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SEATTLE, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Weyerhaeuser Company (NYSE: WY) today announced an agreement to purchase 80,800 acres of high-quality timberlands in North and South Carolina from a fund managed by Campbell Global for approximately $265 million. The acquisition is comprised of highly productive timberlands situated in strong coastal markets and strategically located to deliver immediate synergies with existing Weyerhaeuser timber and mill operations. Additionally, the acquisition is expected to deliver portfolio-leading cash flow and harvest tons per acre within the company's Southern Timberlands business.
Key attributes include:
- Fee ownership with 89 percent planted pine acreage and strong site productivity delivering attractive long-term timber returns
- Well-stocked timber inventory with a mature age class producing attractive sawlog mix and average harvest of 6.5 tons per acre (or 520,000 tons) annually over the first 10 years
- Expected average Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $160 per acre (or $13 million) annually from timber operations over the first 10 years
- Significant optionality to capture additional upside from real estate and natural climate solutions opportunities
"This transaction is a great example of our ongoing efforts to enhance our portfolio with high-quality, well-managed timberlands that generate solid returns for our shareholders," said Devin Stockfish, president and chief executive officer. "These Carolina timberlands are strategically located, well-integrated with our existing operations and offer very attractive timberland attributes, and they will provide strong cash flows for our Southern Timberlands business."
With this acquisition, Weyerhaeuser will own or manage more than 900,000 acres of timberlands in the Carolinas, and the company also operates four mills, a distribution center and tree nursery and hosts multiple mitigation banks and real estate development projects — employing more than 700 people between the two states. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.
ABOUT WEYERHAEUSER
Weyerhaeuser Company, one of the world's largest private owners of timberlands, began operations in 1900. We own or control approximately 11 million acres of timberlands in the U.S. and manage additional timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada. We manage these timberlands on a sustainable basis in compliance with internationally recognized forestry standards. We are also one of the largest manufacturers of wood products in North America. Our company is a real estate investment trust. In 2021, we generated $10.2 billion in net sales and employed approximately 9,200 people who serve customers worldwide. Our common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WY. Learn more at www.weyerhaeuser.com.
NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES
This news release references forward-looking estimates of Adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP measure that management uses to evaluate the performance of the company. Adjusted EBITDA, as we define it, is operating income adjusted for depreciation, depletion, amortization, basis of real estate sold and special items. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered in isolation from, and is not intended to represent an alternative to, our GAAP results. We have not provided a reconciliation of this forward-looking non-GAAP financial measure to the most comparable GAAP measure of net income because Adjusted EBITDA, as we define it, excludes the impact of certain items listed above in our definition of Adjusted EBITDA, and management cannot estimate these items or the impact they will have on Adjusted EBITDA on a forward-looking basis without unreasonable effort. As a result, investors may be unable to accurately compare the expected impact of the acquisition to our historical results or the results or expected results of other companies that may have treated such matters differently. Nonetheless, management believes that providing this forward-looking non-GAAP information about the acquisition is useful to investors, and given the uncertain nature of forward-looking statements, we believe investors are able to take into account the inherent limitations of this forward-looking non-GAAP information. We cannot predict the occurrence, timing or amount of any of the items that we exclude from our Adjusted EBITDA estimate. Accordingly, the actual effect of these items, when determined, could potentially be significant to the calculation of Adjusted EBITDA and actual results may differ materially from our estimate.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This news release contains statements that are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including, without limitation, with respect to the company's expectations concerning the occurrence, timing and expected financial contributions and economic results (including expected synergies, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA per acre) of its acquisition of certain North and South Carolina timberlands. Forward-looking statements may be identified by our use of certain words in such statements, including without limitation words such as "expected," "opportunities," "sustained," "will" and similar words, terms and phrases using such terms and words. We also reference expected performance through, or events to occur by or at, a future date, and such references also constitute forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, are based on current expectations and involve and are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those identified in our 2021 Annual Report on Form 10-K, as well as those set forth from time to time in our other public statements, reports, registration statements, prospectuses, information statements and other filings with the SEC. In addition, Weyerhaeuser may not be able to complete the transaction within the stated time period, or at all, because of a number of factors, including without limitation: the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstances that could give rise to a termination of the transaction under the terms of the purchase and sale agreement governing the transaction, or the failure to satisfy other closing conditions. There is no guarantee that any of the events anticipated by these forward-looking statements will occur. If any of the events occur, there is no guarantee what effect they will have on the company's business, results of operations, cash flows, financial condition and future prospects. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements after the date of this news release.
For more information contact:
Analysts – Andy Taylor, 206-539-3907
Media – Nancy Thompson, 919-861-0342
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SOURCE Weyerhaeuser Company | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/14/weyerhaeuser-acquire-timberlands-north-south-carolina/ | 2022-04-15T02:22:20 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/14/weyerhaeuser-acquire-timberlands-north-south-carolina/ |
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO) ("Broadcom" or the "Company") announced today the pricing terms of the Company's new notes due 2037 (the "New Notes") to be issued in connection with its offers to eligible holders (the "Exchange Offers") of the Company's or its subsidiaries' Existing Notes listed in the table below (the "Existing Notes") to exchange Existing Notes (subject to, among others, the acceptance priority levels) for consideration consisting of a combination of up to $2,500,000,000 (the "Notes Cap") aggregate principal amount of the New Notes and a cash payment, the complete terms and conditions of which are set forth in an offering memorandum, dated March 31, 2022 (the "Offering Memorandum").
As a result of reaching the Notes Cap by the Early Participation Date, no Existing Notes tendered for exchange after the Early Participation Date will be accepted for exchange, regardless of priority level. Existing Notes not accepted for exchange will be returned promptly to the tendering holders in accordance with the Offering Memorandum. Capitalized terms not defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the Offering Memorandum.
The aggregate principal amount, fixed spread and interest rate of New Notes expected to be issued by the Company is set forth in the table below:
For each $1,000 principal amount of each series of Existing Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn as of the Early Participation Date and accepted for exchange by the Company, the following table sets forth the applicable yield and the Total Consideration (subject to rounding and cash in lieu of fractional amounts of New Notes) to be received by Eligible Holders, as priced below:
The table below identifies the aggregate principal amount of each series of Existing Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) in the Exchange Offers as of the Early Participation Date and the principal amount of each series of Existing Notes that the Company expects to accept for exchange on the Early Settlement Date:
The Exchange Offers are being conducted upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Offering Memorandum. Consummation of the Exchange Offers is subject to a number of conditions.
For each $1,000 principal amount of Existing Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn, and accepted for exchange by the Company, Eligible Holders of such Existing Notes will also receive cash payment for accrued and unpaid interest on the applicable series of Existing Notes up to, but excluding, the date on which the exchange of Existing Notes accepted for exchange is settled, as well as a cash payment due in lieu of fractional amounts of New Notes.
The Exchange Offers will expire at 12:00 midnight, New York City time, at the end of April 27, 2022, unless extended or earlier terminated by the Company. In accordance with the terms of the Exchange Offers, the Withdrawal Deadline relating to the Exchange Offers occurred at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on April 13, 2022. As a result, all Existing Notes that have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to, and any Existing Notes validly tendered after, the Withdrawal Deadline are irrevocable, except in certain limited circumstances where additional withdrawal rights are required by law.
If and when issued, the New Notes will not have been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), or any state securities laws. The New Notes may not be offered or sold in the United States or to any U.S. persons except pursuant to an exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. The Company will enter into a registration rights agreement with respect to the New Notes. The New Notes will be unsecured obligations of the Company and will rank pari passu with all other unsecured and unsubordinated indebtedness of the Company.
The Exchange Offers are only made, and copies of the documents relating to the Exchange Offers will only be made available, to a holder of Existing Notes who has certified in an eligibility certification certain matters to the Company, including its status as a "qualified institutional buyer" as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act, a person other than a "U.S. person" as defined in Rule 902 under the Securities Act, or a Canadian "accredited investor" and "permitted client" as defined in National Instrument 45-106—Prospectus Exemptions, Section 73.1(1) of the Securities Act (Ontario) and National Instrument 31-103—Registration Requirements, Exemptions and Ongoing Registrant Obligations. Holders of Existing Notes who desire access to the electronic eligibility form should contact D.F. King & Co., Inc., the information agent (the "Information Agent") for the Exchange Offers, at (800) 967-7574 (U.S. Toll-free) or (212) 269-5550 (Collect). Holders that wish to receive the Offering Memorandum can certify eligibility on the eligibility website at: http://www.dfking.com/broadcom. In connection with the Exchange Offers, Barclays Capital Inc., BBVA Securities Inc., BNP Paribas Securities Corp., and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are acting as dealer managers (collectively, the "Dealer Managers"). Questions or requests for assistance in relation to the Exchange Offers may be directed to the Dealer Managers at the addresses and telephone numbers set forth below.
The Dealer Managers
Barclays Capital Inc.
745 Seventh Avenue
New York, New York 10019
Attn: Liability Management Group
Collect: (212) 528-7581
Toll Free: (800) 438-3242
BBVA Securities Inc.
1345 Avenue of the Americas, 44th Floor
New York, New York 10105
Attn: Liability Management Group
Collect: (212) 728-2446
Toll Free: (800) 422-8692
BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
787 Seventh Avenue
New York, New York 10019
Attn: Liability Management Group
Collect: (212) 841-3059
Toll-Free: (888) 210-4358
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
383 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10179
Attn: Liability Management Group
Toll-Free: (866) 834-4666
Collect: (212) 834-4045
The Information and Tender Agent
D.F. King & Co., Inc.
48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor
New York, New York 10005
Attention: Michael Horthman
Banks and Brokers Call Collect: (212) 269-5550
All Others, Please Call Toll-Free: (800) 967-7574
This news release does not constitute an offer or an invitation by the Company to participate in the Exchange Offers in any jurisdiction in which it is unlawful to make such an offer or solicitation in such jurisdiction. None of Broadcom, the Information Agent or the Dealer Managers makes any recommendation as to whether any eligible holders should participate in the applicable Exchange Offer, and no one has been authorized by any of them to make such a recommendation. Eligible holders must make their own decisions as to whether to exchange their Existing Notes, and if so, the principal amount of such Existing Notes to be exchanged.
About Broadcom Inc.
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops and supplies a broad range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. Broadcom's category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including data center, networking, enterprise software, broadband, wireless, storage and industrial. Our solutions include data center networking and storage, enterprise, mainframe and cyber security software focused on automation, monitoring and security, smartphone components, telecoms and factory automation.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements (including within the meaning of Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended) concerning Broadcom. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements that address our expected future business and financial performance, and other statements identified by words such as "will," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "should," "intend," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "aim," and similar words, phrases or expressions. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and beliefs of the management of Broadcom, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, such management, current market trends and market conditions and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside the Company's and management's control, and which may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on such statements.
Particular uncertainties that could materially affect future results include risks associated with: the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted, and will likely continue to disrupt, normal business activity, and which may have an adverse effect on our results of operations; any loss of our significant customers and fluctuations in the timing and volume of significant customer demand; our dependence on contract manufacturing and outsourced supply chain; our dependency on a limited number of suppliers; government regulations and administrative proceedings, trade restrictions and trade tensions; global economic conditions and concerns; cyclicality in the semiconductor industry or in our target markets; global political and economic conditions; our significant indebtedness and the need to generate sufficient cash flows to service and repay such debt; the amount and frequency of our share repurchase program; dependence on and risks associated with distributors and resellers of our products; dependence on senior management and our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel; any acquisitions we may make, such as delays, challenges and expenses associated with receiving governmental and regulatory approvals and satisfying other closing conditions, and with integrating acquired businesses with our existing businesses and our ability to achieve the benefits, growth prospects and synergies expected by such acquisitions; involvement in legal proceedings; quarterly and annual fluctuations in operating results; our ability to accurately estimate customers' demand and adjust our manufacturing and supply chain accordingly; our competitive performance and ability to continue achieving design wins with our customers, as well as the timing of any design wins; prolonged disruptions of our or our contract manufacturers' manufacturing facilities, warehouses or other significant operations; our ability to improve our manufacturing efficiency and quality; our dependence on outsourced service providers for certain key business services and their ability to execute to our requirements; our ability to maintain or improve gross margin; our ability to protect our intellectual property and the unpredictability of any associated litigation expenses; compatibility of our software products with operating environments, platforms or third-party products; our ability to enter into satisfactory software license agreements; availability of third party software used in our products; use of open source code sources in our products; any expenses or reputational damage associated with resolving customer product warranty and indemnification claims; market acceptance of the end products into which our products are designed; our ability to sell to new types of customers and to keep pace with technological advances; our compliance with privacy and data security laws; our ability to protect against a breach of security systems; fluctuations in foreign exchange rates; our provision for income taxes and overall cash tax costs, legislation that may impact our overall cash tax costs and our ability to maintain tax concessions in certain jurisdictions; and other events and trends on a national, regional and global scale, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive and regulatory nature. Many of the foregoing risks and uncertainties are, and will be, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and any worsening of the global business and economic environment as a result.
Our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), which you may obtain for free at the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov, discuss some of the important risk factors that may affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. Actual results may vary from the estimates provided. We undertake no intent or obligation to publicly update or revise any of the estimates and other forward-looking statements made in this announcement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
Contact:
Broadcom Inc.
Ji Yoo
Investor Relations
408-433-8000
investor.relations@broadcom.com
(AVGO-Q)
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SOURCE Broadcom Inc. | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/broadcom-inc-announces-pricing-terms-its-private-exchange-offers-certain-outstanding-notes-new-notes/ | 2022-04-15T02:22:28 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/broadcom-inc-announces-pricing-terms-its-private-exchange-offers-certain-outstanding-notes-new-notes/ |
- CBL joins hands with Indonesia's ANTAM and IBI on the Indonesia EV Battery Integration Project
- With a joint investment of nearly 6 billion USD, the project focuses on nickel mining and processing, battery materials, battery manufacturing as well as battery recycling
- The partnership marks an important milestone for CATL's global footprint expansion, and will promote the electric vehicle industry of Indonesia as well
NINGDE, China, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 14, Ningbo Contemporary Brunp Lygend Co., Ltd. (CBL), a subsidiary of Guangdong Brunp Recycling Technology Co., Ltd (Brunp), signed a tri-party framework agreement with PT Aneka Tambang (ANTAM) and PT Industri Baterai Indonesia (IBI) to cooperate on the Indonesia EV Battery Integration Project, which includes nickel mining and processing, EV battery materials, EV battery manufacturing, and battery recycling. Brunp is a subsidiary of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL).
With a joint investment of 5.968 billion USD, the project is located in the FHT Industrial Park of East Halmahera of Indonesia's North Maluku Province and other places in the country as well.
ANTAM is a member of the state-owned mining company MIND ID of Indonesia. IBI, or the Indonesia Battery Corporation, is a state-owned company engaged in the battery electric vehicle and EV ecosystem, and also a subsidiary of MIND ID and ANTAM.
The project will further enhance CATL's footprint in the battery industry, ensure the supply of upstream raw materials and resources, lower manufacturing cost, and promote the development of the battery recycling business.
"The Indonesia project is an important milestone for CATL as we expand our global footprint, and it will become an emblem of the everlasting friendship between China and Indonesia," said Robin Zeng, founder and chairman of CATL. "We are fully confident in the development of the project in the future."
"The framework agreement we signed today is of significant importance to Indonesia as we strive to build out an EV ecosystem," said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investments. "I believe with the concerted efforts from all parties, the project will be successfully implemented."
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SOURCE CATL | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/catl-partners-up-with-indonesia-boost-e-mobility-with-an-investment-nearly-6-billion-usd/ | 2022-04-15T02:22:35 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/catl-partners-up-with-indonesia-boost-e-mobility-with-an-investment-nearly-6-billion-usd/ |
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Creature Hunters recently launched a successful IDO Launching on the NFT Launchpad in March 2022. Furthermore, the project's CHTS Token has been reviewed and successfully listed on Pancakeswap's DEX for sale. Players can now follow the growth of CHTS's value directly through Crypto markets stats sites like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap
Creature Hunters is a blockchain-based online defense game built on NFTs technology. People will take on the role of the character in order to defend themselves against constant attack by enemies or annihilation. Players will be rewarded if they win the match. Furthermore, with diverse gaming modes, users can have various ways to easily and conveniently earn rewards.
Vision of Creature Hunters
A real-life game platform run by a self-sustaining NFT ecosystem in which anyone can easily participate. Creature Hunters creates a welcoming environment for players with quick access, high performance, and user convenience. Furthermore, this is a platform where anyone should be able to quickly create, sell, buy, exchange, farm, and use NFTs.
Four important missions of Creature Hunters
1. Making a game easier for players all over the world to access, play and enjoy it
Unlike some NFT games, which have numerous complex processes and procedures to learn before playing for the first time. Its disadvantage is that it reduces new users, and high entry barriers are a significant barrier to new players. Creature Hunters makes it easy for people to use, especially newcomers.
2. Providing equipment for anyone to quickly resolve cryptocurrency without expertise in NFT through game simple game activities
Using the benefits of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency owners and players can easily connect and trade in Creature Hunters. It contributes to a self-sustaining NFT ecosystem, resulting in a long-lasting and secure token.
3. Playing unique design games in fair, diversity of game modes and rewards must be accompanied
The game is created with full of enthusiasm, based on the user's perspective. Zang You Shick, the creator of Creature Hunters, is a producer who worked as an OVA director on Walt Disney's "Gargoyles" project, directed Warner Brothers' "Mask," and produced One Piece Mecca (theater version). As a result, the overall background of the game, as well as the design of each element, should surely be distinct and appealing.
4. Keeping the transparent game environment
When users play Creature Hunters, the outcome or reward must be properly reflected based on the NFT character or item. This refers to a user's level, characteristics, skill, and control. Data on all rewards provided to players as a result of the game must be transparently managed on the blockchain using blockchain technology.
Upcoming: Multiple Giveaways & Rewardable Community Events
Multiple Rewardable & Giveaway events would be constantly hold in order to connect and create the most appealing activity for the community. To carry out the above plan, Creature Hunters will continue to invest in and build activities such as Airdrop, Bounty, KOL Gameplay Streaming, Game Contest, and so on.
All of the above activities have appealing rewards, are free to participate in, and are simple to win. As a result, in order to not miss out on any opportunities to attend, make sure to follow Creature Hunters' official channels to stay up to date about the most exciting events.
Additionally, Creature Hunters Tokens (CHTS) are now listed for sale on Pancakeswap. So don't hesitate to check out and invest in the project.
CHTS's Buying Link: https://bit.ly/3tFbY7r
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Telegram | Linkedin | Discord | Medium | Youtube | Tiktok
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SOURCE Creature Hunters | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/creature-hunters-by-producer-one-piece-mecha-is-now-officially-launched-pancakeswap/ | 2022-04-15T02:22:41 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/creature-hunters-by-producer-one-piece-mecha-is-now-officially-launched-pancakeswap/ |
QINGDAO, China, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Hisense, a leading global home appliance and consumer electronics brand and Paris Saint-Germain step into their second year of partnership and join forces to launch their second commercial today.
Looking back on 2021, Hisense has released an impressive commercial featuring football stars such as Neymar Jr, Keylor Navas, Ángel Di Maria, Ander Herrera and Presnel Kimpembe to highlight the excellent quality of Hisense. The first commercial received extensive attention and was praised both online and offline.
Today, Hisense released its second collaborative commercial with Paris Saint-Germain. Ángel Di María and Presnel Kimpembe are back on the commercial while Leo Messi, Marquinhos, and Idrissa Gueye joined the crew for their first Hisense commercial. The advertisement showcases a variety of Hisense home appliances in a comfortable home environment and highlights the superiority technology of Hisense products through the lens of a footballer's daily life. The continued partnership and high level of engagement from each player reflect Paris Saint-Germain's support and recognition of Hisense and signifies that the Hisense brand is widely appreciated and supported worldwide.
Hisense Becomes "Perfect Partner" Through Exquisite Technology and High-Quality Products
The theme of this commercial is Perfect Partner, indicating Hisense and Paris Saint-Germain's excellent partnership throughout these years; it also signifies that Hisense expects to become a Perfect Partner in football fans' and consumers' life thanks to its superb products and technology. The commercial features five Paris Saint-Germain stars living in the same building, capturing the interactions of the stars in their daily life while using Hisense products.
Over the years, Hisense has continued to deepen display technology through technological innovation to deliver perfect TV quality to consumers. In this commercial, players used Hisense TV and experienced the Sports Mode technology, an outstanding feature that enhances the smoothness of sports while watching fast-paced matches, which allowed him an ultimate and immersive game-watching experience.
Consistently, Hisense aims to deliver a more immersive and realistic game viewing experience to football fans and consumers through exquisite technology and perfect TV quality; benefiting from excellent technology and quality, Hisense Mid-to-High end TVs (A7/U6/U7/U8) are highly appreciated by many media and consumers. So, in 2021, global sales revenue of mid-to-high end TVs over 99% YoY, fully reflecting the high reputation and recognition of Hisense TVs worldwide.
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SOURCE Hisense | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/hisense-enters-homes-paris-saint-germain-players-introducing-its-second-year-partnership-with-club/ | 2022-04-15T02:22:49 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/hisense-enters-homes-paris-saint-germain-players-introducing-its-second-year-partnership-with-club/ |
WASHINGTON, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 15, to discuss the wet dress rehearsal test of the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft at Launch Complex 39B at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of the uncrewed Artemis I lunar mission.
The teleconference will stream live on the agency's website.
Teleconference participants include:
- Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, NASA Exploration Ground Systems program, Kennedy
- Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, NASA Headquarters
To participate by telephone, media must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the event to: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
NASA's third test attempt began April 12 with a modified test procedure and concluded April 14. The test focused on using the ground systems at the Kennedy spaceport to load propellant into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket's core stage tanks, with minimal propellant operations on the upper stage.
Engineers encountered a liquid hydrogen leak on the tail service mast umbilical that prevented the team from completing the test. Before ending the test, teams were able to collect additional data by chilling down the lines used to load propellant into the upper stage. The rocket remains in a safe configuration as teams asses next steps.
Through Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone to send astronauts to Mars.
For updates, follow along on NASA's Artemis blog at:
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis
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SOURCE NASA | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/nasa-discuss-initial-findings-artemis-moon-mission-modified-test/ | 2022-04-15T02:22:55 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/nasa-discuss-initial-findings-artemis-moon-mission-modified-test/ |
RIO DE JANEIRO, April 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TIM S.A. ("Company") (B3: TIMS3; NYSE: TIMB) hereby informs its shareholders and the market in general that it has filed its 2021 annual report ("Form 20-F") for the calendar year ended December 31, 2021 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").
The Form 20-F is available for download on the Company's Investor Relations website, https://ri.tim.com.br/, and, in addition, shareholders may receive a hard copy of the Form 20-F and the complete financial statements, free of charge, by requesting in the following channels: by telephone (+55 21) 4109-4167 or by email ri@timbrasil.com.br.
Any further information regarding the Form 20-F can be obtained by contacting Investor Relations Team and/or Mrs. Camille Loyo Faria, Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relations Officer of TIM S.A. through the channels indicated above.
TIM S.A.
Camille Loyo Faria
Chief Financial Officer and
Investor Relations Officer
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SOURCE TIM | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/tim-notice-market-filing-annual-report-form-20-f-year-ended-december-31-2021/ | 2022-04-15T02:23:02 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2022/04/15/tim-notice-market-filing-annual-report-form-20-f-year-ended-december-31-2021/ |
The war in Ukraine has led to some remarkable profiles of humanity – including a love story spanning several continents.
Philip Hurst and Olga Ganay met through work virtually. Although Philip lived in Ohio and Olga lived in Ukraine, the two had an instant connection.
“I felt like I knew this person all my life,” said Olga.
“Whenever I would talk to her…it was just peace,” said Philip. “And that’s when I knew she was the one.”
