his administration announced new consequences for Russia or assistance to Ukraine following Biden’s public assessment.
Biden’s comments drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had encouraged Western leaders to use the term to describe Russia’s invasion of his country.
“True words of a true leader @POTUS,” he tweeted. “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.”
A United Nations treaty, to which the U.S. is a party, defines genocide as actions taken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Past American leaders often have dodged formally declaring bloody campaigns such as Russia’s in Ukraine as genocide, hesitating to trigger an obligation that under international convention requires signing countries to intervene once genocide is formally identified. That obligation was seen as blocking President Bill Clinton from declaring Rwandan Hutus’ killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in 1994 as genocide, for example.
Biden said it would be up to lawyers to decide if Russia’s conduct met the international standard for genocide, as Ukrainian officials have claimed, but said “it sure seems that way to me.”
“More evidence is coming out literally of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine, and we’re only going to learn more and more about the devastation and let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies,” he said.
Just last week Biden had he did not believe Russia’s actions amounted to genocide, just that they constituted “war crimes.”
During a trip to Europe last month, Biden faced controversy for a nine-word statement seemingly supporting regime change in Moscow, which would have represented a dramatic shift toward direct confrontation with another nuclear-armed country. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
He clarified the comments days later, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
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Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ | 2022-04-13T04:52:44 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ |
Putin vows war will continue as Russian troops mount in east
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.
Thwarted in their push toward the capital, Kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern region of Donbas, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
WARNING: Images and videos contain graphic content.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated there were no serious injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, which has been pummeled by weeks of Russian assaults.
Western leaders warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a grievous breach of international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide” and said “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report but reiterated U.S. concerns about Russia using chemical agents. Britain, meanwhile, has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorus bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorus munitions to illuminate targets or to produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to fumes could breach the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former laboratory head at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it becomes banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said the Biden administration was preparing yet another package of military aid for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. Delivery is due to be completed this week of $800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago.
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around Kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Zelenskyy said evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, including alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 720 people were killed in Kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and over 200 were considered missing, the Interior Ministry said early Wednesday.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said Tuesday it was also looking into events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. It said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a basement in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces were believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to leave by car from the village of Peremoha in the Brovary district, killing four people including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed including two children when a car was fired upon, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake.” Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some of whom had their hands bound and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Speaking at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s far east, in his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began, Putin also said the West would fail to isolate Russia and its economy has withstood sanctions.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, he said Moscow was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” to “achieve the planned goals while minimizing the losses.”
___
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ | 2022-04-13T04:52:51 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ |
Posted: Apr 12, 2022 / 11:20 PM EDT Updated: Apr 12, 2022 / 11:20 PM EDT SHARE Close Modal Suggest a Correction Your name(required) Your email(required) Report a typo or grammatical error(required) Submit Δ Suggest a Correction | https://fox59.com/hoosier-lottery/daily-3-daily-4-evening-drawing-april-12-2022/ | 2022-04-13T04:56:13 | 0 | https://fox59.com/hoosier-lottery/daily-3-daily-4-evening-drawing-april-12-2022/ |
Tuesday’s high school scores: D-R girls lacrosse dominates Bourne
DIGHTON— The Dighton-Rehboboth girls lacrosse team is on a roll, and show no signs of slowing down.
D-R dominated play against Bourne at home on Tuesday as they beat the Canalwomen 16-4 in South Coast Conference action.
D-R led 9-2 at halftime. The Falcons defense dominated and controlled the outcome of this game. Starting defenders Fiona Todd, Rachel Zankul, Lauren Marcotrigiano and Ava Fernandez did not allow the ball to stay in the D-R defensive end for long. Bourne won the majority of the draw controls, but the Falcons defense was able to turn over the ball consistently throughout the game. High defender Fiona Todd consistently won ground ball battles and forced the Bourne offense out of the D-R defensive end. Karina Bosco capitalized on key moments to cut through the middle and score 9 out of the Falcons’ 16 goals. Cassie Lunghi also netted three goals and three assists.
The Falcons (4-0) plays its next at Fairhaven on April 20.
BOYS LACROSSE
Bridgewater-Raynham 13, New Bedford 1
B-R was a force against New Bedford, with seniors John Coyle, Antonio Carucci, Jack Woods, and Noah Reardon leading the way with one goal apiece. B-R had 13 different goal scorers in the Southeast Conference win. B-R (5-0) plays its next against Concord-Carlisle as part of the Coaches Challenge Cup Tournament on April 19.
GIRLS TRACK AND FIELD
King Philip 83, Taunton 53
The Tigers fell to the Warriors on the road in a Hockomock League dual meet and are now 0-2 on the season.
First place finishers for Taunton include senior Nia Mainer-Smith, who won the 200 meter with a time of 28.6 seconds, junior Phylicia Dias, who won the 400 meter with a time of 1:06.1, freshman Emersyn DePonte, who won the 800 meter with a time of 2:27.6, freshman Colby Dunham, who won the mile with a time of 6:09, senior Taylor Doherty, who won the high jump with a height of 4’6” and junior Sayla DePina, who won the discus with a distance of 72’10”.
The Tigers also won both the 4x100 meter and 4x400 meter relays.
Their next dual meet is at home against Franklin on April 26. | https://www.tauntongazette.com/story/sports/high-school/2022/04/12/tuesdays-high-school-scores-d-r-girls-lacrosse-dominates-bourne/7298150001/ | 2022-04-13T05:01:43 | 1 | https://www.tauntongazette.com/story/sports/high-school/2022/04/12/tuesdays-high-school-scores-d-r-girls-lacrosse-dominates-bourne/7298150001/ |
AP source: DOJ denies panel details in Trump records probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department declined a request this week from the House oversight committee to disclose the contents of records that former President Donald Trump took to his Florida residence after leaving the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The move could serve as a setback for Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform as it was ramping up its investigation into Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. It remains unclear what implications the decision could have for the panel’s probe, which was announced in March.
The Justice Department’s decision is part of an effort to protect confidential information that may compromise an ongoing investigation, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The development was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The National Archives had referred the matter of Trump’s handling of those records to the Justice Department earlier this year. Because of that, the DOJ is asking the National Archives not to share information related directly to it, including the contents of the 15 boxes that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The notice to the committee comes days after its chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., accused the Justice Department of “obstructing” the panel’s expanded investigation by preventing the release of information from the National Archives.
The Justice Department has not formally announced it is investigating Trump’s handling of the records, but letters between the committee and the department seem to indicate that investigators are taking steps toward it.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined a request for comment Tuesday.
In addition, the FBI has taken steps to begin examining the potential mishandling of classified information related to the documents in the boxes, according to two other people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. It wasn’t clear exactly what work investigators had done so far or what additional steps they were planning to take.
In a letter to the National Archives last month, Maloney made a series of requests for information she said the committee needs to determine if Trump violated federal records laws over his handling of sensitive and even classified information. In response, the general counsel for the archivist wrote on March 28 that “based on our consultation with the Department of Justice, we are unable to provide any comment.”
___
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ | 2022-04-13T05:01:43 | 0 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ |
Biden: Russia war a ‘genocide,’ trying to ‘wipe out’ Ukraine
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — President Joe Biden said Russia’s war in Ukraine amounted to “genocide,” accusing President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
“Yes, I called it genocide,” he told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
At an earlier event in Menlo, Iowa, addressing spiking energy prices resulting from the war, Biden had implied that he thought Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine, but offered no details. Neither he nor his administration announced new consequences for Russia or assistance to Ukraine following Biden’s public assessment.
Biden’s comments drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had encouraged Western leaders to use the term to describe Russia’s invasion of his country.
“True words of a true leader @POTUS,” he tweeted. “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.”
A United Nations treaty, to which the U.S. is a party, defines genocide as actions taken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Past American leaders often have dodged formally declaring bloody campaigns such as Russia’s in Ukraine as genocide, hesitating to trigger an obligation that under international convention requires signing countries to intervene once genocide is formally identified. That obligation was seen as blocking President Bill Clinton from declaring Rwandan Hutus’ killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in 1994 as genocide, for example.
Biden said it would be up to lawyers to decide if Russia’s conduct met the international standard for genocide, as Ukrainian officials have claimed, but said “it sure seems that way to me.”
“More evidence is coming out literally of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine, and we’re only going to learn more and more about the devastation and let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies,” he said.
Just last week Biden had he did not believe Russia’s actions amounted to genocide, just that they constituted “war crimes.”
During a trip to Europe last month, Biden faced controversy for a nine-word statement seemingly supporting regime change in Moscow, which would have represented a dramatic shift toward direct confrontation with another nuclear-armed country. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
He clarified the comments days later, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
___
Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ | 2022-04-13T05:01:49 | 1 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ |
Putin vows war will continue as Russian troops mount in east
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.
Thwarted in their push toward the capital, Kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern region of Donbas, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
WARNING: Images and videos contain graphic content.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated there were no serious injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, which has been pummeled by weeks of Russian assaults.
Western leaders warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a grievous breach of international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide” and said “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report but reiterated U.S. concerns about Russia using chemical agents. Britain, meanwhile, has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorus bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorus munitions to illuminate targets or to produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to fumes could breach the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former laboratory head at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it becomes banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said the Biden administration was preparing yet another package of military aid for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. Delivery is due to be completed this week of $800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago.
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around Kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Zelenskyy said evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, including alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 720 people were killed in Kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and over 200 were considered missing, the Interior Ministry said early Wednesday.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said Tuesday it was also looking into events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. It said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a basement in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces were believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to leave by car from the village of Peremoha in the Brovary district, killing four people including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed including two children when a car was fired upon, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake.” Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some of whom had their hands bound and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Speaking at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s far east, in his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began, Putin also said the West would fail to isolate Russia and its economy has withstood sanctions.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, he said Moscow was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” to “achieve the planned goals while minimizing the losses.”
___
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ | 2022-04-13T05:01:56 | 0 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ |
Thursday
Al-Anon, 1-2 p.m., Faith Presbyterian Church, 1608 Kirk Row, enter through door 1.
Card Classes, 10-11 a.m., Greentown Public Library, 421 S. Harrison St., Greentown, this once-a-month class provides the materials to create beautiful and useful cards, call 765-628-3534 to register.
Crafter Work: Canning Jar Craft, 6-8 p.m., Library Community Room, Greentown Public Library, 421 S. Harrison St., Greentown, call 765-628-3534 to register.
Friday
Greentown Lions Club drive-thru fish fry, 4-8 p.m., Lions Cafeteria at the South End of the Howard County Fairgrounds in Greentown, $12 includes fish, tenderloin, beans, slaw and cookie.
Al-Anon, 6:30-7:30 p.m., Faith Presbyterian Church, 1608 Kirk Row, enter through door 1.
Saturday
Orlando A. Somers Camp # 1 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War meeting, noon, South Branch of the Howard County Public Library, 1755 E. Center Road, Kokomo, any descendant from a Union soldier or sailor or anyone who has an interest in the Civil War is invited to attend, contact Travis LeMaster at 765-667-1940 or visit www.orlandosomerscamp.org
Greentown Historical Society open, 1-4 p.m. Saturdays and Mondays or by appointment, 103 E. Main St., Greentown, call 765-628-3800.
Youth Easter egg hunt, 1 p.m., Northwest Park, 1600 W. Judson Road, for children 10 and younger, free of charge, bring your own basket/bag, three age groups: 3 and younger, 4-6 and 7-10, all children must be accompanied by an adult, adults may only help children in the age group 3 and younger, all eggs will be filled with candy but some will have a numbered slip for an additional prize, for more information, contact the Parks & Recreation Department at 765-456-7275.
Russiaville Lions Club fish fry, 4-7 p.m., 555 N. Liberty St., Russiaville, meals $12 for adults and $8 for children ages 5-12, pie $2 a slice, menu includes all-you-can-eat fish and tenderloins from Hawg Heaven, baked beans, french fries, coleslaw or applesauce, bread and butter, water, lemonade and coffee, proceeds will benefit college scholarships awarded to Western students.
Adult-only Easter egg hunt, 8:30 p.m., Kirkendall Nature Center at Jackson Morrow Park, 4200 S. Park Road, ages 16+, wristbands on sale for $5 cash only, 10,000 eggs will be hidden and filled with candy, some eggs will also have a numbered slip for an additional prize, photo ID may be required for age verification, wristbands on sale 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday until April 14 at the KPRD office in Highland Park; wristbands also available from 5-8:25 p.m. on day of event, for more information, contact the Parks & Recreation Department at 765-456-7275.
Sunday
VFW bingo, noon to 4 p.m., 920 N. Washington St., kitchen open.
Monday
Greentown Historical Society open, 1-4 p.m. Saturdays and Mondays or by appointment, 103 E. Main St., Greentown, call 765-628-3800.
Pet portraits, 3:30-6:30 p.m. April 18-22, Kokomo-Howard County Public Library South, 1755 E. Center Road, kids can drop in with a photo of their pets and the library will show them how to transform it into a colorful portrait, photos can be headshots or include the whole body, black and white photos also accepted, finished size of print will be the same size as original photo.
VFW bingo, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., 920 N. Washington St., kitchen open. | https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/calendar-april-13-2022/article_8f8de014-ba95-11ec-8981-5f4cb48de2ef.html | 2022-04-13T05:10:25 | 1 | https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/calendar-april-13-2022/article_8f8de014-ba95-11ec-8981-5f4cb48de2ef.html |
A waitress approached Wylen Ford’s table carrying food, silverware and a glass of water. She gave him a plastic straw for his drink. That’s how he got the idea.
A few years later, Ford is nearly ready to start production on his first invention, TheStrawWasher. One of his early prototypes was 3D-printed at Kokomo-Howard County Public Library’s Digital Den.
TheStrawWasher uses hot water, microscopic bubbles and cog wheels to clean batches of metal straws. Ford hopes it will help restaurants phase out plastic straws while saving money.
“The government's taking away these plastic straws and banning them but not offering a solution,” Ford said. “That's where I come in and help them out.”
Ben Rutz, the library’s digital media coordinator, had just started at the Digital Den and was going through emails left by his predecessor. That’s how he started correspondence with Ford.
The den hadn’t even celebrated its grand reopening from COVID when Ford met Rutz at the library. The 21-year-old inventor didn’t have any experience with 3D modeling, but brought some design drawings along hoping to materialize pieces of a machine that hadn’t been built before.
Using the project as a learning opportunity, Rutz showed Ford Tinkercad, a mostly educational 3D modeling website that would help the inventor create gears for TheStrawWasher.
After that first lesson, Ford returned home and started studying the website. He estimates it took him two weeks to learn 3D modeling. He was also working a full-time plumbing job at Roto-Rooter while developing his machine.
“I've been doing that since I was 19-and-a-half to 21 years old, now,” Ford said. “Going straight home working every weekend, every night, every day. Just trying to make this a possibility.”
“He just ran with it,” Rutz said, adding that the two met a couple of times for lessons before Ford printed different gear options for his invention.
The Digital Den charges $1 per print hour and usually sets a maximum of 5 hours. However, when Ford submitted projects that would take 8 to 10 hours, Rutz worked out a timeline to help get pieces printed while other patrons’ projects were at a lull.
For the most part, Ford said his invention has been developed in a 5-square-foot corner of his garage. He used a borrowed drill press, a few hand tools and a Dremel to build the first prototype. The second prototype used 3D-printed parts from the Digital Den.
Ford is now waiting to see if his third prototype will be the last. Although the third prototype will also be 3D-printed, he wasn’t able to use the printers at the Digital Den — the plastic used in the library’s 3D printers isn’t able to withstand the hot water needed to cleanse metal straws.
Once he’s settled on a design, Ford plans to use an injection mold instead of a 3D-printer to manufacture the product.
Hoping the third prototype will be his last, Ford returned to the Digital Den to create a cache of photos and videos for marketing the product. Rutz operated the camera and showed Ford how to use Adobe Creative Cloud software to edit photos and videos. They also utilized the library’s green screen.
The material shot at the library, as well as Ford’s first 3D model, can be found on his website, https://strawwashin.com/ and his social media sites, each named “OFFICIALWYCO.” He also plans to launch a Kickstarter that will feature the photos and videos produced in the Digital Den.
“It's really crazy to see somebody who came in, literally knew nothing about 3D printing, and then designed something that he's now trying to get in restaurants,” Rutz said. “I'm really proud of the guy and I'm excited to see what happens with it.” | https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/fords-first-invention-library-helps-build-prototype/article_85e3444c-b9b3-11ec-995c-7b1880ca8657.html | 2022-04-13T05:10:31 | 1 | https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/fords-first-invention-library-helps-build-prototype/article_85e3444c-b9b3-11ec-995c-7b1880ca8657.html |
Mumaw, Phyllis, services are noon today at Shirley & Stout Funeral Home, 1315 W. Lincoln Road, Kokomo.
Ginda, Paul, services are 2 p.m. today at Shirley & Stout Funeral Home, 1315 W. Lincoln Road, Kokomo.
Hougland, Rick, services are 6 p.m. today at Shirley & Stout Funeral Home, 414 W. Jefferson St., Kokomo.
Browning, Carolyn, services are at 1 p.m. Thursday at Woodland Church of God, 3401 S. Webster St., Kokomo.
Prater, Jennifer, services are 5 p.m. Thursday at Crossroads Community Christian Church, 3570 E. 200 South, Bringhurst.
Douglas, Larissa, services are 7 p.m. Thursday at Howard Miami Mennonite Church, 3976 E. 1400 South, Kokomo.
Eaton, Janice, services are noon Saturday at Stout & Son Funeral Home, 44 Michigan St., Burlington.
Cobb, Beulah, services are 2 p.m. April 20 at Mast-Hensler Cemetery, 3828 600 East, Kokomo.
Janes, Robert Henry, services are 11:30 a.m. April 21 at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, 3155 S. 200 West, Kokomo.
Snyder, Richard, services are April 23 at Spruce Creek Presbyterian Church, Port Orange, Florida.
Lancaster, Dixie, services are 2 p.m. May 7 at Bennett Switch Community Church.
Tudor, William, services are 2 p.m. May 8 at the American Legion Post 6, 2604 S. Lafountain St., Kokomo. | https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/funeral-listings-april-13-2022/article_35330e18-b9d3-11ec-b55f-cff3a8771d0f.html | 2022-04-13T05:10:38 | 1 | https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/funeral-listings-april-13-2022/article_35330e18-b9d3-11ec-b55f-cff3a8771d0f.html |
Hendryx retiring after 29-year career
Winamac football coach John Hendryx is retiring.
The Hall of Fame coach compiled a 232-97 record over a 29-year career that included successful stints at Carroll, Northwestern and Knox before he returned to his alma mater, Winamac.
Hendryx compiled a sizzling 113-48 record in 14 seasons at Carroll. He led the Cougars to the Class A state title in 1995 and a runner-up finish in ‘96.
He was just as impressive at Northwestern. He led the Tigers to a 62-30 record over eight seasons with one Mid-Indiana Conference title, one Class 2A sectional title and three sectional runner-up finishes. His .674 winning percentage at Northwestern is by far the best in school history and his 62 wins rank No. 2. The eight straight winning seasons also is the best in school history.
Hendryx went on to lead Knox to a 2019 sectional title — the first in the school’s history. And he led Winamac to a 2020 sectional title.
IU Kokomo baseball wins series finale
BLUEFIELD, Va. — IU Kokomo’s baseball team beat West Virginia Tech 14-3 Monday to salvage a win in the three-game series.
Former Western standout Patrick Mills continued his hot hitting by belting a solo home run and triple. It was his 12th homer of the season. Seth Denoyer smacked two singles and drove in four runs, Dylan Steele cracked a double and a single, drove in three runs and scored two runs and Tahj Borom had two singles, three RBI and two stolen bases.
J.T. Holton pitched six scoreless innings for the win. He allowed just five hits.
• IUK’s game at Georgetown (Kentucky) on Tuesday was canceled. The Cougars are scheduled to visit Indiana Tech today. | https://www.kokomotribune.com/sports/sports-briefs-for-wednesday-april-13/article_e2cb3fb2-bad9-11ec-9a5a-a316bfdc8e0f.html | 2022-04-13T05:10:44 | 1 | https://www.kokomotribune.com/sports/sports-briefs-for-wednesday-april-13/article_e2cb3fb2-bad9-11ec-9a5a-a316bfdc8e0f.html |
AP source: DOJ denies panel details in Trump records probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department declined a request this week from the House oversight committee to disclose the contents of records that former President Donald Trump took to his Florida residence after leaving the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The move could serve as a setback for Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform as it was ramping up its investigation into Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. It remains unclear what implications the decision could have for the panel’s probe, which was announced in March.
The Justice Department’s decision is part of an effort to protect confidential information that may compromise an ongoing investigation, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The development was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The National Archives had referred the matter of Trump’s handling of those records to the Justice Department earlier this year. Because of that, the DOJ is asking the National Archives not to share information related directly to it, including the contents of the 15 boxes that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The notice to the committee comes days after its chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., accused the Justice Department of “obstructing” the panel’s expanded investigation by preventing the release of information from the National Archives.
The Justice Department has not formally announced it is investigating Trump’s handling of the records, but letters between the committee and the department seem to indicate that investigators are taking steps toward it.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined a request for comment Tuesday.
In addition, the FBI has taken steps to begin examining the potential mishandling of classified information related to the documents in the boxes, according to two other people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. It wasn’t clear exactly what work investigators had done so far or what additional steps they were planning to take.
In a letter to the National Archives last month, Maloney made a series of requests for information she said the committee needs to determine if Trump violated federal records laws over his handling of sensitive and even classified information. In response, the general counsel for the archivist wrote on March 28 that “based on our consultation with the Department of Justice, we are unable to provide any comment.”
___
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ | 2022-04-13T05:17:56 | 0 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ |
Biden: Russia war a ‘genocide,’ trying to ‘wipe out’ Ukraine
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — President Joe Biden said Russia’s war in Ukraine amounted to “genocide,” accusing President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
“Yes, I called it genocide,” he told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
At an earlier event in Menlo, Iowa, addressing spiking energy prices resulting from the war, Biden had implied that he thought Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine, but offered no details. Neither he nor his administration announced new consequences for Russia or assistance to Ukraine following Biden’s public assessment.
WARNING: Images and videos used contains graphic content.
Biden’s comments drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had encouraged Western leaders to use the term to describe Russia’s invasion of his country.
“True words of a true leader @POTUS,” he tweeted. “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.”
A United Nations treaty, to which the U.S. is a party, defines genocide as actions taken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Past American leaders often have dodged formally declaring bloody campaigns such as Russia’s in Ukraine as genocide, hesitating to trigger an obligation that under international convention requires signing countries to intervene once genocide is formally identified. That obligation was seen as blocking President Bill Clinton from declaring Rwandan Hutus’ killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in 1994 as genocide, for example.
Biden said it would be up to lawyers to decide if Russia’s conduct met the international standard for genocide, as Ukrainian officials have claimed, but said “it sure seems that way to me.”
“More evidence is coming out literally of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine, and we’re only going to learn more and more about the devastation and let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies,” he said.
Just last week Biden had he did not believe Russia’s actions amounted to genocide, just that they constituted “war crimes.”
During a trip to Europe last month, Biden faced controversy for a nine-word statement seemingly supporting regime change in Moscow, which would have represented a dramatic shift toward direct confrontation with another nuclear-armed country. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
He clarified the comments days later, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
___
Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ | 2022-04-13T05:18:03 | 0 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ |
Police hunt gunman who wounded 10 in Brooklyn subway attack
NEW YORK (AP) — Police hunted late into the night for the gunman who opened fire Tuesday on a subway train in Brooklyn, an attack that left 10 people wounded by gunfire and once again interrupted New York City’s long journey to post-pandemic normalcy.
The search focused partly on a man who police say rented a van possibly connected to the violence.
Investigators stressed they weren’t sure whether the man, Frank R. James, was responsible for the shooting. But authorities were examining social media videos in which the 62-year-old decried the United States as a racist place awash in violence and sometimes railed against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.
“This nation was born in violence, it’s kept alive by violence or the threat thereof and it’s going to die a violent death. There’s nothing going to stop that,” James said in one video.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell called the posts “concerning” and officials tightened security for Adams.
The gunman sent off smoke grenades in a crowded subway car and then fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm handgun, police said. Five gunshot victims were in critical condition but expected to survive. At least a dozen people who escaped gunshot wounds were treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries.
One passenger, Jordan Javier, thought the first popping sound he heard was a book dropping. Then there was another pop, people started moving toward the front of the car, and he realized there was smoke, he said.
When the train pulled into the station, people ran out and were directed to another train across the platform. Passengers wept and prayed as they rode away from the scene, Javier said.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” he said.
The shooter fled in the chaos, leaving behind the gun, extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van.
That key led investigators to James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, said Chief of Detectives James Essig. The van was later found, unoccupied, near a subway station where investigators determined the gunman had entered the train system, Essig said.
Rambling, profanity-filled YouTube videos apparently posted by James, who is Black, are replete with violent language and bigoted comments, some against other Black people.
One video, posted April 11, criticizes crime against Black people and says drastic action is needed.
“You got kids going in here now taking machine guns and mowing down innocent people,” James says. “It’s not going to get better until we make it better,” he said, adding that he thought things would only change if certain people were “stomped, kicked and tortured” out of their “comfort zone.”
Several videos mention New York’s subways.
A Feb. 20 video says the mayor and governor’s plan to address homelessness and safety in the subway system “is doomed for failure” and refers to himself as a “victim” of the city’s mental health programs. A Jan. 25 video criticizes Adams’ plan to end gun violence.
Adams, who is isolating following a positive COVID-19 test on Sunday, said in a video statement that the city “will not allow New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single individual.”
___
Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Beatrice Dupuy, Karen Matthews, Julie Walker, Deepti Hajela, Michelle L. Price and David Porter in New York contributed to this report, and Michael Kunzelman contributed from College Park, Maryland.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ | 2022-04-13T05:18:09 | 1 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ |
Putin vows war will continue as Russian troops mount in east
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.
Thwarted in their push toward the capital, Kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern region of Donbas, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
WARNING: Images and videos contain graphic content.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated there were no serious injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, which has been pummeled by weeks of Russian assaults.
Western leaders warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a grievous breach of international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide” and said “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report but reiterated U.S. concerns about Russia using chemical agents. Britain, meanwhile, has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorus bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorus munitions to illuminate targets or to produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to fumes could breach the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former laboratory head at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it becomes banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said the Biden administration was preparing yet another package of military aid for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. Delivery is due to be completed this week of $800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago.
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around Kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Zelenskyy said evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, including alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 720 people were killed in Kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and over 200 were considered missing, the Interior Ministry said early Wednesday.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said Tuesday it was also looking into events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. It said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a basement in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces were believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to leave by car from the village of Peremoha in the Brovary district, killing four people including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed including two children when a car was fired upon, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake.” Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some of whom had their hands bound and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Speaking at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s far east, in his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began, Putin also said the West would fail to isolate Russia and its economy has withstood sanctions.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, he said Moscow was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” to “achieve the planned goals while minimizing the losses.”
___
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ | 2022-04-13T05:18:15 | 1 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/putin-vows-war-will-continue-russian-troops-mount-east/ |
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – Tuesday, April 12th carpenter local 232 held “Tax Fraud Days of Action.”
The event took aim at construction industry tax fraud, something the Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters (IKORCC) estimates costs Indiana over 400 million dollars every year.
the IKORCC pointed out that much money could pay for a number of different things in the community. Like 8,741 state troopers, 7,937 K-12 teachers, or 783 small business loans.
Tom Case, a representative of IKORCC, said that although Fort Wayne is the second largest city in Indiana it’s construction wages are actually the lowest in the state. He says the wages are in their low state because of workers that are being paid cash or improperly.
Presentations at the event covered that construction tax fraud hurts more than just taxpayers. The workers, and contractors who play by the rules are hurt as well. Per IKORCC workers lose out on benefits and other contractors lose business, their bids aren’t as competitive as those who are exploiting cheap labor.
In what became a bit of a who’s who of politicians and influential community figures. Councilmembers Russ Yale, Geoff Paddock, and Thomas Didier all attended alongside Mayor Tom Henry, state senators Justin Busch and David Niezgodski. In addition Phil GiaQuinta, a minority house representative spoke as well.
Mayor Henry said the whole conversation really boiled down to trust, and took time to talk about a proposed solution to the issue. A new responsible bidding ordinance for Fort Wayne.
A responsible bidder ordinance helps ensure that cities hire responsible contractors. They serve to protect local governments by establishing criteria that contractors must meet to be eligible to work.
At one point multiple politicians from both sides of the aisle took to the podium and agreed that something had to be done, much to event organizer Kyle Gresham’s delight saying, “What you are seeing today is both parties coming together to tackle an issue that affects all of us. This is what our political system is supposed to look like.”
Tomorrow another event will be put on concerning tax fraud in Indianapolis, more information about the event, and more information about their movement can be found here. | https://www.wane.com/news/carpenters-shine-light-on-millions-of-lost-dollars-looks-for-plan-to-crack-down-on-tax-fraud/ | 2022-04-13T05:28:58 | 0 | https://www.wane.com/news/carpenters-shine-light-on-millions-of-lost-dollars-looks-for-plan-to-crack-down-on-tax-fraud/ |
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – On Tuesday night city council passed a pair of funding motions.
The first one allows the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) enacted by Congress in March of 2021 to move forward in the Fort. Fort Wayne will receive $50.8 million to help recover from economic hardships brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
With tonight’s meeting they agree to a preliminary plan on just how to spend that money.
The second motion related to the ongoing riverfront development. Now in phase 2 the development has been buying business that don’t “fit” with the feeling they’re going for on the river. The latest move will now be to buy the land Schaab metal products sits on, and relocate it to allow another business that is more pedestrian friendly to move in.
Whether it’s a new restaurant or shopping center is still yet to be decided. | https://www.wane.com/news/city-council-passes-two-funding-motions-regarding-arpa-and-the-riverfront-development/ | 2022-04-13T05:29:04 | 1 | https://www.wane.com/news/city-council-passes-two-funding-motions-regarding-arpa-and-the-riverfront-development/ |
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – WANE 15 caught up with some fans Tuesday night at the first home game of the 2022 TinCaps season.
Watch the video to hear why they came out for the first game at Parkview Field.
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – WANE 15 caught up with some fans Tuesday night at the first home game of the 2022 TinCaps season.
Watch the video to hear why they came out for the first game at Parkview Field. | https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/fans-have-fun-at-tincaps-home-opener/ | 2022-04-13T05:29:10 | 0 | https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/fans-have-fun-at-tincaps-home-opener/ |
Donoho’s girls sailed through the Class 1A-3A tennis sectional Tuesday, one step in trying to take it one step farther after finishing as state runner-up a year ago.
The Falcons won all six singles courts and all three doubles courts to advance to next week’s state tournament at Montgomery’s Lagoon Park.
Claire Hillman, Lily Grace Draper, Mary Marshall Perry, Harper Pumroy, Blair Kitchen and Anne Marie Harris all emerged victorious in their brackets.
Hillman, the reigning All-Calhoun County player of the year, and Draper teamed to win a state title in No. 1 doubles in 2021, and Hillman was runner-up in No. 1 singles. Draper and Pumroy were also runners-up in No. 2 and No. 4 singles, respectively.
Basketball
North-South All-Stars: Jacksonville’s John Broom and Cade Phillips, Piedmont’s Alex Odam and Ranburne’s Briley Merrill were selected to play for the Alabama North All-Stars, the Alabama High School Athletic Association announced Tuesday.
Oxford’s Melissa Bennett will be part of the North girls’ coaching staff.