After months of FaceTime dates, the two met in person in Ukraine last year. On that same trip, Philip proposed.
“Our first message was on her parent’s anniversary. I asked her to marry me in person on September 13th, with my grandfather’s ring which just so happens to be the same day that my grandfather asked my grandmother to marry him,” said Philip.
Philip had to return home to Ohio. Olga remained in Ukraine. Then in February, the Russian invasion happened.
U.S. & World
“At that point I kind of lost it. Because she was in Kiev. The capital city.” Philip anxiously checked social media each day.
“Just to see because it says online five minutes ago…just to know she was alive…sorry to say this, but that’s what my reality was,” he said.
After learning that Ukrainians were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, they made a plan.
Philip drove 55 hours from Ohio. Olga traveled through Poland, Spain and Mexico. The two finally reunited at the Tijuana airport.
“I’m like there she is…this is the moment. I’m just sitting there behind a Ukrainian flag with others waiting for their Ukrainian friends…and I’m like, this is beautiful. This is what magic is,” said Philip.
“I was really happy to see him there…I cried,” said Olga.
Olga then took a bus to the Pedwest border crossing. She safely made it to the U.S. late Wednesday night.
On Thursday morning, the two of them saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
“Plus the joy of having this woman that I want to marry and be with for the rest of my life next to me…that we can grow finally and not have all these other things in the way…top notch,” said Philip.
Philip added that they love San Diego and might even move here to start their life together in the future.
A reminder that love knows no borders. | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/ohio-man-drives-55-hours-to-reunite-with-ukrainian-fiance-at-u-s-mexico-border/3647421/ | 2022-04-15T02:27:43 | 0 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/ohio-man-drives-55-hours-to-reunite-with-ukrainian-fiance-at-u-s-mexico-border/3647421/ |
Authorities are investigating the cause of death this week of a Mexican woman whose leg was entrapped while using a climbing harness and ended up hanging upside down off the border wall in eastern Arizona.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials offered few details, but the local sheriff’s office said the woman was a 32-year-old who was attempting to cross the wall Monday night near Douglas, Arizona. Her name was not released.
The Cochise County Sheriff's office said she hung upside down “a significant amount of time.”
The sheriff's office said it was in contact with the local Mexican consulate and continues to investigate what happened.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said its Office of Professional Responsibility is working with the sheriff's office on the investigation and would release more information as it becomes available.
Migrants occasionally die while attempting to cross the border wall, including a man who died earlier this month from injuries he suffered when he fell from the barrier in Texas.
It was unknown if there was video surveillance in the area where the woman became entangled. Authorities did not describe the wall she was trying to climb over.
However, some of the last border wall construction carried out before the end of former President Donald Trump's term was in the Douglas area, with 30-foot-tall (9-meter) steel columns erected on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property.
U.S. & World
On April 1, two migrants fell from the border barrier near Clint, Texas, about 12 miles west of the Tornillo port of entry.
Emergency medical technicians rendered first aid and took them to a hospital in El Paso.
One man arrived at the hospital unconscious and died at the hospital on April 5.
The second was treated for a fractured right hand and returned to Customs and Border Protection officials, who returned him to Mexico. | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/woman-hanging-upside-on-border-wall-for-significant-amount-of-time-found-dead/3647417/ | 2022-04-15T02:27:49 | 1 | https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/woman-hanging-upside-on-border-wall-for-significant-amount-of-time-found-dead/3647417/ |
WASHOUGAL, Wash. — This week's Let's Get Out There takes us to the Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge will reopen to the public on May 1 after more than two years of improvements to wildlife habitats and the floodplain.
The groves of cottonwood trees and wildlife sightings make the Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge a special urban getaway.
“The refuge spans the urban wild interface between metro Vancouver and the Columbia River Gorge. So it's one of the first places you can go recreate in the Gorge,” said Chris Collins of the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership. The nonprofit cares for the Columbia River form the Bonneville Dam out to the Pacific Ocean.
The Steigerwald Lake refuge sits just east of Washougal, Washington on highway 14. It’s been closed for the past couple of years for much needed improvements.
“We've done a lot of these habitat projects over the years. Not at this scale,” said Collins.
The $31 million Steigerwald Reconnection Project will be completed in the coming months, and the refuge will reopen to the public on May 1 with a reopening ceremony on May 7. At the heart of the project was reconnecting the floodplain.
Friends of the Columbia Gorge Land Trust acquired 160 acres of land and transferred it to the refuge for expansion on the east side. The accomplishments include:
- Removing 2.2 miles of Columbia River levee and connecting the river to its historic floodplain for the first time in more than 50 years.
- Restoring salmon-bearing Gibbons Creek to its natural channel, while removing the fish ladder at the confluence of the creek and the Columbia River.
- Constructing 1.6 miles of new setback levees to enhance protection of the Port of Camas-Washougal Industrial Park, city of Washougal wastewater treatment plant, and private residents.
- Raising a portion of State Route 14 to the Columbia River’s 500-year flood level.
- Moving and expanding the refuge parking lot.
- Creating more than 100 acres of wetland and reforesting 250 acres of riparian habitat, planting more than 500,000 trees and shrubs and more than 14,000 pounds of native seeds.
- Adding 1.1 miles of new trail to the urban refuge.
More than 500,000 native plants have been put in the ground over the last three years, and almost 2 million cubic yards of earth was essentially rearranged to allow the floodplain to handle more water, mitigating future flood risk, especially with the spring snow melt.
“Just the amount of water that's in the historic lake bed is drastically more, you know, maybe before we had 15 to 20 acres now we maybe have a couple of 100 acres,” said Eric Anderson, deputy project leader with the U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife.
Several partners teamed up with USFWS and the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership to make the project happen. The refuge’s levee system will have a perimeter trail with other trails for hikers, joggers, bikers, horseback riders and more. The true benefit is for the waterfowl, birds of prey and salmon.
“Fish have access to come from the Columbia River into the lake bed into the stream,” Anderson said. He noted steelhead have been spotted in Gibbons Creek for the first time in over a decade. “More numbers to the ocean means more numbers coming back.”
“It's such a great ecological uplift for the area, particularly being able to restore this amount of habitat in the Portland metro area is really a phenomenal opportunity,” said Collins.
“And hopefully people will come here, learn about restoration and respect what's happened here,” Anderson added.
Let's Get Out there airs once a week on KGW's 4 p.m. newscast and The Good Stuff, which airs Monday-Thursday at 7 p.m. We're including viewer photos for this series. You can text your photos to 503-226-5088 or post them on the KGW Facebook page. | https://www.kgw.com/article/life/style/lets-get-out-there/steigerwald-lake-national-wildlife-refuge-reopens-may-1/283-39af152a-6392-4e83-964a-e023d22db83d | 2022-04-15T02:28:05 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/life/style/lets-get-out-there/steigerwald-lake-national-wildlife-refuge-reopens-may-1/283-39af152a-6392-4e83-964a-e023d22db83d |
PORTLAND, Ore. — Multnomah County commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to ban the public display of human remains for profit. The proposed ordinance comes after a controversial event where people paid hundreds of dollars to watch a live autopsy of a human cadaver in a hotel conference room.
“Today, we are saying enough,” said Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury.
The autopsy, organized by a media company called Death Science, was part of the Oddities & Curiosities Expo held in Portland in October.
According to a Facebook post advertising the Death Science class, attendees could watch a full forensic autopsy or anatomical dissection of a real human cadaver. Tickets started at $250 each, with VIP seats going for $500.
Multnomah County’s chief medicolegal death investigator, Kimberly DiLeo tried to stop the live autopsy before it happened, but police and prosecutors told DiLeo, as the law was written, there was nothing they could do.
Video taken inside the conference room at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront by KING-TV showed more than two dozen people watching the dissection.
After seeing news coverage about the controversial event in Portland, a funeral director in Louisiana recognized the name of the man whose body was on display. The corpse had a wristband that read "David Saunders."
“I’m deeply hurt and frustrated that I was unable to save my husband from the violation of his remains,” said Saunders widow, Elsie. The Louisiana woman testified before the Multnomah County commission on Thursday by phone.
David Saunders was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. After the 98-year-old died of COVID in August, his family honored Saunders’ wishes by donating his body to science. Little did they expect his corpse would end up on display in a hotel conference room, the centerpiece of a live autopsy and dissection before a paying audience.
“I was duped by selfish and immoral people for the sake of their personal monetary gain,” said Elsie Saunders. “Adding to my grief for his loss is the vision in my mind of his naked and defenseless body being dismembered like a butcher preparing an animal carcass for sale.”
The controversial Portland event raised ethical questions and negatively impacted legitimate body donation programs, explained Tamara Ostervoss, body donation director at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).
“It’s incredibly harmful. Our program for example, we support over 2,000 learners throughout the state of Oregon and these sort of disreputable programs impacts their education, and it really impacts health care outcomes for future generations,” said Ostervoss.
The proposed county ordinance targets the commercialization of displaying dead bodies to the public, although it does provide some exceptions including accredited funeral homes, museums like OMSI and universities like OHSU.
Anyone caught breaking the county law could face fines of $1,000 per violation, per day. Additionally, violators would have to hand over any profits to the county and pay for all attorney fees and costs.
Formal approval of the proposed county law will require a second vote.
County counsel suggested it is a simple ordinance designed for specific and rare instances — adding they hope it will have a deterrent effect, so the community will never see or encounter a pay-per-view autopsy again. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/multnomah-county-ban-pay-per-view-autopsy/283-03839f15-a016-45ae-b679-78abbcdd7dad | 2022-04-15T02:28:11 | 1 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/multnomah-county-ban-pay-per-view-autopsy/283-03839f15-a016-45ae-b679-78abbcdd7dad |
PORTLAND, Ore. — Two members of the Gypsy Joker Outlaw Motorcycle Club were sentenced to life in federal prison on Wednesday for the 2015 kidnapping, torture and murder of a former fellow member.
Mark Leroy Dencklau, 51, of Woodburn and Chad Leroy Erickson, 51, of Rainier were convicted in December of a laundry list of federal crimes related to the killing.
Dencklau was president of the Gypsy Joker club's Portland chapter from 2003 until his arrest, federal prosecutors said, also overseeing a handful of "support clubs" that aided the flagship gang and served as a source of recruitment for new members.
Federal prosecutors said that the Gypsy Jokers grew to prevalence in the 1980s, establishing six clubhouses in the Pacific Northwest and a handful of international chapters in Germany, Australia, and Norway. Court documents and trial testimony have implicated the gang in all the hallmarks of organized crime, prosecutors said; acts of "violent racketeering" including murder, kidnapping, robbery, extortion, narcotics trafficking and witness tampering
On July 1, 2015, the body of an estranged member of the Gypsy Jokers' Portland chapter was found in a field in Clark County. Robert Huggins' body had been badly beaten and showed signs of torture.
"Huggins was previously stripped of his club membership for allegedly stealing from the club and, after breaking into Dencklau’s Woodburn residence, tying up Dencklau’s girlfriend and stealing multiple firearms," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon said in a statement.
After Huggins' robbery, federal prosecutors say that Dencklau directed members of his gang to track the man down. On June 30 of 2015, Dencklau and a group of others kidnapped Huggins from a Portland home and brought him to a property in rural Southwest Washington. He was beaten and tortured over the course of several hours before he died.
Between June and November of 2018, Dencklau and six others, including Erickson, were charged either in direct connection with Huggins' death or with other racketeering charges.
Erickson and 64-year-old Kenneth Earl Hause of Aumsville, the Gypsy Jokers national president, were acquitted of racketeering conspiracy in December 2021 by a federal jury. Dencklau and Erickson were nonetheless found guilty on charges related to Huggins' murder.
Another Gypsy Joker pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 140 months in prison, while three more pleaded guilty and are still awaiting sentencing.
“Mark Dencklau and Chad Erickson will rightfully serve the rest of their lives in federal prison," said Scott Erik Asphaug, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon. "These men prided themselves in using violence to intimidate others and increase their power and influence among club members and rivals. Organized violent crime has no place in Oregon and will not be tolerated." | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/gypsy-joker-motorcycle-gang-president-life-sentence-murder-torture/283-c6d0edfe-0fdf-4719-9722-06c8472fd699 | 2022-04-15T02:28:17 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/gypsy-joker-motorcycle-gang-president-life-sentence-murder-torture/283-c6d0edfe-0fdf-4719-9722-06c8472fd699 |
PORTLAND, Ore. — Day eight of the Nancy Brophy murder trial saw testimony from her stepson who had previously sued her in civil court for the wrongful death of his father.
Romance novelist Nancy Brophy is accused of shooting and killing her husband, chef Daniel Brophy, at the Oregon Culinary Institute in June 2018.
Father and son
Nathaniel Stillwater, Dan Brophy’s son from a previous marriage, took the stand and talked about how a strained relationship blossomed into a close father-son relationship and friendship. Stillwater said he began working for Nancy Brophy’s catering company after reconnecting with his father.
“We had a strong friendship as well as a father-son relationship,” Stillwater said. He said he looked up to him. They took trips together, went mushroom foraging together and he would come to help Dan Brophy with projects at the house.
During that time, he also said he got to know Nancy Brophy: “I got to know her, so I thought, pretty well.”
Stillwater depicted his father as a man always on the move. “There wasn’t a lot of quit in him,” he said. He knew Dan Brophy to get up early, tend to his chickens, go to work, come home to work in the yard, cook dinner, read a book and go to bed.
Nancy and Dan Brophy, as well as Stillwater’s grandparents, sometimes provided child care for his eldest daughter. He said Nancy Brophy doted on her and enjoyed being a grandmother. Dan Brophy enjoyed his role as a grandfather as well.
“I think he was very proud. He took it very seriously. While he is known for his dry sense of humor. He was very affectionate and fun with my daughter,” said Stillwater.
Stillwater also testified that if Dan and Nancy Brophy fought before his death, it was never in front of him.
“There was never much cause for concern, I could probably count on one hand the evenings we came over and noticed tension,” he said.
He did say he had noticed a change in his dad. He said that he had noticed Dan Brophy was more interested in watching sports than he previously had been and worked in his yard less. This had come up during testimony with Dan Brophy’s mother, Karen Brophy who had testified that Nancy Brophy had told her the same thing.
It was Karen Brophy who alerted Stillwater to his father’s death. He and his pregnant wife were on vacation at the coast when they learned. Stillwater said he believed he had just spoken to his father the day before he was shot and killed.
“Her words were, ‘It was your sweet daddy,’ which stands out in my mind because he had never been referred to as that before, he was always ‘my father.’ Those words will be seared in my mind,” Stillwater said.
RELATED: 'Dan was not a gun person': Mother and father of victim testify in romance novelist murder case
Talk of retirement and financial issues
Stillwater said about a year before his father’s murder, Nancy and Dan Brophy had started talking about selling their home.
“I think my grandparents and I were all a little surprised by that. I think everyone did some quizzing independently. The answer I got from him was that they needed to have a more ranch-style home,” Stillwater said. He said his father had said Nancy Brophy was dealing with either a hip or knee issue that was going to make the stairs in their home a challenge. Dan Brophy also wanted somewhere with a little property so he could engage in the gardening he did.
However, Nancy Brophy talked about living an ex-pat life of traveling through Europe. He said their ideas of what happened after selling the house never came to a common ground before his father’s death.
Stillwater said he was not under the impression that Dan Brophy actually wanted to sell the house but that it was necessary for Nancy Brophy’s health, so he was on board. He also said that it did not seem that much work was done to try and prepare the home for selling. He said no concrete retirement plans were ever relayed to him by either Dan or Nancy Brophy.
While Stillwater said he was not privy to their financial issues, he had noted that Nancy Brophy had some anxiety about finances after Dan Brophy died. However, he said he remembered that shortly after something changed and she had indicated to him that the “coffers had refilled.”
RELATED: Tearful testimony from woman who performed CPR on Dan Brophy in second day of murder trial
Guns
Stillwater said he had been a gun owner since he was 18 years old. In 2018, he estimated he had 6-7 guns in his possession of various types including handguns and long guns. He used them to hunt and also shoot at ranges as a hobby. He said both Nancy and Dan Brophy were aware he owned guns.
The state said it was stated in opening arguments that Stillwater had built a gun kit. However, he had not. He told the court that he had put together an AT-15 style rifle by buying the serialized gun parts, because it was more economical than buying a put-together gun. Like buying the other guns he owned, purchasing parts of guns required him to go through a background check.
He didn’t talk about guns often with Dan or Nancy Brophy and neither of them had expressed wanting to own a firearm.
“Never. He [Dan Brophy] never expressed interest in owning a firearm,” said Stillwater.
He remembered a time when Nancy Brophy had talked with him briefly about guns in 2015 or 2016. Stillwater said she asked him about what sort of gun a military person would carry for a book she was working on.
He did not know that Nancy Brophy had bought a gun until after his father was killed. He also did not learn of the ghost gun kit until then either.
Dealing with the death
Following his dad’s death, Stillwater said he took two weeks off and was in very close proximity of Nancy Brophy. He said he wanted to make himself available in case she needed anything.
“I spent the first two weeks, following pretty close to her I remember asking her if she was receiving any counseling, but I don’t know if that question was ever posed to me,” Stillwater said.
Stillwater said he did not know he was a beneficiary on the life insurance policies covering his father. He learned that Nancy Brophy was not on the mortgage of the home but she had recently been added to the deed before Dan Brophy’s death only while dealing with the estate.
He also later learned that Nancy and Dan Brophy had not actually been married for many years and had filed paperwork to get that legal recently.
The state closed with asking Stillwater about contacting Nancy Brophy. He had testified that if he couldn’t get ahold of his father or needed to tell them both something, he could get ahold of Nancy Brophy because she always had a phone or computer in her hand.
“Did you ever have a problem getting ahold of Nancy?” The state prosecutor asked.
“Only on the day of the murder,” Stillwater said before court adjourned for the day.
The trial of Nancy Brophy will continue Monday morning at 9 a.m. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/nancy-brophy-trial-stepson-testifies/283-e33d8777-d670-4d54-b272-0607457e5056 | 2022-04-15T02:28:23 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/nancy-brophy-trial-stepson-testifies/283-e33d8777-d670-4d54-b272-0607457e5056 |
PORTLAND, Ore. — Five hundred people were recognized as new U.S. citizens Thursday at a ceremony at the Oregon Convention Center. Event organizers said it’s the largest naturalization event ever to be held in Portland.
As part of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ceremony, citizenship candidates stood up when speakers named the countries they were from, showing the diversity of the class.
There was no louder or longer cheer than the one for Ukraine, as Evghenia Sincariuc stood proudly.
Sincariuc, who waved her American flag while wearing a shirt with the Ukrainian national colors of blue and gold, moved to America in 2016. She said she’s dreamed and worked to become a U.S. citizen since then.
Her daughter, who was born in Kyiv, brought her flowers after the ceremony.
"It's amazing, it feels awesome, one of the best days of my life," Sincariuc said. "So many emotions and so much joy and I'm so proud."
She said that while America has become her happy place, she’s heartbroken for everyone in Ukraine who is paying a "high price for their freedom."
The event’s keynote speaker was Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Chanpone Sinlapasai, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Laos in 2001.
Sinlapasai said the celebrations were nothing short of beautiful, describing the strengths of diversity and the “magic in the room.”
In 2020, the U.S. granted citizenship to 625,400 people. To become naturalized, immigrants must spend at least five years as a "lawful permanent resident" (LPR). The median amount of time it took for someone of LPR status to achieve citizenship was just over seven years — but that can vary greatly by country of origin. The median for immigrants from Mexico was 12.5 years as of 2020's figures. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/new-us-citizens-500-portland-oregon-convention-center-naturalization-ceremony/283-51b1cf7f-fefd-4e43-9083-6c513e0a9256 | 2022-04-15T02:28:29 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/new-us-citizens-500-portland-oregon-convention-center-naturalization-ceremony/283-51b1cf7f-fefd-4e43-9083-6c513e0a9256 |
PORTLAND, Ore. — For some employees at Oregon Health & Science University, an email sent by the university on April 12 offering up to $7,500 in financial assistance may have seemed like a lifeline.
The email read, in part: "In response to the current community hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon Health & Science University has decided to assist all employees in getting through these difficult times."
It turned out to be a fake phishing test, organized by OHSU to test its employees' cybersecurity awareness and its own technology systems.
The attempt to educate employees about phishing threats caused frustration, with some saying it was harsh or "tone deaf."
The email, sent from a "benefit@ohsu.edu" email address with a link to "register" for COVID-related benefits, was based on a real phishing attempt that was reported to OHSU leaders in March.
Last month, OHSU sent a message to employees warning about suspicious emails and online scams. Then this week, the university decided to test its own — sending out the fake phishing email with the exact same wording as the previous scam, offering potential money for employees in need.
In a statement, OHSU said its focus was too narrow and the university didn't fully consider the harm it could cause:
"First and foremost, we want to sincerely apologize to the OHSU community. This week, as part of OHSU's regular exercises to help members practice spotting suspicious e-mails, the language in the test e-mail was taken verbatim from an actual phishing e-mail to ensure no one else fell for the scam. That was a mistake. The real scam was insensitive and exploitive of OHSU members — and the attempt to educate members felt the same way, causing confusion and concern."
University spokesperson Sara Hottman said email scams are the largest threat to OHSU technology systems and so "this phishing exercise was focused on the effectiveness of the real scam."
Hottman added that OHSU will "learn from this event and implement preventative measures to keep a similar incident from happening in the future." | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/ohsu-phishing-scam-cybersecurity-test-financial-aid/283-d9430607-126f-4c43-bbb7-de8e92583e73 | 2022-04-15T02:28:35 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/ohsu-phishing-scam-cybersecurity-test-financial-aid/283-d9430607-126f-4c43-bbb7-de8e92583e73 |
PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland city commissioners voted against giving $225,000 to a project aimed at bringing a public ferry to Portland amid tension between TriMet and the nonprofit Friends of Frog Ferry.
The plan to bring a ferry to Portland has been building for about five years, with Frog Ferry leading the way. Now tensions between the transit agency and Frog Ferry have boiled over.
“I wish it were more promising, but we don't right now have a path forward,” said Frog Ferry founder Susan Bladholm.
TriMet was in charge of delivering a half-million dollars in state grant money to develop a feasibility study for the ferry, but it has only delivered $67,000.
TriMet accused the nonprofit of inappropriate spending and billing practices, writing that "[Friends of Frog Ferry] submitted certain expenses that do not qualify for reimbursement, included invoices that didn't add up and kept changing, and management costs that could not be considered reasonable or necessary."
But Bladholm says TriMet is guilty of being unwilling to work with Frog Ferry, while throwing wave after wave of requests its way for ever-changing documentation.
“I am happy to address that we have absolutely operated with full transparency and integrity here,” said Baldholm, who added, “I think bottom line, TriMet doesn’t want another operator in this community.”
All of the tension culminated in an urgent request of the Portland City Council to keep Frog Ferry afloat.
At least half a dozen people spoke in support of the system that would ferry people on the Columbia and Willamette rivers between Vancouver and Portland, possibly further.
Commissioner Mingus Mapps proposed the city bailout, but Mapps is not in charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is. And despite having said she is excited about the future of ferries, she shot down the idea of supporting Frog Ferry at this point.
“I cannot in good conscience support this budget allocation when both TriMet and Frog Ferry are leveling such serious allegations against each other,” said Hardesty.
And so it went: a majority of commissioners voted no, leaving Frog Ferry high and dry.
“This is a real shame that all of the grassroots and private sector effort behind this is getting nowhere,” said Bladholm.
Baldholm encouraged people to look at the Friends of Frog Ferry website for information about the plan and the financial details available to the public. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-frog-ferry-trimet-tension/283-849cabc8-b0ae-45a8-a9cc-fa2f9b57717a | 2022-04-15T02:28:41 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-frog-ferry-trimet-tension/283-849cabc8-b0ae-45a8-a9cc-fa2f9b57717a |
Updated April 14, 2022 at 9:55 PM ET
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is trying to assuage employee fears in the wake of Elon Musk launching a hostile $43 billion takeover attempt of the social media company.
At an all-staff meeting on Thursday, Agrawal said Twitter's board is considering Musk's offer and will act in the best interest of company shareholders, according to two employees in attendance.
When an employee suggested that Musk's aggressive acquisition bid felt like a hostage situation, Agrawal dismissed the notion.
"I don't believe we are being held hostage," Agrawal shot back, according to the employees.
After the meeting, many were dismayed, saying they feel like they were being left in the dark about what was really going on and that a Musk-owned Twitter represents, to some, a nightmare scenario, given Musk's long history as a volatile business leader.
"The culture here and this platform deserves to be protected, and I hope the Board does the brave thing and refuses the offer," said one Twitter employee who requested anonymity. "Our democracy is more important than a payout," this employee said. "I hope the Board agrees."
But this Twitter worker added: "It does feel like there isn't much we can do as employees," this person said.
Musk revealed his interest in purchasing Twitter earlier in the day by tweeting a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission stating the acquisition depended on the "completion of anticipated financing."
That was unusual, analysts noted, because an investor eyeing a takeover typically discloses financing along with a bid.
"I'm not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it," Musk said at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, which was his first appearance since making his Twitter purchase public.
When asked if there was a "Plan B," if his takeover failed, he said "there is," but he refused to provide further detail.
Musk's bid could attract other potential Twitter buyers
Musk's offer of $54.20 per share is 38% more than the value of Twitter stock the day before his investment was publicly announced and 18.2% higher than Wednesday's closing price.
"It would be utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote," Musk tweeted on Thursday afternoon. "They own the company, not the board of directors."
Twitter stock closed down 1.35% on Thursday, well below Musk's offer price, however, suggesting investors may be skeptical of the billionaire's bid.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, a longtime Twitter shareholder, tweeted on Thursday that Musk's offer doesn't come close to the company's "intrinsic value" and said he would reject it. Musk responded on Twitter by asking: "What are the Kingdom's views on journalistic freedom of speech?"
Interesting. Just two questions, if I may.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2022
How much of Twitter does the Kingdom own, directly & indirectly?
What are the Kingdom’s views on journalistic freedom of speech?
But Musk's approach may open the door to other interested buyers who have their own designs on Twitter, said Scott Kessler, an analyst at research firm Third Bridge.
"This is really perhaps the beginning of a process, and it's not necessarily going to start and end with Elon Musk," Kessler said.
However, analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a note to clients that he expects Musk to succeed.
"It would be hard for any other bidders/consortium to emerge and the Twitter board will be forced likely to accept this bid and/or run an active process to sell Twitter," Ives said.
Still, there are unanswered questions, including how Musk would balance his time given that he is already CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and how he would finance his cash offer. Most of his $266 billion net worth is held in Tesla shares. Selling part of his stake could affect Tesla's valuation.
From Twitter's most vocal user to would-be owner
The takeover bid is the latest twist in a wild two weeks for the billionaire and the social media platform.
On April 4, Musk disclosed he'd been buying up Twitter shares and had become its largest individual shareholder. (Earlier this week, a Twitter shareholder filed a securities fraud lawsuit against Musk, alleging his late disclosure of his stake cost investors money and saved Musk around $143 million.)
The Tesla CEO is both a prolific user of Twitter and a vocal critic, so his investment immediately sparked questions about his intentions. In the weeks before his stake became public, he had publicly questioned Twitter's commitment to free speech and mused about creating his own rival social network.
The next day, Twitter CEO Agrawal announced Musk would join the company's board — and had agreed to limit how much more Twitter stock he could buy. Both men said they looked forward to working together on the company's future.
But those plans quickly fell apart. Over the weekend, Musk notified Twitter he would not join the board after all, a decision that Agrawal described as "for the best."
Before his about-face became public on Sunday night, Musk had spent much of the weekend tweeting suggestions, criticisms and jokes about Twitter. "Is Twitter dying?" he asked in one tweet, noting that many of its most-followed users, such as Barack Obama and Katy Perry, rarely tweet.
Musk is a self-described free-speech absolutist
While it's not clear why Musk changed his mind about joining the board, in his filing on Thursday, he doubled down on his vision of Twitter's role in society — and what is needed to realize it.
"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," he wrote in a letter to Twitter chairman Bret Taylor. "However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form."
Musk has described himself as a "free speech absolutist" and has been critical of Twitter's rules about what people are allowed to say on the site.
Among Musk's other proposals for Twitter include cracking open the "black box" of the social platform's algorithm so there is more transparency around what tweets get promoted or demoted. That automated process being secret, he said at the TED event, is "quite dangerous."
"I don't like to lose": Musk
But Twitter, which has far fewer users compared to social networks like Facebook and TikTok, is also under pressure to grow its business. Changing its policies against content such as hate speech and false claims about COVID could be a turn-off for users and advertisers.
"This is a moneymaking platform where your ideas are amplified if they're going to help the company make money," said Karen Kornbluh of the German Marshall Fund, who studies online disinformation.
"When you poll people, people say they want moderation, that they don't want conspiracy theories floating freely on their platforms, that they don't want harassment," she said. "So I think it's a misunderstanding of what people want."
At the TED conference on Thursday, Musk said his interest in Twitter was not about economics or making money. "Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square," he said. "So it's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law."
He added: "I don't like to lose."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-14/twitter-ceo-addresses-employees-worried-about-elon-musks-hostile-takeover-bid | 2022-04-15T02:31:09 | 0 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-14/twitter-ceo-addresses-employees-worried-about-elon-musks-hostile-takeover-bid |
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Some sellers and creators on the online marketplace Etsy are going on a weeklong strike starting today. They say the company's fees and unfair practices make staying on Etsy untenable for their businesses. And they hope their strike forces the company to address their concerns. NPR's Jaclyn Diaz has been following this story and joins us now. Hi, Jaclyn.
JACLYN DIAZ, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: Hi. So let me just make sure I understand here. They're calling this a strike. But these sellers, they're not actually employees of Etsy, right?
DIAZ: Yeah, that's right. They're independent artists that use Etsy as a platform to sell their goods, which is their business. These are artists that sell anything from, say, a Victorian Gothic wedding dress to, like, stickers. And for the next week, they're putting their online shops in vacation mode and putting a message on their page that says they're on strike. But, you know, this is not a traditional strike as we know it. The sellers aren't employees, and they're not part of a union. I talked to Lori Peterson, who has a shop on Etsy.
LORI PETERSON: Technically, we are just customers of Etsy because they have a platform and we're on it. But we are also the laborers for them, and they make money directly off our labor. So that's why we're using the term strike.
CHANG: Not all the sellers on Etsy are on strike, but some of them are. What exactly are their concerns?
DIAZ: So the thing that sparked calls for a strike was Etsy saying they were going to raise transaction fees by 30%. And that's a cost that's taken out of a seller's commission from a sale. The company said that was going to start today. But also sellers want to be able to opt out of Etsy's offsite ads. And these are ads that promote a shop's listings on the internet. They're ads created by Etsy, but then they can cost sellers an additional 12% to 15% in fees. Another complaint is that sellers want Etsy to tackle resellers on the platform, and these are people who are copying other artists' work and then making money off of that.
CHANG: Well, what's been the reaction from Etsy so far to all of this?
DIAZ: So they said the fees will go toward marketing, more customer support and removing those exact listings like those resellers. But Etsy says that of their 5.3 million active sellers, the ones actually striking just make up a small portion, just about a few thousand. They said this shows that a lot of sellers are happy with the way that Etsy runs its company. And I actually spoke to one seller who is opposed to the strike. Nicole Lewis thinks sellers should do more things on their end to cut down on the impact of the fees on their businesses.
NICOLE LEWIS: If this fee increase is making you nervous, your prices are not correct. And it's not as simple as raising your prices to make up for it. What are some other changes as a seller that you can make on your end to cut down your cost of goods? Can you buy in bulk at a cheaper price per box to save X amount of money? There are so many things that sellers can be doing behind the scenes on their end that they're responsible for that can cut down these costs drastically.
DIAZ: For a lot of the sellers I spoke to, raising their prices is just not something they want to do. This is Lori Peterson again.
PETERSON: I don't want to milk my customers for as much as I can get out of them because I know I could raise my prices and I could do that. But I don't feel like - you know, I feel like I owe it to my customers to provide them a reasonable price. And I want to see my art in the world. That's what it is for me as an artist.
CHANG: What happens if this weeklong strike is over and Etsy doesn't really make any real concessions to the strikers? What's their long-term plan?
DIAZ: For now, they'll see their strike through this week, but many told me they are more than willing to go on strike again and again until their demands are met.
CHANG: That is NPR's Jaclyn Diaz. Thank you, Jaclyn.
DIAZ: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.mainepublic.org/2022-04-11/etsy-sellers-launch-weeklong-strike-over-increased-fees | 2022-04-15T02:35:30 | 1 | https://www.mainepublic.org/2022-04-11/etsy-sellers-launch-weeklong-strike-over-increased-fees |
As the music critic Joe Levy wrote 30 years ago about Pavement, Wet Leg is a band that feels simultaneously like it came from nowhere and everywhere. History repeats itself: Another crew of droll, deadpan rockers has slouched out of an unlikely locale to rattle indie rock awake. As alluring and insouciant as those California boys Stephen Malkmus and Spiral Stairs were in 1992, Wet Leg's front duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers seemed to emerge fully-formed last summer with their sexy and silly single "Chaise Longue." And just as Pavement nodded without nodding at Jonathan Richman and the Velvet Underground, Wet Leg bears sonic echoes of New Wave and '00s indie rock, and aesthetic and thematic similarities to contemporary television shows and fiction.
Wet Leg is as fun to listen to as it is to think about, and in the band's loopy, addictive rock songs you can either turn your brain off completely, or turn your brain on to the sounds and styles of the far-reaching musical universe contained within it. And while Teasdale and Chambers would probably roll their eyes at anyone who takes their music too seriously, this week they respond with a full-fledged statement of their own in Wet Leg's self-titled debut, a collection of free-wheeling rock songs peppered with dry talk-singing and sex jokes, but also real moments of millennial existentialism. To greet its release, three NPR Music staffers discussed the amalgamation of references bound up in Wet Leg's arrival.
Ann Powers: We're here together because we had the same question about Wet Leg — not whether they're the next big thing (who cares) or even good (with a band this cheeky, qualitative judgments seem extraneous), but ... where did they come from? Not literally, but in that lipstick-traces way in which all popular culture reflects many elements of its own past. Each of us hears an entire history of music in this band. But we're picking up slightly different signals. So... what are we talking about when we talk about Wet Leg?
Hazel Cills: We made a 69-song playlist of all the things Wet Leg reminds us of. My contributions mostly came from two sonic spaces: one, the recent, mostly U.K. post-punk revival, bands like Dry Cleaning and Shopping, who are drawing on the sounds of original post-punk groups like Kleenex, the Au Pairs and Delta 5. And then this idea of the female f***-up in rock — that 2011 to 2016 era with acts like people like Bully and Childbirth and Tacocat who were kind of working in like Riot Grrrl lineage, almost in the same vein as Liz Phair's "F*** and Run": songs about being in your 20s and waking up hung over and sex being kind of reckless. I hear a very specific strain of young, millennial messiness that has been really popular not just in music but in pop culture at large.
Powers: We represent three different generations and it's interesting: We all hear a bit of our youth in this band, the kind of moment in youth where you're still wild and experimenting, but you're also realizing that maybe this isn't so good for your brain. I remember once when I was a kid in San Francisco, being on the train with my friend after a night of debauchery and my friend turning to me and saying, "Did you know when you drink too much the next day, your brain shrinks?" And feeling my brain shrinking in my head at that moment! Wet Leg is the sound of your brain shrinking, but it's also the sound of what happens to make your brain shrink.
What I loved in my youth was original punk and New Wave music, and particularly the oddballs in those scenes — bands like the Flying Lizards, the B-52s, singers like Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen. Often those artists engaged in a similar kind of speak-singing. They were often women, though not always. They also often represented a kind of, I don't want to say marginalized because that's not the right term, but more under-recognized identity. I immediately thought of an artist like Lovich, this crazy singer who dressed like she'd just stepped right out of a dumpster and walked through an enchanted forest. She made wild songs, like her critique of consumerism, "New Toy," which sounds so much like a Wet Leg song. Or the B-52s, with Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson skewering traditional femininity by wearing pink wigs and cocktail dresses, and then singing unhinged, sci-fi Stepford Wives songs like "52 Girls." There's something about Wet Leg's way of inhabiting the "normal" both in the music and in their presentation to the world that is exactly what New Wave meant to accomplish: some sort of an opening for people who were not part of the original rock myth.
Jacob Ganz: The music that I kept finding myself drawn to when I thought about Wet Leg doesn't really sound anything like Wet Leg. But it did emerge one generational cycle ago in a moment when there was a desperate hunger for almost cartoonishly traditional rock from bands. I thought of bands like The Hives and The Donnas who were enacting archetypes of rock and roll that are right at the surface of the songs and performances. For a certain audience aware of rock history and how the genre has risen and fallen, it was impossible to turn away from those songs. Whether you liked them or not, there was a need to have an opinion about them.
I think I'm reminded of that garage revival moment because, as much as its music draws on the odd rock sounds you both correctly link to bands of the '70s or today, Wet Leg isn't using those sounds to face away from the mainstream or present a kind of outsider take on traditional rock and roll. It's a band that, like The Strokes or, a few years later, tongue-in-cheek revivalist acts like The Pipettes, understands exactly where it fits in the lineage of rock and roll. But here's the difference: Wet Leg executes that role with so much playfulness and humor that it keeps some of the "saviors of rock" nonsense that accompanied those bands at arm's length. Are they representing anything? The focus of the sound and the seeming lack of obligation to a scene or ethos is impressive. Anything in the history of this very narrow genre is accessible to such bands, right? It's like globalist locavorism — they can make commerce or product out of anything, but they're choosing a really precise row of influences to do that within.
Powers: That leads to a question that people seem to have about Wet Leg — how calculated is this project? That question is one that resonates across the history of the music we're discussing. (Call it odd rock or outsider rock or off-kilter rock). Humorous songs, the wacky songs often made by women, are always suspected to be artifice or calculated. Guys I knew would ask, are the B-52s even really a band? Is Cyndi Lauper actually New Wave, or just faking it? I think those early New Wave icons, there's a little bit of them in Wet Leg. There's this energy of: I'm doing femininity, but I'm doing it like a little off or maybe flamboyantly off.
Cills: I have admittedly been skeptical of Wet Leg — not in the sense that I think they're an "industry plant," because those things don't really exist — but I do think Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are very savvy and it's interesting that we're talking so much about the '80s, the era of the music video, because the pressures on artists to stand out in an overcrowded field and make a really strong visual and hook that can be looped on TikTok into a meme are more intense than ever. When I first heard "Chaise Longue" and I saw the video for it, I felt like I knew exactly what these girls were doing immediately. I could see their references, down to the clothes they were wearing and the ways in which they were singing about sex.
There are also a lot of moments on this album of real emotional vulnerability — an "I'm almost 28, I didn't expect my life to look this way" lyricism — but they never linger on them. Teasdale and Chambers wield that New Wave coldness aesthetically, and they don't really let the listener get close. Maybe I'm demanding too much emotional intimacy from them, because they're clearly a very playful band. But I think that emptiness also kind of contributes to my skepticism, and also because the imagery of the f***-up is so well-worn in pop culture, it's an experience that doesn't feel necessarily as sharp to me anymore.
Powers: I see an interesting relationship between the words and the music in the way that Teasdale delivers these lyrics — which for me adds depth. Like the song "Supermarket," where it's just kind of a whimsical love song about transforming a place of commodity exchange into a magical place when you are young and in love. But then there's that chorus of "We got too high, we got too high." They're using ghoulishly, almost helium-inflated voices. And then in the middle of the song, she's trying to introduce this partner to her parents, and he gets too high in that situation, which is actually a dark moment. The playfulness of [her] voice undercuts the darkness of the moment.
That song in particular really made me think of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her [show] Fleabag, and Waller-Bridge is someone who's really mastered the ability to go to that dark moment and deliver true pathos. But maybe not giving us that moment is the true challenge. Staying in that more disaffected state doesn't deliver a catharsis that's more conventional, and maybe that's what's interesting about this band.
Ganz: It does feel like an album dedicated to a particular time in a young person's life when you can see the end of that period of being young. When you wake up feeling those regrets but you do the same thing again the next weekend, just make the same decisions over and over again. The Wet Leg album feels very zine-y in some ways, like just Xeroxed notes about the things that happened last weekend. No time to zoom out and assign meaning to the collection of events.
Cills: The music is very zine. But what I connect it to is that mid-2010s moment I was talking about before where you had all of these women who were making music in a very '90s lineage about their lives. I think of a song like "Trying" by Bully, where she sings about praying for her period all week. And I think Wet Leg is picking up on that trend of articulating a kind of anxious, young millennial experience, but they're bringing a new kind of numbness articulated in a wider way across pop culture. We mentioned Fleabag and Lena Dunham, but they also feel connected to writers like Ottessa Moshfegh and Halle Butler, whose heroines are very cold, bitchy young women and professionally aimless. Or Sally Rooney, whose young characters can't articulate their feelings in an emotionally vulnerable way, women who put up walls.
Powers: There's an honesty to that rejection of what we're usually asked to give. By "we" I mean both women and artists. Sincerity, authenticity, all of these things. I'm thinking about Debbie Harry singing "Rip Her to Shreds," which was always one of my favorites. She was this classically gorgeous, Hollywood movie-looking person, but in her vocal affect and in the way she looked out at you in performance, [she] very much denied that she would ever give herself to you in any way. I think that's one thing about Wet Leg — they're not giving themselves away. Think about that in contrast with the popular indie rock artists who give themselves away, almost as a strategy? People like Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, Mitski. Their whole thing is intense emotionality presented almost as a tonic: what we need in this f***** up time. I love all those artists, but sometimes you just need to laugh it off, you know?
Cills: I think that's what confuses me personally about Wet Leg because it's like, I love a cold woman. I love a woman who slips through your fingers. I mentioned the Au Pairs and I love Lesley Woods as a lyricist and vocalist because you can never quite tell if she's joking or if she's being serious in half of those songs. And I think the expectation that every young woman artist should be writing sincerely about their experiences or sort of giving over their emotional vulnerability is such a trap. But I think with Wet Leg, there's just something about their package that gives me pause. And maybe it has to do with the fact that it is so well received or that song did go viral. And if "Chaise Longue" did go viral and it was so well received, then what is the kind of biting, withholding statement that's actually being made there?
Powers: I wanted to raise one thing to the group, which is do you see any relationship between this album and hip-hop? Because I was thinking about all the moments when this kind of off-kilter, spoken word-driven rock surfaces, and it's often at a moment when hip-hop is posing a real challenge to rock truisms.
Cills: I think there is a relationship. I was thinking about the way Wet Leg sings about boys, especially in a song like "Wet Dream," and how they often make fun of men. It's very emasculating. And I was thinking about "WAP," which is one of the last great pop songs about sex, but men are almost just a tool to be used in that song. I thought it was funny, when I read Rob Tannenbaum's profile of the band for The New York Times, that "WAP" was the only song Wet Leg referenced as being an influence. Their music may not sound like rap, but if we think about who dominates that genre right now it's Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, it's more alternative artists like cupcakKe, women who are doing something demanding and funny and grotesque with how they talk about sex and desire, simultaneously flirting with but also making fun of men. It's music for boys who want to be stepped on.
Ganz: I don't know, it's never embarrassing when I climb on the hood of a car and lick the windshield.
Powers: I don't think Wet Leg's success is going to lead to rock coming back to the center of anything. I think those days are gone. But I think that's one reason why a lot of older rock fans love this band.
Ganz: It's an argument for the usefulness of rock as a genre or as a delivery mechanism. But a lot of the goofiness and the self-sabotage that is part of a lot of great rock has been gone for a long time or at least not part of the center. They have managed to pull that into a package that is very palatable. They can do it, it seems based on this record, over and over again, depending on your tolerance.
Powers: We should talk about the band's visuals, starting with the video for "Chaise Longue," which really was as much part of their breakthrough as the sound of the song. Hazel, what was your take when you first saw it?
Cills: I immediately thought about the clothes they were wearing, those kind of Little House on the Prairie, almost Amish-style dresses that have been very en vogue for a certain 20-something woman for the last 10 years — fashion brands like Ganni and Batsheva. I thought about the wrongness of it; these are two young women who are singing about sex, but they're dressed like schoolmarms. And I thought too about artists like Su Tissue and Exene Cervenka, '80s artists who wore aprons on stage and contorted a conservative piece of clothing into something punk rock. And I think those clothes are an extension of the aesthetic coldness but also humor of Wet Leg's music — clothing that keeps you at a distance, almost as a troll. They're saying, you're not going to get me emotionally, and you're also not going to get me physically, but I'm going to joke about sex and maybe imply that it could happen between us, perhaps in your dreams.
Powers: That was a smart move. It's perhaps calculated, perhaps not, in a pop landscape where so much is exposed, not just emotionally, as we talked about before, but in terms of bodies, right? When we tune in to an awards show, we see lots of flesh, male and female and non-binary at this point. And there is an explicitness in the mainstream — I never want to say it's more than ever because I think everything in pop is cyclical. It's sort of a mid-70s moment when there's a lot of nudity and sexuality on stage. Here's this band that is like, no, I'm not going to do that. And then there's an interesting element of self-protection embedded in the relationship between the two women at the center. That's not so much something you hear in the music because you don't really hear Chambers' voice that much. But in the video, she's really central as a foil for Teasdale, as the best friend who's hugging her and holding her up.
Cills: I don't know if I hear female friendship in the music. I feel like it's more lonely. There are a lot of lonely moments on the album as well.
Ganz: I hear friendship in the presentation. When you hear Chambers' voice, it's often in direct response to something Teasdale is saying. Chambers also plays the lead guitar on the record and so much of the melody and the fun and the attraction of the music is dependent on those guitar lines. Teasdale's vocals are so flat and monotone, but the songs get energy from the guitar. On many of the other songs, any melody that exists in the vocals is actually cribbed directly from the guitar line. So it does feel like there is a musical element where Chambers is that same kind of support, building a wall or building protection.
I did a little slightly trolling thing of putting a song by The Lonely Island on our playlist. And I think that humor — particularly inside humor between friends — is an essential thing in this music. It's not a coincidence that there are two big, dumb inside jokes in "Chaise Longue." The first thing that she says is trying to convince us that her parents don't know that the "Big D" is not actually her degree. And then that "Is your muffin buttered?" line, which is stolen from Mean Girls. You know that the two of them are going off and laughing about having delivered those jokes to you as an audience. You might know you are not included in the laughter, but you're a necessary prop for the delivery of the joke.
Powers: Mean girls and meme girls. Chambers is sort of like a hype man in a way, like she's the Flavor Flav to Teasdale's Chuck D, or maybe the Bob Nastanovich to Stephen Malkmus. I was actually surprised at the live show in terms of how much fun they were having on stage with each other. It didn't feel choreographed; they weren't wearing the prairie dresses. The band was real, not put together in a London studio, and it felt like that was another place where the friendship was located.
Ganz: I do think it's possible that playing live will change the band. It's interesting to remember that the record was made before anybody heard it — it was completely finished before anybody heard any of these songs. In The New York Times profile that was presented as something strange, but maybe it's rare in a valuable way to catch a band before there is any awareness of who they are out in the world. And maybe the pandemic allowed that to happen in a way that hasn't happened in more normal recent times. But in this album we have a document of a band that was not yet influenced by the public's demands for what they do in any way. They had not toured. They had not played live. They didn't have any songs on SoundCloud. They were a new thing and somebody had the great idea not to wait for them to evolve – to put them in a studio and capture that newness whole.