The North-South Game will be part of All-Star Sports Week July 18-22 in Montgomery. Rising seniors are eligible.
Broom and Phillps starred on Jacksonville’s Class 4A state title team, and Broom was a finalist for Alabama Sports Writers Association 4A player of the year. Odam was a finalist for 3A player of the year.
Merrill made the ASWA Class 2A all-state team.
Bennett coached Oxford’s girls to their first-ever Final Four appearance and a runner-up finish. She was the ASWA’s 6A coach of the year.
Baseball
Jacksonville 4, Cherokee County 3: Tito Canales led the way as Jacksonville prevailed in Class 4A, Area 9 action. He went 2-for-3 with a double and drove in two runs.
Dakoda Willingham struck out 11 batters and allowed four hits, three earned runs and four walks in 6 2/3 innings. Grant Patterson retired the final batter.
Other top performers for Jacksonville (14-7):
—Jae-Taj Morris, 1-for-4, run.
—Jim Ogle, 1-for-3, double, RBI.
—Jackson Bonner, 2-for-3.
Piedmont 5, Glencoe 0: Jack Hayes and Sloan Smith combined to pitch a shutout, and Piedmont (24-4) ran its winning streak to 18 games.
Hayes started and went six innings, allowing seven hits and four walks with four strikeouts. Smith worked the final inning, allowing one hit and one walk.
Hayes also went 1-for-1 with two RBIs.
Also, McLane Mohon went 1-for-4 to extend his hitting streak to 23 games.
Other top performers for Piedmont:
—Austin Estes, 1-for-3, run.
—Max Hanson, 2-for-3, run, RBI.
—Jake Austin, 2-for-2, run.
—Cassius Fairs, 1-for-4, run.
Ohatchee 7, Pleasant Valley 1: Brent Honaker went 3-for-4 with a home run, double and four RBIs to lead Ohatchee.
Other top performers for the Indians:
—Carson Title, 1-for-3, two runs.
—Devin Howell, 1-for-3, run.
—Bryce Noah, 1-for-4, run, RBI; pitched complete game, allowing three hits, one earned run and two walks with seven strikeouts over seven innings.
Top performers for Pleasant Valley:
—Pelham Parris, 1-for-3, run.
—Samuel Duncan, 1-for-2.
—Zeke Curvin, 1-for-2.
Oxford 14, Southside 0: Peyton Watts pitched a one-hit shutout, and Oxford’s victory combined with a Pell City’s victory over Springville clinched the Class 6A, Area 13 title for the Yellow Jackets.
Watts struck out nine batters.
He also drove in a run and scored a run.
Other top performers for Oxford (25-5):
—Sam Robertson, 4-for-4, four runs, five RBIs.
—Hayes Harrison, 1-for-2, run, RBI.
—RJ. Brooks, run, RBI.
—Chance Griner, run, two RBIs.
—Forrest Heacock, 1-for-2, run, RBI.
—Tide Gann, 2-for-3, two runs, two RBIs.
—Miguel Mitchell, 1-for-1, three runs.
Donoho 10, Ragland 3: Lucas Elliott homered, drove in two runs and scored two to help the Falcons in Class 1A, Area 9 play. He was 2-for-5 on the day.
Other top performers for Donoho (14-3):
—Slade Haney, 3-for-4, RBI; struck out six batters with two walks, three hits and no earned runs in six innings.
—Judson Billings, 1-for-5, run, RBI.
—Blake Sewell, 1-for-3, run.
—Conner Goodson, 1-for-3, run, RBI.
—Peyton Webb, 2-for-4, triple, run, two RBIs.
—Tyler Allen, 2-for-3, two runs, RBI.
—Will Folsom, 1-for-2, double, run, RBI.
Faith Christian 10, Jacksonville Christian 7: Colton Pahman went 3-for-4 with a triple and five RBIs to lead Faith in 1A, Area 9 play. He also scored a run.
On the mound, he pitched five innings, allowing four hits, no earned runs and three walks with three strikeouts.
Other top performers:
—Brodie Dodson, 1-for-2, three runs.
—Carson Limbaugh, 2-for-4, three runs.
—Brady Whitworth, 1-for-3, two runs, two RBIs.
—Kash Sharma, 1-for-4, RBI.
—Eli Robinson, 1-for-3, run.
Saks 5-20, Wellborn 4-8: Saks beat Wellborn 5-4 on Monday and 20-8 on Tuesday to clinch the runner-up spot in Class 3A, Area 9 and a playoff spot.
Mason Jairrels came up big for the WIldcats, going 5-for-7 with six runs and six RBIs in the two games. He was 4-for-4 with a home run, inside-the-park home run, four runs and six RBIs on Tuesday.
He also started on the mound Tuesday, striking out four batters in 4 2/3 innings.
Other top performers for Saks:
—Rickey Garrett, 4-for-7, three runs, three RBIs.
—Trent Hopkins, 2-for-6, double, four runs.
—Jacori Avery, 2-for-6, two runs, three RBIs.
—Malik Carlisle, 2-for-6, three runs, RBI.
—Jeremy Waters, 4-for-6, two runs, three RBIs; pitched complete game Monday, spreading out six hits with two earned runs and one walk in seven innings.
—Lajuan Curry, 2-for-4, run, RBI.
—Clay Rucker, 1-for-3, double, RBI on Monday.
Top performers for Wellborn:
—Joseph Wyatt, 2-for-7, two runs; started on the mound Monday, pitching six innings, allowing six hits, four earned runs and three walks with five strikeouts.
—Ethan Carroll, 3-for-5, two runs, RBI.
—James Smith, 3-for-5, two runs, two RBIs.
—John Phillps, 2-for-4, two runs, three RBIs.
—Landan Boyd, 1-for-2, run, three RBIs.
Softball
Alexandria 12, St. Clair County 2: Ashley Phillips homered, tripled and drove in five runs to lead Alexandria in Class 5A, Area 11 play. She was 2-for-5 on the day and scored two runs.
Other top performers for Alexandria (33-7):
—Jill Cockrell, 3-for-3, four runs, RBI.
—Rylee Gattis, 4-for-5, double, three RBIs; spread out eight hits over seven innings, allowing no earned runs or walks with 12 strikeouts.
—Addie Jennings, 1-for-4, double, run, RBI.
—Christian Hess, 2-for-4, run, two RBIs.
—Clancy Bright, 1-for-1, run.
White Plains 2, Cherokee County 0: Leighton Arnold pitched a three-hitter with eight strikeouts as the Wildcats won in 4A, Area 9 play.
Other top performers for White Plains (25-7):
—Callie Richardson, 3-for-4, home run, run, RBI.
—Cooper Martin, 1-for-4, RBI.
—Hallie Williams, 2-for-2, run.
Pleasant Valley 12, Ohatchee 2: Madyson Cromer went 4-for-4 with a home run, three doubles and five RBIs to lead the Raiders.
Hers was one of several big performances for Pleasant Valley (20-13-1):
—Taylor Nix, 1-for-5, two runs, RBI.
—Macey Roper, 2-for-4, two runs.
—Rylee Haynes, 3-for-4, three runs.
—Lily Henry, 2-for-5, run, two RBIs; pitched complete game, striking out four batters with two walks, two earned runs and two hits over seven innings.
—Gracee Ward, 3-for-5, two doubles, four RBIs.
—Haylie Lee, 3-for-4, RBIs.
—Emma Harvey, 1-for-4, run.
—Sydney Beason, 1-for-1, double.
Spring Garden 2, Piedmont 0: Abbey Steward pitched a three-hit shutout with five walks and nine strikeouts Monday. She was also 2-for-3 at the plate.
Other top performers for Spring Garden:
—Maggie Jarrett, 2-for-3, two doubles, RBI.
—Helena Ingram, 1-for-3, RBI.
Top performers for Piedmont (14-10):
—Emily Farmer, pitched six innings, allowing seven hits, two earned runs and two walks with six strikeouts; also 1-for-3 at the plate.
—Savannah Smith, 1-for-2.
—Jaycee Glover, 1-for-3. | https://www.annistonstar.com/sports/high_school/prep-roundup-donoho-girls-sweep-at-tennis-sectionals/article_de376882-bae2-11ec-8e77-dfbbac02ebbe.html | 2022-04-13T05:33:47 | 0 | https://www.annistonstar.com/sports/high_school/prep-roundup-donoho-girls-sweep-at-tennis-sectionals/article_de376882-bae2-11ec-8e77-dfbbac02ebbe.html |
Rates of gonorrhea, syphilis continued to increase in 2020, CDC data shows
Data published Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States decreased in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many had recovered and even increased by the end of 2020.
Related video above: Birth Control Methods Are Being Left Out of a Lot of ‘Sex Talks’
According to the 2020 STD Surveillance Report, cases of gonorrhea had risen 10% by the end of the year, and rates of syphilis, both primary and secondary, were up 7%. Primary and secondary refer to different stages of syphilis infection.
"In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted life as we knew it," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, said Tuesday.
"While there were moments in 2020 when it felt like the world was standing still, sexually transmitted diseases were not. The unrelenting momentum of STDs continued even as prevention and treatment services were disrupted."
Increased syphilis in newborns
Syphilis in newborns, called congenital syphilis, rose 15% from 2019 — a 235% increase from 2016. Congenital syphilis happens when a woman with syphilis passes the infection to her baby during pregnancy. It can lead to serious health problems and death.
In a letter to CDC partners published with the report, Dr. Leandro Mena, director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, said the "surge" in congenital syphilis over the past five years is fueled by increases in primary and secondary syphilis.
"Rates of P&S syphilis increased 24% among reproductive-age women from 2019 to 2020, resulting in increases in congenital syphilis. In 2020, there were 2,148 congenital syphilis cases, an increase of 15% since 2019," the researchers wrote.
According to the report, the most common missed opportunity around congenital syphilis prevention was in women who did not receive timely prenatal care or testing for syphilis.
Chlamydia rates decline
Rates of chlamydia fell 13% from 2019 to 2020, which researchers said was probably due to reduced health care access during the pandemic rather than an actual decrease in infections.
"Most people with chlamydia usually have no signs or symptoms and most cases are identified through screening at routine preventive care visits," the researchers wrote.
"Therefore, it is likely chlamydia was disproportionately affected by reduced screening during the pandemic, resulting in undiagnosed infections."
Researchers said the bump in STD cases seen in the end of the year could be linked to testing changes, meaning reopenings and greater access to care, symptom severity, and clinics targeting patients for testing.
There may also have been more disease transmission in 2020, when people may have had active infections longer due to reduced access to health care, and there may have been changes to sexual behavior during and after shelter-in-place orders. | https://www.koat.com/article/rates-gonorrhea-syphilis-increase-2020-cdc-data-shows/39708595 | 2022-04-13T05:45:33 | 0 | https://www.koat.com/article/rates-gonorrhea-syphilis-increase-2020-cdc-data-shows/39708595 |
Dear Amy: I’ve become good friends with a co-worker who started at the same job I did over 12 years ago.
I’ve received raises, including two after I changed departments six years ago.
In a recent conversation with my co-worker, they disclosed that they have not had one raise in all their time with the company.
When I was given my raises, I was always told it was confidential, and I’ve kept it quiet. My friend has asked several times and has been told that no raises are being given.
They have a good track record with the company and have done well in meeting their goals.
Should I say something to the co-worker about my pay increases?
Would it be better to hint at it and not break the agreed-to confidentiality?
My friend is thinking of looking for a new job.
– Feeling Guilty
Dear Feeling Guilty: This is from NLRB.gov: “Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or the Act), employees have the right to communicate with other employees at their workplace about their wages. Wages are a vital term and condition of employment, and discussions of wages are often preliminary to organizing or other actions for mutual aid or protection.”
Further, they write: “When you and another employee have a conversation or communication about your pay, it is unlawful for your employer to punish or retaliate against you in any way for having that conversation.”
Employers tell employees to keep their salaries confidential because it is in the employer’s best interests for their employees to be kept in the dark about co-workers’ compensation and raises.
Review your company’s official policies and any employment agreement you may have signed. Unless you agreed in writing to keep your own salary confidential, then you should be free to exercise your right to disclose it.
If you want to hedge, you could say, “I know for a fact that raises have been given.”
And yes – your friend should get another job.
Dear Amy: The letter from “Mourning” about the emotions surrounding keeping pets alive when they are suffering really got me.
My friend has the same problem with her old and blind spaniel.
I had to make the decision with my own 17-year-old pet, but took the vet’s advice that quality of life was gone and had to think of the animal, not me.
My friend knows what she should do, but she can’t. Is there anything you can say to ease the choice?
– Sad
Dear Sad: Some vets offer “hospice” or end-of-life palliative care for animals. You might do some research and see if there is a vet in your area who will come to your friend’s house and examine her pup.
This is from ASPCA.org: “Pet hospice is not a place, but a personal choice and philosophy based on the principle that death is a part of life and can be dignified. When considering hospice care, pet parents should be very careful not to prolong the suffering of pets who are in pain or experiencing poor quality of life.”
I went through this with my 20-year-old tabby cat, and the palliative care veterinarian who examined him outlined my options.
I chose to have him euthanized, and buddy died at home with me petting him and thanking him for gracing my life.
And yes – it was so hard!
As with any life-event that is absolutely guaranteed to also be heartbreaking – this is easier to face with a friend’s support.
You can ask if she would like you to go with her – or be with her – when she is ready to go through this process.
Dear Amy: “Sad Mad Daughter,” who was now caring for her abusive and elderly mother could be me.
The thing that is hardest to take is looking at your vulnerable, lonely, isolated, helpless elderly parent and realizing they were looking at a vulnerable, lonely, isolated, helpless child and could actually emotionally and physically abuse that child!
I know my mother didn’t ask for her mental disorder. She is in a nursing home near me; I visit a few times a week and make sure she has everything she needs.
She has taken so much from me, gosh darn it, she will not dictate the kind of attentive daughter I want to be, and get to be, to an elderly parent.
I – not her – get to control how I want to be, and it’s a great feeling.
– Kathy, in Virginia
Dear Kathy: This is next-level wisdom, earned the hardest way possible. I think your perspective could help a lot of people.
Got a question for Amy? Enter it here and we’ll send it to her.
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©2021 Amy Dickinson. | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/advice/ct-aud-ask-amy-0413-20220413-72t6lzybund3hcthbfobz2gisi-story.html | 2022-04-13T05:46:04 | 0 | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/advice/ct-aud-ask-amy-0413-20220413-72t6lzybund3hcthbfobz2gisi-story.html |
DALLAS — The Tampa Bay Lightning had a chance to punch their ticket to the postseason Tuesday night against the Dallas Stars at American Airlines Center.
There’s not much drama to which teams will make the playoffs from the Eastern Conference, as the eight qualifiers seem all but set. But Dallas entered the game clinging to the final spot in the West by two points and, after a sluggish start by both teams, played with a sense of urgency.
The Lightning, with a chance to clinch their fifth straight playoff appearance, didn’t seem to have the same energy. An N.Y. Islanders shootout win over the Pittsburgh Penguins meant the Lightning had to win to clinch their spot in the postseason, and they struggled to match the Stars’ intensity.
If Tampa Bay is treating each game as an opportunity to round into postseason form, this certainly was not a step forward.
The Lightning flirted with danger throughout the game, and it seemed just a matter of time before the Stars would break through. It happened with Roope Hintz’s goal with 4:50 left in the third period.
Here is what we learned from the Lightning’s 1-0 loss:
Second-period disaster
The Lightning had to enter the second intermission feeling lucky to be playing a scoreless game, because the Stars completely turned things around by seizing momentum on a mid-period penalty kill.
The Lightning had just 5 shot attempts in four second-period power-play minutes. During the same span, the Stars had 7.
Dallas forward Luke Glendening had 4 shorthanded shot attempts in a 21-second span. He fired a wrist shot from in front after a puck slid out to him from the corner, then buzzed around the Tampa Bay zone for 3 more attempts. If the Lightning had a man-advantage, it sure didn’t look like it.
Tampa Bay couldn’t set up its power play, struggling on its entries. From that point on, Dallas tilted the ice, peppering the Lightning net.
It didn’t get much better 5-on-5, as the Lightning had just 2 shots on goal in such situations in the period.
In Vasilevskiy we trust
Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy doesn’t get booed in very many arenas, but it certainly makes sense that he’s given a cold reception in Dallas for the way he dashed the Stars’ Stanley Cup dreams two postseasons ago.
Vasilevskiy received some rest — three days, to be exact — and was in top form Tuesday night.
And he needed to be, as he faced an onslaught, particularly in a second period that saw the Stars get 25 shot attempts and outshoot the Lightning on goal, 12-6.
Vasilevskiy was a little lucky, too, as one shot hit the crossbar and Hintz’s third-period wrister through traffic rolled just wide of the far post past an open net.
Vasilevskiy suffered a rare loss to the Stars, but it certainly wasn’t his fault. He entered with a 16-3-3 career record against Dallas, including four wins in the 2020 Stanley Cup final.
Penalty problems
Officiating typically gets a little looser come playoff time, but the silly stick penalties that the Lightning too often commit will only get them into trouble.
In the first period, two of the Lightning’s more disciplined players — Alex Killorn and Brayden Point — committed egregious tripping penalties that forced the penalty-kill unit onto the ice early and, as a result, took away important ice time from some of Tampa Bay’s top skill players.
Mikhail Sergachev was sent to the box early in the third period for tripping Stars captain Jamie Benn after he turned the puck over to Benn in the neutral zone.
These kind of penalties drive head coach Jon Cooper crazy, and the Lightning commit a lot of them. Tampa Bay entered the night fifth in the league in minor penalties. Some of those calls likely won’t be made in the postseason, but the obvious ones will. | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-sp-tampa-bay-lightning-dallas-stars-recap-0413-20220413-msno6h2jpzcylamegbsz2snjaa-story.html | 2022-04-13T05:46:07 | 1 | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-sp-tampa-bay-lightning-dallas-stars-recap-0413-20220413-msno6h2jpzcylamegbsz2snjaa-story.html |
WASHINGTON — Western weaponry pouring into Ukraine helped blunt Russia's initial offensive and seems certain to play a central role in the approaching, potentially decisive, battle for Ukraine's contested Donbas region. Yet the Russian military is making little headway halting what has become a historic arms express.
The U.S. numbers alone are mounting: more than 12,000 weapons designed to defeat armored vehicles, some 1,400 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft, and more than 50 million rounds of ammunition, among many other things. Dozens of other nations are adding to the totals.
The Biden administration is preparing yet another, more diverse, package of military support possibly totaling $750 million to be announced in coming days, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. The additional aid is a sign that the administration intends to continue expanding its support for Ukraine's war effort.
These armaments have helped an under-gunned Ukrainian military defy predictions that it would be quickly overrun by Russia. They explain in part why Vladimir Putin’s army gave up, at least for now, its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital, and has narrowed its focus to battling for eastern and southern Ukraine.
U.S. officials and analysts offer numerous explanations for why the Russians have had so little success interdicting Western arms moving overland from neighboring countries, including Poland. Among the likely reasons: Russia's failure to win full control of Ukraine's skies has limited its use of air power. Also, the Russians have struggled to deliver weapons and supplies to their own troops in Ukraine.
Some say Moscow's problem begins at home.
“The short answer to the question is that they are an epically incompetent army badly led from the very top,” said James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who was the top NATO commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013.
The Russians also face practical obstacles. Robert G. Bell, a longtime NATO official and now a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech University, said the shipments lend themselves to being hidden or disguised in ways that can make them elusive to the Russians — “short of having a network of espionage on the scene” to pinpoint the convoys' movements.
“It’s not as easy to stop this assistance flow as it might seem,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “Things like ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles can be transported in trucks that look just like any other commercial truck. And the trucks carrying the munitions the Russians want to interdict are just a small part of a much larger flow of goods and commerce moving around in Poland and Ukraine and across the border.
“So the Russians have to find the needle in this very big haystack to destroy the weapons and ammo they’re after and not waste scarce munitions on trucks full of printer paper or baby diapers or who knows what.”
Even with this Western assistance it's uncertain whether Ukraine will ultimately prevail against a bigger Russian force. The Biden administration has drawn the line at committing U.S. troops to the fight. It has opted instead to orchestrate international condemnation and economic sanctions, provide intelligence information, bolster NATO's eastern flank to deter a wider war with Russia, and donate weapons.
In mid-March, a Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said arms shipments would be targeted.
“We warned the United States that pumping weapons into Ukraine from a number of countries as it has orchestrated isn’t just a dangerous move but an action that turns the respective convoys into legitimate targets,” he said in televised remarks.
But thus far the Russians appear not to have put a high priority on arms interdiction, perhaps because their air force is leery of flying into Ukraine's air defenses to search out and attack supply convoys on the move. They have struck fixed sites like arms depots and fuel storage locations, but to limited effect.
On Monday the Russians said they destroyed four S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers that had been given to Ukraine by an unspecified European country. Slovakia, a NATO member that shares a border with Ukraine, donated just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. On Tuesday the Russian Ministry of Defense said long-range missiles were used to hit two Ukrainian ammo depots.
As the fighting intensifies in the Donbas and perhaps along the coastal corridor to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Putin may feel compelled to strike harder at the arms pipeline, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called vital to his nation's survival.
In the meantime, a staggering volume and range of war materiel is arriving almost daily.
“The scope and speed of our support to meeting Ukraine’s defense needs are unprecedented in modern times," said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. He said the approximately $2.5 billion in weapons and other material that has been offered to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration is equivalent to more than half of Ukraine's normal defense budget.
One example: The Pentagon says it has provided more than 5,000 Javelin missiles, which are among the world's most effective weapons against tanks and other armored vehicles — and can even take down a low-flying helicopter. The missile, shaped like a clunky dumb bell and weighing 50 pounds (23 kilograms), is fired by an individual soldier; from its launch tube it flies up at a steep angle and descends directly onto its target in what its known as a “curveball” shot — hitting the top of a tank where its armor is weakest.
The specific routes used to move the U.S. and other Western materials into Ukraine are secret for security reasons, but the basic process is not. Just this week, two U.S. military cargo planes arrived in Eastern Europe with items ranging from machine guns and small arms ammunition to body armor and grenades, the Pentagon said.
A similar load is due later this week to complete delivery of $800 million in assistance approved by President Joe Biden just one month ago. The weapons and equipment are offloaded, moved onto trucks and driven into Ukraine by Ukrainian soldiers for delivery.
Kirby said the material sometimes reaches troops in the field within 48 hours of entering Ukraine. | https://www.5newsonline.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-western-weapons/507-6d9b8aaa-cc44-42e5-8c98-ae43b1cf1ff7 | 2022-04-13T05:53:55 | 1 | https://www.5newsonline.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-western-weapons/507-6d9b8aaa-cc44-42e5-8c98-ae43b1cf1ff7 |
In the annual State of the County address Monday night, Durham County Board of Commissioners chair Brenda Howerton foregrounded the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic and laid out a plan to expand funding to transit, broadband, and crime reduction initiatives.
For the first time in three years, the address was delivered in person.
“While the pandemic has brought challenges, it has also released a newfound success and sense of collaboration and innovation,” Howerton said.
She applauded the resilience of the community and noted the county economy’s recovery to pre-pandemic levels.
“Durham County is attracting new businesses and expanding existing ones,” Howerton said, pointing to companies like Smart Wires, Beam Therapeutic, and Google Cloud Hub.
Howerton went on to discuss how the 2021 budget allowed for the formation of several new initiatives—the Long-Term Homeowner Grant Program, the City-County Racial Equity Commission, and the Safety and Wellness Task Force—as well as the hiring of a Refugee and Immigrant Affairs Strategist.
Looking ahead to this year’s budget, Howerton said the board is prioritizing an expansion of transit investments and displayed an accompanying visual of the Triangle Bike Study’s recommended 17-mile shared-use path, which connects Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, Research Triangle Park, Durham, and Chapel Hill.
She also said the board hopes to allocate more money to supporting crime reduction and intervention initiatives.
Due to the county’s recent uptick in gun violence, Howerton said the board has reinstated the former Crime Cabinet to “develop new ideas that can be implemented to significantly reduce the impact of violent crime.” She added that Mayor Elaine O’Neal has called on citizens to volunteer five hours a week to help those experiencing violent crime in their neighborhoods.
Howerton also mentioned that the pandemic has illuminated the need for broadband expansion; the new budget will aim to increase broadband in rural areas to improve education and increase telehealth availability.
“While this list is not all our priorities, I feel it represents our current goals moving forward,” Howerton concluded.
The public hearing for the 2022-23 budget will be held on May 23.
After the address, the board proclaimed April 2022 as Fair Housing Month in Durham County and called local realtor Pete Eisenmann to the stand.
Eisenmann serves as co-chair of the Durham Regional Association of Realtors’ Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which was formed in 2020 to advocate for equal housing opportunities.
He said his interest in preventing housing discrimination came after the Durham association called the murder of George Floyd an “untimely death.”
“I absolutely blistered them with an email, I told them they were self-righteous racist bigots and I was embarrassed to be part of this profession,” Eisnemann said.
He challenged them to create a committee that would retrain their realtors, he said.
“I’m a 60 year old white man. I’m the hand grenade that goes in the room, because I can go anywhere in the white boy’s club. I’m welcome. Look at me,” Eisenmann continued, spreading his arms. “I sit in the middle of the room, I pull the plug, and they are in trouble.”
Citing data that the vast majority of appraisers are white men—and that Black households are undervalued by $48,000, on average—Commissioner Nimasheena Burns asked Eisenmann if the committee has plans to increase diversity among the association’s appraisers.
“There’s an initiative from the federal level; the new director of HUD is particularly interested in making [appraisals] non-personal,” Eisenmann replied. “We know discrimination takes place with people’s names, with people’s color, with people’s location.”
Eisenmann said he foresees the federal initiative bleeding down to the local level.
Eismann added that the committee recently released a diversity pledge and toolkit, which local brokers are required to sign—or not sign—as a commitment to both promote inclusion and provide clients with a document that outlines steps they can take if they experience harassment or discrimination. The committee has also invited an Elon professor who teaches Critical Race Theory to instruct the association on inclusive practices later this year.
Eisenmann wrapped up his remarks by stating that when he was growing up in Levittown, Pennsylvania in the ‘60s, the government would only guarantee federal loans to homebuilders if the deed stated that the house would not be sold to a Black person.
“It is systematic, it is institutional, and it is—excuse me, it’s just a white boy’s club and it’s been that way for years,” Eisenmann said. “I can’t wait to see it burn to the ground.”
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Follow Staff Lena Geller on Twitter or send an email to lgeller@indyweek.com. | https://indyweek.com/news/durham/durham-state-of-the-county-address-fair-housing-month/ | 2022-04-13T05:57:37 | 1 | https://indyweek.com/news/durham/durham-state-of-the-county-address-fair-housing-month/ |
Senate leader Phil Berger (left) and House Speaker Tim Moore field questions at a 2015 press conference. | Photo by Carolina Public Press
This story originally published online at Carolina Public Press.
House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, tried out a legal theory in 2020 elections litigation that had the potential to change the balance of power between the state legislature and the executive branch.
It failed at every level of state and federal courts.
Now, they’re trying to apply that theory again with a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, this time over a disagreement with the other branch of government, the state courts.
The argument, called the independent state legislature theory, takes the position that since Article 1 Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution says, “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” the state legislature should be able to write federal election law without check by the other branches of state government.
Since the state Supreme Court blocked partisan gerrymandering on state constitutional grounds, this legal theory is central to North Carolina legislative Republicans’ hopes of gerrymandering the state’s U.S. congressional maps, assuming they control the state legislature after the 2022 elections.
But there are problems with the argument, according to Carolyn Shapiro, a law professor at the Chicago-Kent School of Law who researched the reemergence of the once-obscure theory in 2020.
“It makes no sense and it will cause chaos,” Shapiro said.
Though the lay reader might think it’s pretty clear—legislature means legislature—Shapiro points to legal scholarship over the last two years that shows the founders’ original meaning of “Legislature thereof” included the legislative mechanisms and checks in a state, including the executive and judicial branches. Reading the line to mean only state legislature, as Moore and Berger do, is a misunderstanding of the constitutional text, she said.
That’s also the position the U.S. Supreme Court came to in the 2015 Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission case in a 5-4 decision. It then referenced that decision favorably in its 2018 Rucho case, meaning the high court would have to overturn or at least evade recent precedent to rule in Moore and Berger’s favor.
But in the last four years, the court has become more conservative, now with a 6-3 edge over liberal justices, and two of the new conservatives have shown interest in the independent state legislature theory.
Should a majority of the justices now accept Moore’s and Berger’s interpretation, state courts would no longer have the authority to review federal redistricting, or possibly any federal election law passed by state legislatures. It depends on if the high court takes the case and how much of Moore and Berger’s arguments it adopts.
But even in a narrow ruling, it would be hard for the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the consequences to just map-drawing, according to Derek Muller, a University of Iowa law professor.
“Once you open that door, you never know how far it can go or who could close it in the future,” Muller said.
Why only Republicans are pursuing the theory
Though only Republicans have brought claims based on the theory in this century, there’s nothing inherent to the argument that should favor one political party over the other, Shapiro said.
In New York, where Democrats control the state legislature and governor’s mansion, state courts blocked the gerrymandered political maps. In California, Democrats who had gerrymandered the state’s maps in their favor gave up the power to draw maps to an independent commission.
In theory, Democrats in those states could benefit from a concentration of power should the independent state legislature become the law of the land. But they haven’t brought the lawsuits, instead treating the theory as if it’s Pandora’s Box, Muller said.
Neither Moore nor Berger responded to questions for this story, including why they are bringing the lawsuits or whether they are worried about unintended consequences of the legal theory.
But examining the political landscape of swing states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the places where the theory has emerged, helps to explain why only Republicans are making legal arguments that could upend how democracy functions in the country.
Should the U.S. Supreme Court accept this argument, the current political balance seems to favor Republicans because they control 30 state legislatures, including seven of the 12 states with split legislatures and executive branches. Those seven include the key swing states of Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
By sheer numbers, that means there are more states where Republicans could pass federal election laws in their favor, either by gerrymandering or restricting access to the vote using laws like photo voter ID, without the usual state court checks.
But this approach is shortsighted, Shapiro said.
“Both parties are going to use it to what they believe is their advantage,” Shapiro said. “I don’t think that there’s anybody who’s going to say, ‘Oh, you know, we’re just going to unilaterally disarm.’”
Pandemic, split governments and theory resurgence
The specific context of the pandemic and political landscape in 2020 helped trigger the rise of the independent state legislature doctrine among Republican legislative leaders in several states.
Suddenly, in early 2020, with the spread of a new worldwide disease of unknown infectiousness or deadliness, elections officials were no longer sure how to run elections. COVID-19 came to North Carolina on March 3, 2020, the same day as the statewide primary.
That timing let North Carolina evade the initial confusion that beset most other states’ primaries, which came later in the year, but it also set up legal fights. Over the summer, the legislature passed a raft of bipartisan election reforms, most of them temporary, to help the election run smoothly during a pandemic.
But advocacy groups still had concerns, mostly around the anticipated explosion in the use of absentee-by-mail voting, so they sued the state, arguing the process at the time would prevent thousands of legitimate ballots from being counted.
Republicans in North Carolina opposed those proposed changes, and this dynamic played out nationwide.
Executive-branch agencies, like the N.C. State Board of Elections, made administrative changes to election procedures under states of emergency or through legal settlements. State courts also made changes, either by blessing legal settlements, as was the case in North Carolina, or by interpreting state constitutions to require changes, as happened in Pennsylvania.