Powers: It reminds me of when Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted came out. And Joe Levy wrote a piece for The Village Voice where he said the band's sound came out of nowhere. There was just this image of these young men walking across the dusty, central California fields to change rock. This idea of a sound coming out of nowhere is such a necessary rejuvenation, it seems for rock — over and over again.
Cills: This is why the term industry plant keeps getting thrown around by younger audiences because the music industry has changed so rapidly that younger audiences are used to an artist going viral and then they get signed and then they record material. The idea of someone having demos and shopping those to a label or before their career takes off is just foreign. It creates a kind of skepticism when a young person sees an artist and they're not already inundated with their body of work.
Ganz: It's kind of a privilege to get to experience it in 2022. That's a thing that used to happen all the time. We didn't have access to those early materials. We didn't have access to bands touring or videos of them playing live. We saw the records show up on a shelf in a record store and you bought it or you didn't.
Powers: That's the real Little House on the Prairie s*** about this band.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-09/meme-girls-three-squares-talk-about-wet-leg-the-band-everybodys-talking-about | 2022-04-15T02:35:36 | 0 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-09/meme-girls-three-squares-talk-about-wet-leg-the-band-everybodys-talking-about |
Back in March, a White House reporter got President Biden to say out loud that he considered Russian President Vladimir Putin "a war criminal."
Those words resounded like a pistol crack in Washington and around the world. Even in the realm of rhetoric, accusations of war crimes carry weight. Attaching Putin's name made the moment all the more portentous, darkening the war clouds already gathering over the two nuclear superpowers.
This week, after the world saw gut-wrenching visuals of atrocities perpetrated against Ukraine's civilians, talk of war crimes seemed suddenly commonplace. The consensus shifted. The evidence of war crimes seems all but undeniable, and Russian claims to the contrary could scarcely diminish the chorus of condemnation.
Yet, it does not follow that Putin or anyone else will be prosecuted for these crimes or any others committed in Ukraine. Responsibility is difficult to prove conclusively in a war zone, and evidence must link such acts to national leaders far from the battlefield.
The International Court of Justice at The Hague is the United Nations' highest court, and at Ukraine's request, that body has ordered Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine. But as NPR's Bill Chappell reported this week, the high court has no way to enforce its order, and of the other international bodies with jurisdiction over military abuses, "few have any leverage over Russia."
That said, there have been instances of prosecution and even conviction for violations of the rules of war that were established by international conventions starting more than a century ago. Beyond these Geneva Conventions, there have also been prosecutions and even convictions for more recently defined crimes, such as "crimes against peace," "waging wars of aggression" and "crimes against humanity" that were codified after World War II.
Precedents from horrors past
Those newer formulations emerged as nations came to terms with the Holocaust and other enormities committed by the Nazi regime of the German dictator Adolf Hitler. Hitler died in Berlin in spring 1945, but two dozen of his subordinates and top military commanders were indicted for war crimes later that year.
They were tried by an international tribunal composed of judges from the U.S., Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The court met in the German city of Nuremberg, famous for the size and fervor of its pre-war Nazi rallies. Most of the defendants were convicted, and half were sentenced to death.
In the years that followed, there were successors to these trials, both in Germany and Japan. But they were less lurid in detail and followed by the public far less.
There have also been war crimes trials elsewhere, often held after many years the atrocities. Just this month, a trial began in the Hague for the accused leader of the Janjaweed militia in the Darfur region of Sudan. Those militia were noted for their brutality in a war that killed more than 200,000 people and drove 2 million from their homes.
Between 1994 and 2016, scores of trials were held for persons accused of taking part in the Rwandan genocide conducted by extremist Hutu tribesmen against the Tutsi tribe and its allies among the Hutu tribe. In the end, however, the key leaders of the slaughter were not prosecuted. This omission was decried at the time as "victor's justice."
In 2018, nearly 40 years after the mass killings carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, two senior leaders of that movement were sentenced to life in prison. They included the former No. 2 for dictator Pol Pot, aged 92 when sentenced, and the 87-year-old former head of state. Pol Pot himself had died two decades earlier.
The main difference between the acts of these convicted war criminals and those of others who were never charged does not appear to be in the nature of the crimes. They are heinous in either case. The difference was that some perpetrators were legally vulnerable and others were not. The vulnerable could be brought to justice because they had already been defeated militarily or politically or both.
Other leaders who remained in power despite committing what appeared to be obvious war crimes have been beyond the enforcement reach of international law.
The case against Milosevic
Perhaps the most compelling recent case of a war crimes trial in recent history was the indictment, arrest and trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who also served as president of the federation of Yugoslavia (of which Serbia was a part). The various independent republics of that federation fell out in the 1980s following the death of the longtime Balkan strongman Josip Tito.
The Balkan wars of that period were by far the worst outbreak of violence Europe had seen since the First and Second world wars, and the stories from disputed Bosnia and environs were all too evocative of those earlier conflagrations.
They were especially disturbing in the emphasis on ethnic, religious and tribal hatred, a spirit captured in the phrase "ethnic cleansing." Horrifying in itself, the phrase was largely a euphemism for genocide, a term first used in a court of law in Nuremberg 50 years earlier.
In the late 1990s, Milosevic's Serbs were intent on removing ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, an independent but adjacent republic that Serbs had long considered their territory.
As civilian refugees fled Kosovo by the hundreds of thousands, NATO stepped in and demanded the Serbs back off. When Milosevic refused, NATO sent troops supported by an intense U.S. campaign from the air, which included the bombing of critical infrastructure in Serbia – including the capital city of Belgrade.
Clinton persists and prevails
The bombing in Serbia was ordered by President Bill Clinton, who faced intense criticism in Congress and in the general public. Most Americans found it all confusing. Even one of Clinton's own White House staffers, Anne Edwards, reported that in Albania, "everything had layers and layers of 'meanings,' and histories and vendettas."
In the end, no U.S. ground troops entered the fray and the air war resulted in no American casualties. But it helped force Milosevic to back down and leave Kosovo.
Russia, a traditional ally of the Serbs, objected to the NATO and U.S. involvement. But as it was in the throes of its own post-Soviet upheaval, it was powerless to intervene. All the same, the perception of humiliation changed the political calculus in Russia, weakening the democratically elected President Boris Yeltsin and contributing to the rise of his hard-line successor. That successor was Vladimir Putin, and he has been the central power figure in Russia ever since.
But at the time, many in Europe wanted someone to pay a price for what had happened in the Balkans and some of the most prominent Serbian leaders became targets.
One was Radovan Karadzic, a Serbian psychiatrist, poet and politician who was held responsible for the massacre of more than 8.000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995. After years in hiding, working under an alias, he was captured in 2008 and sent to The Hague for trial, which was delayed for years before he was convicted in 2016. He is now in a British prison, serving a life term.
Also prosecuted for the massacre in Srebrenica, as well as for war crimes against civilians in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, was the Serbs' notorious combat leader Ratko Mladic. He too evaded capture for years after his original indictment. Finally arrested in 2011, he was tried in the Hague and convicted of genocide and other crimes in 2017. His conviction was upheld in 2021, and he is now 79, serving a life sentence.
But while Karadzic and Mladic managed to avoid detection for years, Milosevic had never really left the public eye. He had been not only the embodiment of Serbian nationalism (and principal architect of the Kosovo War), but also the Yugoslav president, powerful enough to remain de facto leader even after officially out of office.
The damage done by the NATO-U.S. campaign, however, and the failure of Milosevic's war aims, turned voters against him in the fall of 2000. Thus exposed, he became a target for international law enforcement. In addition, he had made himself more vulnerable to prosecution by naming himself commander of his armed forces. When he was no longer also the head of state, he could be seen in his military guise and was regarded as responsible for actions at the battlefield level.
So exposed, Milosevic was swiftly indicted by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, taken into custody and transferred to The Hague. There he refused legal representation, insisting the court had no jurisdiction over him. Whenever the court convened, Milosevic would represent himself and do all he could to disrupt the proceedings. His failing health over the next several years also delayed the trial, which ended when he died of a heart attack in 2006.
Shift the focus to the U.S.
By the time of Milosevic's death, the international focus had shifted to the Middle East, where the U.S. had invaded Iraq in 2003 and occupied it for nearly three tempestuous years. Iraq under dictator Saddam Hussein had become the focal point in the U.S. "global war on terror," a campaign begun after the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
The war in Iraq was marred by many actions by U.S. personnel, the most notable being the physical and psychological abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison run by the U.S. Army and the CIA.
But the post-Sept. 11 national mood was such that most Americans readily accepted the U.S. bringing captured enemy combatants to an offshore prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some remain even now. The U.S. was also reported to be using extreme methods of interrogation, including "waterboarding," a form of partial drowning that is widely considered torture. Under a secret program known as "extreme rendition," captured terrorism suspects were flown to interrogation sites far from their home countries and far from the U.S.
Critics in the U.S. joined a chorus of international objection to these methods, which many called war crimes.
The accusations often centered on Vice President Dick Cheney, reputed to have been an advocate for "tough on terror" tactics.
Some countries even issued indictments against President George W. Bush or Cheney or both. In Malaysia, both men and their legal advisers were tried in absentia and found guilty.
In the U.S., at least, Bush and Cheney were regarded as insulated from international charges by the War Crimes Act of 1996, passed by big majorities in Congress well before the war on terror and signed into law by Clinton.
That law, still on the books, sets penalties in the U.S. for anyone committing a war crime (as defined by the Geneva Conventions) where the victim or perpetrator is an American. It was later amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to limit its scope, after concerns were raised that it might be used against American officials.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-10/from-nuremberg-to-darfur-history-has-seen-some-war-criminals-brought-to-trial | 2022-04-15T02:35:42 | 1 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-10/from-nuremberg-to-darfur-history-has-seen-some-war-criminals-brought-to-trial |
Recently, as I drove home from Walmart on a quiet Sunday morning, I was startled by a rumble above me. I looked up to see a plane flying uncomfortably low in the sky. My heart raced as I thought, "What if this jet starts dropping bombs?"
I briefly — but genuinely — felt as if my life were at risk, and I almost took the next turn to speed as far away as possible.
Then I reminded myself, "I am in Michigan, not in an active war zone."
On March 25, the Ethiopian government declared a humanitarian ceasefire. Like many people born and raised in Ethiopia, I feel cautiously optimistic about this news. In my lifetime, two major wars have broken out in my country. The first was the Ethiopia-Eritrea War, back when I was in elementary school. I still remember my parents tuning into the national radio to hear updates from the battlefield. This news was especially important to my mother, whose brother was stationed at the front lines as a military trainer. Talk about enemy forces, recaptured territories and casualties were way too common in those days. I remember asking my mom, "What if those jets fly to our school and start bombing our playgrounds?"
The current war began in November 2020. This time, I am a grown woman in my 30s, living in the U.S. with a career in mental health research. I have read about the psychological impact of war and violence on some of the world's most vulnerable. I know it is not uncommon for people to live with the impact of a trauma without ever acknowledging it.
But until the moment I saw that plane in Michigan, I never considered myself to have any form of war-related trauma. It's something I plan to bring up with my therapist at our next appointment. For so many other Ethiopians — and others around the world — that's not an option. And that's unacceptable.
Although a ceasefire may mark an end to fighting, the trauma will undoubtedly linger. Any plan for peace must also include mental health resources to help those in war-affected regions deal with the full toll of their experiences. If we learned anything from other post-conflict communities like South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda and others, it's that a war worsens mental health issues and complicates access to care.
There is recognition of this reality. For instance, the World Health Organization estimates about half a million Ukrainian refugees will need mental health care as part of the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. However, in most cases, this acknowledgement does not necessarily translate into the quality and equitable services needed.
In Ethiopia, even in the most peaceful of times, as is the case in many low-income countries, mental health care is not widely available. The country of more than 115 million has fewer than 100 psychiatrists, mostly based in Addis Ababa or in other regional cities. It also mirrors existing social and economic inequalities: Rural residents have poorer access to mental health care even when it is locally available. They typically have limited financial resources, low levels of education and difficulties with transportation, all of which create barriers to connecting with services.
There's also significant stigma around mental illness, and families try to keep their problems hidden from friends and neighbors. As a social work graduate student, I interned at Ethiopia's only psychiatric hospital, which was an eye-opening experience. Witnessing these secret struggles pushed me to pursue a Ph.D. in mental health epidemiology, so I could do something to help.
The situation is even more dire now following years of conflict. A preliminary study focusing on young people's mental health in the Ethiopia's Tigray region reported a sharp spike in rates of anxiety and depression after the war began. But, of course, everyone across the population has been traumatized in different ways. A crisis of this proportion warrants a reimagining of mental health care delivery.
One option is to look beyond traditional health care workers to find sources of support. For example, the Friendship Bench program in Zimbabwe recruits and trains grandmothers to help women in their communities with depression. They deliver talk therapy outdoors on wooden park benches, which is a less intimidating setting than a hospital. These lay providers can offer counseling and connections to resources as well as suggest ways to cope with troubling and intrusive mental health symptoms.
In other post-conflict settings, programs have improved health outcomes for people with post-traumatic stress disorder by relying on peer providers, who have typically experienced similar adversities. Services provided by mental health peer support specialists often include reducing interpersonal conflict, building social support and encouraging active listening.
This path is particularly relevant for a country like Ethiopia, which suffers from a lack of basic mental health literacy, including understanding and managing symptoms and knowledge of available mental health services. Volunteer health workers can deliver healing and recovery interventions that take into account the beliefs, norms and values of the community. These interventions are delivered in their local languages because language is an essential part of the healing process.
After all, no one should be scared of seeing a plane in the sky.
Maji Hailemariam Debena is a mental health epidemiologist currently working as a Research Assistant Professor at Michigan State University.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-10/opinion-a-jet-flew-by-in-michigan-it-reminded-me-that-wartime-trauma-is-hard-to-heal | 2022-04-15T02:35:48 | 0 | https://www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2022-04-10/opinion-a-jet-flew-by-in-michigan-it-reminded-me-that-wartime-trauma-is-hard-to-heal |
After two years of navigating a pandemic, things are just about back to normal at Ebenezer United Methodist in northern Virginia. But, there are a few exceptions.
For example, during a normal church service, parishioners could turn in an attendance card or place contributions in an envelope. Now at Ebenezer, QR codes implemented during the pandemic and displayed on each pew allow people to do both online, cutting down on the need for shared surfaces.
"Ordinarily, we would have a shared cup for communion with persons dipping pieces of bread from communion into the cup together, but we'll have separate cups for everyone and separate pieces of bread," said pastor Emily Moore-Diamond of Ebenezer United Methodist Church.
During a church service, parishioners turn in an attendance card or a tithing envelope. QR codes implemented during the pandemic allow people to do those things online, cutting down on the need for shared surfaces.
And this Easter, visitors can choose from an online experience, an outdoor service, or worship right inside the building.
"Meet them in the community, meet them here at the church, meet them at a coffee shop, wherever they feel that they are the most comfortable how we can meet them in that place, just as Christ meets us wherever we are at as well," said Pastor Jeff Harrison of Ebenezer United Methodist Church.
A study from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research collected answers from 38 Christian denominations and found 80% turned to a hybrid worship experience during the pandemic. Those are also the churches that saw the most growth.
"We're still masked, we're still social distancing, we're still doing temperature checks at the door and getting people in as quickly as possible," Pastor H. Patrick Cason.
Pastor Cason's church in Chesapeake, Virginia is among those offering a hybrid experience.
This year, they are ready for a traditional Easter Sunday.
"It's going to be a very full service, and I also believe because it's the first time, people are looking forward to putting on their Easter Sunday best," Cason said.
According to Pew Research, while Blacks are statistically considered more religious, Protestants in historically Black churches are less likely to say they have attended in-person worship recently.
Black people were also among the groups hardest hit by the pandemic.
According to Lifeway Research, three out of five pastors are actively encouraging members who are able to return to the pews.
Cason says he wants to meet people where they are, keeping the online option in place and expanding with the addition of a virtual minister. He also says he doesn’t regret the initial decision to close.
"I think it showed our people and our members how much we care because we were doing our best to be protective of them," Cason said. "I hope that the Lord can understand the decision that I made."
The pastoral team at Ebenezer agrees that gauging individual comfort levels is important.
"Learning how to do church and life with people where they are is an incredible way to grow in our faith as a real people doing real life together," Moore-Diamond said.
It's one of the many lessons they have learned from an uncharted time in church history.
Newsy is the nation’s only free 24/7 national news network. You can find Newsy using your TV’s digital antenna or stream for free. See all the ways you can watch Newsy here. | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/churches-prepare-for-easter-sunday-celebrations-after-pandemic-pause | 2022-04-15T02:36:39 | 0 | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/churches-prepare-for-easter-sunday-celebrations-after-pandemic-pause |
Keith Marion crossed the border from Poland into Ukraine and handed Easter bags filled with food and candy to families, but he was caught off guard by the generosity of a Ukrainian boy who appeared to be about 10-years-old.
The child pulled a small candy bar from his pocket and insisted that Marion keep it.
This week, Marion, a merchant mariner, returned home to Ohio after spending two weeks helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing the country because of the invasion by Russia. He brought the candy bar with him.
"I treasure it," Marion said.
The encounter with the boy was among multiple emotional moments that Marion, 51, experienced during the trip.
During an interview with News 5, Marion read from his journal that detailed the people he met and fought back tears as he talked about the plight of Ukrainians.
"I mean, these families are coming over with nothing, and (for me) to put a smile on a kid's face, it felt good," he said.
Marion's only real connection to Ukraine was his great-grandmother who was from that country.
"I met her (when he was a child) because she lived to be, I believe, 96 or 98," he said.
However, it wasn't family ties that inspired Marion to fly to Poland. He said he felt a calling to do something after watching news coverage of the war.
With his passport in hand and a Rosary around his neck, Marion boarded a plane for Poland on March 30 without a plan.
During his time there, he used his own money to buy food, water and Easter treats for many of the refugees.
He crossed the border about 12 times assisting people who had already made it to Poland and others who were waiting in long lines— sometimes in frigid weather— to enter Poland.
"It was just the kids' faces. I'll never forget them."
With their permission, Marion took many pictures of the Ukrainians, along with other U.S. volunteers who offered relief. One of his precious photographs captured a young boy jumping into the arms of a man, a reunion that happened moments after the child crossed into Poland.
"There wasn't a dry eye," Marion said.
Marion also joined a small group of Americans who went into Ukraine to provide medical supplies to injured soldiers. He met a soldier who had been shot and survived.
"His name was Jacob. He was a Ukrainian soldier. He was heading to surgery in Warsaw."
The two still communicate through a social media app, Marion said. Marion developed a strong affinity for many of the refugees, so coming home was hard, but he continue to keep them in his heart.
"It was very bittersweet. If I could have stayed, I would have," he said. "I'm definitely going to be more involved in humanitarian efforts."
This story was originally published by Bob Jones of WEWS in Cleveland, Ohio. | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/man-returns-home-after-helping-ukrainian-refugees-in-poland-tells-his-story | 2022-04-15T02:36:46 | 0 | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/man-returns-home-after-helping-ukrainian-refugees-in-poland-tells-his-story |
(OTTAWA, Ontario) — Canada is sending soldiers to Poland to help with the care, coordination, and resettlement of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, including some who will come to Canada.
Defense Minister Anita Anand announced the deployment of up to 150 troops on Thursday.
More than 2.6 million Ukrainians have fled into Poland since the first Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on Feb. 24 and over 2 million more have fled into other surrounding countries.
Anand said the majority of the deployed troops will head to reception centers across Poland to help care for and register Ukrainian refugees. Another group is being sent to help coordinate international aid efforts.
Canada has deployed hundreds of additional troops to eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion as the NATO military alliance seeks to both support Ukraine and prevent the conflict from expanding into a broader war. | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/russia-ukraine-conflict/canada-sends-troops-to-poland-to-assist-in-resettling-with-some-returning-to-canada | 2022-04-15T02:36:53 | 0 | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/russia-ukraine-conflict/canada-sends-troops-to-poland-to-assist-in-resettling-with-some-returning-to-canada |
From the food you eat to the products you buy, surging inflation has crept into the daily lives — and budgets — of Americans, regardless of socioeconomic status. For small business owners, the tentacles of inflation are even more pronounced, leaving them to precariously toe the line between rising costs and whether to raise prices.
Data released earlier this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the consumer price index, which measures price changes in a basket of commonly purchased goods and services, had increased 8.5% from a year ago, largely falling in line with Wall Street predictions. Excluding the often volatile prices of food and energy services, the so-called core CPI increased 6.5 percent compared to March 2021.
Surging levels of inflation translate into higher prices that consumers have to pay for everyday items. The price increases being felt by Americans have not been this prevalent since stagflation stymied the economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Perhaps there is no better way to see the inflation’s impact than to consider what Niko Semertsidis, the owner of longtime Old Brooklyn staple in Cleveland, Gus’s Family Restaurant, now has to pay for a case of fresh eggs.
“Eggs are one of our main features here,” Semertsidis said. “Last year at this time, it was $16 a case and now we’re up to $47 a case. In one year, that’s an increase of well over 150%.”
Considering the Ohio restaurant only serves breakfast and lunch and you begin to get a clearer picture of just how deflating inflation can be. And that’s just part of it.
Bacon and meat prices have increased well over 100%. To-go boxes and other paper goods have increased 150%. The coffee deliveries are now subject to a $15 service charge on top of costlier product and mileage fees, Semertsidis said.
The compounding price increases and supply chain constraints have been difficult to navigate, Semertsidis said.
“I’m trying trying to cut costs any way I can. I’m trying to find the best deal that’s out there, even if it’s me running out and [buying products retail], that’s what I’ll do,” Semertsidis said. “On top of everything else that we have to do in the restaurant, especially in a small restaurant like this, it gets stressful to try to figure out what the next solution is. It’s always a problem and problem solving that.”
George Mateyo, the chief investment officer at KeyBank, said business owners like Semertsidis are faced with the difficult task of striking an increasingly more delicate balance.
“[Inflation] hurts consumers. It hurts businesses. It generally becomes a problem for a lot of people, frankly,” Mateyo said. “ It’s very hard. They have to worry about higher wages to keep people employed because they want to keep the restaurant open. They have higher prices for materials and goods and so forth, but they also have higher wages. They don’t want to alienate their customers so they have to manage both sides of the equation.”
When it comes to mitigating the effects of inflation, unfortunately, it largely comes down to wait it out, Mateyo said. Business owners can better manage their inventory and employ other cost-cutting measures but, largely, inflation is out of their control.
“You may have to be flexible with your staff. You have to ask your customers to share some of the pain with you,” Mateyo said.
Earlier this year, Semertsidis made the difficult decision to implement a minor price increase across the board. However, as the case in the restaurant industry, implementing any price increase comes with expenses: Menus have to be changed and re-printed, online listings and other in-store displays have to be altered, and marketing materials have to be updated.
For a neighborhood staple like Gus’s Family Restaurant, price increases aren’t just business decisions. They are personal decisions too.
“It was a hard thing for me to do. I have customers that come in every day and they see that difference,” Semertsidis said. “Every day, it’s a couple of extra bucks. That hurts them. That hurts me. I don’t want to have to do that. But at the same time I’m here to try to make a living and provide for my family. We’re just trying to survive like everybody else is.”
That kind of levity and dedication to the customer is why Gus’s Family Restaurant has fed Cleveland for more than 30 years. And it’s the reason why Semertsidis wanted to get into the hospitality industry to begin with.
“I’ve been wanting to do this since I was 6 years old. It’s a cliche but it’s not work for me,” Semertsidis said.
This story was originally published by Jordan Vandenberge of WEWS in Cleveland, Ohio. | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/small-business-owners-walking-an-increasingly-difficult-balancing-act-as-inflation-surges | 2022-04-15T02:37:00 | 1 | https://www.wrtv.com/news/national/small-business-owners-walking-an-increasingly-difficult-balancing-act-as-inflation-surges |
A crowd of people evacuated Orlando Sanford International Airport Thursday evening and some flights were delayed due to a glitch in one of the terminal’s HVAC systems.
Lauren Rowe, a spokesperson for airport, said it was an air handler malfunction that caused a “smoky haze with an awkward smell” in Terminal B. The fire department came in and determined there was no fire, she said.
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The interruption delayed several flights. Rowe estimated the evacuation lasted about an hour before the terminal reopened and resumed operations.
Terminal B is one of the main terminals of the airport where all passengers go through for ticketing and security services.
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arabines@orlandosentinel.com | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-ne-orlando-sanford-international-airport-evacuation-smoke-hvac-20220415-u3iphxjkzjct7eqkv3hl3xrf6y-story.html | 2022-04-15T02:37:02 | 1 | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-ne-orlando-sanford-international-airport-evacuation-smoke-hvac-20220415-u3iphxjkzjct7eqkv3hl3xrf6y-story.html |
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — The school closures, stay-at-home mandates and curfews that Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine imposed early in the pandemic still infuriate Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters. His dismissal of the former president’s stolen election lie and criticism that Trump “poured gas on the fire” before the U.S. Capitol riot put him at odds with many GOP voters.
But that may not be enough to topple DeWine in the state’s upcoming May 3 primary.
Despite some notable splits with Trump, he is entering the final stretch of the campaign in a strong position to win the GOP’s nomination for another four-year term. He’s facing challenges from three lesser-known conservatives who could essentially split the far-right faithful, with DeWine potentially emerging as a Republican who crossed Trump’s base and managed to survive.
“Whatever happens in the election happens, but this was a crucial time in our history,” DeWine, 75, said in an interview, referring to his management of the pandemic.
The dynamics harken back to an era when Ohio prized middle-of-the-road candidates, making it a bellwether for presidential elections for decades. But that reputation for moderation eroded under Trump, who won the state in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The higher-profile race for an open U.S. Senate seat is perhaps more reflective of Ohio’s rightward shift as candidates have spent months trying to out-Trump one another as they seek his coveted endorsement.
So far, the former president has stayed quiet in the governor’s race, a credit to DeWine’s ability to walk a fine line of expressing support for Trump while also keeping him at a distance. Despite their different approach to the pandemic, which Trump sought to minimize, there was only one hint of a genuine rift between the two men.
That was when DeWine suggested in November 2020 that it was time for Trump to acknowledge that Joe Biden had won the White House. Trump’s response was a tweet wondering who would challenge DeWine in this year’s primary. “Will be hotly contested!” Trump predicted.
Trump announced this week he’ll be in Ohio for an April 23 rally ahead of the GOP primary. DeWine said on Thursday that he’s not sure if he’ll be able to make it because he already committed to attending a 200th birthday celebration for another ex-president, Ohio native Ulysses S. Grant.
Former U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, who served four terms in Congress, was thought to be DeWine’s biggest threat, especially if he could win an endorsement from Trump after getting his backing four years ago in a failed U.S. Senate bid. But some recent polls show Renacci splitting the anti-DeWine vote with Joe Blystone, a farmer who jumped in the race early and built a following in rural Ohio.
Much of the frustration toward DeWine has bubbled up in Republican-dominated rural counties where mask mandates and school shutdowns were met with resistance. Those areas hold the fewest votes yet carry significant weight because Republicans often pile up big enough margins to negate the strong Democratic turnout in the state’s big cities.
“They say in politics people forget things. Down here they haven’t forgotten,” said Dennis Cooper, a member of the Clermont County Republican Party, which overwhelmingly endorsed Renacci over DeWine earlier this year. “It wasn’t just one thing. It was one thing on top of another that made no sense.”
Still, DeWine has a huge fundraising advantage and a network of supporters built from a political career spanning more than 40 years. Both are why more prominent Republicans in the state decided against challenging him even as dissatisfaction grew.
Ryan Stubenrauch, a former DeWine policy adviser who’s now a GOP consultant, thinks the anger is coming from a vocal minority.
“There’s a whole lot of people mad at a lot of things. The last two years have been really rough on people,” he said. “I don’t know if the party has changed or all of our politics have shifted over the last two years.”
One thing that hasn’t changed, he said, is DeWine. “He values life just about over everything,” Stubenrauch said.
He’s an old-school conservative who just months into his first term as governor signed into law what at the time was one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the nation.
DeWine has leaned on his pro-life stance to explain why that also includes protecting people from COVID-19. He was widely praised early in 2020 for not downplaying the pandemic when he became the first governor to shut down schools statewide.
But the mood soured among Republicans who quickly tired of mask mandates and health orders that closed many small businesses but allowed large retailers to remain open. They saw him putting in restrictions that ran counter to what they were hearing from Trump and conservative governors such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem.
A hostile state Legislature dominated by DeWine’s own party overrode his veto of a bill weakening the governor’s ability to respond to public health emergencies.
Renacci said DeWine prioritized “fear over freedom.”
Some conservatives have vowed never to vote for DeWine again, according to a handful of county GOP chairs, even if that means sitting out in November.
The winner of the Republican primary will face the Democratic nominee, either former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley or ex-Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley.
“They’re not going to vote again for someone who has disappointed them and not represented them well,” said Shelby County Republican Chairwoman Theresa Kerg. “I think people are frustrated and tired of just accepting whoever is given to them.” | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/74663/ohios-gop-governor-aims-to-overcome-anger-in-party-base | 2022-04-15T02:37:02 | 1 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/74663/ohios-gop-governor-aims-to-overcome-anger-in-party-base |
A 32-year-old-man who police say shot at a parked vehicle outside an Orlando hotel, injuring two passengers, is in custody.
Police were called to the Home Suite Home extended-stay hotel on Colonial Drive about 11 a.m. Thursday, an arrest report said. That’s where Erick Ramirez Ramos allegedly approached a male and female sitting in a vehicle and fired at them. Orlando Police Deputy Chief Jose Velez located and detained the suspect shortly after Ramos tried to flee the scene, according to the report.
The woman suffered minor injuries and was released from the hospital earlier today. The male victim has multiple gunshot wounds, but is in stable condition, according to the most recent police update.
Investigators suggest the attack was targeted. Ramirez Ramos is facing attempted murder and aggravated assault charges.
No further details have been released.
In a statement, Chief Orlando Rolón said the staff of Home Suite Home hotel assisted with this investigation by taking appropriate security measures. He also congratulated Velez for catching the suspect, the officers on scene and the investigators for their “diligent work.”
arabines@orlandosentinel.com | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-ne-orlando-shooter-shooting-home-suite-home-20220415-yieusn2g2zckrolroz25upw6eu-story.html | 2022-04-15T02:37:03 | 1 | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-ne-orlando-shooter-shooting-home-suite-home-20220415-yieusn2g2zckrolroz25upw6eu-story.html |
WEST PORTSMOUTH — After a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, the annual True Lure Trout Derby is back.
This year’s derby will honor World War II and Korean Navy Veteran Harley Ellis, with his name being a part of the official title of this year’s event. The Harley Ellis True Lure Trout Derby is scheduled for April 23 at Roosevelt Lake for disabled children and disabled veterans. The event will begin at daybreak and go till 5 p.m.
“This means everything to me,” Ellis said while wearing an official Harley Ellis True Lure Trout Derby Shirt. “This really floored me. I didn’t have any idea until they told me.”
Those who participate in the event will have the opportunity to fish at the lake and in a special area where trout will be placed. ODNR will have special nets set up in the lake to allow those fishing more of an opportunity to catch a fish.
“This is what it’s all about,” True Lure founder and organizer Todd Dunn said. “Harley served in the war and is a veteran and has taken care of kids and enjoys helping them, so we thought he was a perfect match to honor him.”
Along with serving in the Navy, Ellis was also served as a 50-year mason in Lucasville and served as a Shriner.
“He’s been through it all,” Dunn said. “He really has been a big part of doing stuff for people.”
Dunn shared that those participating in the event can also enjoy socialization, food, and free items, including fishing poles and bait to fish while supplies last.
“We want everyone to come out and have a good time,” Dunn said. “You know there are not a lot of vets like him left anymore, but we just want to take care of Harley and make it the best day ever for him.”
Dunn shared that the event has grown throughout the years and despite the event being canceled the past two years, he expects a large turnout.
“This has truly become a community event,” Dunn said. “We have had people donate items and help organize. If I tried to name them all, I know I would be leaving someone out.”
Dunn shared that he is also thankful for Governor DeWine, who waived the fishing licenses for the children and vets at the event.
“They don’t have to worry about getting that,” Dunn said. We just want them to come out and have a good time and catch some fish.”
Ellis shared that he is looking forward to the event and getting a chance at catching a fish.
“I am looking forward to meeting all the kids and the veterans,” Ellis said.” I used to fish, but I don’t fish anymore, but I am this day. I used to fish every day when I was younger.”
While Dunn said there are many sponsors he would like to thank, he shared that the American Legion Post 23, The Portsmouth Eagles and American Producers have really stepped up and helped by donating fishing poles and other items for the event.
“We are still collecting items. If anyone wants to donate a fishing pole or a case of pop, whatever, they can just bring it down here to the legion and it will get to us,” Dunn said.
The Harley Ellis True Lure Trout Derby is scheduled for April 23 at Roosevelt Lake for disabled children and disabled veterans. The event will begin at daybreak and go till 5 p.m. Anyone interested in donating can drop off supplies at the American Legion Post 23 or contact Dunn directly at (740)-716-9960.
“We are still out there trying to do more and more for the vets and it’s worth more than anything to watch the smiles on their faces out there,” Dunn said.
Reach Adam Black at (740) 353-3101 ext. 1927, or by email at [email protected]
© 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/74690/harley-ellis-to-be-honored-at-true-lure-trout-derby | 2022-04-15T02:37:03 | 1 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/74690/harley-ellis-to-be-honored-at-true-lure-trout-derby |
PORTSMOUTH — All three Scioto County Commissioners were present and accounted for at Thursday’s regular session, as Chairman of the Commissioners, Scottie Powell called attention to an item that normally doesn’t receive much notice.
Before casting a vote on a resolution involving the weekly appropriation of funds, Powell asked his fellow Commissioners and those in attendance to take note.
“There’s a couple of items I would like to drag out here that are not typical, there’s a request RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) from our Sheriff’s office for the jail in the amount of $37, 021.00,” Powell said. “This is a technology to be put into the jail that will assist our corrections officers as they manage the population and the rounding-it gives us tighter reporting and it makes the operation much more efficient and effective.”
Powell also said that the request from Sheriff David Thoroughman asked for three additional officers, which Powell stated would actually save the county money in the long haul by cutting out some overtime hours, coming to his estimate of a potential $50,000.00 savings over the course of one year alone.
Commissioner Bryan Davis added, “This will allow them, like when they go in to deliver meals or to check on the inmates that are in the cells, they will scan a card and this actually goes along with the compliance requirements for jail inspections-sometimes they want to see the documentation right now and it is currently very paperwork heavy. This will reduce the number of documents and reports automatically and they’ll be able to store that information electronically.”
Davis also said he believes the efficiency of the new units will help reduce burnout and stress from having to work all of the overtime.
In other legislation, the Commissioners received a communication from Dave Miller, dated April 8th of this year, requesting permission for AEP to run electric service from the commissioner’s secondary electric pole located on Fort Hill Road to his adjacent property. Paige Williams, Director of the Portsmouth Public Library, stated Mr. Ryan Salmons term is expiring and Mr. Salmon has expressed interest in continuing to serve. Library trustees serve a seven-year term.
The Commissioners also approved a resolution amending the schedule for legal counsel reimbursement as $55 per hour for out of court services and $65 per hour for in court services, effective May 1, 2022.
New mileage rates also came into play, as the three county leaders set the rate for reimbursement for county employees to $.58, while also setting the new rate for mileage for witnesses in civil cases in Common Pleas Court to $.58
A bid award for the Allegheny Hill Road culvert replacement project was awarded to Distel Construction Inc. in the amount of $71,268 upon recommendation of Darren LeBron, Scioto County Engineer.
As growth continues at the Southern Ohio Aeronautical Regional (SOAR) Business Park, protective covenants to ensure proper use, development and maintenance of each parcel within the business Park were approved, in order to preserve the value of each parcel within the Business Park as well as all land located within the vicinity. The move will also protect the local environment as well as guard against the direction of improper, unsuitable structures and uses; to ensure protection from incompatibility and unsightly Ness; to protect the health and safety of the general public; and to attract quality, image conscious companies to the business Park.
A lifetime membership of the Scioto Foundations Dynamic Community Leadership initiative, Scioto 365, to connect, select and positively affect to make a meaningful difference in the community, in the amount of $3650 was also the recipient of all three Commissioner’s approval.
The Scioto County Commissioners meet every Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in Room 310 of the Scioto County Courthouse. The general public is invited to attend, with a live stream of each meeting available on the Scioto County Commissioner’s Facebook page, Questions for the Commissioners may be asked and answered in real time on that page.
Reach the Daily Times at (740) 353-3101 or by email at [email protected]
© 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/74692/commissioners-tackle-25-item-agenda | 2022-04-15T02:37:05 | 1 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/news/74692/commissioners-tackle-25-item-agenda |
SPRING SCOREBOARD — April 13
Baseball
Valley 3, Wheelersburg 2
Minford 11, West 1
South Webster 7, Eastern 0
Waverly 3, Oak Hill 2
Notre Dame 12, Clay 4
Green 27, Western 7
Symmes Valley 6, Ironton St. Joseph 4
New Boston at East, ppd. to April 26
Ironton 10, Chesapeake 0 (5 innings)
Fairland at Portsmouth, ppd. to April 14
Gallia Academy 13, Coal Grove 2 (5 innings)
Rock Hill 7, South Point 2
Softball
Portsmouth 3, Fairland 2
West 11, Minford 0
South Webster 11, Eastern 3
Waverly 7, Oak Hill 0
Notre Dame 4, Clay 1
Green 13, Western 2
New Boston at East, ppd. to April 26
Valley at Wheelersburg, ppd.
Northwest at North Adams, ppd.
Ironton 15, Chesapeake 0 (5 innings)
Gallia Academy 7, Coal Grove 2
Rock Hill 15, South Point 2 (5 innings) | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74657/spring-scoreboard-april-13 | 2022-04-15T02:37:12 | 1 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74657/spring-scoreboard-april-13 |
PORTSMOUTH — The first meeting of the two previously unbeaten SOC I teams lived up to its’ billing.
Dominant pitching in the circle by Clay senior Preslee Lutz and Notre Dame sophomore Gwen Sparks meant that Wednesday’s game was one where runs were hard to come by.
With the game tied 1-1 in the bottom of the fifth, a leadoff walk by freshman Maddie Entler gave the Lady Titans its’ opportunity.
In the next at-bat, freshman Bree Hicks delivered an RBI double — scoring Entler from first to put Notre Dame back in front after Clay had tied the game in the third.
A two-out, two RBI double in the bottom of the sixth by sophomore Katie Strickland gave the Lady Titans a pair of insurance runs — scoring Sparks and junior Libby Kelly who reached with a one-out single and intentional walk, respectively.
That last blow gave Notre Dame (7-0, 6-0 SOC I) a 4-1 lead and — enough cushion for Sparks finish what she’d done all night in the circle: get out of innings.
“Definitely a good game, it was tight and that’s good for us to be tested and have some pressure on us,” Notre Dame coach Shad Ford said, afterwards. “Able to get out of a bases loaded jam when it was 1-1. Proud of how Gwen pitched tonight and our corners, Katie Strickland and Gracie Ashley, did great on the bunt coverage. Made the outs when we needed to and getting those insurance runs with Katie’s double in the sixth was huge.”
The Lady Titans got on the board first in the first when senior Maddie Brown collected an RBI on a sacrifice bunt to score junior Annie Dettwiller — who had a no-out single and advanced to second.
Clay (5-2, 2-1 SOC I) tied the game in the third on an RBI ground out by junior Morgan McCoy.
Sophomore Shea Edgington scored from third on McCoy’s groundout — after her leadoff double in the third. Edgington led Clay with a team-high three hits.
“So proud of this team — I think we showed people today that we can play,” Clay coach Jason Gearheart said, afterwards. “We could have easily won, but that’s a great Notre Dame team. That game gives us confidence we can beat anybody. We made the plays, put down some bunts, and Preslee pitched a great game.”
Inning-ending punchouts by Sparks left the bases loaded in the third and also the first — halting the Lady Panthers’ damage to a proverbial minimum.
Sparks finished with 12 strikeouts in the circle, allowing seven hits and the lone earned run credited to her pitching line.
Lutz, who is battling through an injury, pitched one of her best games in a Lady Panther uniform, according to Gearheart. The senior right-hander allowed nine hits, four earned runs, and struck out eight in the contest.
Both coaches had insight on the quality pitching matchup that unfolded in Wednesday’s meeting.
“Sparks spins the ball really well. Likes to stay on the outside — lot of movement — probably the best movement pitcher I’ve seen,” Gearheart said. “Preslee’s hurt, but that was one of the best games she’s thrown. She’s fighting in her senior year.”
“Either one can dominate at times. Lutz is a good pitcher; Gwen hit her spots pretty well — if they put it in play it wasn’t hard shots,” Ford said. “Credit to her and our defense for keeping it simple and getting the outs when we needed to.”
Four different Lady Titans collected a stolen base in the game — sophomores Kyndall Ford, Strickland, Sparks, and the freshman Hicks.
Ford said activity on the base path was part of their gameplan coming into the game — and also may play a large-role in the team’s long term success.
“We’re trying to find our identity. Some days we’ll have to play small ball, other days we’ll be able to hit gappers,” Ford said. “We want to put the pressure on them. When we get runners on base, we want to use our team’s speed to try and get runs across.”
Clay and Notre Dame will meet for the second time at Carol Vice Memorial Field on Thursday, April 28. The Lady Panthers will also face SOC I contender Symmes Valley twice before the end of the regular season.
“We usually struggle down here, it’s a tight field to me. We know what to work on and I’m guessing we’ll see (Kyndall) Ford next time around,” Gearheart said. “This (game) gives us hope that we’ve got a shot to do something in the tournament.”
“Clay’s a good team that’s capable of beating anyone. It’ll be Clay and Symmes (Valley) competing right there with us,” Ford said. “It’ll be a tough game when we have to go out there (Clay). We were able to get an idea of who they are, and proud of our team for how they responded in a dog fight tonight.”
***
BOX SCORE
Clay 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 — 1 7 0
Notre Dame 1 0 0 0 1 2 — 4 9 1
Clay hitting
Shea Edgington 3-4, R
Jacy Gearhart 2-4
Morgan McCoy 0-4, RBI
Katie Fife 1-3
Kyleigh Oliver 1-3
Kailey Ware 0-3
Jordyn Mathias 0-3
Preslee Lutz 0-3
Sarah Cassidy 0-3
Notre Dame hitting
Bree Hicks 3-3, RBI
Annie Dettwiller 2-3, R
Kyndall Ford 1-3
Maddie Brown 0-2, RBI
Gwen Sparks 1-3, R
Libby Kelly 1-2, R, BB
Kaylyn Darden 0-2
Katie Strickland 1-3, 2RBI
Maddie Entler 0-2, R, BB
Pitching
Preslee Lutz (C) 6IP, 9H, 4ER, 2BB, 8K (L)
Gwen Sparks (ND) 7IP, 7H, 1ER, 0BB, 12K (W)
Reach Jacob Smith at (740) 370-0713 ext. 1930, by email at [email protected], or on Twitter @JacobSmithPDT © 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74668/late-runs-push-notre-dame-past-clay-lady-titans-continue-unbeaten-start | 2022-04-15T02:37:18 | 0 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74668/late-runs-push-notre-dame-past-clay-lady-titans-continue-unbeaten-start |
MINFORD — A pair of four-run frames in the bottom of the third and fifth helped the Minford Falcons (5-4, 5-2 SOC II) fly past visiting Portsmouth West on Wednesday by an 11-1 margin.
Junior leadoff hitter Noah Martin led the Falcons at the plate, going 2-of-4 with a team-high three RBI.
Sophomore Carson Cronin and freshman JD Matiz each had a pair of hits for the Falcons who out-hit West 9-2 in the contest.
Junior Cole Borland earned the win on the mound — allowing two hit, no earned runs, issuing four walks and striking out five in five innings.
West (5-4, 2-4 SOC II) drew four walks and reached twice via hits — one each by sophomore Jakob Tipton and senior Eli Sayre.
***
BOX SCORE
West 0 0 0 1 0 — 1 2 3
Minford 1 2 4 0 4 — 11 9 1
West hitting
Jakob Tipton 1-2
Jacob Davis 0-1, R, BB
Eli Sayre 1-2
Reece Coleman 0-1, BB
Cole Windsor 0-1, BB
Wesley Cooper 0-0, BB
Minford hitting
Noah Martin 2-4, 3RBI
Adam Crank 1-1, 2R, 2RBI, 2BB
Aodhan Queen 1-4
Mason Book 1-4, RBI
Branson Alley 0-2, R, BB
Cole Borland 0-2, R, BB
Jacob Lewis 0-0, 2R, 3R
JD Matix 2-3, R, RBI
Carson Cronin 2-2, 3R, RBI, BB
Pitching
Trevor Fike (W) 2.2IP, 6H, 1ER, 4BB, 1K (L)
Jakob Tipton (W) 1.1IP 1H, 2ER, 2BB, 1K
Jacob Davis (W) 0.2IP, 2H, 2ER, 1BB
Cole Borland (M) 5IP, 2H, 0ER, 4BB, 4K (W)
© 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74671/falcons-fly-past-senators | 2022-04-15T02:37:22 | 0 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74671/falcons-fly-past-senators |
LATHAM — After the Green Bobcats’ offensive performance at Western on Wednesday, the scoreboard in Latham may need new lights.
That’s because the Bobcats defeated the host Indians 27-7 — including scoring a season-high 12 runs in the top of the seventh.
As a team, Green (1-8, 1-4 SOC I) collected 12 hits and drew 21 walks. Freshman Brody Stapleton drew a team-high five walks in the contest.
Sophomore Nathaniel Brannigan scored a team-high six runs for the Bobcats and was one of six Green players to have three RBI.
Freshmen Blake Smith, Quincy Merrill, Stapleton, Landon Kimbler, and sophomores Brannigan and Thompson each had three RBI in the win.
Brannigan earned the win on the mound — allowing no earned runs in four-and-one-third innings pitched while striking out six Indians batters.
***
BOX SCORE
Green 3 0 0 6 1 5 12 — 27 12 3
Western 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 X — 7 7 4
Green hitting
Blake Smith 2-4, 4R, 3RBI, 2BB
Quincy Merrill 3-4, 5R, 3RBI, 2BB
Nathaniel Brannigan 2-5, 6R, 3RBI, BB
Brody Stapleton 0-2, 3R, 3RBI, 5BB
Landon Kimbler 2-5, 2R, 3RBI, 2BB
Landon Lewis 1-3, RBI
Trevor Sparks 0-1, R, 2RBI, BB
Braxton Conschafsky 0-3, R, RBI, BB
Eli Fitch 0-1
Ace Thompson 2-3, 3R, 3RBI, 3BB
Matthew Evans 0-0, BB
Austin Ray 0-3, 2R, RBI, BB
Green pitching
Nathaniel Brannigan (G) 4.1IP, 5H, 0ER, 6BB, 6K (W)
© 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74674/bobcats-pummel-indians-27-7 | 2022-04-15T02:37:29 | 1 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74674/bobcats-pummel-indians-27-7 |
LATHAM — The Green Lady Bobcats got on the scoreboard early in Wednesday’s 13-2 road win over Western — scoring five runs in the first inning and never trailing.