This was outside the regular legislative scheme states usually followed, Muller said. In places like North Carolina, there was suddenly a new election battlefield laid among old foes—Republican-controlled legislatures and Democratic-controlled executive agencies and Democratic-controlled courts.
Faced with last-minute changes to election procedure, legislatures didn’t have time to call new sessions and pass their own laws, assuming they could even get around a gubernatorial veto.
So, to stop legal changes, such as extending the date by which by-mail ballots could be accepted if they were legally voted before Election Day, Republican legislators had to turn to the courts.
In North Carolina, Moore and Berger tried to intervene in a case the State Board of Elections settled in state court. The judge rebuffed them and approved the settlement. So, Moore and Berger appealed, but a strong majority of Democratic justices controlled the N.C. Supreme Court.
To win, the legislators would likely need a way into federal courts, a difficult task because the settlement was a matter of state law. To get there, North Carolina’s legislative Republicans needed a federal hook.
In these kinds of cases, there aren’t many, according to Muller. That’s what made the independent state legislature claim attractive. That, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, had already signaled in a case from Wisconsin earlier that year he was open to the argument.
So, Moore and Berger argued simultaneously in state and federal courts that the State Board of Elections didn’t actually have the authority to agree to the legal settlement because it changed state law, something only the legislature should be able to do.
Trump’s campaign, the N.C. Republican Party, the national Republican senatorial and congressional committees also sued in federal court with the same arguments, showing North Carolina was at the tip of a national Republican spear seeking a way around the limitations of state courts.
Both sets of cases got up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take them up. This time, another Trump appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, indicated he was interested in the independent state legislature theory.
Then, the 2020 votes were in, and it slowly became clear Joe Biden won the election.
But the theory did not vanish.
Instead, Republican attorneys general from 18 states tried to use it to block certification of the presidential election, feeding into lies from Trump that the election had been stolen. Even after Trump’s insurrectionists raided the Capitol, 147 Republican members of Congress voted to overturn the election results on the ungrounded claims that nonlegislative changes could have introduced the opportunity for fraud.
Moore and Berger try again
The fight over redistricting gave Moore and Berger another shot at pushing the independent state legislature doctrine to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Back in November, the North Carolina legislature passed political maps along a party-line vote for state Senate, state House and U.S. congressional districts.
After three months of back-and-forth in state courts, in February the N.C. Supreme Court set new rules limiting partisan gerrymandering, and a three-judge trial court panel accepted the legislature’s redrawn state maps but rejected its congressional maps. To prevent the primaries from being delayed again, those three judges drew temporary maps only to be used this year and told the legislature to try again in 2023.
Moore and Berger disagreed with the ruling.
“Let me be clear: This court has effectively taken a hammer to our state constitution and the rule of law, and I will appeal this ruling with respect to the congressional map immediately on behalf of the voters,” Moore said in a statement after the trial court ruling.
In the past, it hasn’t always been Democrats who appealed maps they disliked to the courts.
In 2001, Republicans brought a state lawsuit called Stephenson that argued Democrats had gerrymandered state legislative seats in their favor. The Republicans won. Democrats tried to redraw the maps, but in 2003, a trial court ruled the new maps were not acceptable and redrew its own maps. Republicans did not appeal that decision.
But Moore and Berger did appeal this year’s trial court redraw of the Republican congressional map. The state Supreme Court rejected that appeal, indicating the lower court decision did not violate the state constitution. Once again, Moore and Berger had one option: try to get to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Politicians and lawyers are opportunistic; they take advantage of the arguments that are in front of them,” Shapiro said.
Once again, the independent state legislature gave Moore and Berger a federal hook. They asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the state decision on the grounds that redistricting is a “manner” of federal elections that state courts cannot review.
Once again, they were joined by the N.C. Republican Party and the National Republican Congressional Committee, with the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Redistricting Trust joining the fray.
Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, said the court should grant the stay. It wasn’t enough. A fourth, Kavanaugh, said the argument deserved review but not on an emergency basis.
Four justices are how many it takes for the U.S. Supreme Court to accept a case, so Moore and Berger then filed a petition for the court to take up the case and get full written and oral briefings.
Per the court’s procedure, it will likely announce whether it will take up the case sometime in May.
“It’s a good thing to have this decided on the merits in a full with full opportunity for briefing and amicus briefs and for the new scholarship to be brought to the attention of the court,” Shapiro said.
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Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com. | https://indyweek.com/news/northcarolina/why-nc-legislators-are-arguing-a-legal-theory-democracy/ | 2022-04-13T05:57:43 | 0 | https://indyweek.com/news/northcarolina/why-nc-legislators-are-arguing-a-legal-theory-democracy/ |
Karl-Anthony Towns put forth perhaps his worst game as a professional Tuesday at Target Center. The big man scored just 11 points on 3-for-11 shooting, committing four turnovers before fouling out after just 24 minutes of action.
He went to the bench after picking up foul No. 6 with 7 minutes, 30 seconds to play, and Minnesota down seven.
And the Wolves won anyway.
D’Angelo Russell and Anthony Edwards delivered inspired efforts, taking over the game offensively at various points in the contest, particularly down the stretch, to lead Minnesota to a thrilling 109-104 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers in a play-in game that seals the No. 7 seed in the playoffs for the Timberwolves.
Minnesota will meet the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 1 of its first-round series Saturday at 2:30 p.m. in Tennessee, in what will be just the Wolves’ second playoff appearance since 2004.
“Couldn’t be more proud of the guys. It’s an emotional win for us, we laid it all out there,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “We fought through a lot of adversity, but we kept fighting.”
Finch noted the importance and value of putting his young team in big-game situations and seeing what it could do.
The Wolves have played in intense, packed houses this season against good teams, but there’s something to be said about doing it in the postseason, with everything on the line. That was Target Center on Tuesday, a packed house against a really good team with massive implications on the line.
It was an all-out battle between two teams of similar caliber. It was physical, it was emotional, it was intense.
And Minnesota was up for the challenge against a team that was in the Western Conference finals just a year ago.
The Wolves locked in defensively in the fourth quarter with everything on the line, making the Clippers’ lives difficult. Los Angeles went just 7 for 20 in the final frame.
On the other end, Edwards and Russell exploded, with Edwards delivering a massive jam and Russell hitting a pull-up triple in transition.
Patrick Beverley held off Reggie Jackson for a rebound with 3 minutes, 30 seconds to play. A foul was called on Jackson, and Beverley instantly flexed to the crowd to bring an already electric crowd to max volume.
Leading by one with 2:30 to play, Edwards connected on a step-back triple over Paul George to build Minnesota’s advantage back up to four. The next possession, Russell hit a pull-up jumper to improve the edge to six.
Russell — who’d struggled down the stretch run of the regular season — finished with 29 points, while Edwards led the way with 30. They were the two best players on the floor, regardless of team.
The younger Wolves were up to the challenge, too. Naz Reid made timely plays down low. Jaden McDaniels defended George — who scored 17 points in the third quarter to put the Clippers up six at the end of three — with vigor.
Towns noted Tuesday morning he felt a sense of confidence, knowing the trust he had in his teammates. He probably didn’t know exactly how much he’d rely on them. On a night when Minnesota’s alpha wolf didn’t come to play, everyone else did.
“This night’s about his teammates,” Finch said. “That’s why you have a team. Other people stepped up.”
Towns received the “MVP” chants early in the contest, but at the end, as he was drilling a pair of free-throws to put Minnesota up five with 39 seconds to play, it was Edwards who was receiving the star treatment from the crowd.
He took over the show.
Some players seem to be built for the bright lights, the big stage, the toughness and grit of playoff basketball.
Edwards established Tuesday that he’s one of them. He’ll again take center stage Saturday at the site of his next act — Memphis, in the real playoffs.
Both Memphis and the Clippers traded Beverley this offseason. As the clock expired, Beverley took off his jersey and sprinted around the floor. He and Edwards joined arms and jumped out together in jubilation. Beverley then went and hugged his mom, before shedding tears.
“I wanted this one so bad,” Beverley said. “This is the icing on the cake, the cherry on top.”
The Wolves are playoff bound. | https://www.twincities.com/2022/04/12/anthony-edwards-dangelo-russell-deliver-as-timberwolves-beat-clippers-to-reach-playoffs/ | 2022-04-13T06:04:28 | 1 | https://www.twincities.com/2022/04/12/anthony-edwards-dangelo-russell-deliver-as-timberwolves-beat-clippers-to-reach-playoffs/ |
On the deadliest day of a horrific week in April 2020, COVID took the lives of 816 people in New York City alone. Lost in the blizzard of pandemic data that’s been swirling ever since is the fact that 43-year-old Fernando Morales was one of them.
Two years and nearly 1 million deaths later, his brother, Adam Almonte, fingers Morales’ bass guitar and visualizes him playing tunes. In a park overlooking the Hudson River, he recalls long-ago days tossing a baseball with Morales.
“When he passed away it was like I lost a brother, a parent and a friend all at the same time,” says Almonte, 16 years younger than Morales, who shared his love of books, video games and wrestling, and worked for the city processing teachers’ pensions.
If losing one person leaves such a lasting void, consider all that’s been lost with the deaths of 1 million.
In the next few weeks the U.S. toll from the coronavirus will likely surpass that once unthinkable milestone.
The pandemic has left an estimated 194,000 children in the U.S. without one or both of their parents. It has deprived communities of leaders, teachers and caregivers. It has robbed us of expertise and persistence, humor and devotion.
Through wave after wave, the virus has compiled a merciless chronology of loss -- one by one by one.
When it began, the threat hadn't yet come into focus. In February 2020, an unfamiliar respiratory illness started spreading through a nursing home outside Seattle, the Life Care Center of Kirkland.
Neil Lawyer, 84, was a short-term patient there, recovering after hospitalization for an infection. When he died of COVID-19 on March 8, the U.S. toll stood at 30.
Lawyer, born on a Mississippi farm to parents whose mixed-race heritage subjected them to bitter discrimination, was the family’s first college graduate.
Trained as a chemist, he lived and worked in Belgium for more than two decades. Fellow expats knew him for his devotion to coaching baseball and for his rich baritone.
After Lawyer -- known to family as “Moose” -- and his wife retired to Bellevue, Washington, he and other family members would serenade couples at their weddings in an ensemble dubbed the Moose-Tones.
Last October, when one of his granddaughters married, the Moose-Tones went on without him.
“He would have just been beaming because, you know, it was the most important thing in the world to him late in life, to get together with family,” his son David Lawyer says.
By late spring of 2020 the pandemic seemed to be loosening its grip, until governors moved to reopen their states and deaths spiraled again.
Luis Alfonso Bay Montgomery had worked through the pandemic’s early months, piloting a tractor through the lettuce and cauliflower fields near Yuma, Arizona. Even after he began feeling sick in mid-June, he insisted on laboring on, says Yolanda Bay, his wife of 42 years.
By the time Montgomery, 59, was rushed to a hospital, he required intubation.
He died on July 18, a day that saw the U.S. toll surpass 140,000. And for the first time since they’d met as teenagers in their native Mexico, Bay was on her own.
Driving past the fields her husband plowed, she imagines him on his tractor.
“It’s time to get rid of his clothes, but ...,” she says, unable to finish the sentence. “There are times that I feel completely alone.
On December 14, 2020, cameras jockeyed for position as the nation’s first COVID vaccine was administered to a New York nurse. But the vaccines had arrived too late to save a fellow caregiver, Jennifer McClung.
At Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama, staffers knew McClung, a longtime dialysis nurse, as “Mama Jen.” She took new nurses under her wing, and some nights woke up crying with worry about her patients.
In November, McClung, 54, and her husband, John, also a hospital worker, both tested positive. She died hours before the vaccination campaign began and the U.S. toll passed 300,000.
Today, a decal with a halo and angel’s wings marks the place McClung once occupied at a third-floor nurses’ station. In her mother, Stella Olive’s kitchen, a digital picture frame displays a steady stream of pictures and videos of the daughter she lost.
“I can hear her laugh. I can hear her voice,” McClung’s mother says. “I just can’t touch her. It is the hardest thing in the world.”
___
Even when the delta wave ebbed, the toll continued to rise.
Last September, as Sherman Peebles, a sheriff’s deputy in Columbus, Georgia, lay in the hospital, the U.S. toll topped 675,000, surpassing the number of Americans killed by the Spanish flu pandemic a century ago. He died the following day.
In addition to his work as a lawman, the 49-year-old Peebles spent every Saturday manning a barber chair at his best friend Gerald Riley’s shop.
Riley still arrives at the barber shop each Saturday expecting to see Peebles’ truck. At day’s end, he thinks back to the routine he and his friend of more than 20 years always followed.
“I love you, brother,” they’d tell one another.
How could Riley have known those would be the last words they’d ever share?
The doctors and nurses were fighting for their lives.
So every evening through the spring of 2020, Larry Mass and Arnie Kantrowitz opened the windows to thank them, joining New York’s symphony of air horns and raucous cheers.
Mass worried about his partner, whose immune system was weakened by medication after a kidney transplant. For months, Kantrowitz, a retired professor and noted gay rights activist, took refuge on their couch.
But it wasn't enough. Arnie Kantrowitz died of complications from COVID on January 21, as the toll moved nearer to 1 million.
Kantrowitz’s papers, in the collection of the New York Public Library, preserve a record of his activism. But the 40 years he shared with Mass can only live in memory.
On days when news headlines leave Mass feeling angry about the world, he reaches out to his missing partner. What would Kantrowitz say if he were here?
“He’s still with me,” Mass says. “He’s there in my heart.” | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/covid-one-million-us-deaths/507-e05f9582-be5f-4727-9b6a-6b28d54245e0 | 2022-04-13T06:04:33 | 1 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/covid-one-million-us-deaths/507-e05f9582-be5f-4727-9b6a-6b28d54245e0 |
The Chicago Bulls will face the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the NBA playoffs, staying close to home to begin their first postseason appearance in five years.
The best-of-seven series will start at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee with TV coverage on TNT.
The Bulls (46-36) — who completed the regular season Sunday night with a 124-120 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves — became locked in to the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference last week after beginning 2022 at the top of the conference standings.
The defending NBA champion Bucks (51-31) were neck and neck with the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers but dropped to the third seed Sunday after resting most of their starters in a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The rivalry between the Bulls and Bucks seemed to gain a new edge after Alex Caruso’s injury at the hands of Grayson Allen in January, but it has been a lopsided series ever since. The Bulls lost all four meetings with the Bucks this season, including 28- and 21-point blowouts in the last two games.
“They’re champions for a reason,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “They’re battle-tested. They’ve been through this. We will have to play very, very good basketball on both ends of the floor.”
Despite facing the hardest schedule in the league after the All-Star break, the Bucks posted a 15-7 record as they chase back-to-back titles.
Giannis Antetokounmpo poses an impossible problem for most teams, but the Bucks have thrived in recent wins over the Bulls on the strength of other players such as Brook Lopez and Jrue Holiday.
“They have a really good team and a complete team,” Zach LaVine said. “I think we do as well. We just have to attack them and figure out a way we can beat them. … We have to try to bring the fight to them because if we’re back on our heels, it’s not going to be good.”
() | https://www.twincities.com/2022/04/12/chicago-bulls-will-face-the-defending-champion-milwaukee-bucks-beginning-sunday-in-the-1st-round-of-the-nba-playoffs/ | 2022-04-13T06:04:34 | 1 | https://www.twincities.com/2022/04/12/chicago-bulls-will-face-the-defending-champion-milwaukee-bucks-beginning-sunday-in-the-1st-round-of-the-nba-playoffs/ |
WASHINGTON — Climate change made the record-smashing deadly 2020 Atlantic hurricane season noticeably wetter, a new study says. And it will likely make this season rainier, too, scientists said.
Human-caused climate change made the entire season -- 30 named storms -- drop 5% more rain. During the 14 storms that reached hurricane status the rainfall was 8% heavier, according to the study in Tuesday’s Nature Communications.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you’re near a threshold, a little bit can push you over the top,” said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab climate scientist Michael Wehner, co-author of the paper. “The implication is that that means there was more freshwater flooding and that the damages from freshwater flooding were increased, but by how much would require a more detailed analysis.
While past studies have predicted climate change would make storms wetter and found individual storms, such as 2017’s Harvey, were in fact wetter because of human-caused climate change, this is the first study to look at an entire season, Wehner said. That’s important because it removes the selection bias of just picking the worst storms, such as Harvey.
“It’s not just the big monster ones, it’s a whole season,” Wehner said.
It's likely 2020 is not the only year made significantly rainier by climate change. Warming is probably increasing the downpours in nearly all storms and most hurricane seasons, including the one that starts June 1, said study lead author Kevin Reed, an atmospheric scientist at Stony Brook University.
And what a season 2020 was. It broke records not only for the number of named storms, but for the number that became major storms with winds of at least 111 miles per hour -- seven -- and the number that made landfall in the United States. Louisiana got hit five times. Overall, more than 330 people were killed directly by named storms in 2020 and damage soared past $41 billion, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hurricanes Laura, Sally, Isaias, Zeta, Delta, Eta and Hanna all caused more than $1 billion in damage, much of it from flooding. Laura, for example, was 10% wetter than it would have been without climate change, a separate quick analysis shows, Reed said.
The researchers used computer simulations -- continually updated with real-time observations -- to calculate how much water fell during the 30 storms and then compared them to a simulated world with no human caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The difference is what's caused by global warming. This scientifically accepted technique came up with the 5% and 8% figures.
When scientists looked at just the three rainiest hours of each storm, climate change amped them up 8% compared to the mythical world without climate change. For the storms that hit hurricane status, 11% more rain fell during the peak rainy time than would have otherwise, the study found.
A fundamental rule of physics is that the atmosphere can hold nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit the air warms (7% more for every degree Celsius). Globally, temperatures have increased about 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times. And the water of the Atlantic hurricane basin, which acts as storm fuel, has warmed about 1.3 degrees (.7 degrees Celsius) in the past century, Wehner said.
“That signal will only get larger as the sea surface temperatures continue to warm,” Reed said.
Storms are getting stronger, which also makes them wetter, Wehner said.
“The expected increase in hurricane rainfall is probably the most robust prediction concerning the response of hurricanes to climate change,” said MIT atmospheric science professor Kerry Emanuel, who wasn’t part of the study team. But the study is limited by not looking at how climate change could have affected storm track, intensity and frequency, he said. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/climate-change-made-2020-hurricanes-rainier/507-6a42f3c6-548b-4cb8-bd15-6231239fbaa1 | 2022-04-13T06:04:39 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/climate-change-made-2020-hurricanes-rainier/507-6a42f3c6-548b-4cb8-bd15-6231239fbaa1 |
Kyrie Irving would like to keep it private.
Ramadan for him is a spiritual journey to be shared exclusively between himself and God. So when basketball fans on social media refer to him as “Ramadan Kyrie” between April 1 and May 1, Irving appreciates the recognition, but it’s a sacred period of time.
“It’s the protection I feel for my brothers and sisters that are doing the same with me,” he said after the Nets’ play-in victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday. “It’s a blessing to be able to do it and still be able to perform.”
But the question only intensifies as Irving’s game improves. How is a professional athlete playing an up-and-down game like basketball supposed to survive — let alone thrive — during these conditions?
Those who observe Ramadan do not eat or drink while the sun is up. The sun, for example, rose sometime around 6:20 a.m. on Tuesday and didn’t set until 7:30 p.m. The Nets had an early tipoff on Tuesday at 7 p.m., which meant Irving — who would usually be spotted eating fruit and drinking water on his first trip to the bench — couldn’t consume anything until the second quarter.
Yet somehow, his focus was sharpened. Irving didn’t miss until his 12th shot. He finished the game 12-of-15 from the field for 34 points to go with 12 assists. It was as if he never missed a step, as if he had eaten the perfect pregame meal.
“Everybody who does Ramadan and is playing through it, you’ve gotta commend them while they’re going through it,” said Irving’s superstar teammate Kevin Durant. “That’s tough to do, especially when you have a job like this. So many people [are] sacrificing to get closer to a higher power, I respect that.
“But to play an NBA game like that? The last week or so? That shows that he’s a different human being. Hopefully he keeps it up. He was great tonight.”
Irving isn’t alone. At least not in NBA history. Ex-Knicks and Celtics big man Enes Kanter is Muslim and plays while fasting for Ramadan. NBA legends Hakeem Olajuwon and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also observed Ramadan while playing NBA games. Both logged some of their best performances during the period of fasting.
For Irving, the day starts earlier than 5:35 in the morning. He has to go through his routine and make sure to fuel his body before the sun rises. As an added curveball, the sun rises earlier and sets later every passing day for the month of April.
“It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination,” he said on Tuesday. “So, you can’t really take any moment for granted during the day. I don’t really have time or the attention to give. I come in here and I just pay attention to the details and remind myself that I’m breathing and that’s enough.”
For Irving, there is an increased sense of gratitude.
“It really simplifies life,” he said. “And puts it in a greater perspective.”
Whether or not he can sustain perfect or near-perfect shooting remains to be seen. In the 14 regular-season games he played during Ramadan last season (April 12 to May 12), Irving averaged 25.9 points and 6.7 assists on 47% shooting from the field, 39% shooting from three and 95.5% shooting from the foul line. In the 38 games he played before Ramadan, he averaged 27.6 points and six assists on 51% shooting from the field, 39.8% shooting from downtown and 90.7% shooting from the foul line.
Ramadan, however, isn’t about basketball or shooting efficiency or advanced metrics. It’s about one’s own spiritual journey with God, a journey that extends well outside of the workplace.
“I just have respect for all you guys [media] in here, and everyone who came into the arena, and being able to show up and play well,” said Irving. “The day starts at 5:35 in the morning or even before that. You can’t really think about being hungry or anything like that. It’s just a fun journey. I’m enjoying it. Again, I’m not alone at this.”
() | https://www.twincities.com/2022/04/12/kyrie-irving-lights-up-barclays-center-despite-challenge-of-playing-during-ramadan-to-play-an-nba-game-like-that-hes-different/ | 2022-04-13T06:04:40 | 1 | https://www.twincities.com/2022/04/12/kyrie-irving-lights-up-barclays-center-despite-challenge-of-playing-during-ramadan-to-play-an-nba-game-like-that-hes-different/ |
SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk’s huge Twitter investment took a new twist Tuesday with the filing of a lawsuit alleging that the colorful billionaire illegally delayed disclosing his stake in the social media company so he could buy more shares at lower prices.
The complaint in New York federal court accuses Musk of violating a regulatory deadline to reveal he had accumulated a stake of at least 5%. Instead, according to the complaint, Musk didn’t disclose his position in Twitter until he’d almost doubled his stake to more than 9%. That strategy, the lawsuit alleges, hurt less wealthy investors who sold shares in the San Francisco company in the nearly two weeks before Musk acknowledged holding a major stake.
Musk's regulatory filings show that he bought a little more than 620,000 shares at $36.83 apiece on Jan. 31 and then continued to accumulate more shares on nearly every single trading day through April 1. Musk, best known as CEO of the electric car maker Tesla, held 73.1 million Twitter shares as of the most recent count Monday. That represents a 9.1% stake in Twitter.
The lawsuit alleges that by March 14, Musk's stake in Twitter had reached a 5% threshold that required him to publicly disclose his holdings under U.S. securities law by March 24. Musk didn't make the required disclosure until April 4.
That revelation caused Twitter's stock to soar 27% from its April 1 close to nearly $50 by the end of April 4's trading, depriving investors who sold shares before Musk's improperly delayed disclosure the chance to realize significant gains, according to the lawsuit filed on behalf of an investor named Marc Bain Rasella. Musk, meanwhile, was able to continue to buy shares that traded in prices ranging from $37.69 to $40.96.
The lawsuit is seeking to be certified as a class action representing Twitter shareholders who sold shares between March 24 and April 4, a process that could take a year or more.
Musk spent about $2.6 billion on Twitter stock — a fraction of his estimated wealth of $265 billion, the largest individual fortune in the world. In a regulatory filing Monday, Musk disclosed he may increase his stake after backing out of an agreement reached last week to join Twitter's board of directors.
Jacob Walker, one of the lawyers that filed the lawsuit against Musk, told The Associated Press that he hadn't reached out to the Securities and Exchange Commission about Musk's alleged violations about the disclosure of his Twitter stake. “I assume the SEC is well aware of what he did," Walker said.
An SEC spokesperson declined to comment.
The SEC and Musk have been wrangling in court since 2018 when Musk and Tesla agreed to pay a $40 million fine t o settle allegations that he used his Twitter account to mislead investors about a potential buyout of the electric car company that never materialized. As part of that deal, Musk was supposed to obtain legal approval for his tweets about information that could affect Tesla's stock price — a provision that regulators contend he has occasionally violated and that he now argues unfairly muzzles him.
Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment posted on Twitter, where he often shares his opinion and thoughts. Alex Spiro, a New York lawyer representing Musk in his ongoing dispute with the SEC, also didn't immediately respond to a query from The Associated Press. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/elon-musk-twitter-stock-lawsuit/507-42797f40-b542-4ca2-b134-7271a8908d2e | 2022-04-13T06:04:45 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/elon-musk-twitter-stock-lawsuit/507-42797f40-b542-4ca2-b134-7271a8908d2e |
WASHINGTON — Western weaponry pouring into Ukraine helped blunt Russia's initial offensive and seems certain to play a central role in the approaching, potentially decisive, battle for Ukraine's contested Donbas region. Yet the Russian military is making little headway halting what has become a historic arms express.
The U.S. numbers alone are mounting: more than 12,000 weapons designed to defeat armored vehicles, some 1,400 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft, and more than 50 million rounds of ammunition, among many other things. Dozens of other nations are adding to the totals.
The Biden administration is preparing yet another, more diverse, package of military support possibly totaling $750 million to be announced in coming days, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. The additional aid is a sign that the administration intends to continue expanding its support for Ukraine's war effort.
These armaments have helped an under-gunned Ukrainian military defy predictions that it would be quickly overrun by Russia. They explain in part why Vladimir Putin’s army gave up, at least for now, its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital, and has narrowed its focus to battling for eastern and southern Ukraine.
U.S. officials and analysts offer numerous explanations for why the Russians have had so little success interdicting Western arms moving overland from neighboring countries, including Poland. Among the likely reasons: Russia's failure to win full control of Ukraine's skies has limited its use of air power. Also, the Russians have struggled to deliver weapons and supplies to their own troops in Ukraine.
Some say Moscow's problem begins at home.
“The short answer to the question is that they are an epically incompetent army badly led from the very top,” said James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who was the top NATO commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013.
The Russians also face practical obstacles. Robert G. Bell, a longtime NATO official and now a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech University, said the shipments lend themselves to being hidden or disguised in ways that can make them elusive to the Russians — “short of having a network of espionage on the scene” to pinpoint the convoys' movements.
“It’s not as easy to stop this assistance flow as it might seem,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “Things like ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles can be transported in trucks that look just like any other commercial truck. And the trucks carrying the munitions the Russians want to interdict are just a small part of a much larger flow of goods and commerce moving around in Poland and Ukraine and across the border.
“So the Russians have to find the needle in this very big haystack to destroy the weapons and ammo they’re after and not waste scarce munitions on trucks full of printer paper or baby diapers or who knows what.”
Even with this Western assistance it's uncertain whether Ukraine will ultimately prevail against a bigger Russian force. The Biden administration has drawn the line at committing U.S. troops to the fight. It has opted instead to orchestrate international condemnation and economic sanctions, provide intelligence information, bolster NATO's eastern flank to deter a wider war with Russia, and donate weapons.
In mid-March, a Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said arms shipments would be targeted.
“We warned the United States that pumping weapons into Ukraine from a number of countries as it has orchestrated isn’t just a dangerous move but an action that turns the respective convoys into legitimate targets,” he said in televised remarks.
But thus far the Russians appear not to have put a high priority on arms interdiction, perhaps because their air force is leery of flying into Ukraine's air defenses to search out and attack supply convoys on the move. They have struck fixed sites like arms depots and fuel storage locations, but to limited effect.
On Monday the Russians said they destroyed four S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers that had been given to Ukraine by an unspecified European country. Slovakia, a NATO member that shares a border with Ukraine, donated just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. On Tuesday the Russian Ministry of Defense said long-range missiles were used to hit two Ukrainian ammo depots.
As the fighting intensifies in the Donbas and perhaps along the coastal corridor to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Putin may feel compelled to strike harder at the arms pipeline, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called vital to his nation's survival.
In the meantime, a staggering volume and range of war materiel is arriving almost daily.
“The scope and speed of our support to meeting Ukraine’s defense needs are unprecedented in modern times," said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. He said the approximately $2.5 billion in weapons and other material that has been offered to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration is equivalent to more than half of Ukraine's normal defense budget.
One example: The Pentagon says it has provided more than 5,000 Javelin missiles, which are among the world's most effective weapons against tanks and other armored vehicles — and can even take down a low-flying helicopter. The missile, shaped like a clunky dumb bell and weighing 50 pounds (23 kilograms), is fired by an individual soldier; from its launch tube it flies up at a steep angle and descends directly onto its target in what its known as a “curveball” shot — hitting the top of a tank where its armor is weakest.
The specific routes used to move the U.S. and other Western materials into Ukraine are secret for security reasons, but the basic process is not. Just this week, two U.S. military cargo planes arrived in Eastern Europe with items ranging from machine guns and small arms ammunition to body armor and grenades, the Pentagon said.
A similar load is due later this week to complete delivery of $800 million in assistance approved by President Joe Biden just one month ago. The weapons and equipment are offloaded, moved onto trucks and driven into Ukraine by Ukrainian soldiers for delivery.
Kirby said the material sometimes reaches troops in the field within 48 hours of entering Ukraine. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-western-weapons/507-6d9b8aaa-cc44-42e5-8c98-ae43b1cf1ff7 | 2022-04-13T06:04:51 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-western-weapons/507-6d9b8aaa-cc44-42e5-8c98-ae43b1cf1ff7 |
AP source: DOJ denies panel details in Trump records probe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department declined a request this week from the House oversight committee to disclose the contents of records that former President Donald Trump took to his Florida residence after leaving the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The move could serve as a setback for Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform as it was ramping up its investigation into Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. It remains unclear what implications the decision could have for the panel’s probe, which was announced in March.
The Justice Department’s decision is part of an effort to protect confidential information that may compromise an ongoing investigation, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The development was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The National Archives had referred the matter of Trump’s handling of those records to the Justice Department earlier this year. Because of that, the DOJ is asking the National Archives not to share information related directly to it, including the contents of the 15 boxes that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The notice to the committee comes days after its chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., accused the Justice Department of “obstructing” the panel’s expanded investigation by preventing the release of information from the National Archives.
The Justice Department has not formally announced it is investigating Trump’s handling of the records, but letters between the committee and the department seem to indicate that investigators are taking steps toward it.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined a request for comment Tuesday.
In addition, the FBI has taken steps to begin examining the potential mishandling of classified information related to the documents in the boxes, according to two other people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. It wasn’t clear exactly what work investigators had done so far or what additional steps they were planning to take.
In a letter to the National Archives last month, Maloney made a series of requests for information she said the committee needs to determine if Trump violated federal records laws over his handling of sensitive and even classified information. In response, the general counsel for the archivist wrote on March 28 that “based on our consultation with the Department of Justice, we are unable to provide any comment.”
___
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ | 2022-04-13T06:05:39 | 1 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/ap-source-doj-denies-panel-details-trump-records-probe-2/ |
Biden: Russia war a ‘genocide,’ trying to ‘wipe out’ Ukraine
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — President Joe Biden said Russia’s war in Ukraine amounted to “genocide,” accusing President Vladimir Putin of trying to “wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
“Yes, I called it genocide,” he told reporters in Iowa on Tuesday shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
At an earlier event in Menlo, Iowa, addressing spiking energy prices resulting from the war, Biden had implied that he thought Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine, but offered no details. Neither he nor his administration announced new consequences for Russia or assistance to Ukraine following Biden’s public assessment.