As a team, Green (2-6, 2-3 SOC I) combined to out-hit Western 11-5.
Senior Kasey Kimbler led Green from the three-spot in the Lady Bobcats’ lineup, going 3-of-4 at the plate with a team-high five RBI and a pair of runs scored.
Sophomore Ryleigh McDavid went 3-of-3 at the plate with two RBI, while senior catcher Kailyn Neal went 2-of-4 with a pair of RBI.
Senior Gracie Daniels earned the win in the circle for the Lady Bobcats — striking out four, allowing five hits and two earned runs in five innings pitched.
***
BOX SCORE
Green 5 1 3 4 0 — 13 11 0
Western 0 0 0 0 2 — 2 5 2
Green hitting
Adriah Barber 1-3, 2R, RBI
Kyleigh McIntyre 1-4, R, RBI
Kasey Kimbler 3-4, 2R, 5RBI
Emily Brady 1-2, 2R, RBI, BB
Kailyn Neal 2-4, R, 2RBI
Ryleigh McDavid 3-3, 2R, 2RBI
Skyler Neal 0-1
Gracie Daniels 0-3, R, BB
Camryn Pierson 0-1, R, BB
Allie Hensley 0-1, R
Heaven Mattingly 0-1, RBI, BB
Bryleigh Null 0-1
Green pitching
Gracie Daniels (G) 5IP, 5H, 2ER, 1BB, 4K (W)
© 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74679/green-softball-blows-by-western | 2022-04-15T02:37:35 | 0 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74679/green-softball-blows-by-western |
PORTSMOUTH — The Portsmouth Lady Trojans (7-1, 5-0 OVC) plated a pair of runs in the sixth inning to overcome a late deficit and defeat visiting Fairland 3-2 in Ohio Valley Conference play.
With one out in the sixth and Portsmouth trailing 2-1, senior Madison Perry tripled to give the Lady Trojans the potential game-tying run.
Sophomore Olivia Dickerson singled to score Perry and tie the game at 2-2 in the next at-bat.
Katie Born’s ground-out moved Dickerson to second base for senior Faith Phillips — who singled to right field to score Dickerson and give Portsmouth the lead at 3-2.
Phillips and the Portsmouth defense held the Lady Dragons scoreless in the seventh — as they’d done in the final six innings after Fairland plated a pair in the first.
Phillips allowed just five hits in the circle and Portsmouth overcame seven errors to remain unbeaten in league play.
***
BOX SCORE
Fairland 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 — 2 5 0
Portsmouth 1 0 0 0 0 2 X — 3 7 7
Portsmouth hitting
Emily Cheatham 1-3, R
Olivia Ramey 0-3
Madison Perry 3-3, R, RBI
Olivia Dickerson 1-3, R, RBI
Katie Born 0-3
Faith Phillips 1-3, RBI
Ayonna Carr 0-2
Madison Ankrom 0-1
Sydney Johnson 1-2
Kyndal Kearns 0-2
Portsmouth pitching
Faith Phillips (P) 7IP, 5H, 2ER, 0BB, 3K (W)
© 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74682/portsmouth-uses-late-rally-to-upend-fairland | 2022-04-15T02:37:43 | 0 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74682/portsmouth-uses-late-rally-to-upend-fairland |
NEW DELHI (AP) — Popular Bollywood stars Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt were married Thursday in a private ceremony at their Mumbai residence.
The couple wore ivory outfits as they came out and waved to photographers from their apartment building. Kapoor picked Bhatt up and walked back into the apartment with her in his arms.
The wedding ceremony was attended by close relatives, Bollywood stars and cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and his wife.
Kapoor, 39, belongs to Bollywood’s popular Kapoor clan which has dominated the Hindi film industry since the 1940s. His parents, Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor, were prominent Bollywood stars in the 1970-80s.
He is the grandson of veteran actor-director Raj Kapoor, who was rated as Bollywood’s best showman. Raj Kapoor’s father, Prithviraj Kapoor, was an actor who ran a theater company and acted in Hindi classics in the 1940s.
Bhatt, 29, also belongs to a Bollywood family. Her father, Mahesh Bhatt, is a well-known filmmaker, and her mother, Soni Razdan, is a former actress. Bhatt made her debut in Karan Johar’s teen drama “Student of the Year” in 2012. She won an award for playing a kidnapping victim in the road drama ”Highway” in 2014.
Ranbir Kapoor began his film career by assisting producer-director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the film “Black” in 2005. He made his acting debut in Bhansali’s ”Saawariya” in 2007. | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/bollywood-stars-ranbir-kapoor-alia-bhatt-marry-in-mumbai/ | 2022-04-15T02:37:47 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/bollywood-stars-ranbir-kapoor-alia-bhatt-marry-in-mumbai/ |
LUCASVILLE — It’s lonely being at the top sometimes, but right now, indeed the Valley Indians are enjoying their view —in more ways than one —and actually wouldn’t want it any other way.
That’s because, by Wednesday evening, the Indians —already the top-ranked team in the Ohio High School Baseball Coaches Association Division IV statewide poll and the newly-minted Prep Baseball Report Ohio’s Division IV Team of the Week —are alone and atop another set of rankings.
And, these are the ones actually played on the diamond on not on paper, as the Indians are the sole owners of the first-place positioning in the rugged Southern Ohio Conference Division II.
That’s right, the undefeated Indians continued their perfect start to 2022 —thanks to an all-important 3-2 triumph over visiting Wheelersburg on Wednesday at Valley’s “Reservation”.
For the Indians, despite being outhit 7-5, they scratched out three runs of the non-traditional variety — aided by an errant Pirate pickoff throw in the first, followed by Pirate pitcher Hunter Thomas walking three, hitting his counterpart George Arnett with a pitch, and catcher Jace Copley dropping in a blooper between a Bermuda Triangle of Wheelersburg defenders.
The final two Valley runs, which were both earned off Thomas, made it 3-1 through the fourth inning —as the standout junior ace Arnett and the Indians’ defense did the rest, making the plays in the field behind him.
That included the game’s final at-bat, when Wheelersburg trailed 3-2 —but had runners on first and second with two outs.
That’s when Cooper McKenzie, the Pirates’ primary hitter in the three-hole spot and already 2-of-3 with an RBI, hit a fly ball to right centerfield —in which both centerfielder Carter Nickel and rightfielder Hunter Edwards gave good running chase.
The two Indian outfielders appeared to be on a collision course in right center, but communication and call-offs aside, Edwards made the catch —and the Indians preserved the 3-2 win.
The snag also saved Valley’s perfect record —7-0 both overall and in the SOC II.
The Pirates, conversely, fell to an even 4-4 (4-1 SOC II) —but Wednesday was their first league loss through five games.
Had McKenzie’s seventh-stanza hit dropped, it’s likely the Pirates would have taken a 4-3 lead.
But the experience of Arnett on the mound, and Nickel and Edwards in the outfield, turned a potentially disastrous — and even dangerous — situation for the Indians into the final out.
And, a serious SOC II ‘W’.
“With Hunter and Carter out there, that’s two experienced guys, and I would like a little more communication on that, but I guess it wasn’t as dangerous as what it looked or could have been. George made the pitch, (Cooper) McKenzie is their best hitter , and I’m sure that’s who Coach Moore wanted up in that spot. But I told George just before he faced him (McKenzie) to ‘just trust your stuff, don’t give into him and you attack with our plan.’ We’ll see what happens,” said Valley coach Nolan Crabtree. “Let our defense make a play.”
McKenzie had come through in the third inning with a one-out RBI-single to center, crossing Creed Warren — who reached on an infield hit on a bunt — for the 1-1 tie.
Indeed, Wheelersburg coach Derek Moore got the guy he wanted at bat with Wheelersburg’s situation —following a one-out walk to Landon Hutchinson and a two-out single to center by Connor Estep.
But Arnett, as he did most of the rain-and-sun mixed afternoon, got the Pirates popping up on pitches —as the Indians’ infielders and outfielders were busy shagging fly-ball outs.
“We wanted Cooper up there in that situation. He’s been our guy all year so far, and he’s going to continue being our guy,” said Moore. “Cooper was upset with himself, but he is going to get plenty more chances like that. Let that one maybe fuel the fire a little bit. You have to give George (Arnett) a lot of credit. He’s a veteran guy, thrown in a lot of big games for them, and we knew he was going to be crafty. I think if you ask him, he doesn’t have overpowering stuff or blows it by you, but he is going to command that curveball, slider and change-up. He commands his off-speed pitch, fills up the zone, and you’re not going to get many free bases at all off him. Hitting a lot of lazy fly balls off him isn’t going to help you very much in a game like this, especially when his defense makes plays like they did.”
Arnett is arguably the top pitcher in the entire SOC II —as he faced 30 Pirates while scattering seven hits, and hitting Cole Estep with a pitch in the sixth.
He struck out five in the complete-game performance, facing four Wheelersburg batters in innings one, two, five and six —sandwiched around retiring the Pirates 1-2-3 in the fourth.
Arnett stranded seven Pirates, including Connor Estep at third and McKenzie at second in the fourth.
Wheelersburg’s only other run was in the fifth —when Hutchinson doubled to left center, advanced to third on a wild pitch, and scored on an Estep sacrifice fly.
McKenzie was 2-for-4 followed by Estep at 2-for-3 —as they both singled in the opening inning, but a baserunning mistake resulted in the Indians catching Estep in a rundown for the second out.
“We went about attacking their hitters a little differently tonight than what we had tried the last couple of games. We had a good plan, and George executed. He is a big-game pitcher and a great player,” said Crabtree. “He made the pitches that he wanted to, he didn’t give into them, and the defense made plays.”
While Arnett earned the win, it was tough-luck day for Thomas — who started and pitched the first four innings for the second consecutive Pirate game.
While Wheelersburg last played on Friday before visiting Valley, and the Indians appeared on Tuesday at VA Memorial Stadium in an SOC II makeup matchup against Oak Hill, the Pirates —perhaps —didn’t quite have their desired rhythm, as Thomas gave up first-inning singles to Chase Morrow and Chris Queen.
Morrow moved up on a wild pitch —and scored when Thomas’ two-out pickoff throw went awry.
“The first inning, we had some stuff going, got a guy behind 0-2, it’s like let’s just put something on and see what happens here. A little drizzle, a wet ball, and it kind of worked out for us,” said Crabtree. “That’s just playing the game.”
So too is being patient at the plate, which Valley was in the fourth.
With one out, Landon Jones, Hunter Edwards and Colt Buckle all drew one-out walks —sandwiched around Copley’s second hit, which dropped in between three Pirates in shallow right field.
On the walk to Buckle, J.R. Holbrook —pinch-running for Jones —crossed, followed by Thomas hitting Arnett with a pitch two batters later and with two outs.
Thomas, like Arnett and Pirate two-inning reliever Jake Darling, all struck out five —but the fourth-frame free passes certainly impacted the Indians positively, and the Pirates negatively.
“That one inning got away from Hunter, but he pitched well enough to win. And we were happy to see Jake Darling come in and pitch lights out in his two innings,” said Moore. “You and I know when you play baseball, it’s all about rhythm, and getting to play a lot in a lot of days. When it’s hit and miss, you just never know. Developing a rhythm in this game is important.”
Of Valley’s five hits —Queen’s, Copley’s in the second and Edwards’ in the sixth off Darling —were all infield singles.
“I won’t say we had great results hitting the ball, but we had good at-bats,” noted Crabtree. “We got deep into counts, we fouled off a lot of pitches, and forced them to come to us. We didn’t swing at a lot of bad pitches in those spots.”
Moore believed, including the first-inning baserunning mistake, “there was a lot of things that we gave them today”.
“We gave them that out, their first run with the pickoff throw, and their two fourth-inning runs they had one little Texas League hit and the rest were three walks and one hit by pitch. That’s the thing,” said the coach. “With an experienced team like Valley, you can’t gift them runs. When we look back, you could say we gifted them all three. But that’s what good teams do. You give them runs, they are going to find ways to make you pay. All the credit to Valley. They did a really good job.”
So much so, in fact, that the Indians are now all alone atop the SOC II—as their Friday meeting with Waverly will mark the end of their first-half league rotation.
Wheelersburg, meanwhile, will host three-time defending division champion Minford on Friday — but the Falcons already have two league losses.
“We’re going to come battle. You just have to do that every night in this league. I wouldn’t expect anything else,” said Crabtree. “Have we put ourselves in a good position first time through the league? Absolutely we have. But it’s a long way from over, and we have a lot of work to do still. I just want us to slowly get better, keep improving every time out and play hard and play together and just do what we’re asked to do.”
* * *
Wheelersburg 001 010 0 — 2 7 1
Valley 100 200 X — 3 5 1
WHS: Hunter Thomas 4IP, 3R, 2ER, 4H, 1HB, 3BB, 5K, 20BF; Jake Darling 2IP, 0R, 0ER, 1H, 0HB, 0BB, 5K, 7BF
VHS: George Arnett 7IP, 2R, 1ER, 7H, 1HB, 1BB, 5K, 30BF
W — George Arnett ; L — Hunter Thomas
Wheelersburg hitting: Creed Warren 1-4 RS; Connor Estep 2-3 RBI sac fly; Cooper McKenzie 2-4 RBI; Cole Estep HBP; Jake Darling 1-3; Landon Hutchinson 1-2 D RS BB
Valley hitting: George Arnett HBP RBI; Chase Morrow 1-3 RS SB; Chris Queen 1-3; Landon Jones BB; Jace Copley 2-3 RS; Hunter Edwards 1-1 BB SB; Colt Buckle BB RBI; J.R. Holbrook RS
Reach Paul Boggs at (740) 353-3101 ext. 1926, by email at [email protected], or on Twitter @paulboggssports © 2022 Portsmouth Daily Times, all rights reserved | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74687/valley-edges-burg-in-soc-ii | 2022-04-15T02:37:49 | 0 | https://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/sports/74687/valley-edges-burg-in-soc-ii |
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — The brother of rapper Arthur “Archie” Eversole, known for the “We Ready” anthem used by Atlanta’s pro soccer team, has been charged in the musician’s fatal shooting, police said Thursday.
Eversole was found with a gunshot wound at a Chevron gas station just east of Atlanta on March 25 and died at a hospital April 3, DeKalb County police said in a statement.
Eversole’s brother, Alexander Kraus, was charged with murder after being apprehended at a home near the gas station where they say the shooting occurred, DeKalb County police Lt. Shane Smith said in an email. It wasn’t known Thursday whether Kraus has a lawyer who could be reached for comment on his behalf.
Eversole was best known for his 2002 hit that was adopted by fans of the Atlanta United soccer club, which plays it before the start of every home game.
The team said in a statement Thursday that it was “heartbroken” about Eversole’s death.
“A staple in the Atlanta hip-hop scene, Archie adopted Atlanta United before our first season and continued to be one of our club’s most fervent supporters,” the team said. “In addition to his decorated musical career, his voice will long live in our supporters’ minds as ‘We Ready’ billows through the speakers for kickoff at Atlanta United matches.” | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/brother-charged-in-we-ready-rapper-archie-eversoles-death/ | 2022-04-15T02:37:54 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/brother-charged-in-we-ready-rapper-archie-eversoles-death/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Charlie Rose, whose career as a journalist imploded in 2017 due to sexual misconduct allegations, emerged Thursday by posting online a lengthy interview he conducted with investor Warren Buffett.
Rose said in a message on his website that he was proud to have the recent conversation with Buffett. The 80-year-old journalist said it was the first interview he had conducted in more than four years.
“It’s great to see you,” Rose told Buffett, the 91-year-old chief of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world.
“It’s great to see you,” Buffett answered. Their talk lasted 75 minutes and focused solely on Buffett. Rose’s experiences were not discussed.
Rose’s television talk show, which had aired on PBS since 1991, ended abruptly in November 2017 after The Washington Post published a story in which several women who had worked with him alleged a pattern of sexual misconduct that included groping and walking naked in front of them.
He called one 21-year-old staffer to tell her his fantasies of seeing her swim in the nude, the Post said in its investigation, published at the height of the #MeToo movement.
Rose apologized for his actions but it didn’t save his job. He was also fired from “CBS This Morning,” which he had co-hosted with Gayle King since 2012.
On his website, Rose called the Buffett interview “a step in a journey to engage the most interesting people and explore the most compelling ideas in the world.”
In the interview, the two men talked about Buffett’s career, which began when he bought stocks for $114.75 in 1942, when he was 11 years old. He described his typical day, which would include calling a co-worker a half hour before the stock market opened to direct him on what business to conduct — sometimes involving billions of dollars in buying and selling.
Buffett talked about his company’s annual meeting, on April 30, where he planned to talk to and answer questions from thousands of his investors.
To that end, he brushed aside some of Rose’s specific questions, including when the interview broached the topic of the war in Ukraine.
“It doesn’t do me any good — and doesn’t do the world any good — to have me talk about it,” Buffett said.
Asked how time has changed him, Buffett said, “I’ve gotten dumber but I’ve gotten wiser.” He can’t add numbers as quickly, sometimes forgets names and occasionally climbs to the top of the stairs and forgot what he came up for. But allocating capital, he said, “I can do … as well as ever.”
Not everyone on social media welcomed Rose’s return, with some people posting old articles on Twitter about what he was accused of. Rebecca Carroll, author of “Surviving the White Gaze,” posted her December 2017 Esquire article in which she wrote of the “toxic and degrading” atmosphere she found when she was a producer on Rose’s PBS show, and the ramifications of the #MeToo movement for Black women.
“Powerful white men will always reemerge,” Carroll wrote on Twitter. “They will always be fine.” | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/charlie-rose-reemerges-with-first-interview-since-firings/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:01 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/charlie-rose-reemerges-with-first-interview-since-firings/ |
A former personal assistant to Amber Heard said she never saw the actress suffer any physical abuse at the hands of then-husband Johnny Depp — but she said Heard once spit in her face when she asked for a higher salary.
Heard descended into screaming fits of blind rage, sent incoherent text messages at 4 a.m. and was often drunk and high on illegal drugs, Kate James testified in a video deposition that was played in court Thursday during the trial for Depp’s libel suit against Heard.
Depp, on the other hand, was very calm, almost shy, “like a total Southern gentleman,” James said.
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor has accused Heard of indirectly defaming him in a 2018 opinion piece that she wrote for The Washington Post. Heard refers to herself in the article as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” The piece doesn’t name Depp. But his attorneys argue that it clearly references a restraining order that Heard sought in May 2016, right after Depp told her he wanted a divorce.
Depp denies abusing Heard, but Heard’s lawyers say evidence will prove that he did. The actor’s denials, they argue, lack credibility because he frequently drank and used drugs to the point of blacking out and failing to remember anything he did.
The video testimony from James offered an inverse view: Depp was the peaceful one, she said, while Heard was frequently intoxicated and verbally abusive, including to her own mother and sister.
“Her poor sister was treated like a dog that you kicked, basically,” James said.
James, who worked for Heard from 2012 to 2015, said she was paid “very poorly.” She said she was hired with an initial salary of $25 an hour and that her duties ranged from picking up Heard’s dry cleaning to talking with the actress’s Hollywood agents.
James said she also was tasked with picking up two copies of any magazine that featured Heard and storing them in the garage to prevent Depp from seeing them. Heard went into a “blind rage” when James failed to place the magazines in the garage, James said.
Regarding Heard and Depp’s time together, James said Heard was a “very dramatic person” who was deeply insecure in the relationship. Heard often called James to cry and complain about Depp, she said.
“I remember one time she called me when she was alone in New York City, and she was crying and walking around the streets,” James said. She said she told Heard to go inside: “I was worried that the paparazzi might take a photo of her.”
Some of the deposition focused on a text message that Depp had sent to James after he and Heard split up. Depp’s text read: “Come over for a spot of purple and we’ll fix her flabby ass nice and good.”
A lawyer asked if “spot of purple” meant wine and whether “her” meant Heard. James said she didn’t want to speculate.
“This is the way he writes,” James said of Depp. “It’s very random and you don’t sort of question it. … He writes in a very abstract way.”
Lawyers also presented a video deposition of Laurel Anderson, a couple’s therapist who worked with Heard and Depp in 2015, when they were ages 29 and 52, respectively.
Anderson said both suffered childhood abuse. As a couple, they were engaged in “mutual abuse,” she testified.
Heard’s father beat her, Anderson said, adding, “It was a point of pride to her if she felt disrespected to initiate a fight.”
Heard would also rather be in a fight with Depp than see him leave, and “would strike him to keep him there,” Anderson said.
The therapist recalled a time when Heard told her that Depp “was ‘stepping up,’ as she would say, on a lot of drugs.”
“And she slapped him because he was being incoherent and talking about being with another woman,” Anderson said. She noted that Depp’s mother was in the hospital at the time.
Anderson said Depp told her that Heard “gave as good as she got.” She also said that in at least one session in which she saw Heard alone, the actress told her that Depp hit her. She said Heard showed her bruises, both in photos and in person.
Anderson said Heard also told her that Depp at one point allegedly said, “No one likes you. You’re getting fame from me. I’m falling out of love with you. You’re a whore.”
Anderson also said that Heard’s “jackhammer style of talking” and habit of cutting off Depp overwhelmed him.
Heard “wanted to want to divorce” but also didn’t, and was still figuring out what to do, Anderson said. “She loved him. He loved her. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that what they were doing wasn’t healthy.”
Both Depp and Heard are expected to testify at the trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court, scheduled for six weeks, along with actors Paul Bettany and James Franco and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
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This story has been edited to correct a word in Anderson’s quote to “jackhammer,” not “chat-hammer.” | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/depp-witness-actor-was-southern-gentleman-heard-was-mean/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:08 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/depp-witness-actor-was-southern-gentleman-heard-was-mean/ |
Soprano Anna Netrebko has been hired by the Monte Carlo Opera to sing this month following the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to drop her for failing to repudiate Russia President Vladimir Putin.
The Monte Carlo Opera said Thursday that Netrebko will sing the title role in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” in performances on April 22, 24, 27 and 30. The 50-year-old Russian replaces an originally announced Maria Agresta.
Tenor Yusif Eyvazov, Netrebko’s husband, is scheduled to sing Des Grieux.
Netrebko was to have sung five performances in a revival of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Met in New York from April 30 to May 14. She was replaced by Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska for Turandot and by Italian soprano Eleonora Buratto for a revival of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” at the Met from Nov. 3-19.
Netrebko issued a statement in early March that she was “opposed to this senseless war of aggression and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now.” She did not directly mention Putin.
Netrebko, who is from Krasnodar, received the People’s Artist of Russia honor from Putin in 2008. She was photographed in 2014 holding a Novorussian flag after giving a 1 million ruble donation (then $18,500) to the opera hose in Donetsk, a Ukrainian city controlled by pro-Russia separatists.
She said in late March she met Putin “only a handful of times in my entire life, most notably on the occasion of receiving awards in recognition of my art or at the Olympics opening ceremony.”
“I am not a member of any political party nor am I allied with any leader of Russia,” Netrebko said in late March. “I acknowledge and regret that past actions or statements of mine could have been misinterpreted.” | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/dropped-by-met-netrebko-to-sing-at-monte-carlo-opera/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:15 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/dropped-by-met-netrebko-to-sing-at-monte-carlo-opera/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — A coalition of arts organizations is distributing more than $4 million in aid to nonprofits around the U.S. that have sustained losses during the pandemic.
The Literary Arts Emergency Fund, established in 2020, includes the Academy of American Poets, the Community of Literary Magazine & Presses and the National Book Foundation. It will distribute $4.3 million in funding to 313 literary arts organizations and publishers around the country.
Beneficiaries range from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to the Texas Book Festival. The emergency fund, which allotted $3.5 million in 2020, was made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
“These grants remain vital because the impact of the emergency of COVID-19 remains very present in our lives,” Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement Thursday.