WARNING: Images and videos used contains graphic content.
Biden’s comments drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had encouraged Western leaders to use the term to describe Russia’s invasion of his country.
“True words of a true leader @POTUS,” he tweeted. “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.”
A United Nations treaty, to which the U.S. is a party, defines genocide as actions taken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Past American leaders often have dodged formally declaring bloody campaigns such as Russia’s in Ukraine as genocide, hesitating to trigger an obligation that under international convention requires signing countries to intervene once genocide is formally identified. That obligation was seen as blocking President Bill Clinton from declaring Rwandan Hutus’ killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in 1994 as genocide, for example.
Biden said it would be up to lawyers to decide if Russia’s conduct met the international standard for genocide, as Ukrainian officials have claimed, but said “it sure seems that way to me.”
“More evidence is coming out literally of the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine, and we’re only going to learn more and more about the devastation and let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies,” he said.
Just last week Biden had he did not believe Russia’s actions amounted to genocide, just that they constituted “war crimes.”
During a trip to Europe last month, Biden faced controversy for a nine-word statement seemingly supporting regime change in Moscow, which would have represented a dramatic shift toward direct confrontation with another nuclear-armed country. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
He clarified the comments days later, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
___
Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ | 2022-04-13T06:05:45 | 1 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/biden-russia-war-genocide-trying-wipe-out-ukraine/ |
Future liability releases at center of Boy Scouts bankruptcy
DOVER, Del. (AP) — Protecting local Boy Scouts of America councils and troop sponsoring organizations from future liability for child sex abuse claims is critical to the national group’s reorganization plan, BSA attorneys told a Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday.
Attorneys opposing the plan countered that liability releases for non-debtor third parties are neither fair nor necessary, and that they infringe on the rights of abuse survivors to seek compensation for their abuse.
The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, petitioned for bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a settlement trust for abuse victims. Although the organization faced about 275 lawsuits at the time, more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case.
The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts and its 250 local councils, along with settling insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations, to contribute some $2.6 billion in cash and property and assign their insurance rights to a settlement trust fund for abuse victims. More than half that money would come from the BSA’s two largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and The Hartford. Those companies would contribute $800 million and $787 million, respectively.
In exchange, the parties contributing to the settlement trust would be released from further liability for sexual abuse claims dating back decades.
The local BSA councils are not debtors in the bankruptcy, but Boy Scouts attorney Jessica Lauria argued that they are inextricably intertwined with the national organization and deserve to be protected from future lawsuits in exchange for contributing to the compensation fund.
“There can be no doubt that there is an identity of interests, and frankly an extreme interconnectedness, between the local councils and the national organization,” Lauria said. Sponsoring organizations similarly are closely tied to BSA and local councils and critical to their operations, she added.
Richard Mason, an attorney for the local councils, told Judge Laura Selber Silverstein that without the liability releases, the compensation fund “basically evaporates.”
Absent approval of the BSA’s plan, the local councils would face “massive litigation” and would be forced to seek bankruptcy protection themselves, endangering the future of Scouting and the ability of abuse survivors to obtain compensation, Mason added.
But opponents questioned why the liability releases for local councils and sponsoring organization are needed in order for the BSA to emerge from bankruptcy. They noted that the Boy Scouts proposed a plan last year under which the settlement trust would be funded only by the national organization, and only for claims made against it. Under that plan, the councils and local sponsoring organizations would make no contribution and would have no protection from liability for abuse claims.
“Debtors said that was workable, feasible,” Silverstein noted. “So why is it necessary to have this elaborate, interconnected, intertwined plan for the Boy Scouts?”
Lauria replied that “BSA-only plan” may have been feasible when first proposed, but that it was never “optimal.” She also noted that the BSA has spent some $100 million more on professional fees in the bankruptcy since then and can’t afford to fund a settlement trust on its own at this point.
Edwin Caldie, an attorney representing scores of alleged abuse victims in Guam, argued that the BSA’s current plan unfairly strips them of their rights to pursue abuse claims against Catholic church officials.
The Guam group includes creditors with claims against the Archdiocese of Agana, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 amid a flood of child sex abuse claims. Many of those claims involve the late priest Louis Brouillard, who was also a BSA Scoutmaster and who was accused of molesting more than 100 children.
The BSA plan would channel claims against the Guam diocese into the proposed BSA settlement trust without the consent of survivors and unfairly deprive them of the ability to pursue BSA insurance policies, Caldie said.
Caldie accused the settling insurers of using “extortionist” tactics in negotiations with the Boy Scouts to obtain liability releases to which they would not be entitled under the policies they issued.
He also rejected the notion that a relatively small number of survivors should not be allowed to interfere with approval of a reorganization plan supported by tens of thousands of other claimants.
“From a common sense perspective, the BSA made a decision to shun and silence survivors of child sexual assault for decades and did not report their perpetrators for decades,” Caldie said. “.... The Guam survivors are not terribly comfortable with ‘greater good’ arguments now, especially made buy the BSA.”
Closing arguments on whether the judge should approve the BSA plan are expected to conclude Wednesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ | 2022-04-13T06:05:52 | 0 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ |
Police hunt gunman who wounded 10 in Brooklyn subway attack
NEW YORK (AP) — Police hunted late into the night for the gunman who opened fire Tuesday on a subway train in Brooklyn, an attack that left 10 people wounded by gunfire and once again interrupted New York City’s long journey to post-pandemic normalcy.
The search focused partly on a man who police say rented a van possibly connected to the violence.
Investigators stressed they weren’t sure whether the man, Frank R. James, was responsible for the shooting. But authorities were examining social media videos in which the 62-year-old decried the United States as a racist place awash in violence and sometimes railed against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.
“This nation was born in violence, it’s kept alive by violence or the threat thereof and it’s going to die a violent death. There’s nothing going to stop that,” James said in one video.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell called the posts “concerning” and officials tightened security for Adams.
The gunman sent off smoke grenades in a crowded subway car and then fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm handgun, police said. Five gunshot victims were in critical condition but expected to survive. At least a dozen people who escaped gunshot wounds were treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries.
One passenger, Jordan Javier, thought the first popping sound he heard was a book dropping. Then there was another pop, people started moving toward the front of the car, and he realized there was smoke, he said.
When the train pulled into the station, people ran out and were directed to another train across the platform. Passengers wept and prayed as they rode away from the scene, Javier said.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” he said.
The shooter fled in the chaos, leaving behind the gun, extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van.
That key led investigators to James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, said Chief of Detectives James Essig. The van was later found, unoccupied, near a subway station where investigators determined the gunman had entered the train system, Essig said.
Rambling, profanity-filled YouTube videos apparently posted by James, who is Black, are replete with violent language and bigoted comments, some against other Black people.
One video, posted April 11, criticizes crime against Black people and says drastic action is needed.
“You got kids going in here now taking machine guns and mowing down innocent people,” James says. “It’s not going to get better until we make it better,” he said, adding that he thought things would only change if certain people were “stomped, kicked and tortured” out of their “comfort zone.”
Several videos mention New York’s subways.
A Feb. 20 video says the mayor and governor’s plan to address homelessness and safety in the subway system “is doomed for failure” and refers to himself as a “victim” of the city’s mental health programs. A Jan. 25 video criticizes Adams’ plan to end gun violence.
Adams, who is isolating following a positive COVID-19 test on Sunday, said in a video statement that the city “will not allow New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single individual.”
___
Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Beatrice Dupuy, Karen Matthews, Julie Walker, Deepti Hajela, Michelle L. Price and David Porter in New York contributed to this report, and Michael Kunzelman contributed from College Park, Maryland.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ | 2022-04-13T06:05:59 | 0 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ |
Union officials say pilots of Southwest Airlines pilots are suffering through an epidemic of fatigue due to poor scheduling practices by the airline, and that it is raising safety concerns.
Union leaders said in an open letter Tuesday to Southwest CEO Robert Jordan and other executives that problems started last summer when the number of travelers returned nearly to normal pre-pandemic levels, and have gotten worse.
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, which is currently negotiating with the airline for a new contract, said the number of pilots asking to be relieved from a flight assignment because of fatigue jumped 330% in March compared with the same month in pre-pandemic years.
“April is already setting fatigue records,” they said. “Fatigue, both acute and cumulative, has become Southwest Airlines’ number-one safety threat.”
Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said the airline saw “a significant and steady decline” in pilots calling in fatigued after the airline made schedule changes in November. She said the March increase was expected, as weather-related flight cancellations disrupted schedules.
More Airlines Coverage
King said the rise in fatigue calls in March shows that the system works and that the airline lets pilots determine if they are too tired to fly.
Last summer, Dallas-based Southwest, the nation’s fourth-largest airline, was plagued by flight cancellations due partly to staffing shortages. The airline responded by hiring several thousand workers, executives have said.
Airlines persuaded thousands of employees to quit during the worst of the pandemic after air travel plummeted and airline revenue collapsed. Since then, travel has picked up — the number of people flying in the U.S. topped 2 million a day in March, nearly 90% of pre-pandemic numbers. Unions at Southwest and other airlines have called on their companies to hire more pilots.
In recent days, JetBlue Airways said it would trim some flights this summer because of staffing issues, and Alaska Airlines has blamed a pilot shortage for a surge in cancellations and delays. | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/southwest-pilots-union-says-fatigue-is-number-one-safety-problem/3643528/ | 2022-04-13T06:20:26 | 0 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/southwest-pilots-union-says-fatigue-is-number-one-safety-problem/3643528/ |
A cryptocurrency expert was sentenced Tuesday to more than five years in federal prison for helping North Korea evade U.S. sanctions.
Virgil Griffith, 39, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy, admitting he presented at a cryptocurrency conference in Pyongyang in 2019 even after the U.S. government denied his request to travel there.
A well-known hacker, Griffith also developed “cryptocurrency infrastructure and equipment inside North Korea," prosecutors wrote in court papers. At the 2019 conference, he advised more than 100 people — including several who appeared to work for the North Korean government — on how to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions and achieve independence from the global banking system.
The U.S. and the U.N. Security Council have imposed increasingly tight sanctions on North Korea in recent years to try to rein in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. government amended sanctions against North Korea in 2018 to prohibit “a U.S. person, wherever located” from exporting technology to North Korea.
Prosecutors said Griffith acknowledged his presentation amounted to a transfer of technical knowledge to conference attendees.
“Griffith is an American citizen who chose to evade the sanctions of his own country to provide services to a hostile foreign power,” prosecutors wrote. “He did so knowing that power — North Korea — was guilty of atrocities against its own people and has made threats against the United States citing its nuclear capabilities.”
Defense attorney Brian Klein described Griffith as a “brilliant Caltech-trained scientist who developed a curiosity bordering on obsession” with North Korea. “He viewed himself — albeit arrogantly and naively — as acting in the interest of peace,” Klein said. “He loves his country and never set out to do any harm.”
U.S. & World
Klein added that he was disappointed with the 63-month prison sentence but “pleased the judge acknowledged Virgil’s commitment to moving forward with his life productively, and that he is a talented person who has a lot to contribute.”
A self-described “disruptive technologist,” Griffith became something of a tech-world enfant terrible in the early 2000s. In 2007, he created WikiScanner, a tool that aimed to unmask people who anonymously edited entries in Wikipedia, the crowdsourced online encyclopedia.
WikiScanner essentially could determine the business, institutions or government agencies that owned the computers from which some edits were made. It quickly identified businesses that had sabotaged competitors’ entries and government agencies that had rewritten history, among other findings.
“I am quite pleased to see the mainstream media enjoying the public-relations disaster fireworks as I am,” Griffith told The Associated Press in 2007.
Klein previously said Griffith cooperated with the FBI and “helped educate law enforcement” about the so-called dark web, a network of encrypted internet sites that allow users to remain anonymous. | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/us-cryptocurrency-expert-gets-5-years-in-north-korea-sanctions-case/3643514/ | 2022-04-13T06:20:32 | 0 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/us-cryptocurrency-expert-gets-5-years-in-north-korea-sanctions-case/3643514/ |
Alyssa Nakken made major league history as the first female coach on the field in a regular-season game when she took her spot for the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night against San Diego.
Nakken came in to coach first base for the Giants in the third inning after Antoan Richardson was ejected.
When she was announced as Richardson’s replacement, Nakken received a warm ovation from the crowd at Oracle Park, and a congratulatory handshake from Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer.
The Giants won 13-2.
San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler said Nakken had “prepared for this moment” while working with Richardson and others.
“So it's not a foreign spot on the field for her. She does so many other things well that aren't seen,” he said. “So it's nice to see her kind of be right there in the spotlight and do it on the field.”
Nakken is an assistant coach who works heavily with baserunning and outfield defense. She watches games from an indoor batting cage near the steps to the dugout — and has a Giants jersey nearby, just in case she needs it.
Sports
And in an instant Tuesday night, she needed it.
The 31-year-old Nakken jogged onto the field four days after Rachel Balkovec became the first woman to manage a minor league affiliate of an Major League Baseball team. She guided the New York Yankees' Class A Tampa club to a win in her first game.
Nakken had previously coached the position in spring training and during part of a July 2020 exhibition game at Oakland against now-Padres manager Bob Melvin when he was skipper of the Athletics. She started at first again a night later against the A's in San Francisco as the teams prepared for the pandemic-delayed season.
“You feel a sense of pride to be out there,” Nakken said at the time. “Me personally, it’s the best place to watch a game, that’s for sure.”
The former Sacramento State softball star, whose blonde braid hung out from her orange protective helmet Tuesday, became the first female coach in the big leagues when she was hired for Kapler's staff in January 2020.
The baseball Hall of Fame and Museum already received a jersey from Nakken's moment two years ago to go to Cooperstown, New York, and now the Hall might be reaching out once more.
At Sacramento State from 2009-2012, Nakken was a three-time all-conference player at first base and four-time Academic All American. She went on to earn a master’s degree in sport management from the University of San Francisco in 2015 after interning with the Giants’ baseball operations department a year earlier.
From Day One with the Giants, Nakken embraced her role as an example for girls and women that they can do anything.
“It’s a big deal," she said. “I feel a great sense of responsibility and I feel it’s my job to honor those who have helped me to where I am.”
___
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/tag/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/sports/giants-alyssa-nakken-becomes-1st-mlb-female-coach-on-field/3643461/ | 2022-04-13T06:20:50 | 1 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/sports/giants-alyssa-nakken-becomes-1st-mlb-female-coach-on-field/3643461/ |
Future liability releases at center of Boy Scouts bankruptcy
DOVER, Del. (AP) — Protecting local Boy Scouts of America councils and troop sponsoring organizations from future liability for child sex abuse claims is critical to the national group’s reorganization plan, BSA attorneys told a Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday.
Attorneys opposing the plan countered that liability releases for non-debtor third parties are neither fair nor necessary, and that they infringe on the rights of abuse survivors to seek compensation for their abuse.
The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, petitioned for bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a settlement trust for abuse victims. Although the organization faced about 275 lawsuits at the time, more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case.
The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts and its 250 local councils, along with settling insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations, to contribute some $2.6 billion in cash and property and assign their insurance rights to a settlement trust fund for abuse victims. More than half that money would come from the BSA’s two largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and The Hartford. Those companies would contribute $800 million and $787 million, respectively.
In exchange, the parties contributing to the settlement trust would be released from further liability for sexual abuse claims dating back decades.
The local BSA councils are not debtors in the bankruptcy, but Boy Scouts attorney Jessica Lauria argued that they are inextricably intertwined with the national organization and deserve to be protected from future lawsuits in exchange for contributing to the compensation fund.
“There can be no doubt that there is an identity of interests, and frankly an extreme interconnectedness, between the local councils and the national organization,” Lauria said. Sponsoring organizations similarly are closely tied to BSA and local councils and critical to their operations, she added.
Richard Mason, an attorney for the local councils, told Judge Laura Selber Silverstein that without the liability releases, the compensation fund “basically evaporates.”
Absent approval of the BSA’s plan, the local councils would face “massive litigation” and would be forced to seek bankruptcy protection themselves, endangering the future of Scouting and the ability of abuse survivors to obtain compensation, Mason added.
But opponents questioned why the liability releases for local councils and sponsoring organization are needed in order for the BSA to emerge from bankruptcy. They noted that the Boy Scouts proposed a plan last year under which the settlement trust would be funded only by the national organization, and only for claims made against it. Under that plan, the councils and local sponsoring organizations would make no contribution and would have no protection from liability for abuse claims.
“Debtors said that was workable, feasible,” Silverstein noted. “So why is it necessary to have this elaborate, interconnected, intertwined plan for the Boy Scouts?”
Lauria replied that “BSA-only plan” may have been feasible when first proposed, but that it was never “optimal.” She also noted that the BSA has spent some $100 million more on professional fees in the bankruptcy since then and can’t afford to fund a settlement trust on its own at this point.
Edwin Caldie, an attorney representing scores of alleged abuse victims in Guam, argued that the BSA’s current plan unfairly strips them of their rights to pursue abuse claims against Catholic church officials.
The Guam group includes creditors with claims against the Archdiocese of Agana, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 amid a flood of child sex abuse claims. Many of those claims involve the late priest Louis Brouillard, who was also a BSA Scoutmaster and who was accused of molesting more than 100 children.
The BSA plan would channel claims against the Guam diocese into the proposed BSA settlement trust without the consent of survivors and unfairly deprive them of the ability to pursue BSA insurance policies, Caldie said.
Caldie accused the settling insurers of using “extortionist” tactics in negotiations with the Boy Scouts to obtain liability releases to which they would not be entitled under the policies they issued.
He also rejected the notion that a relatively small number of survivors should not be allowed to interfere with approval of a reorganization plan supported by tens of thousands of other claimants.
“From a common sense perspective, the BSA made a decision to shun and silence survivors of child sexual assault for decades and did not report their perpetrators for decades,” Caldie said. “.... The Guam survivors are not terribly comfortable with ‘greater good’ arguments now, especially made buy the BSA.”
Closing arguments on whether the judge should approve the BSA plan are expected to conclude Wednesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ | 2022-04-13T06:23:30 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ |
Police hunt gunman who wounded 10 in Brooklyn subway attack
NEW YORK (AP) — Police hunted late into the night for the gunman who opened fire Tuesday on a subway train in Brooklyn, an attack that left 10 people wounded by gunfire and once again interrupted New York City’s long journey to post-pandemic normalcy.
The search focused partly on a man who police say rented a van possibly connected to the violence.
Investigators stressed they weren’t sure whether the man, Frank R. James, was responsible for the shooting. But authorities were examining social media videos in which the 62-year-old decried the United States as a racist place awash in violence and sometimes railed against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.
“This nation was born in violence, it’s kept alive by violence or the threat thereof and it’s going to die a violent death. There’s nothing going to stop that,” James said in one video.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell called the posts “concerning” and officials tightened security for Adams.
The gunman sent off smoke grenades in a crowded subway car and then fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm handgun, police said. Five gunshot victims were in critical condition but expected to survive. At least a dozen people who escaped gunshot wounds were treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries.
One passenger, Jordan Javier, thought the first popping sound he heard was a book dropping. Then there was another pop, people started moving toward the front of the car, and he realized there was smoke, he said.
When the train pulled into the station, people ran out and were directed to another train across the platform. Passengers wept and prayed as they rode away from the scene, Javier said.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” he said.
The shooter fled in the chaos, leaving behind the gun, extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van.
That key led investigators to James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, said Chief of Detectives James Essig. The van was later found, unoccupied, near a subway station where investigators determined the gunman had entered the train system, Essig said.
Rambling, profanity-filled YouTube videos apparently posted by James, who is Black, are replete with violent language and bigoted comments, some against other Black people.
One video, posted April 11, criticizes crime against Black people and says drastic action is needed.
“You got kids going in here now taking machine guns and mowing down innocent people,” James says. “It’s not going to get better until we make it better,” he said, adding that he thought things would only change if certain people were “stomped, kicked and tortured” out of their “comfort zone.”
Several videos mention New York’s subways.
A Feb. 20 video says the mayor and governor’s plan to address homelessness and safety in the subway system “is doomed for failure” and refers to himself as a “victim” of the city’s mental health programs. A Jan. 25 video criticizes Adams’ plan to end gun violence.
Adams, who is isolating following a positive COVID-19 test on Sunday, said in a video statement that the city “will not allow New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single individual.”
___
Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Beatrice Dupuy, Karen Matthews, Julie Walker, Deepti Hajela, Michelle L. Price and David Porter in New York contributed to this report, and Michael Kunzelman contributed from College Park, Maryland.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ | 2022-04-13T06:23:37 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ |
Study: Climate crisis supercharging rainfall in hurricanes
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 2:07 AM EDT|Updated: 10 minutes ago
(CNN) - A new study suggests the climate crisis is supercharging rainfall in hurricanes.
The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
It found that rainfall from hurricanes during the record-breaking 2020 season was as much as 11% higher due to human-caused climate changes.
Researchers determined that global warming increased hourly rainfall rates in tropical storms and hurricanes from 5% to 10%.
When experts observed just hurricanes, the increase was 8% to 11%.
The findings suggest the threat surged over the past few decades and it will likely increase more in the future.
That’s because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which leads to higher rainfall rates.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ | 2022-04-13T06:23:44 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ |
There have been a number of 5K run/walk events in Tippah County and the North Mississippi region to raise money and awareness for various causes. Fundraisers like these benefit communities in an untold number of ways, their positive effects reaching far beyond just the funds accumulated. They stimulate local economies, build community and encourage good health.
Runs tend to draw large crowds. Large numbers - usually in the hundreds or more - register and participate in the events. In addition to the number of people gathering to run, there are those who come out to support runners or gather to watch. Volunteers gather to man registration tables, speak at programs, mark the routes and provide all of the other work required to stage one of these events.
That many people gathering in a town is bound to have at least some positive impact on the local economy. People are traveling in vehicles that require gasoline - many of them likely stop in the town of the event to purchase it. There are drinks or bottled water to be purchased on the way. There are snacks to be purchased on the way home. Groups of friends gather at local spots to wind down once the activities are over. However small the purchases made, they add up to increased income for the town.
These events are great for building community. They do so in multiple ways. Offices and organizations build teams to participate together - creating a social opportunity for those who might not otherwise socialize. Those gathering at the starting line bump into people they haven't been in contact with in years or meet new friends. People join together for a common cause. Plus, it has been scientifically proven that exercising together is a bonding experience due to the endorphins released during physical activity.
Runs and walks celebrate good health. Walking and running is one of the most basic forms of exercise - events like these add fun to it. They serve as motivation for individuals in a lot of ways. Experienced runners may be motivated to beat their own personal best or attempt to win a trophy. Those in the beginning of a fitness journey may just be motivated to make it to the finish line. Whatever a person's goal, if these events help them push themselves forward, then that's definitely beneficial.
Of course, the obvious reason behind charity walks and runs is to raise funds - and they're very good for that. When you consider their benefit to charities combined with all of the other ways they help a community, charity runs are a win for everyone involved. | https://www.djournal.com/sentinel/opinion/charity-runs-benefit-communities-in-multiple-ways/article_ae816f8b-477b-54e8-91bf-cba809a52c95.html | 2022-04-13T06:28:42 | 1 | https://www.djournal.com/sentinel/opinion/charity-runs-benefit-communities-in-multiple-ways/article_ae816f8b-477b-54e8-91bf-cba809a52c95.html |
A recent nippy and damp April morning began with my usual trudge to the kitchen to make coffee. As I stood impatiently waiting for the Folgers to brew, I looked down and contemplated the warmth of my tan suede moccasin house slippers. They had been a gift from my dear friend and “Co-Granny,” Bettie Bradford.
I made a small spill on the counter top and reached in the drawer for a dish-rag. And as I picked it up, I thought 'there's Bettie again this morning' for she had gifted me over the years with fancy dish towels around which she had sewn crocheted lace. Now as a rule there's nothing more homely than a dish-rag, but Bettie gussied them up into works of art which she enjoyed making and sharing with friends and family.
I scrambled Roger some eggs and made some toast, buttered it, and wanting something tangy to put on it, went to the pantry for some pepper jelly. The jar was labeled “BB-15.” I opened it and sampled. Zing went the strings of my tongue. Bettie was infamous for making hot stuff and taking a look around my pantry, I then viewed both red and green varieties of her Jalapeño jellies (made for Christmas dipping with cream cheese and Ritz.) In there also are BB Bread and Butter pickles and Kosher Dills, BB Salsa, BB canned tomatoes, BB pickled pepper sauce in recycled Jack Daniels bottles...the list goes on. I tuned up and had a little weepy spell right then and there when realizing how many hours of her work inhabited my pantry.
Then there is my freezer which Bettie helped fill every year with packs of white crowders and pink-eye purple hull peas she had raised, ready-to-fry breaded okra, and Ziploc bags of paper-shell pecans.
It was time to get dressed for work. I opened the bathroom drawer only to pull out another of Bettie's specialties, a lace-crochet decorated wash-cloth. I used it to cleanse the tears from my eyes that did not stop coming.
I opened my closet to get out something to wear to the clinic. During Covid, scrub shirts and jeans have been my uniform. My closet is full of multi-color scrub tops that Bettie bought me whenever Shoup's Medical Supply in Ashland would have a sale, and jeans that she had hemmed-up for me or patched when ripped.
I brushed my hair and then squirted on some perfume, and saw the curvy brown bottle of Estee Lauder Youth Dew that had been Bettie's (as well as my own mother's) signature scent. There's Bettie again, I thought.
That was just about enough grieving for one morning, but this experience gave me a realization of how much joy Bettie had added to my life. This spring, I think of her when I am at the Tippah Co-Op and still look for those Celebrity and Arkansas Traveler tomato plants that were her absolute favorite varieties to grow.
She always called me “Missy” and my name for her was “Betty Boop.” When I see a funny t-shirt I still want to buy it for her - the same when I run across a Find-A-Word puzzle book.
She was a fantastic cook and I remember once telling her that we could make a mint marketing her super special baked beans. “Bettie Beans,” would have been the brand name!
Bettie Childers Bradford was a plain and simple fun-loving country girl, an extremely generous person, and a loyal and dependable friend. The two of us had several things in common: a love of down home life, of watching things grow, of both being tomboys and daddy's girls, and of course the three grandchildren we shared together, Molly, Jeb and Quaid.
When all the material gifts she shared have been consumed, or worn out and forgotten, her best legacy to me will remain, her sweet daughter and my daughter-in-law, Kimmie Bradford Williams.
Our Bettie died too soon this past February at her home in Ashland after a hard six month struggle with metastatic lung cancer. She was only 69. Bettie's favorite meal was always a bottomless mug of sweet tea and a bag of tater chips, with a Berkeley cigarette for dessert. A half century of smoking is what took her from us. She tried valiantly but was never able to quit. Bettie had been miserable for a long time when she passed. Her death, as hard as it is for us to take, was a relief for her and set her soul free. She will be fiercely missed by friends, family and her community.
As Christians we have long been sustained by the belief that we are pilgrims just temporarily passing through this world and will someday arrive on another shore where our loved ones await our arrival. This illustration is found in the following poem:
What Death Really Is
I am standing on the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails
to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. . .
I stand and watch her until at length she hangs
like a speck of white cloud come down to mingle
with each other. Then someone at my side says,
“There! She's gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight. . . that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side. . .
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
“There! She's gone!” --- there are other eyes
watching her coming, and other voices ready
to take up the glad shout, “There she comes!”
And that is dying.
When that “crossing-over” day comes, I'm sure I'll be heard hollering “Well, there's that Bettie Bradford again!” She will always be alive in my memory. | https://www.djournal.com/sentinel/opinion/southernism-theres-that-bettie-again/article_9f942b1f-4f99-5e13-8e00-f49c5b12f41b.html | 2022-04-13T06:28:49 | 0 | https://www.djournal.com/sentinel/opinion/southernism-theres-that-bettie-again/article_9f942b1f-4f99-5e13-8e00-f49c5b12f41b.html |
Future liability releases at center of Boy Scouts bankruptcy
DOVER, Del. (AP) — Protecting local Boy Scouts of America councils and troop sponsoring organizations from future liability for child sex abuse claims is critical to the national group’s reorganization plan, BSA attorneys told a Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday.
Attorneys opposing the plan countered that liability releases for non-debtor third parties are neither fair nor necessary, and that they infringe on the rights of abuse survivors to seek compensation for their abuse.
The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, petitioned for bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a settlement trust for abuse victims. Although the organization faced about 275 lawsuits at the time, more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case.
The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts and its 250 local councils, along with settling insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations, to contribute some $2.6 billion in cash and property and assign their insurance rights to a settlement trust fund for abuse victims. More than half that money would come from the BSA’s two largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and The Hartford. Those companies would contribute $800 million and $787 million, respectively.
In exchange, the parties contributing to the settlement trust would be released from further liability for sexual abuse claims dating back decades.
The local BSA councils are not debtors in the bankruptcy, but Boy Scouts attorney Jessica Lauria argued that they are inextricably intertwined with the national organization and deserve to be protected from future lawsuits in exchange for contributing to the compensation fund.
“There can be no doubt that there is an identity of interests, and frankly an extreme interconnectedness, between the local councils and the national organization,” Lauria said. Sponsoring organizations similarly are closely tied to BSA and local councils and critical to their operations, she added.
Richard Mason, an attorney for the local councils, told Judge Laura Selber Silverstein that without the liability releases, the compensation fund “basically evaporates.”
Absent approval of the BSA’s plan, the local councils would face “massive litigation” and would be forced to seek bankruptcy protection themselves, endangering the future of Scouting and the ability of abuse survivors to obtain compensation, Mason added.
But opponents questioned why the liability releases for local councils and sponsoring organization are needed in order for the BSA to emerge from bankruptcy. They noted that the Boy Scouts proposed a plan last year under which the settlement trust would be funded only by the national organization, and only for claims made against it. Under that plan, the councils and local sponsoring organizations would make no contribution and would have no protection from liability for abuse claims.
“Debtors said that was workable, feasible,” Silverstein noted. “So why is it necessary to have this elaborate, interconnected, intertwined plan for the Boy Scouts?”
Lauria replied that “BSA-only plan” may have been feasible when first proposed, but that it was never “optimal.” She also noted that the BSA has spent some $100 million more on professional fees in the bankruptcy since then and can’t afford to fund a settlement trust on its own at this point.
Edwin Caldie, an attorney representing scores of alleged abuse victims in Guam, argued that the BSA’s current plan unfairly strips them of their rights to pursue abuse claims against Catholic church officials.
The Guam group includes creditors with claims against the Archdiocese of Agana, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 amid a flood of child sex abuse claims. Many of those claims involve the late priest Louis Brouillard, who was also a BSA Scoutmaster and who was accused of molesting more than 100 children.
The BSA plan would channel claims against the Guam diocese into the proposed BSA settlement trust without the consent of survivors and unfairly deprive them of the ability to pursue BSA insurance policies, Caldie said.
Caldie accused the settling insurers of using “extortionist” tactics in negotiations with the Boy Scouts to obtain liability releases to which they would not be entitled under the policies they issued.
He also rejected the notion that a relatively small number of survivors should not be allowed to interfere with approval of a reorganization plan supported by tens of thousands of other claimants.
“From a common sense perspective, the BSA made a decision to shun and silence survivors of child sexual assault for decades and did not report their perpetrators for decades,” Caldie said. “.... The Guam survivors are not terribly comfortable with ‘greater good’ arguments now, especially made buy the BSA.”
Closing arguments on whether the judge should approve the BSA plan are expected to conclude Wednesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ | 2022-04-13T06:33:03 | 0 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ |
Police hunt gunman who wounded 10 in Brooklyn subway attack
NEW YORK (AP) — Police hunted late into the night for the gunman who opened fire Tuesday on a subway train in Brooklyn, an attack that left 10 people wounded by gunfire and once again interrupted New York City’s long journey to post-pandemic normalcy.
The search focused partly on a man who police say rented a van possibly connected to the violence.
Investigators stressed they weren’t sure whether the man, Frank R. James, was responsible for the shooting. But authorities were examining social media videos in which the 62-year-old decried the United States as a racist place awash in violence and sometimes railed against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.
“This nation was born in violence, it’s kept alive by violence or the threat thereof and it’s going to die a violent death. There’s nothing going to stop that,” James said in one video.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell called the posts “concerning” and officials tightened security for Adams.
The gunman sent off smoke grenades in a crowded subway car and then fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm handgun, police said. Five gunshot victims were in critical condition but expected to survive. At least a dozen people who escaped gunshot wounds were treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries.
One passenger, Jordan Javier, thought the first popping sound he heard was a book dropping. Then there was another pop, people started moving toward the front of the car, and he realized there was smoke, he said.
When the train pulled into the station, people ran out and were directed to another train across the platform. Passengers wept and prayed as they rode away from the scene, Javier said.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” he said.
The shooter fled in the chaos, leaving behind the gun, extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van.
That key led investigators to James, who has addresses in Philadelphia and Wisconsin, said Chief of Detectives James Essig. The van was later found, unoccupied, near a subway station where investigators determined the gunman had entered the train system, Essig said.
Rambling, profanity-filled YouTube videos apparently posted by James, who is Black, are replete with violent language and bigoted comments, some against other Black people.
One video, posted April 11, criticizes crime against Black people and says drastic action is needed.
“You got kids going in here now taking machine guns and mowing down innocent people,” James says. “It’s not going to get better until we make it better,” he said, adding that he thought things would only change if certain people were “stomped, kicked and tortured” out of their “comfort zone.”
Several videos mention New York’s subways.
A Feb. 20 video says the mayor and governor’s plan to address homelessness and safety in the subway system “is doomed for failure” and refers to himself as a “victim” of the city’s mental health programs. A Jan. 25 video criticizes Adams’ plan to end gun violence.
Adams, who is isolating following a positive COVID-19 test on Sunday, said in a video statement that the city “will not allow New Yorkers to be terrorized, even by a single individual.”
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Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Beatrice Dupuy, Karen Matthews, Julie Walker, Deepti Hajela, Michelle L. Price and David Porter in New York contributed to this report, and Michael Kunzelman contributed from College Park, Maryland.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ | 2022-04-13T06:33:10 | 0 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/police-hunt-gunman-who-wounded-10-brooklyn-subway-attack/ |
Study: Climate crisis supercharging rainfall in hurricanes
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 2:07 AM EDT|Updated: 20 minutes ago
(CNN) - A new study suggests the climate crisis is supercharging rainfall in hurricanes.
The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
It found that rainfall from hurricanes during the record-breaking 2020 season was as much as 11% higher due to human-caused climate changes.
Researchers determined that global warming increased hourly rainfall rates in tropical storms and hurricanes from 5% to 10%.
When experts observed just hurricanes, the increase was 8% to 11%.
The findings suggest the threat surged over the past few decades and it will likely increase more in the future.
That’s because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which leads to higher rainfall rates.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ | 2022-04-13T06:33:17 | 1 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ |
WH environmental justice advisors press for Justice40 action
(AP) - Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said Tuesday that the Biden administration hadn’t done enough to make good on its promise that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities.
Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the HBCU Climate Change Conference in New Orleans, the council members said they’ve secured $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a program called Engage, Enlighten and Empower to hold the Biden administration accountable for carrying out its Justice40 initiative.
President Biden made the commitment in a sweeping executive order on his first day in office. The initiative has been held up as an unprecedented push to bring environmental justice to communities long plagued by pollution and climate inaction.
The three members of the federal environmental justice council leading the $14 million-dollar effort, Beverly Wright, Peggy Shepard and Robert Bullard, have been working closely with the administration on Justice40.
But Wright told members of the press that more needs to be done to “turn a novel idea into a project that works.”
The trio are combining philanthropic grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, $6 million from Shepard’s WE ACT for Environmental Justice, $4 million from Wright’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and $4 million from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, to ensure federal funding from Justice40 “goes where it’s intended,” Shepard said.
The effort should “ensure equitable implementation of the Justice40 initiative at the state and local level and empower local communities to participate in the policy-making” that comes as a result of the initiative, a press release said.
The funds will go to educate grassroots organizations on the resources available to them through Justice40, inform state and local governments on how the money should be used, and develop a screening tool to determine where Justice40 funds are needed most, one that includes racial demographic data. Controversially a federal screening tool used by the administration does not take into account the racial makeup of communities.
There has been little change on the ground yet from the Justice40 pledge because the federal government is still trying to figure out which communities are most in need of the investment. In recommendations to the Biden administration, many reputable environmental justice advocates pushed for a methodical, intentional process for identifying disadvantaged communities and disbursing funds.
At the briefing, Wright and Bullard said they’ve seen past federal social and infrastructure projects fail to deliver on promises to disadvantaged communities and don’t want to see it happen again.
“There’s been a lot of really novel approaches at changing the lives of Americans in general that have worked out” benefitting just white Americans, Wright said.
Bullard pointed to discrimination in how flood relief was distributed in Texas, where the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice is located, as an example.
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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ | 2022-04-13T06:33:24 | 0 | https://www.wnem.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ |
When I taste, smell or think about Easter pie, I think of my grandmother, Mary Palombo. I think of the family brownstone in the Bronx where she made a version of this pie that was reserved for the most festive occasions of the year. I think of her soft, wrinkled hands holding a white box with red and white butcher twine tied into a knot, and how whenever anyone in my family saw this, we knew what was inside — a flaky, crusted pie filled with thin layers of ham, egg, cheese, salami and sometimes capocollo, also called “gabagool” to my New York family.
This is one of my core food memories, but it’s about so much more than the pie itself. I think about the box of Red Rose black tea in the cupboard and what a treat this was with milk and sugar, sitting at the kitchen table covered in a vinyl tablecloth, my grandfather sitting at the head of the table with his magnifying glass and book of stamps.
Food lives on a spectrum. At one end resides utility and on the other, sentiment. This simple pie my grandmother made year after year (with store-bought pie dough) resides on the far end of the sentiment spectrum for me, containing memories that would otherwise be forgotten. While sentiment tends to be frowned upon, I cannot help but think this is the best of what food has to offer: A place where nourishment and memories meet, making a path for our children to follow, a living history in the middle of our kitchens.
Normally Easter pie is reserved for, well, Easter. But somehow our family ignored this rule and we called it meat pie, but it is also commonly called pizza rustica and about a dozen other names depending on what region in Italy it comes from. This recipe is a more traditional take on the pie my grandmother used to make and includes a ricotta cheese mixture that bakes similarly to a quiche. I added a layer of spinach and fire-roasted poblanos (when in Rome) and I added a bit more structure to the pie dough by adding some eggs, which makes a strong crust to hold the weight of all the meat and cheese inside.
You’ll notice you have some leftover scraps of dough. If you wish, roll this out and make any decorations you want. The day I made this pie also happened to be the day my family was going to visit some new friends who had recently had a special experience at Cerro Pedernal. Even though I was a little nervous, I had an idea. Of course, thoughts were running through my mind like, would it turn out? Would it look weird? Would they think I was weird? But in the end, I decided to go for it and attempted to decorate the pie with the shape of the mesa and the moon, and feeling inspired by the hole I had cut in the middle for steam to escape, I ended up making an upside-down sun. It was a pie to share as the sun was setting over Lamy, but it was something else, too, and I’m reminded of what the American poet Richard Hugo famously said, “Dare to be sentimental.”
Easter Pie
Makes: 1 pie, 10-12 servings;
total time: 4 hours
For the crust:
3½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and diced
1 teaspoon flaky salt
3 eggs
¼ cup cold water, as needed
For the filling:
1 pound whole-milk ricotta cheese
½ teaspoon flaky salt
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
3 eggs, divided
1 teaspoon olive oil
8 cups fresh spinach
3 fire-roasted poblano chiles, peeled, seeded and diced
2 teaspoons herbes de Provence or High Desert Herbs
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon softened butter, for greasing the pan
12 slices of prosciutto
¾ pound (12 ounces) any combination of salami, pepperoni or other Italian cured meats
Preparation: First, make the crust. In a large bowl, crumble together the flour, butter and salt until it resembles coarse sand. Add the eggs and water and lightly knead just until it forms a ball of dough. If needed, you can add an additional splash of cold water if the mixture is too dry. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
While the dough is resting, make the ricotta filling: In a medium bowl, stir together the ricotta, salt, nutmeg, Parmesan, mozzarella and 2 eggs. Crack the third egg into a small ramekin, stir and set aside. We’ll use this for egg washing the pie right before it goes in the oven.
Now let’s make the spinach layer: In a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, add the olive oil. After a minute, add the spinach and fire-roasted poblanos, dried herbs and a pinch of salt and pepper, and cook this until almost all of the water has evaporated from the spinach. Set this aside.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the sides and bottom of a 9-inch springform pan with the softened butter. Pull the dough from the fridge and cut a piece around three-quarters of the dough and wrap the remaining quarter with the plastic. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the larger piece into an 18-inch-diameter circle. Lay this in the bottom and up the sides of the pan, trimming off any excess dough hanging over the edge.
Now it’s time to build the pie: Lay 12 slices of prosciutto evenly over the bottom of the crust. This will help keep the bottom of the crust from getting soggy. Now spread half of the ricotta mixture evenly over the prosciutto. Next, add a layer using half of the salami, then evenly sprinkle the spinach and chile mixture. Add the remaining ricotta mixture, spreading it evenly across, and finally a layer of the remaining salami.
Roll out the remaining piece of dough into a 9-inch circle and lay this on top of the pie like a lid. Use any remaining scraps of dough to make decorations for the top if you wish. Make sure to cut a slit or hole in the pie dough to let steam escape. Brush the entire top generously with the egg wash, being sure to brush any decorations with egg wash as well. Sprinkle the top with flaky salt and bake the pie for 75 minutes. Let cool to room temperature (around an hour) before transferring to the fridge to finish cooling, ideally at least 2 hours before serving. This is best served cold, but it’s still delicious if you are unable to wait and serve it warm. | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/taste/an-easter-pie-filled-with-memories/article_ea230076-ba96-11ec-9e8c-ef87cf290640.html | 2022-04-13T06:41:54 | 1 | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/taste/an-easter-pie-filled-with-memories/article_ea230076-ba96-11ec-9e8c-ef87cf290640.html |
On a recent, typically blustery early April afternoon in Santa Fe, I did something I almost never do: I stopped by Canyon Road.
Excuses, excuses: There’ll be too many tourists. There’ll be nowhere to park. There’s nothing I could afford there anyway.
But then I stepped into the sweet, airy courtyard outside Manolla Cafe, and suddenly I wondered why I hadn’t been here already.
Manon Pierme, a licensed nutrition and wellness practitioner, opened her cafe in June 2020, and the concept is ideal for a cautious, pandemic-weary world. There’s beautiful outdoor seating, and everything here is already packaged to-go, arranged so prettily you’ll forget you’re not eating off china.
The setting is equally charming — in the first block of Canyon Road off Paseo de Peralta, across from the mesmerizing kinetic wind sculptures at Mark White Fine Art. I found side street parking with no trouble just a few minutes away.
Pierme, whose family moved here from France when she was 5, describes her menu as a modern take on health food with a Mediterranean twist. The simple but thoughtful menu includes healthful sandwiches, tartines and salads, smoothies and Ohori’s espresso and tea drinks. Items on the menu are labeled as gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, organic or dairy-free.
“We’ve had really wonderful feedback,” said Pierme, who also offers postpartum packages and personal nutrition services. “People appreciate that we’re delivering 100 percent organic food.”
A top seller is the housemade tuna, studded with figs and herbs. You can have it all on its own ($8) or in a sandwich ($10.50) with goat cheese and arugula. I had a scoop atop the Amour De Kale salad ($13 topped with tuna salad, smoked salmon or tempeh), a tangy and satisfying medley of massaged kale, mixed greens, blueberries, walnuts, goat cheese, hemp seeds and dressing. It’s the kind of lunch that’s filling without being overwhelming, the kind that makes it easy to feel good about eating healthy because it tastes so good.
I also tried a new customer favorite, La Parisienne ($13), a simple but flavorful sandwich of shaved ham, P’tit Basque cheese, greens, cucumber, watermelon radish, grain mustard and butter. The Avocado Tartine ($9) was a picture-perfect snack with cashew-based cream cheese and a scatter of hemp and sesame seeds. A Golden Goddess smoothie ($10) — with mango, banana, turmeric, ginger, coconut water and coconut milk, hemp protein and maple syrup — had just the right amount of sweetness.
Manolla also sells vegan, gluten-free, low-glycemic granolas ($9.50 per package): Lavender vanilla and chocolate cacao are regular flavors; I tried the perfectly springlike seasonal offering, a crisp and light lemon coconut.
Then there are the cookies ($3.50), which manage to be vegan, gluten-free and paleo-friendly — crisp yet moist sweets that are so popular they can sell out. Chocolate chip and lemon lavender are always on offer, but specialty flavors pop up, too.
“I’m not just making food to have a restaurant,” Pierme said. “We try to pass along as much good energy into the food as possible.”
I carried some of that good energy back outdoors as I passed tables of diners chatting happily and headed to my car. Across the street I paused, taking in the spring blossoms and those slowly spinning wind sculptures glinting in the sun. A man drove past in a gorgeous Jaguar, and the whole thing felt too fancy to be true.
Then reality reared its head, and I laughed out loud in the middle of Canyon Road: Stuck in the grille of the Jag was a stubborn spring tumbleweed.
Sometimes it’s nice to visit a place you haven’t been to in a while, to eat and drink something nourishing and look at something beautiful — and it’s so nice we have places like Manolla Cafe to remind us that a lovely little break from the everyday is just around the corner.
Be an Angel
Grab breakfast, lunch or dinner April 21 from one of 31 local restaurants, and 25 percent of the revenue will go to local nonprofit Kitchen Angels. This is the 23rd year for Angels Dine Out, which benefits this community-based, volunteer-driven agency that provides free, home-delivered meals to people in Santa Fe who are homebound living with life-challenging health conditions.
Visit kitchenangels.org for more details.
Here’s the list of participating restaurants: 315 Restaurant & Wine Bar; Andiamo!; Arable; Arroyo Vino; Bourbon Grill; Cafecito; Café Castro; Café Fina; Café Pasqual’s; Cowgirl BBQ; Herve Wine Bar; Hidden Mountain Brewing Co.; Horno Restaurant; India House; Izanami; Jambo Café; Joe’s Dining; La Casa Sena; Le Pommier Bistro; Mariscos Costa Azul; Museum Hill Café; Paper Dosa; Pecos Trail Café; Piccolino; Plaza Café Southside; Posa’s Tamale Factory & Restaurant; Pranzo Italian Grill; Rio Chama Steakhouse; Rustica; Santa Fe Bite; and TerraCotta Wine Bistro. | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/taste/turning-up-the-canyon-road-charm/article_d97c136a-baab-11ec-a576-a7ec9d4b3de1.html | 2022-04-13T06:42:00 | 1 | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/taste/turning-up-the-canyon-road-charm/article_d97c136a-baab-11ec-a576-a7ec9d4b3de1.html |
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is asking a state District Court to reverse a ruling that revoked the parole of a man who had already served
40 years in prison.
The ACLU argued in a petition filed last week the decision to end Shane Lasiter’s parole hinged on an alleged minor technical violation and “not based on substantial evidence.”
Lasiter, 57, was sentenced to life in prison in 1981 after he was convicted of fatally shooting a shopkeeper during an armed robbery of a Dairy Queen in Lordsburg, according to the nonprofit’s petition.
He was 16 at the time, but was tried and sentenced as an adult.
Denied parole four times by the state Adult Parole Board, he was eventually granted parole in April 2021, according to the petition, which said Lasiter demonstrated “immense growth” and increased maturity and rehabilitation during the 40 years he spent in prison.
He availed himself of education, ministry, music and a dog-training program, and he was even paid by the state to provide personal care for a disabled co-defendant who was his cellmate, according to the petition.
In August, the petition added, Lasiter left the halfway house where he’d been living and rented his own apartment.
But his freedom was short-lived.
In November, he struck up a casual acquaintance with a young woman to whom he occasionally gave rides and helped with errands.
Unbeknownst to him, a warrant was issued for the woman’s arrest Jan. 21 in connection with her alleged role in what the board said was a homicide case. Court records show she has been charged, but not convicted, with armed robbery.
Lasiter was with the woman when police served her with the warrant five days later, according to the complaint. He was arrested on a parole violation for having been found in her company, the petition says.
The Adult Parole Board subsequently revoked his probation — incarcerating him for at least 18 more months and possibly up to five more years — based on allegations he violated two conditions of his parole.
One of the provisions requires him to “maintain acceptable behavior and conduct” and another bars him from knowingly associating with anyone detrimental to his parole.
The ACLU argues Lasiter had no way of knowing the woman had been accused of a crime less than a week before, or of determining she would be considered “detrimental” to his parole.
“Fundamental to our criminal legal system is the principal that we differentiate between inadvertent acts and those committed with a guilty mind,” ACLU attorney Denali Wilson wrote in the petition.
“[Lasiter’s] case departed starkly from this foundation principle of criminal law,” Wilson wrote. “His parole was revoked under a charge of ‘knowingly associating’ with someone who was detrimental to his parole, absent a shred of evidence that he possessed this required knowledge. [Lasiter’s] parole revocation cannot stand without this evidence and must be reversed.”
The New Mexico Adult Parole Board did not respond to a message seeking comment Monday.
The ACLU argues the rule is unconstitutionally vague was inconsistently enforced.
State District Judge Maria Sanchez-Gagne has been assigned to review Lasiter’s appeal, but the court has not yet set a hearing in the case. | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/aclu-fights-revocation-of-mans-parole-inmate-served-40-years-for-murder-committed-at-age/article_4cd5534c-b784-11ec-b946-d7e5d1b55345.html | 2022-04-13T06:42:06 | 1 | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/aclu-fights-revocation-of-mans-parole-inmate-served-40-years-for-murder-committed-at-age/article_4cd5534c-b784-11ec-b946-d7e5d1b55345.html |
The city of Santa Fe is considering adding a police substation at City Hall to boost officers’ presence in and around the downtown area and on the Plaza.
The $100,000 proposal in Mayor Alan Webber’s draft budget for fiscal year 2023 comes as downtown businesses owners say they have seen an increase in burglaries and vandalism in recent weeks.
Police Chief Paul Joye said a station in unused space at City Hall on Marcy Street would be more accessible for officers patrolling the area and north-side residents who need police assistance. He envisions the substation as a primary hub for the police department’s downtown bike team, which he said would meet with crime victims, take calls and handle other police business in the offices.
The substation would be the department’s only public station other than its headquarters on Camino Entrada, south of Airport Road. The proposal was unveiled Monday as part of a $382 million spending plan.
Joye said the city used to share a substation on West Alameda Street with the Santa Fe Fire Department about a decade ago, until the building was shuttered. Officers patrolling the north side used the West Alameda substation as a center of command.
Now, Joye said, officers and residents have to travel across the city for police business.
He said he was uncertain why the West Alameda station shuttered.
“We haven’t had a real presence or substation on the north side in several years,” Joye said. “It’s something we have had discussion about quite a bit, and it’s something the mayor has really been wanting to make happen.”
The department also is planning a more permanent location near the city-owned midtown campus, he said.
The downtown substation project wouldn’t require any major remodeling, Joye said. He noted staffing numbers have not yet been determined.
The possibility of a City Hall substation was welcome news to Cyndi Hall, associate director of Manitou Galleries on West Palace Avenue. Hall has worked downtown for 25 years and said when the previous substation was active, it “kept guys who were up to no good at bay.”
The gallery has been broken into twice in recent months, she said, including the theft in March of over $100,000 worth of art.
She said no suspect has been arrested in the case.
“Having a substation a block away would be a real help for a lot of our issues downtown,” she said.
Charles Dampf, director of operations at Palace Prime Steak + Seafood on West Palace Avenue, said the restaurant has been broken into numerous times over the past seven months.
“It’s been a whole ordeal,” he said.
The restaurant has spent “thousands” of dollars on security to deter further break-ins, Dampf said, adding it would be “great to have a substation … as long as it is being utilized.”
Webber touted the plan in an interview Monday, calling it way to ensure “all parts of town have a police presence.”
“There are so many things in the budget that I think people should feel good about, but I think we are really making investments in public safety,” Webber said.
Along with the substation, the mayor’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal includes a $2.25 million infusion in the police department’s collective bargaining reserve, which is equivalent to a salary and benefit increase of about 16 percent. The Santa Fe Fire Department received an 8 percent boost to its collective bargaining fund.
The police department also would receive $1.8 million for 30 new hybrid vehicles and fuel costs and $1.1 million for new camera equipment and would continue offering $15,000 lateral hiring bonuses for new officers.
Overall, the police department budget would increase by 13 percent compared to the current fiscal year.
Joye said he’s heard positive input from the police union.
The city is also creating a $750,000 down payment assistance program to help police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians buy homes in Santa Fe, which Joye said he hopes will encourage more officers to live in the city.
“I understand the cost difference in houses between us and Rio Rancho, for example,” Joye said. “Something like this is definitely a step in the right direction.” | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/downtown-police-substation-proposal-comes-as-business-owners-see-crime-rising/article_bce7e1c2-ba72-11ec-b0e7-3bc03a93d3c2.html | 2022-04-13T06:42:12 | 1 | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/downtown-police-substation-proposal-comes-as-business-owners-see-crime-rising/article_bce7e1c2-ba72-11ec-b0e7-3bc03a93d3c2.html |
The five candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor blasted Democratic incumbent Michelle Lujan Grisham — and each other — during a forum Tuesday hosted by the Santa Fe Federated Republican Women.
The potshots among the GOP contenders in the June primary spilled into social media immediately afterward. Many were aimed at former TV meteorologist Mark Ronchetti, who has raised far more money than his primary opponents despite a late start to his campaign.
Ronchetti, in response to the blows, told the crowd “bluster” doesn’t win elections but turns voters off.
Jay Block, a Sandoval County commissioner, pounced on Ronchetti for telling the crowd, “I’m not somebody who has deep knowledge of what is failing you.” Block labeled Ronchetti’s remarks the “worst thing you could say.”
“Now we know why Mr Ronchetti doesn’t show,” Block wrote on Twitter, referring to Ronchetti’s absence at several past candidate forums and debates. “If you don’t understand the problems facing New Mexicans, how do you think you can be Governor?”
In a follow-up tweet, Block tagged several news organizations, as well as the Republican Governors Association.
“This statement is very concerning to those who are looking for experience,” he tweeted. “We don’t want to train a Gov, we need strong leadership.”
Enrique Knell, Ronchetti’s campaign spokesman, wrote in an email Block had “quoted a sentence fragment ridiculously out of context. Mark is making the point he’s not a career politician.”
Ronchetti had been asked how he distinguished himself from the other gubernatorial hopefuls.
“I will admit to you, I am not a politician,” he said. “I’m not somebody who has a deep knowledge of what is failing you. We need to tear down the bureaucracy in Santa Fe that has long since stopped listening to you.”
Block took aim at Ronchetti during the forum, as well as state Rep. Rebecca Dow of Truth or Consequences over an ethics probe scheduled for a hearing in July.
“It’s imperative that you nominate the right candidate with the right leadership, the right experience, that doesn’t have the political baggage, that’s not establishment, that doesn’t have an ethics trial a month after a primary election,” Block told the crowd.
Though Dow didn’t respond to Block, earlier in the forum she called the ethics charges “bogus.” They include allegations she may have used her legislative position to advocate for a nonprofit she founded more than 20 years ago.
Dow also spoke pejoratively of Ronchetti.
“My fight is the primary,” Dow said. “If you’re looking at the polls, and you’re looking at cash on hand, it’s between myself and the weatherman.”
Knell lambasted what he called cheap shots lodged against Ronchetti.
“In this primary it’s Mark versus everyone, they all know it and are pulling out every cheap shot they can,” he wrote in an email. “Mark is and will stay laser-focused on Michelle Lujan Grisham’s failed policies. That’s why Republicans in this primary are coalescing behind the movement Mark continues to build.”
The verbal jabs at the forum, held at the Santa Fe Country Club, came a day after candidates for public office filed campaign finance reports that show Ronchetti, who came close to winning a U.S. Senate seat in 2020, with a sizable fundraising lead over his rivals.
Ronchetti has more than $1.5 million in cash remaining as the June primary approaches, compared to Dow’s $684,000 and Block’s $20,044, according to the reports. Block’s name will appear first on the ballot after he received the highest number of delegate votes at the GOP pre-primary convention in February, while Ronchetti came in fourth at the event.
In an interview after Tuesday’s forum, which drew about 115 attendees, Block said he wasn’t “taking hits or giving hits.”
“I’m talking about public information out there,” he said, adding the ethics complaint against Dow should disqualify her from the race.
“She won’t be the nominee, but if she is the nominee, then we have a Republican nominee against [Lujan Grisham] who has to go in front of an ethics trial in July,” he said. “That’s not good. That’s what I’m talking about with baggage. We don’t need that.”
Block said Ronchetti would be “a governor in training” if he won the primary and beat Lujan Grisham in November.
“He even said it himself; he doesn’t understand these issues,” Block said.
During and after the forum, Ronchetti said the candidates “need to run on values,” a formula he said worked when he ran for the Senate.
“In that election, we got more votes than any Republican in the history of the state of New Mexico,” he said. “We have to do that again. We have to gather people outside our party, and thinking of the nastiest thing you can say about your opponent isn’t going to get it done.”
He added: “If we continue shrinking down our party, taking all the shots we can and looking like we would rather beat each other up than become governor, then we will not succeed.”
In an interview, Ronchetti said political jabs come with the territory, but it won’t be how he runs his campaign.
“People in this state don’t want to see people running for political office sit there and see what kind of shots they can take with each other,” he said. “That doesn’t address the problems that New Mexicans have, and honestly, I don’t care about all the bluster. I don’t care about all the backbiting and the backstabbing. I care about what everybody here in this state is facing.
“We have a government that doesn’t listen to us anymore,” he said. “If we don’t realize that the way forward on that is to address people’s problems, then we’re lost.” | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/gop-gubernatorial-hopefuls-trade-verbal-jabs-during-santa-fe-forum/article_3ce4c19e-ba9e-11ec-b832-e79aafa186ce.html | 2022-04-13T06:42:18 | 0 | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/gop-gubernatorial-hopefuls-trade-verbal-jabs-during-santa-fe-forum/article_3ce4c19e-ba9e-11ec-b832-e79aafa186ce.html |
Santa Fe County Manager Katherine Miller announced at a County Commission meeting Tuesday she was retiring from the position she held for nearly a dozen years.
The commission selected County Attorney Greg Shaffer to replace her.
Before stepping into the position, Miller served as Cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration, executive director of the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority and deputy chief of staff of policy for former Gov. Bill Richardson, the county said in a news release. She also worked as the county’s finance director and procurement manager.
Under Miller’s leadership, the news release said, the county has achieved financial stability with healthy reserves and a AAA bond rating. She also led the county through the coronavirus pandemic, including managing
$14 million in federal CARES Act funding, and distributing
$4 million in small-business grants and
$2 million in housing assistance.
In a statement, Miller lauded the county leadership and staff. “I have been so very fortunate to be able to call myself their manager, their leader,” she said.
Shaffer, who previously was the county’s risk management director and interim deputy county manager, said in a statement, “I’m truly honored and humbled to be entrusted with this position.”
He said he hopes to build on the foundation Miller built and work with staff and elected officials “to achieve the County’s objectives and meet whatever challenges come our way.”
Shaffer was appointed by former Gov. Susana Martinez in October 2017 as a judge in the First Judicial District Court following the retirement of Judge Sarah Singleton. He served until the end of 2018 after he lost a primary race for the position that year against Maria Sanchez-Gagne.
Shaffer also served as general counsel of the state Department of Finance and Administration and deputy chief counsel for the state Taxation and Revenue Department.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Juris Doctorate at New York University School of Law, the county said in the news release.
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ALBUQUERQUE
As opening nights go, not too bad.
The food was great, the home team provided some fireworks, there was late-game drama and two hometown products both shone brightly at the plate.
Of course, you’d have to overlook the steady wind that made conditions miserable by game’s end for anyone not sitting in climate-controlled luxury suites of Isotopes Park for the home opener of Triple-A baseball in New Mexico. What started off as a blustery, mostly cloudy opening night ended with temperatures dipping into the mid-40s and the Albuquerque Isotopes blowing a seven-run lead.
Visiting Tacoma stormed back for a 10-9 win in extra innings as former University of New Mexico star Sam Haggerty went 2-for-4 with an RBI and run scored for the Rainiers. On the flip side was another former Lobo D.J. Peterson. Once a can’t-miss prospect drafted in the first round by the Seattle Mariners, he’s now a veteran signing for the Isotopes and went 2-for-5 with a home run and two RBIs.
It was the first true home opener for the Isotopes since the pre-pandemic days of 2019. The 2020 season was canceled due to COVID-19, and last season was a tempered return to minor league baseball with zero fan interaction with players and the loss of the in-game promotions fans have come to love.
Tuesday’s game — minus the crummy weather — had the look and feel of what baseball is all about, said Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller.
Wearing a custom purple Isotopes game jersey, he took in part of the game from the press box and shared a few thoughts about baseball, his memories of the game growing up, the stadium that’s housed the Isotopes for more than two decades, and his visions of the future.
“It does feel special, and the specialness comes from the fact that we don’t have the anxiety that we had before,” he said, referring to mask mandates and concerns over the spread of COVID-19 when a good portion of the public had not yet been fully vaccinated.
“Now it’s like people can kind of be themselves again,” Keller said. “Come as you are, be who you are and it’s OK, we don’t have to worry about all these extra things.”
A 1996 graduate of Albuquerque’s St. Pius X, Keller’s fondest memories of the footprint that is now Isotopes Park is that of the old Albuquerque Sports Stadium, the precursor to the current park and the former home of the Triple-A Albuquerque Dukes.
The Sports Stadium had its drive-in area around the top of the outfield wall, where Keller was like any other kid who risked skinned knees and chipped teeth while chasing home run balls through the steep lava rock hill that separated cars from the fence.
A lot has changed since then. The Dukes and the city’s relationship with the Dodgers are both history. The backdrop to the rebuilt stadium has become crowded with big buildings. The area around the facility has seen development of all kinds, including what Keller said will eventually be a completely overhauled interchange at Interstate 25 and Avenida Cesar Chavez about half a mile away.
Keller said a five-year plan calls for engineers to finally get rid of the S-curve that leads I-25 on a meandering path past the stadium corridor, replacing it with a straight shot that will, hopefully, come with other changes like landscaping and easier access to the ballpark. It would open the door for rapid mass transit to get people in and out more quickly.
“So, yeah, it’s going to change everything, but I think finally and for the better,” Keller said. “And also, as the mayor, some landscaping would be nice.”