“Throughout the United States, readers, writers, poets, students, and teachers rely on our country’s vibrant ecosystem of literary magazines, presses, and organizations— one that reveals the power and the possibility of the literary arts to the broader public. We are proud to continue our support for this emergency fund and look forward to the remarkable poetry and literature it will help cultivate.”
But the grants will not cover all, or even most of the losses of its recipients. According to the Literary Fund, those being supported project a cumulative deficit of more than $18 million.
“In some ways, this year was even more challenging than last year for literary organizations and publishers as there were fewer opportunities to receive emergency funding but also increased costs including producing hybrid events,” Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation, said in a statement.
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Online: poets.org/literary-arts-emergency-fund-awards-43-million-historically-under-funded-literary-arts-field-it | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/hundreds-of-arts-organizations-to-receive-emergency-funding/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:21 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/hundreds-of-arts-organizations-to-receive-emergency-funding/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Journalists are sounding an alarm about the spread of disinformation in society and how it affects their jobs on a daily basis, along with skepticism on whether traditional methods to combat it really work.
The free speech advocates PEN America found in a survey of journalists released Thursday that 90% said their jobs have been affected by false content created with the intent to deceive.
Disinformation takes many forms: former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, unproven COVID-19 treatments spreading online and wild QAnon theories about pedophilia. It could be as simple as a local politician lying about an opponent’s record or this week’s debate over whether video showed bird poop landing on President Joe Biden’s jacket during a speech.
When more than 1,000 journalists returned the survey, PEN America was struck at how images in written responses “kept coming up with people being flooded with disinformation,” said Dru Menaker, the organization’s chief operating officer.
“Clearly, we have touched a nerve,” she said.
Four in five respondents labeled it a serious problem and most say they deal with it regularly, either through sources passing along false information or the need to debunk something spreading online.
False information can be spread through bots, or in doctored photos and video that needs to be verified, Menaker said. It has spread in large part because its purveyors find it effective.
Luke O’Brien, a journalist and fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, is now an expert on a beat that hardly existed a decade ago. He said he’s been stunned at how fast misinformation spreads into the media.
“It just gets worse and worse,” he said.
While most journalists work to combat it, 11% of those surveyed admitted that they had unwittingly passed along false information, and 17% said they avoided doing a story because they feared being subject to a “fake news” backlash that would seek to discredit their reporting.
Asked by PEN America about sources of the most egregious misinformation they’ve encountered, 76% of the journalists cited right-wing conspiracy theorists (35% said left-wing conspiracy theorists). Seventy percent said government officials or politicians, 65% said advocacy groups and 54% mentioned organizations specifically designed to create disinformation.
Public hostility toward journalists and a business climate that has reduced ranks in the field, particularly outside of big cities and among those who cover minority communities, has amplified the issue.
One Los Angeles Times reporter who returned the survey told about reporting on a militia-backed group that was using disinformation to gain power in local government. The group’s leader went on a podcast to call the reporter and a colleague Nazis who needed to be “taken care of,” and she now keeps a bulletproof vest in her closet.
O’Brien said he first became aware of bad actors operating online in the mid-2010s when covering the harassment of women in the video game industry.
Several news organizations have strengthened their efforts to root out disinformation in recent years. The Associated Press, for example, has a 12-person verification unit that investigates claims spread online, along with a separate fact-check operation and reporters that cover disinformation as a news beat.
AP has a weekly column, “Not Real News,” that dissects the most popular but completely untrue stories circulating online.
Many don’t have the capacity, though. “We need more journalists,” one survey respondent said. “The ones who are left are overwhelmed and do not have the time to take on the entire world of disinformation.”
Many of the journalists don’t think enough is being done to train people on how to deal with these issues. Yet there’s also little unanimity in how to do this.
While some believe it’s important to report on false claims, others believe that only gives them greater circulation. O’Brien said there are ways to report them without amplification, by not including links, for example.
It’s important to report on what is going on for the historical record, he said. Journalists should also devote resources to reporting on who is behind disinformation, both bankrolling and executing it.
Fact-checkers are often met with resentment, and have to guard against readers who feel they are being talked down to, Menaker said. Some of those surveyed concede that journalists have to do a better job showing to readers or viewers that they’re not remote, that they are part of the community.
Frighteningly, there may be no way to combat this effectively. And some people simply won’t accept it if presented with facts contrary to what they believe.
“Some people are despairing that people have just become unmoored from facts, that there is a substantial part of the audience that may be unreachable,” she said. | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/journalists-despair-over-toll-of-disinformation-on-jobs/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:27 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/journalists-despair-over-toll-of-disinformation-on-jobs/ |
ROME (AP) — Letizia Battaglia, an Italian photographer who documented the arrests of Mafia bosses and the bodies of their victims, has died in her native Sicilian city of Palermo. She was 87.
Among the authorities announcing her death was Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando, who stood vigil next to her coffin during her wake in city hall on Thursday, a day after her death. No cause of death was cited, but Battaglia had been in frail health for some time.
Much of her work, predominantly in black-and-white, explored the everyday lives of those who lived in Palermo’s poor neighborhoods, where Cosa Nostra bosses held sway. Battaglia photographed ordinary Sicilians in moments of grief and joy.
Among her noted photos was that of the body of Sicily’s assassinated governor being held by his brother, who 35 years later would be elected Italy’s president.
Battaglia recounted how, on Jan. 6, 1980, she raced to the scene of a fatal shooting of a man in a car and began photographing it, before she knew who the victim was.
Only shortly later would she learn that the deceased was the governor, Piersanti Mattarella, and that one of the men rushing to hold his body as it was removed from the car was his brother, Sergio, who 35 years later would become Italy’s president.
Asked frequently about that photograph, Battaglia would say that while she captured a scene of death, for her it represented a moment of hope as Sergio Mattarella would have the resolve and courage to follow a political career and later hold Italy’s highest office.
Besides death in Palermo’s streets, Battaglia photographed their life. The cover photo of a book of her photographs, “Palermo amore amaro” (Palermo bitter love) features a thin young girl, almost an adolescent, holding a soccer ball in one hand and giving the camera a hard look as she leans against a graffiti-marred door in 1982 in Kalsa, a tough Palermo neighborhood.
Another photo captures a girl, washing dishes in a home so poor, there’s a toilet bowl in the kitchen. Other photographs show couples embracing at the beach or kissing in the countryside.
Other photos by Battaglia capture scenes all too familiar to Palermo’s people, especially in the 1980s, when Mafia clan turf wars bloodied the city. One 1983 photo shows three bodies — one slumped on the ceramic floor, another on a couch and the third in an armchair — in a triple homicide in an apartment.
There there’s the photo of a mother, advanced in years, holding the photo of her son, a radio journalist who dared denounce the local mobsters by name on the air — and who was killed, tied to a railroad track and blown apart by sticks of dynamite stuffed into his clothes.
“Letizia Battaglia with her snapshots captured the souls of Palermo,” Sen. Pietro Grasso, who formerly was Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor, wrote on Facebook in a condolence tribute. ”Those of the women and of the girls that she took photos of for all of her life, and the crime photos, of the Mafia, often arriving at the scene of the crime before the police forces.”
She captured the “sorrow of the victims the arrogance of the mob bosses, the blood on the street, the protagonists in the fight against Cosa Nostra,” Grasso said.
Born in Palermo on March 5, 1935, she married when she was 16 and had three daughters. In her 30s, she began to take photographs, working in Milan but then hired by a Sicilian newspaper to work in Palermo. Battaglia’s work was also published by major Italian newsweekly magazines L’Espresso and Panorama.
Battaglia also spent several years in politics, serving as Palermo culture commissioner during one of Orlando’s earlier administrations and as a representative in Sicily’s regional legislature.
Volcanic in personality, forever young in outlook, Battaglia, whose surname means “battle” in Italian, worked through her last months of failing health. One of her last assignments was the cover for 7, a weekly magazine of Corriere della Sera daily. The photo portrayed a 19-year-old Italian singer-songwriter, Ariete,
In an interview in the “Palermo amore amaro” book, the interviewer notes at the end that the two of them in their conversation never spoke about the Mafia.
“Well, better,” Battaglia replied. “Why always talk about them. Let’s step over them.”
Her family said her remains would be cremated and scattered in the sea near Palermo at her request. | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/letizia-battaglia-who-shot-life-and-death-in-palermo-dies/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:34 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/letizia-battaglia-who-shot-life-and-death-in-palermo-dies/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Before he was working with Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse and many others, Mark Ronson was a teen DJ in 1990s downtown New York, a place and time he will look back on in an upcoming book.
The Oscar and Grammy-winning producer and songwriter has a deal with Grand Central Publishing for “93 ‘Til Infinity,” scheduled for 2023. Ronson says he will write a combination memoir-DJ study-New York celebration, centering the narrative on favorite venues and events.
“Before smartphones hit the dancefloor and bottle service & VIP banquettes shrunk the club, in the 90’s people stayed all night in the same place to dance, hustle, politic, and party like no one was watching — ascending hip hop moguls, artists, hustlers, models, posers, dancers and hard-working 9 to 5’ers all rubbing shoulders with each other,” Ronson said in a statement Thursday.
“At that moment, New York was still the center of the music game and in the land of Biggie, Wu-Tang and Tribe, we celebrated them every night. More importantly, this era also happened to be the most exciting time in my life. “ | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/mark-ronson-will-remember-the-dj-life-in-upcoming-book/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:42 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/mark-ronson-will-remember-the-dj-life-in-upcoming-book/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oprah Winfrey and the Smithsonian Channel are partnering to highlight racial disparities in the health care system through a new campaign and documentary.
The network revealed on Thursday the Color of Care campaign to create a solution toward health equity. The campaign will follow the premiere of Winfrey’s “The Color of Care” documentary, which airs May 1.
Through Harpo Productions, Winfrey will executive produce the documentary that chronicles how people of color suffer from systematically substandard health care in the United States, with the COVID-19 pandemic being a catalyst to shed light on the issue.
The documentary will coincide with the campaign, which expects to take a broader look at the topic. The yearlong campaign will feature multiple activations in the coming months, including a digital series. It will bring together impacted communities, medical and nursing schools, health care workers and policymakers in hopes of finding a solution to inequities.
“The COVID crisis has exposed gross inequalities in our healthcare system which, if left unaddressed, will again disproportionately impact people of color during the next health emergency,” said James Blue III, the head of the Smithsonian Channel. “This campaign will work to address these inequalities.” | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/oprah-smithsonian-focus-on-health-care-racial-disparities/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:48 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/oprah-smithsonian-focus-on-health-care-racial-disparities/ |
TROUTMAN, N.C. (AP) — A person was shot and wounded outside the North Carolina home of rapper DaBaby, authorities said Thursday, but it was unclear if he himself was involved or hurt.
DaBaby and at least one other person were at the home when the shooting happened Wednesday evening, Troutman Police Chief Josh Watson told The Associated Press. But he wouldn’t say who was shot or who did the shooting, citing an ongoing investigation. He said the injuries of the unidentified wounded person were not life-threatening.
A spokesperson for the rapper didn’t immediately respond to an email request for comment on Thursday.
Troutman, located in Iredell County, is 35 miles (56 km) north of Charlotte.
The shooting is the latest in a series of incidents involving DaBaby, whose real name is Jonathan Kirk. In 2019, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon after a fatal shooting at a Walmart in Huntersville, North Carolina, just south of Troutman. He was not charged in the shooting.
Last year, the Grammy-nominated rapper was arrested after he took a loaded gun into an upscale store on Rodeo Drive. | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/police-person-shot-outside-north-carolina-home-of-dababy/ | 2022-04-15T02:38:55 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/police-person-shot-outside-north-carolina-home-of-dababy/ |
PARIS (AP) — Films by David Cronenberg, Park Chan-wook and Kelly Reichardt will vie for the coveted Palme d’Or at a Cannes Film Festival set to unspool against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
Cannes film festival artist director Thierry Frémaux and president Pierre Lescure announced the lineup to this year’s festival, Cannes’ 75th, in a press conference Thursday in Paris. After canceling the 2020 event and hosting a slightly scaled down 2021 edition, the French Riviera festival is looking to reclaim its pre-pandemic allure with some 35,000 accredited attendees expected next month.
The 18 films announced in Cannes’ prestigious competition lineup feature new works by several former Palme winners, including Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda(“Broker”), Swedish social satirist Ruben Ostlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“Tori and Lokita”).
Also in competition: Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” starring Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen; Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” which reunites her with “Wendy and Lucy” star Michelle Williams; Chan-wook’s Korean mystery thriller “Decision to Leave”; and French filmmaker Claire Denis’ “Stars at Noon” with Margaret Qualley.
The 75th anniversary of the French Riviera film extravaganza “is happening in special circumstances: the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, a world that has changed and will keep changing,” Fremaux said.
The biggest Hollywood splashes expected at Cannes had already been announced, including a screening of “Top Gun: Maverick,” which will be accompanied by a tribute to star Tom Cruise. The “Top Gun” sequel will play out of competition, as will Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic “Elvis,” starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.
Organizers will announce the jury at a later date.
Cannes’ international village of flag-waving pavilions annually hosts more than 80 countries from around the world. But organizers earlier said no Russian delegations would be welcome at the this year because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian director, Kirill Serebrennikov, who recently fled Russia for Berlin after several years banned from travel, will premiere his latest film, about composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky
As usual, most of the directors in the competition are men. Only three of the 18 films competing for the Palme d’Or were directed by women. Last year, Julia Ducournau became only the second woman in Cannes history to win the top prize, for her film “Titane,” the body-horror thriller.
The festival will open on May 17 with the premiere of the zombie comedy “Final Cut,” by “The Artist” director Michel Hazanvicius. The film had earlier been scheduled to debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival but was pulled when the festival shifted to a virtual edition amid a virus surge.
Ethan Coen will debut his first feature without his brother, Joel, in the out-of-competition documentary “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.” Other highlights include George Miller’s first film since 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”: “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance with Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. And Brett Morgan will premiere “Moonage Daydream,” a David Bowie documentary.
As has been the case since 2017, no Netflix films are in competition at Cannes. The streamer and the festival have been an impasse due to the country’s rigid windowing rules. Once a film plays in cinemas in France, it can’t stream for 15 months. Earlier this year, though, Netflix signed a three-year agreement with French film guilds to spend a minimum of $45 million financing French and European films to play theatrically in France.
The Cannes Film Festival runs May 17-28. | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/top-gun-to-star-at-cannes-film-fest-under-ukraine-shadow/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:03 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/top-gun-to-star-at-cannes-film-fest-under-ukraine-shadow/ |
The Justice Department is improving language access to its programs to help people with limited English proficiency better report crimes. The Interior Department is providing technical assistance to Native American tribes to help them apply for grants. The Energy Department is helping low-income households access programs to weatherize their homes and save energy.
Those efforts are among hundreds of strategies and commitments the Biden administration released Thursday. They are the product of an executive order that President Joe Biden signed hours after taking office with the goal of advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities across the federal government.
The order was the first of its kind by a president, said Chiraag Bains, deputy assistant to the president for racial justice and equity.
“We set the mission and the mandate for every agency, the entire federal government, to center equity in all that we do,” Bains told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
After more than a year of review, more than 90 federal agencies, including all major Cabinet departments, released their “equity action plans” on Thursday.
The plans outline more than 300 strategies and commitments that aim to make federal policies fairer for everyone, including poorer communities and communities of color; tribal, rural and LGBTQ communities; and people with disabilities and women and girls. The White House posted an overview of the plans on its website Thursday.
They were discussed at a White House event hosted Thursday by domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, budget director Shalanda Young and members of the Cabinet. Biden, a Democrat, has one of the most diverse Cabinets, with Black and Hispanic people and women leading major departments, including Defense, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Some of the equity plans have been announced, such as work by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to close the racial gap in homeownership, address disproportionate rates of homelessness among underserved communities and reduce bias in home appraisals.
Others strategies are being made public for the first time, such as Defense Department efforts to promote the use of artificial intelligence technology to reduce algorithmic bias by investing in the development of a more diverse AI workforce. That work includes partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities.
Equity action teams at every agency led the reviews. Bains said that, taken together, the strategies “will advance equity and justice so that everybody can thrive in America.” | https://www.wivb.com/news/administration-unveils-steps-to-boost-racial-equity-in-govt/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:09 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/administration-unveils-steps-to-boost-racial-equity-in-govt/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — The average salary in the major leagues rebounded to $4.4 million on opening day, boosted by a frenzy of free agent signings before and after the 99-day lockout, according to a study of baseball contracts by The Associated Press.
New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer set a season record at $43.3 million, topping the previous mark established last year by Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer at $38 million. Scherzer earns more than all the current players on the Baltimore Orioles combined.
The average of $4,414,184 was up 5.9% from the $4,167,164 at the start of last season and just below the record of $4,451,508 set in 2017, before the salary slide that angered players during the labor contract that expired last December.
Major League Baseball projects opening-day payrolls at about $4.5 billion, up almost 10% from the previous high of approximately $4.1 billion.
This year’s average would have been higher had active rosters not been expanded from 26 to 28 through May 1 following the shortened spring training. Factoring out the added players who are at the $700,000 minimum or close to it, the average would have been a record $4.62 million.
In addition, this year’s final average will be boosted by the new labor contract’s $50 million bonus pool for lower-salaried players not yet eligible for arbitration. Adding that figure and dropping the added 60 players, the average would be $4.68 million.
The average salary declines over the course of a season as higher-paid veterans are released and replaced by lower-salaried players.
The Los Angeles Dodgers top the major leagues at nearly $285 million, up from $241 million at the start of last season.
The Mets are second at $266 million in their second season under owner Steven Cohen, up from $186 million last year and $154 million in 2019, the last full season under the Wilpon and Katz families.
The New York Yankees are third at just under $237 million, followed by Philadelphia ($224 million) and San Diego and Boston ($212 million each).
World Series champion Atlanta is eighth at $184 million, and AL champion Houston is 10th at $174 million.
Oakland, which traded several stars after the lockout, is last at $48 million, down from $83 million last opening day and the Athletics’ lowest for a full season since 2008.
Other low payrolls are Baltimore ($58 million), Cleveland ($60 million), Pittsburgh ($62 million), and Miami (just under $80 million).
The Orioles totaled $38 million for their current players, with just over $20 million going toward the final season of the seven-year contract of first baseman Chris Davis, who retired after years of injuries and three straight sub-.200 batting averages.
Scherzer was followed at the top of the salary list by Angels outfielder Mike Trout at $37.1 million, Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon at $36.6 million, Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole at $36 million. Minnesota shortstop Carlos Correa at $35.1 million and San Diego third baseman Manny Machado at $34 million.
Thirteen players earn $30 million or more, 48 earn at least $20 million and 133 at least $10 million. More than half the players, 514, earn at least $1 million.
After several years of widening, payroll disparity among players decreased slightly.
The 50 highest-paid players are getting 30.3% of salaries, down from 33.4% at the start of last season but still above the 28.6% in 2017. The 100 highest-paid are receiving 48.9%, down from 52.4% last year but above the 42.5% in 2017.
Of 975 players on opening day active rosters, injured lists, the restricted list and the bereavement list, 461 (47%) had salaries under $1 million, up from 46% last year. The minimum was raised from $570,500 to $700,000; 57 earned the minimum and 375 were below $730,000.
The median salary — the point at which an equal number of players are above and below — rose by $50,000 to $1.2 million, down from $1.4 million in 2019 and well below the $1.65 million record high at the start of 2015.
The AP’s figures include salaries and prorated shares of signing bonuses and other guaranteed income. For some players, parts of deferred money are discounted to reflect current values. For the 23 players remaining eligible for salary arbitration, the midpoints of the player requests and team offers were used.
Luxury tax payrolls computed by Major League Baseball are different, using average annual values of contracts on 40-man rosters plus about $18 million per team for benefits and extended benefits and a 1/30 share of the pre-arbitration bonus pool.
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.wivb.com/news/ap-exclusive-mlb-average-salary-up-5-9-after-lockout/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:15 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/ap-exclusive-mlb-average-salary-up-5-9-after-lockout/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stephen Miller, who served as a top aide to President Donald Trump, was questioned for hours Thursday by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
Miller was a senior adviser for policy during the Trump administration and a central figure in many of the Republican’s decisions. He had resisted previous efforts by the committee, filing a lawsuit last month seeking to quash a subpoena for his phone records.
Miller was interviewed virtually for about eight hours, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private testimony. A second person also confirmed that Miller appeared before the committee. A spokesperson for the committee said the panel had no comment, and Miller did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Miller is the latest in a series of sit-downs the committee has scored with those in Trump’s inner circle as lawmakers move closer to the former president by questioning people who were with him on the day of the attack or were his confidants in the weeks leading up to it.
His appearance comes weeks after Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, also agreed to sit down with congressional investigators, months after the committee had first reached out.
Members of the panel said Kushner’s testimony in late March, which lasted more than six hours, was helpful. Ivanka Trump, who was with her father in the White House on Jan. 6, was questioned for eight hours last week as congressional investigators tried to piece together her father’s failed effort to delay the certification of the 2020 election results.
The nine-member panel subpoenaed the former Trump adviser in November along with Steve Bannon and former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the panel’s chairman, said at the time that Miller was aware of and had participated in “efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud” and had encouraged state legislatures to alter the outcome of the 2020 election by appointing alternate electors.
Thompson has also said that Miller helped prepare Trump’s remarks for a rally on the Ellipse that preceded the insurrection and was with Trump when he spoke.
The House voted last week to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their monthlong refusal to comply with subpoenas. The move was the third time the panel has referred people in the former president’s orbit to the Justice Department for potential prosecution for contempt. The first two referrals, sent late last year, were for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Bannon.
The contempt referral against Bannon resulted in an indictment, with a trial set to start in July. The Justice Department has been slower to decide whether to prosecute Meadows, much to the committee’s frustration.
By agreeing to cooperate, Miller appears to be looking to avoid the fate of those former advisers and administration officials.
For the committee, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, the central facts of the insurrection are known, but what members are hoping to do with the more than 850 interviews and over 100,000 documents is fill in the remaining gaps about the attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers say they are committed to presenting a full accounting to ensure it never happens again.
The panel is examining every aspect of the riot, including what Trump was doing while it unfolded and any connections between the White House and the Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol building.
Members plan to release information in the coming months as the committee begins to hold public hearings and eventually release a series of reports on the insurrection. While there have been discussions about the possibility of eventually pursuing a criminal referral against Trump, lawmakers have not made a final decision.
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Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed to this report. | https://www.wivb.com/news/ap-source-trump-aide-miller-to-testify-to-jan-6-committee/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:22 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/ap-source-trump-aide-miller-to-testify-to-jan-6-committee/ |
RISON, Ark. (AP) — A 20-year-old Arkansas woman was killed when a tree fell on her home as severe storms swept through the state and a possible tornado ripped roofs off homes in Alabama, officials said.
The woman’s death occurred Wednesday as part of a multiday severe weather outbreak that caused tornadoes, powerful winds and huge hail in parts of the central and southern United States.
A weak tornado confirmed by the National Weather Service tore roofs from homes in a public housing community and peppered cars with debris Wednesday night in rural Greene County, Alabama, located about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Birmingham. Billy Hicks, who lives in the area, told WBMA-TV he was lying down when he heard a rush of wind that lasted only a few seconds.
“I jumped up and put my clothes on, put my shoes on when everything was over with. I come to the side door and looked across the street. I knew that something had hit all these houses,” said Hicks, who got in his car to go check on neighbors.
Authorities swarmed the area but didn’t find anyone who was hurt, said Zac Bolding of Greene County Emergency Medical Services.
“Most of the people we talked to as we were doing a house-to-house search explained that they were in their bathroom or an interior hallway, so they were listening to those warnings and without that I think we would have been looking at a much different situation,” he said.