A look around Isotopes Park hides some of the hard truths about what’s to come. In its agreement with Major League Baseball, minor leagues like the Pacific Coast League will need to upgrade their facilities to stay in step with what MLB says are minimum requirements. Locker rooms and player-access areas will need to be expanded and improved, as well as infrastructure needs that don’t necessarily impact the fans.
All must be completed in time for next year, so upgrades to the park affectionately known as The Lab are in the planning phases.
As he watched part of Tuesday’s game, Keller talked about the city’s need for an additional facility for the New Mexico United soccer club. With Isotopes Park in use nearly every day even during the offseason, the demands on the park are obvious. It’s leading to wear and tear on the field, which is apparent with areas around the infield where the clay meets the grass. What used to be clear, sharp borders are now bumpy and somewhat worn because of the constant changeovers between soccer and baseball.
“I will mention the issue that eventually is going to hurt,” Keller said. “The schedules of two professional teams in the same stadium, it’s a lengthy, tough negation every year, and at some point with some league or something, it’s going to be a major issue. So that has not gone away.”
There are problems, to be sure. For now, though, baseball is back and it’s time to celebrate a sport that’s here to stay through August. | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/sports/isotopes-narrowly-lose-blustery-home-opener-to-tacoma/article_1a784628-baa6-11ec-9775-7778845840b1.html | 2022-04-13T06:42:30 | 1 | https://www.santafenewmexican.com/sports/isotopes-narrowly-lose-blustery-home-opener-to-tacoma/article_1a784628-baa6-11ec-9775-7778845840b1.html |
Blame Trump? Jury hears that defense at Capitol riot trial
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mentions of Donald Trump have been rare at the first few trials for people charged with storming the U.S. Capitol, but that has changed: The latest Capitol riot defendant to go on trial is blaming his actions on the former president and his false claims about a stolen election.
Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol, doesn’t deny that he joined the mob on Jan. 6, 2021. But his lawyer vowed Tuesday to show that Trump abused his power to “authorize” the attack.
Describing Trump as a man without scruples or integrity, defense attorney Samuel Shamansky said the former president engaged in a “sinister” plot to encourage Thompson and other supporters to “do his dirty work.”
“It’s Donald Trump himself spewing the lies and using his position to authorize this assault,” Shamansky told jurors Tuesday during the trial’s opening statements.
Justice Department prosecutor Jennifer Rozzoni said Thompson knew he was breaking the law that day.
“He chose to be a part of the mayhem and chaos,” she said.
Thompson’s lawyer sought subpoenas to call Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as witnesses at his trial this week. A judge rejected that request but ruled that jurors can hear recordings of speeches that Trump and Giuliani delivered at a rally before the riot.
Thompson’s jury trial is the third among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. The first two ended with jurors convicting both defendants on all counts with which they were charged.
In a February court filing, Shamansky said he wanted to argue at trial that Thompson was acting at the direction of Trump and “his various conspirators.” The lawyer asked to subpoena others from Trump’s inner circle, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and former Trump lawyers John Eastman and Sidney Powell.
Prosecutors said Thompson can’t show that Trump or Giuliani had the authority to “empower” him to break the law. They also noted that video of the rally speeches “perfectly captures” the tone, delivery and context of the statements to the extent they are “marginally relevant” to proof of Thompson’s intent on Jan. 6.
Thompson’s lawyer argued that Trump would testify that he and others " orchestrated a carefully crafted plot to call into question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.” Shamansky claimed that Giuliani incited rioters by encouraging them to engage in “trial by combat” and that Trump provoked the mob by saying that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Shamansky said Thompson, who lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, became an avid consumer of the conspiracy theories and lies about a stolen election.
“This is the garbage that Dustin Thompson is listening to day after day after day,” Shamansky said. “He goes down this rabbit hole. He listens to this echo chamber. And he acts accordingly.”
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled in March that any in-person testimony by Trump or Giuliani could confuse and mislead jurors.
More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes arising from Jan. 6. Over 250 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors. Thompson is the fifth person to be tried on riot-related charges.
On Monday, a jury convicted a former Virginia police officer, Thomas Robertson, of storming the Capitol with another off-duty officer to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Last month, a jury convicted a Texas man, Guy Reffitt, of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun.
A judge hearing testimony without a jury decided cases against two other Capitol riot defendants at separate bench trials. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted one of them of all charges and partially acquitted the other.
Thompson has a co-defendant, Robert Lyon, who pleaded guilty to riot-related charges in March.
Thompson, then 36, and Lyon, then 27, drove from Columbus, Ohio, to Silver Spring, Maryland, stayed overnight at a hotel and then took an Uber ride into Washington, D.C., on the morning of Jan. 6. After then-President Donald Trump’s speech, Thompson and Lyon headed over to the Capitol.
Thompson was wearing a “Trump 2020″ winter hat and a bulletproof vest when he entered the Capitol and went to the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office, where he stole two bottles of liquor and a coat rack worth up to $500, according to prosecutors.
Thompson and Lyon traded text messages during the riot.
“Some girl died already,” Lyon said in one text, an apparent reference to a law enforcement officer’s fatal shooting of a rioter, Ashli Babbitt
“Was it Pelosi?” Thompson replied.
“I’m taking our country back,” Thompson later texted Lyon.
Around 6 p.m. on Jan. 6, Thompson and Lyon were sitting on a sidewalk and waiting for an Uber driver to pick them up when Capitol police officers approached and warned them that they were in a restricted area. As they started to leave, Thompson picked up a coat rack that appeared to be from the Capitol, the FBI said. Thompson ran away when the officers told him to put down the rack, dropping it as he fled. Lyon stayed behind and identified himself and Thompson to police.
That night, Thompson received a text from his wife that said, “I will not post bail.”
The FBI said agents later searched Lyon’s cellphone and found a video that showed a ransacked office and Thompson yelling: “Wooooo! ‘Merica Hey! This is our house!” A surveillance video also captured Thompson leaving a Capitol office with a bottle of bourbon, the FBI said.
Thompson is charged with six counts: obstructing Congress’ joint session to certify the Electoral College vote, theft of government property, entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Lyon pleaded guilty to theft of government property and disorderly conduct. Both counts are misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of 1 year imprisonment. Walton is scheduled to sentence Lyon on June 3.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/blame-trump-jury-hears-that-defense-capitol-riot-trial/ | 2022-04-13T06:49:27 | 0 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/blame-trump-jury-hears-that-defense-capitol-riot-trial/ |
Future liability releases at center of Boy Scouts bankruptcy
DOVER, Del. (AP) — Protecting local Boy Scouts of America councils and troop sponsoring organizations from future liability for child sex abuse claims is critical to the national group’s reorganization plan, BSA attorneys told a Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday.
Attorneys opposing the plan countered that liability releases for non-debtor third parties are neither fair nor necessary, and that they infringe on the rights of abuse survivors to seek compensation for their abuse.
The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, petitioned for bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a settlement trust for abuse victims. Although the organization faced about 275 lawsuits at the time, more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case.
The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts and its 250 local councils, along with settling insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations, to contribute some $2.6 billion in cash and property and assign their insurance rights to a settlement trust fund for abuse victims. More than half that money would come from the BSA’s two largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and The Hartford. Those companies would contribute $800 million and $787 million, respectively.
In exchange, the parties contributing to the settlement trust would be released from further liability for sexual abuse claims dating back decades.
The local BSA councils are not debtors in the bankruptcy, but Boy Scouts attorney Jessica Lauria argued that they are inextricably intertwined with the national organization and deserve to be protected from future lawsuits in exchange for contributing to the compensation fund.
“There can be no doubt that there is an identity of interests, and frankly an extreme interconnectedness, between the local councils and the national organization,” Lauria said. Sponsoring organizations similarly are closely tied to BSA and local councils and critical to their operations, she added.
Richard Mason, an attorney for the local councils, told Judge Laura Selber Silverstein that without the liability releases, the compensation fund “basically evaporates.”
Absent approval of the BSA’s plan, the local councils would face “massive litigation” and would be forced to seek bankruptcy protection themselves, endangering the future of Scouting and the ability of abuse survivors to obtain compensation, Mason added.
But opponents questioned why the liability releases for local councils and sponsoring organization are needed in order for the BSA to emerge from bankruptcy. They noted that the Boy Scouts proposed a plan last year under which the settlement trust would be funded only by the national organization, and only for claims made against it. Under that plan, the councils and local sponsoring organizations would make no contribution and would have no protection from liability for abuse claims.
“Debtors said that was workable, feasible,” Silverstein noted. “So why is it necessary to have this elaborate, interconnected, intertwined plan for the Boy Scouts?”
Lauria replied that “BSA-only plan” may have been feasible when first proposed, but that it was never “optimal.” She also noted that the BSA has spent some $100 million more on professional fees in the bankruptcy since then and can’t afford to fund a settlement trust on its own at this point.
Edwin Caldie, an attorney representing scores of alleged abuse victims in Guam, argued that the BSA’s current plan unfairly strips them of their rights to pursue abuse claims against Catholic church officials.
The Guam group includes creditors with claims against the Archdiocese of Agana, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 amid a flood of child sex abuse claims. Many of those claims involve the late priest Louis Brouillard, who was also a BSA Scoutmaster and who was accused of molesting more than 100 children.
The BSA plan would channel claims against the Guam diocese into the proposed BSA settlement trust without the consent of survivors and unfairly deprive them of the ability to pursue BSA insurance policies, Caldie said.
Caldie accused the settling insurers of using “extortionist” tactics in negotiations with the Boy Scouts to obtain liability releases to which they would not be entitled under the policies they issued.
He also rejected the notion that a relatively small number of survivors should not be allowed to interfere with approval of a reorganization plan supported by tens of thousands of other claimants.
“From a common sense perspective, the BSA made a decision to shun and silence survivors of child sexual assault for decades and did not report their perpetrators for decades,” Caldie said. “.... The Guam survivors are not terribly comfortable with ‘greater good’ arguments now, especially made buy the BSA.”
Closing arguments on whether the judge should approve the BSA plan are expected to conclude Wednesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ | 2022-04-13T06:49:35 | 0 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ |
Study: Climate crisis supercharging rainfall in hurricanes
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 1:07 AM CDT|Updated: 37 minutes ago
(CNN) - A new study suggests the climate crisis is supercharging rainfall in hurricanes.
The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
It found that rainfall from hurricanes during the record-breaking 2020 season was as much as 11% higher due to human-caused climate changes.
Researchers determined that global warming increased hourly rainfall rates in tropical storms and hurricanes from 5% to 10%.
When experts observed just hurricanes, the increase was 8% to 11%.
The findings suggest the threat surged over the past few decades and it will likely increase more in the future.
That’s because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which leads to higher rainfall rates.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ | 2022-04-13T06:49:42 | 1 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ |
WH environmental justice advisors press for Justice40 action
(AP) - Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said Tuesday that the Biden administration hadn’t done enough to make good on its promise that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities.
Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the HBCU Climate Change Conference in New Orleans, the council members said they’ve secured $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a program called Engage, Enlighten and Empower to hold the Biden administration accountable for carrying out its Justice40 initiative.
President Biden made the commitment in a sweeping executive order on his first day in office. The initiative has been held up as an unprecedented push to bring environmental justice to communities long plagued by pollution and climate inaction.
The three members of the federal environmental justice council leading the $14 million-dollar effort, Beverly Wright, Peggy Shepard and Robert Bullard, have been working closely with the administration on Justice40.
But Wright told members of the press that more needs to be done to “turn a novel idea into a project that works.”
The trio are combining philanthropic grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, $6 million from Shepard’s WE ACT for Environmental Justice, $4 million from Wright’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and $4 million from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, to ensure federal funding from Justice40 “goes where it’s intended,” Shepard said.
The effort should “ensure equitable implementation of the Justice40 initiative at the state and local level and empower local communities to participate in the policy-making” that comes as a result of the initiative, a press release said.
The funds will go to educate grassroots organizations on the resources available to them through Justice40, inform state and local governments on how the money should be used, and develop a screening tool to determine where Justice40 funds are needed most, one that includes racial demographic data. Controversially a federal screening tool used by the administration does not take into account the racial makeup of communities.
There has been little change on the ground yet from the Justice40 pledge because the federal government is still trying to figure out which communities are most in need of the investment. In recommendations to the Biden administration, many reputable environmental justice advocates pushed for a methodical, intentional process for identifying disadvantaged communities and disbursing funds.
At the briefing, Wright and Bullard said they’ve seen past federal social and infrastructure projects fail to deliver on promises to disadvantaged communities and don’t want to see it happen again.
“There’s been a lot of really novel approaches at changing the lives of Americans in general that have worked out” benefitting just white Americans, Wright said.
Bullard pointed to discrimination in how flood relief was distributed in Texas, where the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice is located, as an example.
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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ | 2022-04-13T06:49:51 | 1 | https://www.1011now.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ |
The Peoria Chiefs staged a home opener full of promise for present and the future
PEORIA — Home openers for the Peoria Chiefs tend to best be judged by potential and patience, and Tuesday's 2022 version was no exception.
The Chiefs were hammered 15-2 by a Great Lakes team that launched four home runs in front of 1,534 at Dozer Park.
Yes, Peoria starter Austin Love was hit hard, allowing a grand slam in the second inning to Jonny DeLuca that cleared the ballpark on the fly and landed 405 feet onto the street beyond left field with an exit velocity of 103 mph.
But the Chiefs starting pitching has been a bright spot in the early days of 2022. The rotation had not given up a run in 13 innings before the opener.
Young team. High draft picks. New manager in Patrick Anderson. There are good pieces on the field worth watching.
More Chiefs:No. 1 pick, pitching and new manager: Meet the 2022 Peoria Chiefs
"It's not just winning," Anderson said a few days ago when introduced at Dozer Park. "It's developing players. Teaching these kids how to play the game. That's the mission."
Developing is the theme off the field
That goes for all things not player-related, too. This season marks the 20th year in operation for Dozer Park. A year from now, the ballpark won't look the same, according to general manager Jason Mott.
There are renovations mandated by Major League Baseball before the 2023 season, structural changes that are believed to possibly cost the Chiefs up to $5 million.
"We're set now, the renovations will begin in September after the season ends," Mott said. "We have to provide an indoor batting cage for each team. So we're going to take down the batters eye screen above the center field wall. We're putting a building in its place that will house the cages, and in the offseason be available as meeting or party space for the public to rent. The outside wall of the building, facing the field, will become the new batters eye."
BOX SCORE: Great Lakes 15, Chiefs 2 | STANDINGS:Midwest League standings
The team says it will build dressing facilities for female umpires or team staff members.
And the field will have a different look from above, as LED lighting is scheduled to be installed over the ballpark.
And the protective netting? Long an issue, Mott says it was ordered two years ago, but the team is waiting for the installer to schedule the job. He says the netting will be extended to the ends of the dugouts.
During a week-night home opener, with much to think about in the future, Mott was happy with the present.
"We've embraced youth," he said of his full-time front office staff, now at 12 after working through 2021 with just eight members. "A year ago, I was climbing up there hanging a batters eye in center field hours before the opener. It's calmer, more relaxed this year."
Orange Barrels and Pork Tenderloins? How these new Peoria Chiefs identities were born
'Nine-inning vacation'
Peoria has lost four straight home openers, and is 5-12 in openers since 2005. It likely didn't matter to the spectators on hand that the Chiefs last home opener win was in 2017.
Remember, developing is the measuring stick. The 2018 Chiefs started this opening day losing streak in 40-degree weather in front of 1,882 and went on to finish the summer in the Midwest League championship series.
"The people in the grandstand tonight, it shows there are a good number of people excited to just get out and go somewhere, do something," Mott said. "This is the most excited I've been in two years. Opening day energizes people.
"We look at a Chiefs game as a nine-inning vacation for people."
Opening night at Dozer Park
A few observations from opening night at Dozer Park in Peoria.
- Canton High School's baseball team was in the park.
- Games with fans were played between innings on the field, something that was not permitted last season under MLB's COVID restrictions.
- Cardinals prospect Masyn Winn turned in a web gem at shortstop in the fourth inning to rob Jonny DeLuca.
- Loons third baseman Leonel Valera cranked two home runs, one of which went 416 feet.
- A clock ticked down from its perch above the wall in center field, part of an MLB rules experiment taking place in the Midwest League this season to keep batters and pitchers from slowing down the game.
- The Chiefs retired numbers were missing from the right field wall, a situation Mott said was temporary while the team works on "upgrading the way we present them out there."
- Temperature was 65 degrees with wind gusts up to 22 mph at first pitch. It was the fifth-warmest opener since 2005.
Dave Eminian is the Journal Star sports columnist, and covers Bradley men's basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. Reach him at 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @icetimecleve. | https://www.pjstar.com/story/sports/minors/chiefs/2022/04/13/milb-peoria-chiefs-open-2022-baseball-season-vs-great-lakes-loons/9531054002/ | 2022-04-13T07:01:00 | 0 | https://www.pjstar.com/story/sports/minors/chiefs/2022/04/13/milb-peoria-chiefs-open-2022-baseball-season-vs-great-lakes-loons/9531054002/ |
Kokomo’s boys golf team returned to prominence in a big way last season by winning the North Central Conference and Peru Sectional titles. It was the Wildkats’ first conference title since 2014 and their first sectional title since 2001.
With a strong core returning, the Kats are poised to build on that success.
“Last year was fun, for sure,” second-year coach Matt York said. “I’d love to repeat as NCC, Howard County, sectional and Logan invite champs, but honestly, I would love for the kids to get a shot at [the State Finals] at Prairie View. It’s an experience that they’d never forget. It’s a possibility, but we have to have a few of the inexperienced kids really step up and my returners have to keep getting better as well.”
The returning players are seniors Brandon Hansen and Ty Lauderbaugh and junior Karson Parrott. All three are All-NCC players.
Hansen is one of the state’s top players. He reached the State Finals as an individual last season and tied for 31st in the 103-player field. It was his second career state appearance.
“Brandon will be one that I can just let him do his thing,” York said. “He’s competed at a high level for years and is already hitting the ball well. He has very high expectations for himself and expects to groove every shot. If he makes putts, he’ll put himself in a great position to get himself down to Prairie View for a third year.
“He seems to excel when playing against the toughest competition,” York added.
Hansen opened the new season with a bang Monday as he fired a 4-under 31 in the Kats’ dual match against McCutcheon on the Kokomo Country Club’s back nine. The Kats beat the Mavs 153-195.
Lauderbaugh and Parrott are strong players as well. They shot 36 and 37, respectively, in Monday’s opener. Lauderbaugh had the Kats’ low score in the NCC tournament last season.
“I certainly have high expectations for my top three kids and I have full confidence in their ability to compete at a higher level than they did last year,” York said. “I’m looking for that important fourth score and I’m counting on William Nelson to grind it out and continue to get better. If he can compete at high level, who knows how much we can accomplish?”
Nelson is a sophomore. He played JV last season.
Senior Travarion Corbin and juniors Camden Horner, Tre’mon Corbin and Eli Guest also played JV last season and are possibilities for the No. 5 spot. Junior Jace Rayl is another possibility. He is new to the team; he last played in middle school.
“My mindset hasn’t changed since day one last year. My No. 1 goal is to promote the game of golf and develop a program like we had in the ‘80s and ‘90s [when] we had 20 kids on each team and decent golfers were cut each year. Now I’m lucky to have enough kids to fill the minimum roster for JV and varsity,” York said. “I’m having a kids clinic this summer for students in grades 3-8, and I don’t think they’ve done anything like this for the last 10-plus years. I want to give kids a chance to come out and at least give it a try.”
The following are looks at Howard County’s other teams.
WESTERN
The Panthers will have a new look following the graduation of No. 1 player Kyle Sanders, who was the last link to the Panthers’ run of five straight Peru Sectional titles (2014-18). Western took fifth place in last year’s sectional.
“Our No. 1 goal is to compete each and every match,” second-year coach Blake Conklin said. “Losing Kyle obviously hurts, not just golf, but also from a leadership and human standpoint. That being said, we will be a vastly improved team overall from last year. Not just our games that have improved, but our ability to think our way around a course and focusing better on the next shot.”
Conklin returns seniors Andrew Hartman and Sam Bowlby and sophomore Ethan Fisher from his sectional lineup. After playing No. 2 last season, Hartman will move into the No. 1 spot.
“Andrew will absolutely be able to compete for medalist every time he tees it up,” Conklin said. “As a team, as the weather improves and we get to play more, we definitely believe we can compete for county, and snagging a spot in regionals. Golf’s a funny game. We’ll see how it shakes out.”
Bowlby, Fisher and senior Nolan Kessler will fill the Nos. 2-4 spots in some order. Kessler is new to the team, but Conklin said he is looking good.
Conklin also has juniors Nolan Miller and Cody Kretz back from last year and freshman Brody Hobson also is in the mix.
“The five spot could absolutely vary from week to week depending on who is playing well at that moment,” Conklin said.
NORTHWESTERN
The Tigers’ 12-player roster includes just one senior.
“We’re a young team so we’re teaching a lot,” coach Kurt Koetter said. “Hopefully they have fun and enjoy it and start working at it.”
Koetter returns three players with varsity experience. Sophomore Sammy Shotwell leads the group. He will play in the No. 1 spot; he filled that role in the sectional last season. Senior Will Baxter likely will play No. 2 and sophomore Braden Applegate likely will play No. 3.
Freshman Logan Duncan is penciled into the No. 4 spot. From there, Koetter is considering juniors Nolan Adams, Joseph Craig and Matthew Girard, sophomores Gavin Padfield and Jeff White and freshmen Michael VanOsdell, Chase Goad and Evan Leicht for the No. 5 spot.
Koetter is confident the lineup will take shape in due time.
“That’s the beauty about golf — scores don’t lie. Eventually somebody’s average score will take over and they’ll earn that spot,” he said.
“Right now, it’s the same thing I preach every year, we have to get better at our short game.”
EASTERN
Eastern coach Michael Lamb was happy to have an improved turnout this year.
“We have gone from four last season to nine this season. So happy with numbers going up,” the second-year coach said.
Seniors Ian Haley and Barak Price and sophomore Bryce Barker return from last season. They will fill the team’s Nos. 1-3 spots in some order.
Senior Myer Miller, who is new to the team, and freshman Kailin Cook are the leading candidates for the Nos. 4-5 spots. Freshman Ryder Roe and junior Trenton Hendrix are other possibilities.
“The guys have been working really hard,” Lamb said. “The three returning players are eager to improve on last season so to see those three put in the work and see results is going to be really fun. I’m also encouraged by the work that the new players have put in.
“I’m hopeful that we can put some rounds together and be more competitive this season. With more players, I think we can achieve that goal, and with their willingness to work and play in some of the rough weather we have had so far this season, I’m really encouraged with what I’m seeing.”
TAYLOR
After not fielding a team last season, Taylor is back, with new coach Jon Binder looking to build a strong foundation.
“I am still in the works to build a full varsity team. We have two golfers from the high school. However, we have close to 20 middle school golfers,” said Binder, who teaches fifth grade at Taylor.
The high school golfers are junior Kaden McCain and sophomore Teme Moody. Binder said McCain has some experience and Moody is new to the game, but has shown potential.
“My hope, this year, is just to recruit and get golfers on the golf course,” Binder said. “Taylor has not had much of a presence for boys golf in a few years so we are in the redesign and rebuild mode. It is very encouraging to see the amount of middle school golfers showing interest. Anticipate Taylor to be back on the map within the next couple of years.” | https://www.kokomotribune.com/sports/boys-golf-howard-county-2022-preview/article_e883f05c-ba93-11ec-bed6-9ffad88c0f82.html | 2022-04-13T07:07:51 | 1 | https://www.kokomotribune.com/sports/boys-golf-howard-county-2022-preview/article_e883f05c-ba93-11ec-bed6-9ffad88c0f82.html |
Eastern’s girls tennis team edged Lewis Cass 3-2 Tuesday at Greentown for a 1-0 start to the season.
The deciding point came at No. 2 singles where the Comets’ Molly Farkas prevailed 7-6 (5), 6-4.
Also for the Comets, Maria Oliveria was a 6-2, 6-1 winner at No. 1 singles and Alivia Salkie and Kennedy Horner were 6-4, 6-2 winners at No. 1 doubles.
“Really good first match. I thought we played some solid tennis with room to improve,” Eastern coach Pat Rice said. “Molly came through big time to clinch the match at 2 singles and a solid first outing from Maria. Really happy with how Alivia And Kennedy complemented each other at 1 doubles.”
For the Kings (0-2), Emma Geisler won 6-3, 6-2 at No. 3 singles and Clara Licklider and Vega Cuenca-Rute won 6-1, 7-5 at No. 2 doubles.
WESTERN 5, FRANKFORT 0
Eliza Lutgen, Chloe Schmidt and Macie Lockwood won the singles points for the Panthers, Sydney Jansen and Sophia Moreno won a doubles point and Lili Hess and Chioma Ozogibo won the other doubles point.
PERU 4, HUNT. NORTH 1
No. 1 singles player Mackey Hyde and No. 2 singles player Lauren Boyer breezed to 6-0, 6-0 wins to highlight Peru’s road win. The No. 1 doubles team of Cate Wolfe and Emma Eldridge and the No. 2 doubles team of Libby Rogers and Casidy Bartel were straight-set winners.
BASEBALL
WESTERN 3, HEIGHTS 1, 8 INNINGS
The Dean brothers delivered big performances to lead Class 3A No. 6-ranked Western to the road win in Hoosier Conference East Division play.
Tied 1-1 after the regulation seven innings, Garrett Lupoi led off the top of the eighth with a single. That brought Parker Dean to the plate and he attacked a 2-0 fastball for a two-run, opposite-field home run.
Mitchell Dean took care of the rest. He pitched a complete game, throwing 69 of his 95 pitches for strikes, and allowing just one hit. He struck out 15 and walked one. The Huskies’ run was unearned.
“Mitchell was really good,” coach Ryan Berryman said. “He got better in the middle innings. He did a really nice job attacking the zone, his [velocity] was ticking up as he went throughout the game. He did a nice job mixing his changeup and his offspeed so he kept the hitters off balance.
“Offensively, it took us a while to get going. We were really too patient. [Drew Van Oeveren] for them did a nice job mixing it up and we were taking too many pitches.”
Western pushed across a run in the fifth, but gave it right back in the bottom of the frame. From there, the teams battled into the extra inning.
“I don’t feel like at any time we panicked,” Berryman said, “and Parker’s hit was enormous.”
Lupoi and Mitchell Knepley finished with two singles apiece for Western.
Western (4-0, 3-0 HC East) and Heights are scheduled to play today at Western to conclude their home-and-home series.
KOKOMO 8, LAF. JEFF 2
The Wildkats scored a run in the bottom of the first to take the lead and scored in five of the six innings in which they batted, building a 6-0 lead through four innings. The Kats moved to 2-1 overall and in North Central Conference play.
J.J. Gillespie went 2 for 2 for the Kats with a double and a homer. Preston Sanford was 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run. Cooper Hansen also doubled. In the field, Sanford shined at third base with five assists and two putouts.
Dameion Deis threw all seven innings for the win with five hits, two earned runs, a walk and five strikeouts.
EASTERN 21, TC 0, 5 INNINGS
The Comets buried the Trojans in a Hoosier Heartland Conference game at Sharpsville.
Eastern (4-0, 3-0 HHC) totaled 15 hits. Levi Mavrick and Porter Brovont provided the biggest fireworks. Mavrick was 3 for 4 with a home run, three RBI and four runs. He also stole three bases. Brovont was 2 for 4 with a homer, double, five RBI and two runs.
Also for the Comets, Gabe Monize was 2 for 3 with two doubles, an RBI and three runs and Cayden Calloway was 2 for 5 with a double, an RBI and two runs.
Mavrick pitched three innings for the win. He allowed one hit, struck out nine and walked none. Brovont pitched the final two innings. He did not allow a hit, struck out four and walked none.
Eastern and TC are scheduled to play today at Greentown to conclude their home-and-home series.
CASS 9, TIPTON 2
Cass pitcher Kaine Fowler allowed one unearned run on three hits and two walks in six innings of work, striking out 10. Ethan Epperhart pitched the seventh for the Kings, allowing one run on one hit with two strikeouts.
The Kings (1-2, 1-2 HC East) took advantage of wildness by Blue Devil pitchers as they drew eight walks and there were several wild pitches and passed balls.
The Kings had just two hits on the night, singles by Ethan Johnson and Haden McClain. Noah Preston and Tyson Good each added an RBI. Wyatt Orpurt, Jack Salyers and Luke Davis added two runs scored apiece.
SOFTBALL
EASTERN 9, TC 3
Kassidy Fritch went 3 for 4 to lead Eastern’s 12-hit attack in beating Tri-Central in HHC play.
Also for the Comets, Kendall Wilson, Marly Coan, Macy Coan and Cassidy Keene had two hits apiece with Marly Coan slugging a solo home run.
HEIGHTS 8, WESTERN 6
Heights built a 5-1 lead through four innings. Western (3-2, 1-1 Hoosier Conference East Division) rallied with three runs in the top of the fifth but Heights matched that 3-spot in the bottom of the frame to maintain control.
Kylie Miller led Western with three doubles and three runs batted in. Maisy Harlow and Kieli Fogg hit solo homers. Morgan Ousley had two singles.
“I was proud of the way we fought back,” Western coach Jim Clouse said. “We kind of dug ourselves a hole. The four runs we gave up in the third inning were on one hit. We had a couple walks and an error that inning. They just had key two-out hits that we did not have. It’s a game we’ve got to overcome and get back to playing good softball.”
CASS 12, TIPTON 2
Cass (1-2, 1-2 HC East) defeated visiting Tipton.
Madison Dormer pitched four innings followed by Bayli Reed for two innings. Reed earned the win.
Dormer went 2 for 4 with an RBI and two runs scored. Cana Jones went 2 for 4 with three RBI. Alisyia Zamora, Elly Logan and Kaylie Williams each added a double. Leah Willison hit a triple.
DELPHI 3, TAYLOR 0
Delphi pushed across a couple runs in the third inning to take the lead and got an insurance run in the sixth. The Titans fell to 0-3 on the season and dropped their Hoosier Heartland Conference opener.
“[Tuesday’s game] was all about the pitchers. Both pitchers had a great outing,” Taylor coach Robert McGuire said.
BOYS GOLF
TIPTON 160, ELWOOD 199, M-G INC.
Gavin Hare and Maverick Conaway led the way in the Blue Devils’ win at Elwood Links. Hare was medalist with an even-par 35 and Conaway backed him with a 36. Nolan Swan (44) and Oliver Conaway (45) rounded out Tipton’s team score.
“It was our second match of the season,” coach Kenny Day said. “I’m really happy with [the 160].”
BOYS TRACK
NORTHWESTERN 67, MACONAQUAH 65
The Tigers edged the Braves to improve to 4-0.
“I cannot express how proud I am of the efforts,” Northwestern coach Alexander Pier said. “The meet came down to the wire. We had to go first and third in the 3,200 and first in the 4x400 to clinch the meet.”
The Tigers did just that.
In the 3,200, Matthew Mitchell won in 11:02 and Jacob Bumgardner took third in 11:22. And in the 4x400, Matthan Mcgriff, Clayton Griswold, Colin Feazel and A’marion Conyers took first in 3:38.9.
Devon Spicer and Ethan Haynes won two individual events apiece for the Tigers. Spicer swept the 110 high hurdles (:16.7) and 300 hurdles (:45.6) and Haynes won shot put (52-8) and discus (131-1). The Tigers’ other winners were: Conyers (high jump, 5-10), Feazel (800 run, 2:07.9); and the 4x800 team of Isaiah Kanable, Caden Lechner, Gunnar Lashure and Feazel (8:46.7).
Pier noted many of the Tigers had personal-best or season-best performances.
“I could fill up the whole sports column with more PRs and our guys scrapping for points past first, but to some it up, I am proud to lead this team, they bring it every day and make everyone better,” Pier said.
CP 68, EASTERN 57, TAYLOR 15
Clinton Prairie edged Eastern in a triangular meet at Taylor.
Led by triple winner Jayden Eagle, Eastern won seven events. Eagle won the 100 (:11.7), the 200 (:24.4) and long jump (19 feet, 11 inches). Tyler Wright won both throws, taking the shot put (38-0.5) and the discus (102-0). Sam Duke won the 400 (:58.3). And the team of Ty Kremer, Kyan Hannah, T.J. Weeks and Levi Ramer won the 4x400 relay (4:08).
“Coming off spring break, we were still working with about 50 percent squad-wise,” Eastern coach Blake Donson said. “I had a couple guys really step up — the 4x4 especially. I was really happy with T.J. stepping in for somebody who could not run. Our young guys are getting better, and Thursday we’re going to have closer to a fuller squad, and Saturday we should be firing on all cylinders with a full team, getting all those practices made up.”
Three second-place finishes led Taylor — Dominick Durham in discus, Chris Moore in long jump and Mekhi McGee in the 400.
GIRLS TRACK
NW 70, MAC 61.5
The Tigers won nine events to edge the Braves.
Lexi Hale won the high jump (5 feet, 2 inches) and 100 hurdles (:17.17). Anna Perry won the 100 (:13.0), 200 and ran a leg of the winning 4x100 relay with Mayli Yoder, Iris Brehm and Anna Bishir. Bishir won the long jump (14-0.75). Hannah Moore won the 1,600 (5:37.9) and the 800 (2:32). Brehm won the 300 hurdles (:55.9). And Emma Haynes won shot put (27-9).
“It came down to the wire,” Northwestern coach Josh Perry said. “We knew we didn’t have a 4x4 so we needed to have a big lead going into the 3,200. The girls knew they needed their best or they were going to get beat. We had everyone scrap for points. That’s what winning teams do. I have a lot of respect for Maconaquah. They gave us our first big challenge of the year and I am excited that we get to race them a few more times.
“Anna Perry pulled in another triple win for us in the 100, 200 and anchoring the 4x1. She has shown up for us no matter what we ask of her. Hannah Moore and Courtney Adams pulled off an impressive 1-2 in both the 1,600 and 800. I think the biggest shout out goes to Lexi Hale though. She had an impressive PR in high jump and ran a major PR in the 100 hurdles to win the event.
EASTERN 72, CP 52, TAYLOR 28
The Comets pulled away to win a triangular against Clinton Prairie and Taylor at Taylor.
Ava Kantz led Eastern’s charge as a quadruple winner. She won the 1,600 and 3,200, and ran legs on the winning 4x800 and 4x400 relays. Alesia Rummel, Lilly Shallenberger and Allie Hueston also ran on the 4x800 relay, and Shallenberger, Brooklyn Brooks and Rummel rounded out the 4x400 relay team. Rummel was a triple winner, taking the 800.
In the throws, Eastern’s Jacey Richmond was first in the shot put and Rebekah Guthrie was first in discus. Hannah Morrisett won the pole vault.
“The girls ran tough,” Eastern coach Anne Kantz said. “We had some PRs and season-bests. I am very proud of their efforts.”
For Taylor, Sydnie Boley was a triple winner, taking the 100 (:13.7), the 200 (:29.3) and the long jump (15-6). Whitney Chorrushi won the 300 hurdles (:55.7).
“This was our first track meet of the season,” Taylor coach Nick Weicht said. “I’m really happy with how all of our athletes performed this evening. The girls had strong performances across the board.”
LOGAN 69, PERU 54
Cadence Korba and Brianna Bennett led Peru as triple winners. Individually, Korba swept the 100 and 200 dashes and Bennett won the 300 hurdles. They both contributed to the winning 4x100 relay team and Bennett also ran on the winning 4x400 team.
Aria Korba and Makayla Dominique rounded out the 4x100 team and Hannah Yoo, Rilei Boggs and Chloe Holler joined Bennett on the 4x400 team.
Boggs also won the 1,600 run and Olivia LaBare won the long jump. | https://www.kokomotribune.com/sports/prep-roundup-for-wednesday-april-13/article_48d845d0-bad9-11ec-85ee-d70b34035da7.html | 2022-04-13T07:07:57 | 0 | https://www.kokomotribune.com/sports/prep-roundup-for-wednesday-april-13/article_48d845d0-bad9-11ec-85ee-d70b34035da7.html |
General Daily Insight for April 13, 2022
Healing might have arrived, but we'll have to choose to accept it. Thanks to the diligent Virgo Moon's opposition to free-flowing Venus, we can let the way we want things to go block even better things from happening in reality. When the Moon bounces off wounded Chiron, we could be tempted to rush through our healing, but this won't help us in the long run. Once the Moon trines Uranus in Taurus, we will be more open to change. Some traditions actually should be broken!
Aries
March 21-April 19
Opportunities to improve must come from within today. Looking for approval from others may end in disappointment if they try to change you in ways that don't resonate with you. You know in your core what really makes sense for you, and trying to deny this in order to improve your popularity will likely backfire. People can sense when your self-expression isn't genuine, and you owe it to yourself to make sure that you aren't following the crowd away from who you really are.
Taurus
April 20-May 20
Unconscious hurts can rise to the surface now. You could have an emotional outburst without properly channeling your emotions, leading to embarrassment and confusion -- both for the people around you and yourself. Even if friends try to sympathize with you or comfort you, you may turn them away in the heat of the moment, potentially because their method of helping turns out to be more troubling than relieving. Try to release any intense feelings through exercise or journaling before they boil over.
Gemini
May 21-June 20
An introspective attitude can reveal your best path to friendship currently. You may be dealing with loneliness, whether you're literally on your own or surrounded by too many people ignoring you. Instead of trying to force someone to listen to you, look inside and envision what your perfect friend group would look like. Some folks might be lucky and already have their ideal friend group, but for those who have a few gaps in their circle, it's time to find those missing puzzle pieces!
Cancer
June 21-July 22
The call to take charge may come for you at any moment. You might normally shy away from leadership, because in the past, the people in your life could have described you as an emotional decision-maker and considered this aspect of you to be a negative trait. Contrary to their thoughts, your empathy can help you act as the best leader for this job! Let others open their hearts to you and allow your sensitive intuition to guide the way forward.
Leo
July 23-August 22
Your philosophies may not be quite as solid as you once thought. Even the most spiritually sound Leos could have a moment of doubt today. You're being encouraged to look inward and ask yourself what you truly believe. Although you may feel lost on your spiritual path, trust in your ability to tell right from wrong and show people the kindness that you would want to receive. The answers to the biggest questions will come in time. Don't lose faith in your journey!
Virgo
August 23-September 22
A debt could loom over your day. Someone might have given you something you desperately needed at the time, and now they want a return on their loan. Whether this is a material debt or an emotional one, you may not feel equipped to give them back exactly what they gave you, but you also don't want to let them down with your offer. Give yourself some grace, do what you can, and communicate with them. They'll likely be understanding of your situation!
Libra
September 23-October 22
Choosing a different companion can improve your energy flow. This could be a partner on a personal project, a coworker, or a significant other -- someone who's in your everyday life. They may routinely criticize you or try to prevent you from speaking up, even though you deserve a voice. Although you may struggle with confrontation and want to be a peacemaker, you should set boundaries or even remove this person from your life in order to create the harmonious environment you need.
Scorpio
October 23-November 21
A personal mindset may no longer be benefiting you. A motto that you frequently repeat or a long-held "motivational" habit could actually be holding you back! Routinely being critical, whether to yourself or others, can make you feel temporarily more powerful or more in control, but you lose strength in other vital areas, such as your ability to connect with people and to forgive minor mistakes. You don't have to be afraid of vulnerability -- it can actually strengthen you instead!
Sagittarius
November 22-December 21
Work and home could be out of balance for you now. Your family and friends could be concerned that they don't see you very often, while your job is complaining that you don't work enough. No matter which area more loudly demands your time, the issues aren't going to get better without some help. This cosmic warning isn't meant to stress you out, but to alert you to the imbalance that already exists so that you're able to make a difference today.
Capricorn
December 22-January 19
A dramatic change could be in order. Words from someone that you respect or appreciate can hurt you, but what they're saying is probably a wake-up call to an action of yours that needs to be remedied. While gradual change is usually more lasting, this is likely something you can take steps toward starting now. This is an opportunity, not an accusation or an insult! Let the feelings that may come in response to their constructive criticism motivate you rather than drag you down.
Aquarius
January 20-February 18
You might be tired of looking at the same four walls, but still want to hang on to their security for dear life. It's OK to be attached to your home base, but spending too much time in one place can create stagnation. You've likely been hearing the cosmos telling you to get out and be more active, and it's time to honor this by putting the screens down and getting out of your comfort zone. You're not meant to live in a box!
Pisces
February 19-March 20
It might be hard to avoid being judged at this time. Someone could knock your confidence and create doubt in your mind about your self-expression by presenting you with a version of yourself that they've idealized over the real you. Even if they’re doing this to help you, it's OK to let them know that this isn't a positive influence. As eager as you may be to please, it's likely that their version of you will not become your reality -- and that's just fine. | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/horoscopes/sns-daily-horoscopes-04132022-20220413-fwjkm6paxrdfhho7qoehoj2beu-story.html | 2022-04-13T07:20:22 | 0 | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/horoscopes/sns-daily-horoscopes-04132022-20220413-fwjkm6paxrdfhho7qoehoj2beu-story.html |
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.
Thwarted in their push toward the capital, Kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern region of Donbas, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated there were no serious injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, which has been pummeled by weeks of Russian assaults.
Western leaders warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a grievous breach of international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide” and said “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report but reiterated U.S. concerns about Russia using chemical agents. Britain, meanwhile, has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorus bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorus munitions to illuminate targets or to produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to fumes could breach the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former laboratory head at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it becomes banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said the Biden administration was preparing yet another package of military aid for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. Delivery is due to be completed this week of $800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago.
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around Kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Zelenskyy said evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, including alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 720 people were killed in Kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and over 200 were considered missing, the Interior Ministry said early Wednesday.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said Tuesday it was also looking into events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. It said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a basement in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces were believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to leave by car from the village of Peremoha in the Brovary district, killing four people including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed including two children when a car was fired upon, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake.” Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some of whom had their hands bound and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Speaking at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s far east, in his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began, Putin also said the West would fail to isolate Russia and its economy has withstood sanctions.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, he said Moscow was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” to “achieve the planned goals while minimizing the losses.”
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report. | https://www.5newsonline.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-wednesday/507-f9dfc830-9b52-4819-a38f-2d12afa3c22a | 2022-04-13T07:33:57 | 0 | https://www.5newsonline.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-wednesday/507-f9dfc830-9b52-4819-a38f-2d12afa3c22a |
Blame Trump? Jury hears that defense at Capitol riot trial
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mentions of Donald Trump have been rare at the first few trials for people charged with storming the U.S. Capitol, but that has changed: The latest Capitol riot defendant to go on trial is blaming his actions on the former president and his false claims about a stolen election.
Dustin Byron Thompson, an Ohio man charged with stealing a coat rack from the Capitol, doesn’t deny that he joined the mob on Jan. 6, 2021. But his lawyer vowed Tuesday to show that Trump abused his power to “authorize” the attack.
Describing Trump as a man without scruples or integrity, defense attorney Samuel Shamansky said the former president engaged in a “sinister” plot to encourage Thompson and other supporters to “do his dirty work.”
“It’s Donald Trump himself spewing the lies and using his position to authorize this assault,” Shamansky told jurors Tuesday during the trial’s opening statements.
Justice Department prosecutor Jennifer Rozzoni said Thompson knew he was breaking the law that day.
“He chose to be a part of the mayhem and chaos,” she said.
Thompson’s lawyer sought subpoenas to call Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as witnesses at his trial this week. A judge rejected that request but ruled that jurors can hear recordings of speeches that Trump and Giuliani delivered at a rally before the riot.
Thompson’s jury trial is the third among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. The first two ended with jurors convicting both defendants on all counts with which they were charged.
In a February court filing, Shamansky said he wanted to argue at trial that Thompson was acting at the direction of Trump and “his various conspirators.” The lawyer asked to subpoena others from Trump’s inner circle, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, former White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and former Trump lawyers John Eastman and Sidney Powell.
Prosecutors said Thompson can’t show that Trump or Giuliani had the authority to “empower” him to break the law. They also noted that video of the rally speeches “perfectly captures” the tone, delivery and context of the statements to the extent they are “marginally relevant” to proof of Thompson’s intent on Jan. 6.
Thompson’s lawyer argued that Trump would testify that he and others " orchestrated a carefully crafted plot to call into question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.” Shamansky claimed that Giuliani incited rioters by encouraging them to engage in “trial by combat” and that Trump provoked the mob by saying that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Shamansky said Thompson, who lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, became an avid consumer of the conspiracy theories and lies about a stolen election.
“This is the garbage that Dustin Thompson is listening to day after day after day,” Shamansky said. “He goes down this rabbit hole. He listens to this echo chamber. And he acts accordingly.”
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled in March that any in-person testimony by Trump or Giuliani could confuse and mislead jurors.
More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes arising from Jan. 6. Over 250 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors. Thompson is the fifth person to be tried on riot-related charges.
On Monday, a jury convicted a former Virginia police officer, Thomas Robertson, of storming the Capitol with another off-duty officer to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Last month, a jury convicted a Texas man, Guy Reffitt, of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun.
A judge hearing testimony without a jury decided cases against two other Capitol riot defendants at separate bench trials. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted one of them of all charges and partially acquitted the other.
Thompson has a co-defendant, Robert Lyon, who pleaded guilty to riot-related charges in March.
Thompson, then 36, and Lyon, then 27, drove from Columbus, Ohio, to Silver Spring, Maryland, stayed overnight at a hotel and then took an Uber ride into Washington, D.C., on the morning of Jan. 6. After then-President Donald Trump’s speech, Thompson and Lyon headed over to the Capitol.
Thompson was wearing a “Trump 2020″ winter hat and a bulletproof vest when he entered the Capitol and went to the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office, where he stole two bottles of liquor and a coat rack worth up to $500, according to prosecutors.
Thompson and Lyon traded text messages during the riot.
“Some girl died already,” Lyon said in one text, an apparent reference to a law enforcement officer’s fatal shooting of a rioter, Ashli Babbitt
“Was it Pelosi?” Thompson replied.
“I’m taking our country back,” Thompson later texted Lyon.
Around 6 p.m. on Jan. 6, Thompson and Lyon were sitting on a sidewalk and waiting for an Uber driver to pick them up when Capitol police officers approached and warned them that they were in a restricted area. As they started to leave, Thompson picked up a coat rack that appeared to be from the Capitol, the FBI said. Thompson ran away when the officers told him to put down the rack, dropping it as he fled. Lyon stayed behind and identified himself and Thompson to police.
That night, Thompson received a text from his wife that said, “I will not post bail.”
The FBI said agents later searched Lyon’s cellphone and found a video that showed a ransacked office and Thompson yelling: “Wooooo! ‘Merica Hey! This is our house!” A surveillance video also captured Thompson leaving a Capitol office with a bottle of bourbon, the FBI said.
Thompson is charged with six counts: obstructing Congress’ joint session to certify the Electoral College vote, theft of government property, entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
Lyon pleaded guilty to theft of government property and disorderly conduct. Both counts are misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of 1 year imprisonment. Walton is scheduled to sentence Lyon on June 3.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/blame-trump-jury-hears-that-defense-capitol-riot-trial/ | 2022-04-13T07:37:00 | 1 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/blame-trump-jury-hears-that-defense-capitol-riot-trial/ |
Russia has yet to slow a Western arms express into Ukraine
WASHINGTON (AP) — Western weaponry pouring into Ukraine helped blunt Russia’s initial offensive and seems certain to play a central role in the approaching, potentially decisive, battle for Ukraine’s contested Donbas region. Yet the Russian military is making little headway halting what has become a historic arms express.
The U.S. numbers alone are mounting: more than 12,000 weapons designed to defeat armored vehicles, some 1,400 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft, and more than 50 million rounds of ammunition, among many other things. Dozens of other nations are adding to the totals.
The Biden administration is preparing yet another, more diverse, package of military support possibly totaling $750 million to be announced in coming days, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. The additional aid is a sign that the administration intends to continue expanding its support for Ukraine’s war effort.
These armaments have helped an under-gunned Ukrainian military defy predictions that it would be quickly overrun by Russia. They explain in part why Vladimir Putin’s army gave up, at least for now, its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital, and has narrowed its focus to battling for eastern and southern Ukraine.
U.S. officials and analysts offer numerous explanations for why the Russians have had so little success interdicting Western arms moving overland from neighboring countries, including Poland. Among the likely reasons: Russia’s failure to win full control of Ukraine’s skies has limited its use of air power. Also, the Russians have struggled to deliver weapons and supplies to their own troops in Ukraine.
Some say Moscow’s problem begins at home.
“The short answer to the question is that they are an epically incompetent army badly led from the very top,” said James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who was the top NATO commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013.
The Russians also face practical obstacles. Robert G. Bell, a longtime NATO official and now a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech University, said the shipments lend themselves to being hidden or disguised in ways that can make them elusive to the Russians — “short of having a network of espionage on the scene” to pinpoint the convoys’ movements.
“It’s not as easy to stop this assistance flow as it might seem,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “Things like ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles can be transported in trucks that look just like any other commercial truck. And the trucks carrying the munitions the Russians want to interdict are just a small part of a much larger flow of goods and commerce moving around in Poland and Ukraine and across the border.
“So the Russians have to find the needle in this very big haystack to destroy the weapons and ammo they’re after and not waste scarce munitions on trucks full of printer paper or baby diapers or who knows what.”
Even with this Western assistance it’s uncertain whether Ukraine will ultimately prevail against a bigger Russian force. The Biden administration has drawn the line at committing U.S. troops to the fight. It has opted instead to orchestrate international condemnation and economic sanctions, provide intelligence information, bolster NATO’s eastern flank to deter a wider war with Russia, and donate weapons.
In mid-March, a Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said arms shipments would be targeted.
“We warned the United States that pumping weapons into Ukraine from a number of countries as it has orchestrated isn’t just a dangerous move but an action that turns the respective convoys into legitimate targets,” he said in televised remarks.
But thus far the Russians appear not to have put a high priority on arms interdiction, perhaps because their air force is leery of flying into Ukraine’s air defenses to search out and attack supply convoys on the move. They have struck fixed sites like arms depots and fuel storage locations, but to limited effect.
On Monday the Russians said they destroyed four S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers that had been given to Ukraine by an unspecified European country. Slovakia, a NATO member that shares a border with Ukraine, donated just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. On Tuesday the Russian Ministry of Defense said long-range missiles were used to hit two Ukrainian ammo depots.
As the fighting intensifies in the Donbas and perhaps along the coastal corridor to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Putin may feel compelled to strike harder at the arms pipeline, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called vital to his nation’s survival.
In the meantime, a staggering volume and range of war materiel is arriving almost daily.
“The scope and speed of our support to meeting Ukraine’s defense needs are unprecedented in modern times,” said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. He said the approximately $2.5 billion in weapons and other material that has been offered to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration is equivalent to more than half of Ukraine’s normal defense budget.
One example: The Pentagon says it has provided more than 5,000 Javelin missiles, which are among the world’s most effective weapons against tanks and other armored vehicles — and can even take down a low-flying helicopter. The missile, shaped like a clunky dumb bell and weighing 50 pounds (23 kilograms), is fired by an individual soldier; from its launch tube it flies up at a steep angle and descends directly onto its target in what its known as a “curveball” shot — hitting the top of a tank where its armor is weakest.
The specific routes used to move the U.S. and other Western materials into Ukraine are secret for security reasons, but the basic process is not. Just this week, two U.S. military cargo planes arrived in Eastern Europe with items ranging from machine guns and small arms ammunition to body armor and grenades, the Pentagon said.
A similar load is due later this week to complete delivery of $800 million in assistance approved by President Joe Biden just one month ago. The weapons and equipment are offloaded, moved onto trucks and driven into Ukraine by Ukrainian soldiers for delivery.
Kirby said the material sometimes reaches troops in the field within 48 hours of entering Ukraine.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/russia-has-yet-slow-western-arms-express-into-ukraine/ | 2022-04-13T07:37:07 | 1 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/russia-has-yet-slow-western-arms-express-into-ukraine/ |
Study: Climate crisis supercharging rainfall in hurricanes
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 1:07 AM CDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - A new study suggests the climate crisis is supercharging rainfall in hurricanes.
The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
It found that rainfall from hurricanes during the record-breaking 2020 season was as much as 11% higher due to human-caused climate changes.
Researchers determined that global warming increased hourly rainfall rates in tropical storms and hurricanes from 5% to 10%.
When experts observed just hurricanes, the increase was 8% to 11%.
The findings suggest the threat surged over the past few decades and it will likely increase more in the future.
That’s because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which leads to higher rainfall rates.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ | 2022-04-13T07:37:14 | 0 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ |
WH environmental justice advisors press for Justice40 action
(AP) - Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said Tuesday that the Biden administration hadn’t done enough to make good on its promise that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities.
Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the HBCU Climate Change Conference in New Orleans, the council members said they’ve secured $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a program called Engage, Enlighten and Empower to hold the Biden administration accountable for carrying out its Justice40 initiative.
President Biden made the commitment in a sweeping executive order on his first day in office. The initiative has been held up as an unprecedented push to bring environmental justice to communities long plagued by pollution and climate inaction.
The three members of the federal environmental justice council leading the $14 million-dollar effort, Beverly Wright, Peggy Shepard and Robert Bullard, have been working closely with the administration on Justice40.
But Wright told members of the press that more needs to be done to “turn a novel idea into a project that works.”
The trio are combining philanthropic grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, $6 million from Shepard’s WE ACT for Environmental Justice, $4 million from Wright’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and $4 million from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, to ensure federal funding from Justice40 “goes where it’s intended,” Shepard said.
The effort should “ensure equitable implementation of the Justice40 initiative at the state and local level and empower local communities to participate in the policy-making” that comes as a result of the initiative, a press release said.
The funds will go to educate grassroots organizations on the resources available to them through Justice40, inform state and local governments on how the money should be used, and develop a screening tool to determine where Justice40 funds are needed most, one that includes racial demographic data. Controversially a federal screening tool used by the administration does not take into account the racial makeup of communities.
There has been little change on the ground yet from the Justice40 pledge because the federal government is still trying to figure out which communities are most in need of the investment. In recommendations to the Biden administration, many reputable environmental justice advocates pushed for a methodical, intentional process for identifying disadvantaged communities and disbursing funds.
At the briefing, Wright and Bullard said they’ve seen past federal social and infrastructure projects fail to deliver on promises to disadvantaged communities and don’t want to see it happen again.
“There’s been a lot of really novel approaches at changing the lives of Americans in general that have worked out” benefitting just white Americans, Wright said.
Bullard pointed to discrimination in how flood relief was distributed in Texas, where the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice is located, as an example.
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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ | 2022-04-13T07:37:21 | 0 | https://www.kttc.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ |
Advocates run campaign for National Pet Day
Published: Apr. 11, 2022 at 11:41 AM EDT
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - Furry friends are important, but some are saying National Pet Day should be a paid holiday. The telehealth vet company Vetster is asking companies and individuals to chime in to their campaign. The company said nearly 70% of households in North America have some kind of pet.
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/advocates-run-campaign-national-pet-day/ | 2022-04-13T07:42:09 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/advocates-run-campaign-national-pet-day/ |
The airlines with the most delays
(Stacker) - When you’ve already waited in line to check your luggage, waited to get through TSA screening, and then waited some more for overpriced coffee or bottled water, the last thing you want to do is wait even more for your plane to board and take off. The sad truth, however, is that air travel is a waiting game, especially if you fly with airlines or out of airports where delays are as commonplace as cramped onboard legroom and crying babies.
Stacker went through data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to determine the percentage of delayed flights among all airlines. We looked at the most recent data available—reported by the airlines to the BTS from December 2020 to December 2021—and defined “delayed” as a flight that arrived at its destination at least 15 minutes after its scheduled arrival time. We also identified the most troublesome airport—the one with at least 100 flights during the reporting period and the highest percentage of delayed flights—for each airline.
Both mainline carriers and branded codeshare partners (airlines that only staff, maintain, and operate planes) were considered. You might wonder why Orlando and Aguadilla (Puerto Rico) are the only airports with the worst record for delays for two airlines each on our list.
#17. Endeavor Air Inc.
- On-time flights: 91%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Orlando, FL: Orlando International
Delta-owned Endeavor Air, which operates Delta Connection planes, may be under the radar; but it boasts the distinction of having fewer delayed flights than any U.S. carrier on our list.
Its excellent on-time status is probably due to the fact that it operates mainly from regional airports, which are subject to fewer delays due to lighter air traffic. But it also operates out of major airports, including hubs in New York City, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Cincinnati—and super-busy Orlando. Its 192 regional jets service 140 destinations in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean with 900 daily flights.
#16. Hawaiian Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 91%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Orlando, FL: Orlando International
Because so many Hawaiian Airlines flights go to the 50th state, where weather delays are relatively rare, its on-time record is exemplary. Hawaiian, in fact, routinely tops on-time performance lists and receives the fewest complaints about cancellations, overbooking, and baggage-handling problems.
With the continual expansion of its routes since its launch in 1941, it now flies throughout the Pacific and the continental U.S.-—even to Orlando, where Hawaiian Airlines passengers endure the most delays. Orlando has the second-worst on-time percentage (24%) of all major U.S. airports because it’s America’s leading family travel destination (i.e. home to Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort).
#15. Delta Air Lines Inc.
- On-time flights: 88%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Kahului, HI: Kahului Airport
Delta is the only airline in the top eight on our list that ranks among the five largest U.S. airlines: second in passengers carried and miles flown, third in fleet size, and fifth in the number of routes and destinations. Infrequent delays represent one reason why Fodor’s ranks it as the #1 U.S. airline. Its flights to Kahului (Maui), where airport expansion has been debated for decades, are delayed most often.
#14. Horizon Air
- On-time flights: 87%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Dallas, TX: Dallas Love Field
Horizon, Alaska Airlines’ regional carrier, serves dozens of destinations in the Western U.S., Canada, and Mexico, with Milwaukee the only destination east of the Mississippi. The light air traffic in Western outposts such as Wichita, Kansas; Walla Walla, Washington; and Dillingham, Alaska keep it on time almost all the time; only two of the 10 U.S. airports with the worst on-time stats are in the West. Horizon also flies to a handful of major Western cities, which does drag those stats down. Its hubs are Seattle, where it started out as a small regional carrier, and Portland, Oregon, while Dallas is the city where you’re most likely to be delayed on a Horizon flight.
#13. Republic Airways
- On-time flights: 87%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Lansing, MI: Capital Region International
You know how some wineries produce wines from grapes purchased from growers in the next county—but the growers don’t get any credit when awards are handed out? You haven’t heard of Republic Airways.
The airline operates regional flights on behalf of United Express, American Eagle, and Delta Connection. Republic gets credit for its solid on-time percentage, even though the airline benefit from flying in and out of quiet airports like Bangor, Maine, and Lansing, Michigan—where snow and ice on the runways contribute to the frequency of delays.
#12. PSA Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 86%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Traverse City, MI: Cherry Capital
PSA operated for a few years in the 1990s as an independent airline but now operates planes exclusively on American Eagle regional routes. Almost all of its nearly 100 destinations are small cities in the eastern half of the U.S. This focus on small cities like Traverse City, Michigan—where winter weather delays make it the airline’s most problematic airport—generally keep delays to a minimum.
#11. Envoy Air
- On-time flights: 85%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Burlington, VT: Burlington International
Envoy, like PSA, is an airline you’ve never heard of because they “only” staff, maintain, and operate American Eagle planes, while American Airlines handles the sales, marketing, and scheduling of flights.
Also like PSA, Envoy flies primarily to smaller cities—more than 150 destinations throughout North and South America, making it American Airlines’ busiest regional partner. The snows of Burlington, Vermont, can be blamed for Envoy’s mediocre on-time percentage there.
#10. SkyWest Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 85%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Panama City, FL: Northwest Florida Beaches International
Because it serves so many masters—operating flights for American, Alaska, United, and Delta—SkyWest is the busiest regional airline in the U.S. The airline delayed more than 1,300 flights in October 2021 due to a server outage.
#9. Alaska Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 84%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Adak Island, AK: Adak
Alaska is nearly triple the size of Texas, leading many Alaskans to treat flying like most of us treat driving—although blizzards and icy runways can make flying there a challenge.
It’s safe to say that if an airline can make it in Alaska, it can make it anywhere; and Alaska Airlines has indeed “made it” as a major carrier throughout Canada, Mexico, and most of the other 49 states. Among major airlines, only Delta has a lower percentage of delayed flights. True to its roots, Alaska still flies to tiny Adak Island (pop. 326), where frequent delays can be attributed to the Aleutian island’s fierce winds and 173 annual days of fog.
#8. American Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 83%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Lubbock, TX: Lubbock Preston Smith International
No U.S. airline transports more passengers than American. Its on-time performance is not bad, though rivals Delta and Alaska do better. Besides 230 U.S. destinations, the behemoth flies to 121 foreign destinations in 62 countries on every continent except Africa. A recent $42 million renovation of Lubbock Airport may help end its status as the worst destination in the U.S. for delays.
#7. United Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 83%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Aguadilla, PR: Rafael Hernandez
United paid a record $1.9 million fine last year for subjecting the passengers of 25 flights between 2015 and 2021 to lengthy tarmac delays. And it hasn’t exactly improved over the years, slipping from an 85% on-time record (third-best among major U.S. airlines) in 2010 to 83.75% (only seventh-best) in 2020. Delays in the not-so-friendly United skies are most common in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, because it’s a popular beach getaway city with only one departure gate and a 1930s runway due to be replaced.
#6. Mesa Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 81%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Montgomery, AL: Montgomery Regional
Mesa is a midsized airline that operates jets for American Eagle and United Express. It became America’s first regional airline to exclusively fly large jets in 2010, with most flights transporting passengers from small airports to six U.S. hub cities (Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Washington D.C.). If you’re itching to leave Alabama, though, you might need to cool your heels for a while as flight delays leaving Birmingham are common.
#5. Spirit Airlines
- On-time flights: 80%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Aguadilla, PR: Rafael Hernandez
If Spirit played on a Little League team, it would be awarded the “most improved” trophy. In 2017, it was dead last (68%) among major U.S. airlines for on-time arrivals. Moving up to fifth-worst ain’t bad, though it’s still in the bottom half on our list. It’s America’s largest ultra-low-cost airline and is expected to merge this year with Frontier in a $6.6 billion deal.
#4. Southwest Airlines Co.
- On-time flights: 79%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Chicago, IL: Chicago O’Hare International
Southwest endeared itself to many loyal passengers with its flexible ticketing policy and free checked bags, but its propensity for delays nearly eclipses those benefits. And it does no worse anywhere in the world than at famously frustrating Chicago O’Hare, where delays are something of a regular occurrence due to snow, severe rain, staffing shortages, and simply too many flights on any given day.
#3. Frontier Airlines Inc.
- On-time flights: 79%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Newark, NJ: Newark Liberty International
There’s one list that Frontier tops by a wide margin, but you won’t see it in any of the airline’s ads. It was #1 by far in the number of complaints per passenger between July 2020 and September 2021. Those complaints weren’t only about delays, but its on-time record is far from stellar, as you can see by its position in this ranking. Worst-case scenario: Your flight is delayed for hours while you’re stuck in Newark—the U.S. airport with the worst record for delays.
#2. JetBlue Airways
- On-time flights: 75%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Ontario, CA: Ontario International
Maybe there’s a reason for the name. Too many JetBlue passengers sing the “Jet Blues” while waiting, sometimes for hours, at their boarding gates. The budget airline flies to more than 100 destinations throughout the Americas (as well as London). Its on-time record is hurt by flying mostly to major cities with high air-traffic volume, but so do most of the major airlines that have better on-time stats, which led the Wall Street Journal to declare JetBlue the worst airline in the U.S.
#1. Allegiant Air
- On-time flights: 73%
- Airport with the most delayed flights: Myrtle Beach, SC: Myrtle Beach International
If a baseball team wins 73% of its games, it’s World Series-worthy. But if an airline is only on time 73% of the time, it’s … well, it’s Allegiant, which has a well-deserved reputation for delays and other problems (including an abysmal safety record revealed in a “60 Minutes” segment). In its defense, it’s an ultra-low-cost airline, so you’re essentially paying for the strong possibility that your flight won’t leave on time. On the bright side, if you’re in Myrtle Beach, where delays are most common, you might have time to hit the sand for some extra tanning.
Copyright 2022 Stacker via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/airlines-with-most-delays/ | 2022-04-13T07:42:17 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/airlines-with-most-delays/ |
Atlanta airport reclaims title as World’s Busiest Airport
ATLANTA (CNN) - Atlanta’s airport is once again the world’s busiest.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport knocked China’s Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport from the top spot for 2021, according to the trade association, Airports Council International.
Guangzhou pushed Atlanta off the perch in 2020, breaking Atlanta’s 22-year streak as number one.
Atlanta’s main airport had 75.7 million passengers in 2021. That is up a whopping 76% from 2020, but still nearly 32% below the pre-pandemic 2019 level.
Meanwhile, Guangzhou’s airport dropped to number eight in 2021.
U.S. airports dominated in 2021, with eight of the top 10, but the year before, airports in China took seven of the top 10.
China’s 2020 dominance was because of th early rebound of domestic travel in China.
The country has still not reopened to international visitors.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/atlanta-airport-reclaims-title-worlds-busiest-airport/ | 2022-04-13T07:42:24 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/atlanta-airport-reclaims-title-worlds-busiest-airport/ |
Average US gas price drops 10 cents to $4.27 per gallon
CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — The average U.S. price of a gallon of regular-grade gasoline dropped 10 cents over the past two weeks to $4.27 per gallon as oil prices continue to “yo-yo,” industry analyst Trilby Lundberg said Sunday.
The price at the pump was $1.32 above what it was one year ago, according to the Lundberg Survey taken Friday.
Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas was in Los Angeles, at $5.85 per gallon. The lowest average was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at $3.52 per gallon.
According to the survey, the average price of diesel was $5.13 per gallon, down 2 cents over two weeks.
Lundberg said prices dropped dramatically in the past two weeks, in part because higher prices reduced demand during the second half of March.
However, the drop isn’t predictive of further declines because among other things, the global oil supply is tight due to a dip in output last month by OPEC, Lundberg said.
The war in Ukraine also has sparked global uncertainty. The U.S. has banned all Russian energy supplies but Lundberg said sanctioned Russian oil is still finding “big buyers like India and China happy to pay discount prices.”
In a bid to reduce spiking energy prices, President Joe Biden last month ordered the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for six months.
On Thursday, the International Energy Agency said that its member countries are releasing 60 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves on top of previous United States pledges.
The Paris-based organization says the new commitments made by its 31 member nations, which include the U.S. and much of Europe, amount to a total of 120 million barrels over six months, the largest release in the group’s history.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/average-us-gas-price-drops-10-cents-427-per-gallon/ | 2022-04-13T07:42:33 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/average-us-gas-price-drops-10-cents-427-per-gallon/ |
Bed recalled after 79-year-old woman died
(Gray News) – Bestar has issued a recall for several models of its beds after a 79-year-old woman died and dozens of others reported injuries.
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the woman died in July 2018, after a Bestar wall bed fell on her, injuring her spine.
The company received reports of 60 additional incidents resulting in bruising and other injuries from the wall beds detaching and hitting people, CPSC said.
The recall includes the following full and queen wall beds that were sold from June 2014 through March 2022:
- Nebula
- PUR
- Versatile
- Edge
- Cielo
- Audrea
- Lumina
- Orion
- Novello
The beds were sold online at Wayfair.com, Costco.com, Cymax.com and Amazon.com.
Bestar is contacting all known purchasers directly, and consumers are advised to stop using the recalled wall beds immediately.
People with the recalled beds are entitled to a free inspection, according to CPSC.
If the bed requires reinstallation, Bestar will reimburse for those costs in a range from $170-$207 for Above Top Shelf wall beds or $338-$414 for Below Top Shelf wall beds.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/bed-recalled-after-79-year-old-woman-died/ | 2022-04-13T07:42:42 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/bed-recalled-after-79-year-old-woman-died/ |
Caught on camera: Man rescues driver after car plunges into Houston port
HOUSTON (KTRK) - A Texas man saved a driver from drowning after the man’s car plunged off a boat ramp in Houston.
The U.S. Coast Guard honored Cody Moore with one of its highest civilian honors for his lifesaving efforts on New Year’s Eve 2021 at the Lynchburg Ferry boat ramp in the Port of Houston. Surveillance video of the rescue was recently released.
Cody Moore and his family had just arrived at the nearby Monument Inn for dinner when the car came whizzing by and launched into the water. The father of five rushed to the car. He initially tried to talk to the driver, but a few moments later, he jumped in.
“When he said, ‘Call 911′ and I was running to the car to get something, I knew he was going in the water. I knew that he wouldn’t just stand by,” said Cody’s wife, Karen Moore.
Somehow, Cody Moore was able to convince the driver, in his 60s, to try and open the window.
As the car quickly sank, the man got out through the window. Cody Moore scooped him up and swam him to the shore.
Neighbors having dinner with the family captured the dramatic scene. They also used their shirts as a rope to get the two men onto the ramp.
Miraculously, nobody was seriously hurt.
“Whenever it happened, it seemed so surreal. I didn’t understand the gravity of it because he got out, he was soaking wet and we went and had dinner,” Karen Moore said.
While New Year’s Eve came and went, Cody Moore’s heroic efforts weren’t forgotten. The U.S. Coast Guard honored him Friday with a certificate of merit as his whole family watched with pride.
“It is really dangerous, and because he did it for someone else, I was really proud of him,” said Cody’s daughter, Ellen Moore.
Copyright 2022 KTRK via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/caught-camera-man-rescues-driver-after-car-plunges-into-houston-port/ | 2022-04-13T07:42:48 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/caught-camera-man-rescues-driver-after-car-plunges-into-houston-port/ |
Darius Rucker to hold concert for UofSC students celebrating the national championship
Published: Apr. 11, 2022 at 4:28 PM EDT|Updated: Apr. 11, 2022 at 4:34 PM EDT
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - The University of South Carolina will host a free Darius Rucker concert for its students on Sunday, April 24.
Rucker plans to celebrate the women’s basketball team’s championship season.
The event will take place at the Colonial Life Arena, with doors opening at 7 p.m.
The event is free to all University of South Carolina system students, and tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
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Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/darius-rucker-hold-concert-uofsc-students-celebrating-national-championship/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:01 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/darius-rucker-hold-concert-uofsc-students-celebrating-national-championship/ |
Dominion Energy to open Lake Murray parks for season
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - Dominion Energy announced it will open its public parks for the 2022 season.
Starting Wednesday, April 13, 2022 the public parks on the Irmo and Lexington sides of the Lake Murray dam will open. The beaches and recreation areas on the Lexington side will open through until Labor Day, Sept. 5, 2022.
Parking fees are $5 for all vehicles, season passes can be purchased at $50 per vehicle.
The Lexington beach and recreation areas will operate:
- Mon. – Fri. (Apr. 13 -- May 1) 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
- Mon. – Fri. (May 1 – Sept. 5) 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
- Sat.-- Sun. 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
The Irmo side boat launch will be accessible to the public 24 hours a day. Dominion said alcohol and pets are not allowed at either area and no life guards are on duty at the beach. Swimming is also prohibited at the boat launch.
Additional information can be found at link here or by calling the Lake Management Office at 803-217-9221.
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/dominion-energy-open-lake-murray-parks-season/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:09 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/dominion-energy-open-lake-murray-parks-season/ |
Duo wanted for pepper-spraying, stealing woman’s purse, police say
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (FOX Carolina) - Asheville Police are looking for a pair of suspects who stole a woman’s purse just after pepper-spraying her in the eyes Saturday, April 9.
The department said officers responded to a call for a robbery along South Tunnel Road around 3 p.m. where two men wearing masks came up to the victim and told her to give her all her stuff. The two men fled the area on foot, but one of the witnesses at the scene chased the two suspects. The witness was able to get the purse and bring it back to the victim.
We’re told the victim was taken to Mission Hospital for treatment.
As officers continued the investigation, the department said they were able to determine that James Franklin Hairr, 37, of Lincolton, NC was one of the suspects. He is being charged with assault of a female and common law robbery.
Officers are continuing to is their investigation as they attempt to identify the second suspect, according to the department.
If you or anyone you know has information on Hairr’s location, please contact the Asheville Police Department at 828-252-1110.
Copyright 2022 WHNS. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/duo-wanted-pepper-spraying-stealing-womans-purse-police-say/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:16 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/duo-wanted-pepper-spraying-stealing-womans-purse-police-say/ |
Family asks for help finding missing Spartanburg County man
Published: Apr. 11, 2022 at 4:47 PM EDT
SPARTANBURG, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - An Upstate family is asking for help locating a missing man. Family members say Franklin Hines was last seen at a nightclub in Spartanburg.
They filed a missing person report after they say they haven’t heard from him since Sunday night.
The 29-year-old was last seen wearing a black hoodie, black jeans with red and white stripes and black Jordans.
Anyone with information on Hines’ whereabouts is asked to contact the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.
Copyright 2022 WHNS. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/family-asks-help-finding-missing-spartanburg-county-man/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:22 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/family-asks-help-finding-missing-spartanburg-county-man/ |
FBI offers $5 million reward for info about ‘armed and dangerous’ fugitive
(Gray News) - The FBI announced a reward of up to $5 million Wednesday for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of a wanted fugitive.
Semion Mogilevich is accused of participating in a scheme that defrauded thousands of investors out of more than $150 million. He was federally indicted in 2002 and 2003 with charges including racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.
According to the FBI, the indictments allege that between 1993 and 1998, Mogilevich headed and controlled the Mogilevich Enterprise, an association that orchestrated a “sophisticated scheme” to defraud investors in stock.
Mogilevich is described as as a 75-year-old white male, 5′6″ to 5′7″, 290 pounds, balding, with gray hair and green eyes. He has Russian, Ukrainian and Israeli passports. His current residence is believed to be in Moscow, Russia.
The FBI said Mogilevich should be considered armed and dangerous.
Anyone with information can call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI, via WhatsApp at 215-839-6844, or online at tips.fbi.gov. All identities are kept strictly confidential.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/fbi-offers-5-million-reward-info-about-armed-dangerous-fugitive/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:29 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/fbi-offers-5-million-reward-info-about-armed-dangerous-fugitive/ |
Federal officials consider transportation mask mandate’s fate
Published: Apr. 11, 2022 at 11:28 AM EDT
(CNN) - An update on the transportation mask mandate is expected to be released later this week.
The White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coming up with a scientific framework to decide on the health issue.
The federal transportation mask mandate for places like planes and trains, is scheduled to expire on April 18.
In most places nationwide, facial coverings are no longer mandatory in public spaces.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/federal-officials-consider-transportation-mask-mandates-fate/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:36 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/federal-officials-consider-transportation-mask-mandates-fate/ |
Fiona the hippo is going to be a (very) big sister
CINCINNATI (Gray News) – The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden announced Monday that hippo Fiona’s mother, Bibi, is pregnant again.
“The hippo team is excited and also nervous,” said Eric Byrd, manager of Cincinnati Zoo’s Africa team. “As most people know, Bibi’s first baby, Fiona, was born six weeks premature and wouldn’t have survived without the intervention of her human caregivers. We are hoping for a full-term pregnancy and will be doing everything we can to support Bibi.”
According to the zoo, Bibi is on hormone supplements and will receive regular ultrasounds to monitor the growth and health of her fetus.
The zoo’s director of animal care, Christina Gorsuch, said they weren’t planning to welcome another baby hippo this soon, but nature found a way.
“Most forms of contraception, in hippos or humans, is not 100% reliable,” Gorsuch said. The dose that was previously effective for Bibi did not prevent pregnancy this time.”
The soon-to-be father, Tucker, arrived at the zoo in September 2021 and “was enamored with 23-year-old Bibi right away,” the zoo said.
The zoo will be sharing updates on Bibi and baby preparations in the months leading up to the birth.
Bibi’s big bundle of joy is expected to arrive in late summer 2022.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/fiona-hippo-is-going-be-very-big-sister/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:43 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/fiona-hippo-is-going-be-very-big-sister/ |
Florida man had live gator, guns and drugs in his truck, sheriff’s office says
COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. (CNN) - Sheriff’s deputies arrested a man who they said had an interesting assortment of illegal items in his truck - guns, drugs and a live alligator.
According to a press release from the sheriff’s office, deputies recognized the driver, Michael Marolla, from “previous encounters” as having a suspended license.
Deputies said when they pulled Marolla over Friday, they found drugs and two firearms inside the truck. Then, in the bed of the pickup, they found an open plastic tub with a baby alligator in it.
The sheriff’s office notified Florida’s Fish and wildlife Conservation Commission about the gator.
Marolla was charged with drug possession and carrying concealed firearms. He was released on bond Saturday and is set to appear in court on May 2.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/florida-man-had-live-gator-guns-drugs-his-truck-sheriffs-office-says/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:51 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/florida-man-had-live-gator-guns-drugs-his-truck-sheriffs-office-says/ |
How the public’s view of Obamacare has changed in the last 12 years
(CNN) - The Affordable Care Act was signed into law by former President Barack Obama nearly 12 years ago and last week, Obama commemorated the anniversary with President Joe Biden at the White House.
“We passed the ACA, I’ve said it before, that was a high point of my time here because it reminded me and it reminded us of what is possible,” Obama said last week.
Today, about 14 million get private health insurance through Obamacare and another 14 million people get insurance through expanded Medicaid programs. That is about 9% of the U.S. population insured because of Obamacare.
Under the law, insurance companies cannot deny you or charge you more because of a pre-existing condition, children can stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26 and prescription drug costs are lower for nearly 12 million seniors.
However, it was a rocky start for Obamacare.
CNN reporter Elizabeth Cohen tried for two weeks back then to get an account and log in to healthcare.gov.
Obama acknowledged the issues, saying that the website troubles “didn’t help” the program at the beginning.
For a long time, Obamacare was relatively unpopular, but that changed in 2017 when Republicans tried to repeal the law.
“That was the moment when Obamacare became popular,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Former President Donald Trump tried to convince Americans that Obamacare was bad.
“We will repeal and replace Obamacare. You watch,” Trump said.
Efforts to do so failed when three Republican senators voted against repealing it, including the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
Levitt says he believes public opinion of the law changed because it appeared that “Republicans were trying to weaken pre-existing condition protections, take coverage away from people, increase the premiums people would pay.”
“That was a very unpopular effort,” he said.
Levitt believes that for now, Obamacare is here to stay.
Last year, Biden expanded financial assistance for people to buy Obamacare insurance through 2022, and he is working on fixing the so-called “Family Glitch” in Obamacare that would help insure more families of working parents.
“Under the current rules, a working mom is told as long as she can afford employer-based coverage for herself, she can’t qualify for premium subsidies to afford coverage for her family. Cover her, but not her family,” he said.
With the fix, an estimated 200,000 more people would gain insurance and nearly 1 million people would pay less for their insurance.
Currently, Obamacare enjoys records enrollment, and Obama says there is a reason it is so popular 12 years later.
“It’s done what it’s supposed to do. It’s made a difference,” he said.
There are still 12 states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid. Biden has tried to clean up that coverage gap for more than 2 million people, but his efforts were thwarted by Congress last year.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/how-publics-view-obamacare-has-changed-last-12-years/ | 2022-04-13T07:43:58 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/how-publics-view-obamacare-has-changed-last-12-years/ |
Johnny Depp suit against Amber Heard starts with jury picks
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A jury was selected Monday to hear a long-anticipated libel lawsuit Johnny Depp filed against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, whom he accuses of falsely portraying him as a domestic abuser.
Depp sued Heard over an op-ed piece she wrote in The Washington Post in 2018 in which Heard refers to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article doesn’t mention Depp by name, but he says it clearly refers to allegations Heard made in other forums that she suffered physical abuse at his hands. Depp denies the accusations.
The lawsuit brought a little bit of Hollywood to a courthouse that has a long history of dealing with high-profile crimes, just not those involving movie stars.
More than a dozen women, some waving signs saying “Justice for Johnny,” joined other fans who waved pirate flags in recognition of Depp’s signature role in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, waited outside the courthouse an hour before the hearing.
The courtroom in the city of Fairfax was closed to the public Monday, with limited closed-circuit access in an overflow courtroom. People lined up before 7 a.m. for the wristbands granting access. Both Depp and Heard were in attendance, but court personnel brought them in and out utilizing special access points that frustrated fans’ ability to see them.
The judge overseeing the trial, Penney Azcarate, has imposed a series of access rules to try to maintain decorum in the courthouse. Most significantly, neither Depp nor Heard are permitted to pose for photos or sign autographs in the courthouse or on the courthouse grounds.
Depp’s fans have been vocal in their support, saying he has been falsely accused. Raylyn Otie, a Depp fan from Bluefield, Virginia, drove five hours to see the movie star. She was disappointed when Depp did not greet fans personally, as sheriff’s deputies carefully limited fan access.
“I’m so disappointed. I came to give him flowers to show some support,” she said, bouquet in hand.
In a separate lawsuit Depp filed against a British newspaper, a judge dismissed the case, finding that Depp assaulted Heard on a dozen occasions and put her in fear for her life on multiple occasions.
Heard has filed a countersuit against Depp that accuses his lawyers of defaming her at his direction.
Heard’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to have the case moved to California, where the actors reside. A Fairfax judge ruled that Depp was within his rights to bring the case here because the Post’s online editions are published through servers located in Fairfax County. Depp’s lawyers have said they brought the case in Virginia in part because the laws here are more favorable to their case.
A jury of seven, plus four alternates, was selected by Monday afternoon. The smaller jury is typical for civil trials in Virginia.
Opening statements are scheduled for Tuesday morning. The trial is expected to last more than a month. A long list of witnesses includes actors James Franco and Paul Bettany, and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Some witnesses are expected to appear in person, while others will testify via video link.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/johnny-depp-suit-against-amber-heard-starts-with-jury-picks/ | 2022-04-13T07:44:05 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/johnny-depp-suit-against-amber-heard-starts-with-jury-picks/ |
Good morning, Gamecock fans. It’s time for another edition of The Star’s Jacksonville State newsletter.
JSU’s football team held its spring game on Saturday before finishing up spring practice Tuesday. New head coach Rich Rodriguez wasn’t pleased with the play of his offense Saturday.
JSU’s softball team swept Eastern Kentucky over the weekend, and JSU’s baseball team lost to Troy on Tuesday after losing two of three to Central Arkansas over the weekend. | https://www.annistonstar.com/sports/jsu/newsletter_header/gamecocks-finish-up-spring-football-practice/article_5eb8922a-baec-11ec-92fa-1b9541bf34ef.html | 2022-04-13T07:44:10 | 1 | https://www.annistonstar.com/sports/jsu/newsletter_header/gamecocks-finish-up-spring-football-practice/article_5eb8922a-baec-11ec-92fa-1b9541bf34ef.html |
Lexington County man dies in motorcycle accident
Published: Apr. 11, 2022 at 2:19 PM EDT
LEXINGTON, S.C. (WIS) - Around 6:25pm on Sunday, a Lexington County man was driving a Harley Davidson when he got into an accident.
The accident occurred North Bound on Beechwoods Drive near US 378.
The driver was transported to Prisma Health Richland by EMS and later pronounced dead.
Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher has identified the victim as Jonathan Wayne Quesinberry Sr.
According to Fisher, Quesinberry was not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.
The South Carolina Highway Patrol continues to investigate the incident
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/lexington-county-man-dies-motorcycle-accident/ | 2022-04-13T07:44:12 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/lexington-county-man-dies-motorcycle-accident/ |
Man gets 17 years in prison for kidnapping woman, forcing her into sex work
MANCHESTER, Md. (Gray News) - A Maryland man was sentenced to 17 years in prison Friday for kidnapping a woman and leading a sex trafficking conspiracy, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
The DOJ said Joshua Lankford, 33, used violence and drugs to control a young woman and planned to kill her to keep her from testifying at trial.
According to court documents, Lankford led and organized a conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force. Evidence indicated that Lankford kidnapped the victim, a young adult woman, to engage in forced prostitution.
Lankford knew the victim was addicted to heroin and withheld drugs from her until she made him enough money by engaging in sex work, the DOJ said.
When the woman tried to escape, Lankford and three others drove the victim to a rural area where they beat, whipped and choked her with a belt, court documents show. They then drove her to a hotel in Delaware to force her to engage in more prostitution.
Documents show that while in jail, Lankford told a co-conspirator that he intended to kill the woman to prevent her from testifying against them at trial.
“Joshua Lankford’s crimes were nothing short of horrific; he kidnapped and victimized a vulnerable woman then plotted to kill her in order to save himself,” said Special Agent in Charge James R. Mancuso of HSI Baltimore. “The atrocities of his crimes are clearly reflected in the severity of his sentence, and today, he will begin to pay his debt to society.”
In addition to his 17-year prison sentence, Lankford was given five years of supervised released and a $2,320 fine.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/man-gets-17-years-prison-kidnapping-woman-forcing-her-into-sex-work/ | 2022-04-13T07:44:18 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/man-gets-17-years-prison-kidnapping-woman-forcing-her-into-sex-work/ |
HOOD RIVER, Ore. — A week ago, Theresa Draper breathed in the balmy air as honey bees zipped from flower to flower in her cherry orchard just outside Hood River. All of her fruit trees were blooming a little early, thanks to a stretch of late winter warmth. Temperatures were in the 60s and life was good.
That changed this week when a record-breaking spring storm dumped nine inches of snow in the Hood River Valley. Now, Draper goes from tree to tree counting the blossoms that have died, and will not bear fruit.
“When I look outside, I see January,” said Draper, who owns Draper Girls' Country Farm in Mt. Hood Parkdale. “Just plain worry because we don't typically get this weather around blossom time. We never get snow.”
In a typical year, Draper said they usually have a couple of cold nights this late in the season. She said in those conditions, they can protect young blossoms with special orchard fans that keep most frost from settling on the trees. But Draper said they can't run the tall fans when it's really windy, which is often the case when it snows in her region.
It's why Draper fears she will lose about a quarter of her cherry crop and sustain some damage to the rest.
“The fruit could be marked-up this year,” said Draper. “But hopefully it would be better to have marked-up fruit than no fruit.”
At Hood River Cherry Company, workers are paying close attention to their crops, which produce about 4.5 million pounds of fruit each year.
“It's nerve-racking. It's very nerve-racking,” said warehouse manager and orchards supervisor, Kristoff Fowler.
Fowler estimates that about 80% of the valley's orchard trees are now in bloom. He figures about 30% of his company’s tress are blooming because they grow at a slightly higher elevation in colder conditions. Buds that haven’t yet bloomed are less at risk of freezing.
“The blossoms and the ovule will actually die when it's around 29 degrees,” said Fowler. “And so the night temperatures have been hitting around 28.5 to 29 degrees so it's borderline. You might get about 20% of your crops, damaged."
Fowler said despite the critical cold snap, he believes most crops will come to fruition. He hopes things aren't as bad as they might seem.
"A lot of people go to Vegas to gamble,” said Fowler. “But farmers, they kind of gamble every year.”
For Draper, every blossom that survives this year is a win, but she’s already thinking about next year. She’s considering buying propane heaters to place along the perimeter of the orchard in case of another spring snow.
“I've never really felt like we needed them,” said Draper. “But after this year, I’m really thinking that through.” | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/cherry-orchards-hood-river-oregon-snow-storm-freeze-crop-loss/283-596b006d-33e4-4716-bf82-96e1153d263c | 2022-04-13T07:44:27 | 1 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/cherry-orchards-hood-river-oregon-snow-storm-freeze-crop-loss/283-596b006d-33e4-4716-bf82-96e1153d263c |
Man uses 30+ aliases to elude criminal charges, deputies say
ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. (WBTV/Gray News) – A man arrested in North Carolina for felony identity theft is accused of using dozens of fake names over several years to get out of criminal charges, according to deputies.
When he was charged last week, the 46-year-old man said his name was Vincente Barrera and then later said his name was Jorge Ortiz-Zaragoza, WBTV reported.
Deputies discovered that the Ortiz-Zaragoza name was in FBI records as an alias used before to try to get out of criminal charges.
Authorities said Ortiz-Zaragoza confessed it was not his real identity and said he has used 27 names in the past.
After fingerprinting the man, deputies determined he has used as many as 35 different names.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office records show that Ortiz-Zaragoza has been deported five times.
The criminal history connected to those fingerprints includes multiple drug felonies in addition to the assault charge, WBTV reported.
The investigation is still open, and Ortiz-Zaragoza, listed in the detention center as Vincente Barrera, was jailed on a bond of $10,000 on charges of identity theft and assault on a female.
Barrera is set to appear in court on Monday.
Copyright 2022 WBTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/man-uses-30-aliases-elude-crimes-deputies-say/ | 2022-04-13T07:44:24 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/man-uses-30-aliases-elude-crimes-deputies-say/ |
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia vowed to continue its bloody offensive in Ukraine as the war neared its seventh week Wednesday, as President Vladimir Putin insisted the campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal and significant losses.
Thwarted in their push toward the capital, Kyiv, Russian troops focused on the eastern region of Donbas, where Ukraine said it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly regime. In the six weeks since, the ground advance stalled and Russian forces lost potentially thousands of fighters and were accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the invasion aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
For now, Putin’s forces are gearing up for a major offensive in the Donbas, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence. Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to finally turn the tide in its favor.
In Mariupol, a strategic port city in the Donbas, a Ukrainian regiment defending a steel mill alleged that a drone dropped a poisonous substance on the city. The assertion by the Azov Regiment, a far-right group now part of the Ukrainian military, could not be independently verified. The regiment indicated there were no serious injuries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while experts try to determine what the substance might be, “The world must react now.”
The claims came after a Russia-allied separatist official appeared to urge the use of chemical weapons, telling Russian state TV on Monday that separatist forces should seize the plant by first blocking all the exits. “And then we’ll use chemical troops to smoke them out of there,” the official, Eduard Basurin, said. He denied Tuesday that separatist forces had used chemical weapons in Mariupol.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said officials were investigating, and it was possible phosphorus munitions — which cause horrendous burns but are not classed as chemical weapons — had been used in Mariupol, which has been pummeled by weeks of Russian assaults.
Western leaders warned that if chemical weapons are found to have been used, it would amount to a grievous breach of international law.
U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time referred to Russia’s invasion as a “genocide” and said “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
The Pentagon said it could not confirm the drone report but reiterated U.S. concerns about Russia using chemical agents. Britain, meanwhile, has warned that Russia may resort to phosphorus bombs, which are banned in civilian areas under international law, in Mariupol.
Most armies use phosphorus munitions to illuminate targets or to produce smoke screens. Deliberately firing them into an enclosed space to expose people to fumes could breach the Chemical Weapons Convention, said Marc-Michael Blum, a former laboratory head at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“Once you start using the properties of white phosphorus, toxic properties, specifically and deliberately, then it becomes banned,” he said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said the Biden administration was preparing yet another package of military aid for Ukraine to be announced in the coming days, possibly totaling $750 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. Delivery is due to be completed this week of $800 million in military assistance approved by Biden a month ago.
In the face of stiff resistance by Ukrainian forces bolstered by Western weapons, Russian forces have increasingly relied on bombarding cities, flattening many urban areas and killing thousands. The war has driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including nearly two-thirds of the country’s children.
Moscow’s retreat from cities and towns around Kyiv led to the discovery of large numbers of apparently massacred civilians, prompting widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes.
Zelenskyy said evidence of “inhuman cruelty” toward women and children in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv continued to surface, including alleged rapes.
“Not all serial rapists reach the cruelty of Russian soldiers,” Zelenskyy said.
More than 720 people were killed in Kyiv suburbs that had been occupied by Russian troops and over 200 were considered missing, the Interior Ministry said early Wednesday.
In Bucha alone, Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said 403 bodies had been found and the toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.
Ukraine’s prosecutor-general’s office said Tuesday it was also looking into events in the Brovary district, which lies to the northeast. It said the bodies of six civilians were found with gunshot wounds in a basement in the village of Shevchenkove and Russian forces were believed to be responsible.
Prosecutors are also investigating allegations that Russian forces fired on a convoy of civilians trying to leave by car from the village of Peremoha in the Brovary district, killing four people including a 13-year-old boy. In another attack near Bucha, five people were killed including two children when a car was fired upon, prosecutors said.
Putin falsely claimed Tuesday that Ukraine’s accusation that hundreds of civilians were killed by Russian troops in the town of Bucha were “fake.” Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in and around the town, some of whom had their hands bound and appeared to have been shot at close range.
Speaking at the Vostochny space launch facility in Russia’s far east, in his first known foray outside Moscow since the war began, Putin also said the West would fail to isolate Russia and its economy has withstood sanctions.
Addressing the pace of the campaign, he said Moscow was proceeding “calmly and rhythmically” to “achieve the planned goals while minimizing the losses.”
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Robert Burns in Washington, and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-wednesday/507-f9dfc830-9b52-4819-a38f-2d12afa3c22a | 2022-04-13T07:44:33 | 1 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/russia-ukraine-war-wednesday/507-f9dfc830-9b52-4819-a38f-2d12afa3c22a |
Manhole cover explosion caused some to panic in New York’s Times Square
NEW YORK (WCBS) - An Earthcam video shows the moment people began scrambling out of the area just before 7 p.m. Sunday.
Con Ed said a power cable failure led to an explosion and fire in a manhole.
As firefighters worked to put out the fire, dark gray smoke came from a manhole and two others, filling the air.
“Once I’m seeing the fire, the cops are telling me to back up and start backing up. But still I started like proceeding to the fire‚ and then it’s actually exploded right in front of me. And that’s when I was just like I started running,” Lavier Pounds said.
Marivic Jaks said she is visiting from California and was running late to catch her tour bus when she heard the boom.
“We just missed it. We missed the bus. Five minutes of walking and then a loud, loud … I’m still nervous and shaking,” she said.
Firefighters evacuated people in the area as a precaution.
Officials said there were elevated carbon monoxide levels in an office building, and firefighters assisted Con Ed crews in ventilating the cellar and subcellar of that building.
On Sunday, Con Ed says there have been no power outages because of the fire.
Copyright 2022 WCBS via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/manhole-cover-explosion-caused-some-panic-new-yorks-times-square/ | 2022-04-13T07:44:33 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/11/manhole-cover-explosion-caused-some-panic-new-yorks-times-square/ |