In Arkansas, the woman was died when a tree toppled on her home in Rison shortly after 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, pinning her to the couch, said Stephen McClellan, Cleveland County’s emergency management coordinator. Rison is about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of Little Rock.
A day earlier, 23 people were injured in the central Texas town of Salado. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth said Wednesday that the twister was rated an EF3 with peak wind speeds of 165 mph (265 kph). On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott declared Bell County, where Salado is situated, and nearby Williamson County to hasten state assistance to storm-ravaged areas.
Tornadoes were also reported Tuesday in parts of Iowa and Minnesota. Residents in the small southeastern Minnesota farming community of Taopi were cleaning up after a devastating tornado destroyed half of the town’s homes, toppled tall trees and left piles of debris.
A tornado that was rated EF2 with peak wind speeds of 130 mph (209 kph) struck Taopi near the Iowa border late Tuesday night, tearing the roofs off houses, overturning vehicles and bringing down power lines. There were no reports of serious injuries.
Volunteers arrived Wednesday to help residents clean up the debris in the community of about 80 people. Family members sifted through rubble looking for keepsakes.
“Half the town is gone,” City Clerk Jim Kiefer said. Of Taopi’s 22 homes, at least 10 are beyond repair, with roofs and walls missing, he said. Kiefer said his house is OK, but his mother’s home is a total loss.
“She won’t be going home,” he said.
Also, a blizzard struck North Dakota this week, closing the state Capitol, schools, government offices and some businesses for a third day Thursday.
The National Weather Service’s blizzard warning for much of the state and smaller sections of South Dakota and Montana remained in effect Thursday. More than a foot of snow (30 centimeters) has fallen in Bismarck with about 2 feet (61 centimeters) in Dickinson and Glenburn.
“For the month of April it’s not uncommon to get the snow. Now, snow of this magnitude — this is something that’s a little bit more unique,” said Rick Krolak, at the weather service’s Bismarck office. | https://www.wivb.com/news/arkansas-woman-killed-when-tree-falls-on-home-during-storms/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:29 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/arkansas-woman-killed-when-tree-falls-on-home-during-storms/ |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — As a casino dealer, Shamikah Townsend knows when the odds are in her favor.
And they definitely are right now.
While working at one Atlantic City casino last year, she went to a job fair held by a different one, and was surprised at how instantly in-demand she was when the recruiter wanted to hire her as a craps dealer.
“She said, ‘I’ll pay you to move to Florida in two weeks,'” Townsend said. “I didn’t know craps, so I had to be honest and tell her, but I went out and I learned it.”
On Monday, Townsend made her move, getting hired on the spot at a job fair held by the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City.
Townsend is part of a great hiring wave taking place at casinos across the nation as the gambling halls compete to add staff while recovering from the coronavirus pandemic that drove customers away and led to staff reductions.
But casinos are just one of many industries struggling to add new workers, and they find themselves competing with each other not only for casino workers, but for people with experience in the hotel, restaurant and tourism industries, to name just a few.
“Gaming is facing the same labor issues that we see across the broader economy,” said Casey Clark, senior vice president of the American Gaming Association, the casino industry’s national trade group. “In our recent CEO survey, the labor shortage is a top concern across the country.
“Competition for talent is a huge impediment for growth, and we’re also experiencing an expansion of gaming with customer demand increasing,” he said. “Those things are problematic when they happen together.”
That has led to some innovative tactics, including the use of virtual reality goggles at some MGM Resorts International job fairs to let applicants experience what the job will be like before signing on the dotted line.
Atlantic City’s casinos are also talking with state government agencies about funding new transit options to get people to jobs at casinos from farther-out places. One possibility: something like the contract the Borgata had with a state transit agency in 2008 for a daily shuttle bus between its Atlantic City casino and Camden — an hour-long trip reaching clear across the state.
In Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, an economic development official said last month more than 40,000 jobs have gone unfilled since the state’s casinos reopened after a temporary closure in 2020. During one job fair in February, Caesars Entertainment was looking to hire 500 people.
On Friday in Las Vegas, about 6,000 people are expected to attend a jobs fair in which 105 casino and other employers will offer 13,000 jobs.
“Work is available whether you are a first-time job seeker, changing fields, newly relocated to the area or retired and wish to return to work,” said Wanda Gispert, a vice president with MGM Resorts.
Nationwide, there were about 1.65 million workers employed in the gambling, amusement and recreation sectors of the U.S. economy in March, representing about 91% of the pre-pandemic workforce, Clark said. The AGA said it does not have a figure for casino employment alone.
Joe Lupo, president of Atlantic City’s Hard Rock casino, is also president of the Casino Association of New Jersey. He estimates there are 2,000 full and part-time casino jobs open in Atlantic City right now, where the overall workforce of 22,000 is down from 49,000 in 2003.
“Coming out of COVID, especially last year, after the restrictions were lifted, the workforce supply just has not been available,” he said. “It’s been difficult for all of us to find enough people. I certainly know after meeting with everyone last week that every property is hiring.”
That has very practical effects in casino resorts, which might not be able to open all their hotel rooms, or open all the craps or roulette tables they have. Restaurants that used to serve 700 tables a night may only be able to do 300, executives said.
As they are in other industries, workers are reaping the benefits of switching jobs, or taking a new one after being unemployed for a time. Casinos are increasing wages and benefits, and are offering to train workers without the type of experience that was once required just to get a foot in the door for an interview.
“Everybody’s looking to hire the same person,” said Bill Callahan, general manager of the Ocean casino in Atlantic City. “We always need people.”
In some departments, “people that made $14 an hour a year ago might now be making $16 or $17,” Callahan said.
Ocean is starting an in-house training program to teach people how to become dealers, something most applicants had to learn on their own before, Callahan added.
The Morongo casino in Cabazon, California, has been regularly holding job fairs since December, and has at least four more scheduled for this month.
In North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians said last month it needed nearly 900 additional workers for its two casinos in the state. Tribal leaders are considering recruiting workers from other countries and housing them in dormitories.
And in West Virginia, racetrack casinos told state regulators last month that a shortage of workers is preventing them from operating at full strength for a third year in a row.
Townsend, the newly hired dealer in Atlantic City, says circumstances are coming together nicely for her.
“I wanted to move up and improve my situation,” she said. “These places have to compete with everybody else for workers now, and there’s money to be had.”
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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/a-safe-bet-if-you-want-a-casino-job-odds-are-on-your-side/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:36 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/a-safe-bet-if-you-want-a-casino-job-odds-are-on-your-side/ |
In his first letter to Amazon shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy offered a defense of the wages and benefits the company gives its warehouse workers while also vowing to improve injury rates inside the facilities.
Jassy, who took over from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as CEO last July, wrote the company has researched and created a list of the top 100 “employee experience pain points” and is working to solve them.
“We’re also passionate about further improving safety in our fulfillment network, with a focus on reducing strains, sprains, falls, and repetitive stress injuries,” he wrote.
The company is set to face two shareholder votes next month tied to workplace injuries. One calls for an independent audit into the working conditions and treatment of its warehouse workers, while the other seeks to assess whether Amazon’s policies give rise to racial and gender disparities in its workplace injury rates. The retailer had argued against both proposals, but U.S. securities regulators disagreed and allowed the resolutions to stand.
A report released this week by Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of four labor unions, found Amazon employed 33% of all U.S. warehouse workers in 2021, but was responsible for 49% of all injuries in the industry. Jassy pushed back on the report during an interview with CNBC Thursday morning, saying it was not accurate.
He further wrote in theshareholder letter that the company’s injury rates can sometimes be misunderstood, saying it has operations jobs that fit both the “warehousing” and “courier and delivery” categories.
Offering his own data, Jassy acknowledged the company’s warehouse injury rates “were a little higher than the average” compared to other warehouses, but lower than average compared to Amazon’s courier and delivery peers.
“This makes us about average relative to peers, but we don’t seek to be average,” Jassy wrote. “We want to be best in class.”
Union organizers in Staten Island, New York and Bessemer, Alabama have often rallied workers while pointing to the company’s injury rates. The nascent Amazon Labor Union, which won the union election in Staten Island earlier this month, is now seeking to negotiate with the retailer for a union contract. But Amazon has rebuffed those attempts and is seeking to re-do the election.
Jassy didn’t mention the union push in his letter, but said the company offers “robust” benefits, and has increased hourly wages in the past few years. When asked about the union win during the interview, he said it was employee’s choice whether they want to join a union but believes they’re better off not doing so.
He argued unions could slow down change, and believes workers are better off having direct relationships with their managers, an argument the company has made in the lead-up to the union elections to persuade its employees not to unionize. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/amazon-ceo-jassy-says-he-wants-to-improve-warehouse-safety/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:43 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/amazon-ceo-jassy-says-he-wants-to-improve-warehouse-safety/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks closed lower on Wall Street Thursday as investors gave mixed reviews to earnings from four of the nation’s largest banks.
The S&P 500 fell 1.2%, ending a shortened trading week with a 2.1% decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3% and the Nasdaq composite lost 2.1%. Both indexes also ended in the red for the week.
A quartet of big banks reported noticeable declines in their first-quarter profits as the latest earnings season kicks into gear. Volatile markets and the war in Ukraine caused deal-making to dry up while a slowdown in the housing market meant fewer people sought mortgages.
Citigroup rose 1.6% while Wells Fargo fell 4.5%. Morgan Stanley rose 0.7% and Goldman Sachs slipped 0.1%.
Bond yields rose again, sending the 10-year Treasury yield to 2.83%, and the price of U.S. oil rose, finishing nearly 11% higher for the week.
“With higher oil prices, higher bond yields, (it) implies the market continues to worry about inflation, worried about Ukraine, worried about the Fed’s response to all of this,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.
The S&P 500 fell 54 points to 4,392.59. The Dow dropped 113.36 points to 34,451.23. The Nasdaq fell 292.51 points to 13,351.08. The U.S. stock market will be closed for Good Friday.
Technology stocks led the way lower Thursday, offsetting gains elsewhere in the market. Pricey valuations for many of the bigger technology companies give them more sway in directing the broader market higher or lower. Microsoft fell 2.7%.
Retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending also weighed on the market. Amazon fell 2.5%. Energy stocks rose along with the price of crude oil. Exxon Mobil rose 1.2%.
Smaller company stocks also lost ground. The Russell 2000 fell 20.12 points, or 1%, to 2,004.98.
Investors again turned their attention to the drama surrounding Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk and Twitter. Musk offered to buy the social media company for $54.20 a share, two weeks after revealing he’d accumulated a 9% stake.
Musk has criticized Twitter for not living up to free speech principles and said, in a regulatory filing, that it needs to be transformed as a private company. Twitter’s stock fell 1.7% at $45.08, well below Musk’s offering price.
Wall Street had mixed economic data to review following several hot inflation reports earlier in the week. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.5% in March, boosted by higher prices for gasoline, as consumers continue to spend despite high inflation.
Inflation remains at its highest levels in 40 years in the U.S. and that has economists and analysts closely watching how consumers react to higher prices on everything from food to clothing and gasoline. Concerns about inflation have worsened amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has made for more volatile energy prices and contributed to rising oil and wheat prices globally.
U.S. crude oil prices reversed an early decline Thursday and settled 2.6% higher.
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that Russia’s war against Ukraine was weakening the economic prospects for most of the world’s countries and reaffirmed the danger high inflation presents to the global economy.
Rising prices are driving the Federal Reserve and many other central banks to tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates, among other measures, to help cool the surging demand that is contributing to the problem.
Bond yields have been mostly on the rise as Wall Street prepares for higher interest rates.
Investors received another update on the recovery in the jobs market. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits ticked up last week, according to the Labor Department, but remained at a historically low level. The data reflect a robust U.S. labor market with near record-high job openings and few layoffs.
Besides the banks, insurer UnitedHealth Group was the other big name on the earnings docket. UnitedHealth rose 0.4% after reporting solid first-quarter results and raising its 2022 forecasts.
Investors are closely watching the latest round of corporate earnings to determine how companies have been dealing with rising costs and whether consumers have pulled back their spending.
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Veiga reported from Los Angeles. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/asian-shares-track-wall-street-higher-oil-prices-retreat/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:49 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/asian-shares-track-wall-street-higher-oil-prices-retreat/ |
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In a victory for President Joe Biden, a federal appeals court Thursday refused to revisit its March decision reviving administration plans to account for potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for pollution-generating industries.
A Louisiana-based federal judge had blocked the so-called social cost of carbon policy earlier this year, saying it would bring costly regulatory burdens and drive up energy prices. But a panel of three 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges in New Orleans unanimously stayed the lower court last month. On Thursday, the appeals court issued a brief order saying none of the court’s 17 full-time judges sought a rehearing, which had been requested by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
Landry led the challenge on behalf of Louisiana and nine other states. His office did not immediately respond to an email asking whether he would appeal to the Supreme Court. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming joined Louisiana in the challenge.
The policy aims to put a dollar value on damage caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. That cost estimate would be used to shape future rules for oil and gas drilling, automobiles, and other industries, and a higher estimate could justify more stringent rules.
On his first day in office, Biden issued an order that restored the cost estimate to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton. Former President Donald Trump’s estimate included only damage felt in the U.S. versus the global damage captured in higher estimates that were previously used under the Obama administration.
Republicans and business groups have questioned the accuracy of the complex economic models used to determine the cost estimate. They argue that an emphasis on future climate damage would hobble the economy, particularly the energy industry.
The 5th Circuit panel said in last month’s ruling that any regulatory burdens the policy might bring are speculative at this point and that Louisiana and other states challenging the policy therefore had no standing to sue. It said U.S. District Judge James David Cain, a Trump appointee in Louisiana’s Western district, had gone “outside the authority of the federal courts” in ordering the Biden administration “to comply with prior administrations’ policies on regulatory analysis absent a specific agency action to review.”
The ruling panel included judges Leslie Southwick, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, and James Graves and Gregg Costa, both appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama. Of the 17 full-time judges on the court, 12 were nominated by Republican presidents — six of those by Trump. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/biden-cost-of-carbon-policy-survives-another-legal-hurdle/ | 2022-04-15T02:39:56 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/biden-cost-of-carbon-policy-survives-another-legal-hurdle/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Four big banks reported noticeable declines in their first-quarter profits Thursday, as the volatile markets and war in Ukraine caused deal-making to dry up while a slowdown in the housing market meant fewer people sought to get a new mortgage or refinance.
The results from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were similar to the results out of JPMorgan Chase, which on Wednesday reported a double-digit decline in profits.
At Goldman Sachs, profits fell 43% to $3.63 billion. Citigroup posted a 47% decline in profits to $4 billion, Wells Fargo’s profits fell 21% and Morgan Stanley’s earnings dropped 11%.
In some ways, comparing this quarter to a year ago doesn’t tell an accurate story of how well Wall Street is doing. The first quarter of 2021 was helped by the start of widespread vaccination campaigns for COVID-19, as well as recovery in the economy from the pandemic. Banks also released large portions of their loan-loss reserves — money they sock away to cover potentially bad loans in a rough economy — last year. Those were a one-time boost to profits.
But banks are often seen as a proxy for the overall economy, and the first quarter of 2022 has been considerably rougher than a year earlier. Markets have struggled with high inflation, as well as a run up in oil prices largely caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Interest rates have also risen sharply in response to the Federal Reserve signaling that it plans to raise interest rates multiple times this year, which in turn has caused mortgage rates to rise.
Outside of the slowdown in deal-making, the war in Ukraine plus the broad international sanctions placed on Russia weighed on the results of at least two banks, Citigroup and to a lesser extent, Goldman Sachs. Citi said it had to set aside $1.9 billion in potential loan losses due to its exposure to Russia, where the bank operates a consumer banking franchise as well as a modest investment bank. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the bank had $300 million in losses this quarter tied to Russia.
That’s on top of the $1.5 billion that JPMorgan set aside on Wednesday to cover higher inflation costs as well as its exposure to Russia.
But where the banks really took a hit this quarter was in investment banking. Goldman Sachs said investment banking revenues fell 40% from a year earlier, while Morgan Stanley reported a 38% decline in investment banking fees. Citigroup reported a 43% drop in investment banking revenues.
The drop in investment banking revenues largely has to do with companies sitting on the sidelines in the quarter due to the volatility.
Wells Fargo, which has a smaller investment bank, was more heavily impacted by the slowdown in the housing market. Revenues from mortgage originations at Wells were down 33% from a year earlier. Freddie Mac said the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 5% last week, nearly double where it was less than a year ago.
“Rising rates drove a significant slowdown in mortgage banking, especially refinance activity,” said Kyle Sanders, an analyst with Edward Jones, who covers Wells Fargo, in an email. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/big-bank-profits-decline-as-deal-making-mortgages-slow/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:03 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/big-bank-profits-decline-as-deal-making-mortgages-slow/ |
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The board of directors of Brazil’s oil giant Petrobras elected on Thursday José Mauro Coelho as its new president – the third to take the lead of the state-run company in a little more than three years.
His appointment by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last week followed the dismissal of his predecessor, Gen. Joaquim Silva e Luna, a former defense minister. The general lost the government’s support after the company boosted fuel prices to pass some of the global oil increases to consumers.
Brazil’s government owns 50.26% of Petrobras, but Bolsonaro’s picks for presidents must be approved by the company’s board.
Coelho worked for 12 years at the state energy research agency, and later was chairman of the board at the state company that manages contracts for offshore pre-salt oil exploration and production. From 2020 until last October, he was secretary for petroleum, natural gas and biofuels at the mining and energy ministry.
Market observers and analysts see Coelho’s appointment for a one-year term as a sign that Petrobras will maintain the same international fuel price policy, resisting political pressure to lower gasoline and diesel prices in an election year.
“It is a suitable profile for the position,” said Gesner de Oliveira, an economist and professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas university in Sao Paulo. “But these changes generate concern because they are the result of government interference in the company.”
This is the second time since he assumed office in 2019 that Bolsonaro, who is running for reelection in October, has made changes at the top of Petrobras because of rising fuel prices.
Before Silva e Luna, Roberto Castello Brancohad also been encouraged to make adjustments to the firm’s policy, but since 2016, Petrobras’ gasoline and diesel prices have been pegged to international oil prices. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/bolsonaro-pick-for-president-of-brazil-oil-giant-takes-over/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:10 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/bolsonaro-pick-for-president-of-brazil-oil-giant-takes-over/ |
SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters contained a massive blaze at a central California food processing plant that prompted authorities to tell thousands of nearby residents to evacuate Thursday and to order tens of thousands more to stay inside their homes.
The fire started Wednesday night at the Taylor Farms packaged salad plant in Salinas, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
The flames were under control by late morning Thursday, but the shelter-in-place and evacuation orders remained while hazardous materials crews worked the scene, said Sophia Rome, a spokesperson for the city of Salinas.
Authorities initially said they feared the fire could generate an explosion and a plume of hazardous ammonia, but the Salinas Fire Department said later that those threats appeared to be minimal.
About 2,700 people living closest to the plant were told that they should evacuate, while 35,000 more were ordered to shelter inside their homes, the Monterey County Office of Emergency Services said in a statement.
Those staying home were told to shut windows and to turn off ventilation systems “until further notice,” the statement said.
Officials said some people evacuated after the fire was reported at 7:15 p.m. Officials did not say what caused the fire.
A woman who answered the phone at Taylor Farms in Salinas told a reporter seeking comment to call back later for information.
Salinas has a population of about 160,000 people and is in a key agricultural region. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/california-food-plant-fire-prompts-evacuations-for-thousands/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:17 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/california-food-plant-fire-prompts-evacuations-for-thousands/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators will soon begin cracking down on vaping companies using a now-closed loophole, including a line of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes that have become teenagers’ top choice.
Under a law taking effect Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration can regulate e-cigarettes and similar products that use synthetic nicotine.
The action targets Puff Bar and several other vaping companies that recently switched their formulas to laboratory-made nicotine to skirt FDA oversight.
The change will allow the FDA to “hold e-cigarette companies using synthetic nicotine to the same public health standards we’ve implemented for other tobacco products,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a tweet Wednesday. Companies must now register with the FDA and submit their products for review within 30 days.
Puff Bar did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The FDA’s action does not automatically ban Puff Bar and similar products. Instead it brings them under the same regulatory scheme as older e-cigarettes that derive their nicotine from tobacco.
“The synthetic nicotine products do not necessarily just disappear on their own,” Robin Koval, chief executive of the Truth Initiative, an advocacy group that runs anti-tobacco ads. “The FDA will have to decide how they want to enforce the law and hopefully they will.”
The FDA has been reviewing applications for a vast array of vaping devices, formulas and flavors — rejecting more than 1 million, usually because of their potential appeal to youngsters. Anti-tobacco advocates hope the agency will quickly do the same for any applications submitted by Puff Bar and other manufacturers.
Nicotine, the chemical the makes smoking and vaping addictive, occurs naturally in tobacco plants.
The 2009 law that first gave the FDA oversight of cigarettes and related products only referred to tobacco-based nicotine. That left an opening for artificial nicotine, which is being used in e-cigarette liquids, nicotine pouches and other products.
Last month, Congress passed language clarifying that the FDA can regulate any form of nicotine, regardless of the source.
After appearing in 2019, Puff Bar has grown to become the most popular e-cigarette among teenagers, by far, sold in flavors like blueberry, strawberry banana and mango. Under FDA pressure, the company said it was halting sales in 2020, pulling its disposable vaping devices out of convenience stores, gas stations and vape shops.
Last February, the company announced a “fresh launch” of its colorful devices using synthetic nicotine. In marketing language, the company said its products “do not contain tobacco or anything derived from tobacco.” That put Puff Bar in a legal gray area, because federal, state and local restrictions nearly always apply to tobacco-based products, not nicotine itself.
Stanford researchers last year found synthetic nicotine products for sale via online platforms that prohibit tobacco sales, such as Amazon, eBay and Target. Under the new law, synthetic nicotine will be subject to the same federal age limit and sales restrictions as other tobacco products.
Using synthetic nicotine is not a new idea. Tobacco companies experimented with chemically derived nicotine as early as the 1960s, but deemed it too expensive for mass production. Manufacturing advances in recent years finally made it a viable alternative to tobacco-derived nicotine.
A large government survey last year showed Puff Bar had leapfrogged over better-known brands to become the top choice among high schoolers who vape. Juul — which is widely blamed for initially sparking the teen vaping trend — was the fourth most popular brand.
In 2020, the FDA restricted flavors in cartridge-based e-cigarettes like Juul to just menthol and tobacco, which are generally preferred by adults. But the flavor ban didn’t apply to disposable e-cigarettes like Puff Bar and other types of vaping devices.
Anti-tobacco groups worry that the FDA seems to consistently be one or two steps behind whichever products are making inroads among kids.
“The lesson we can all take away from this is that when the FDA’s actions are incomplete and happen after the fact — which has often been the case with e-cigarettes — you will always be playing whack-a-mole and catch-up,” said Koval.
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Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/e-cigs-using-synthetic-nicotine-come-under-fda-oversight/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:23 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/e-cigs-using-synthetic-nicotine-come-under-fda-oversight/ |
The head of the European Central Bank reiterated Thursday that the bank would raise interest rates “some time after” ending its pandemic stimulus efforts later this year, sticking to a gradual path even as the United States, United Kingdom and other countries take a harder line to combat soaring consumer prices.
People in the 19 countries that use the euro currency have seen costs increase for everything from food to fuel as inflation rose to an annual rate of 7.5% last month, the highest since statistics began in 1997.
Driven by energy prices that have soared ever higher since Russia invaded Ukraine, record inflation has sharpened attention on when the European Central Bank will take more drastic steps to control excessive price increases for consumers.
The bank said recent economic data confirmed its expectations of ending its pandemic stimulus efforts later this year and that the exact timing would depend on the economic situation.
Bank President Christine Lagarde, who previously opened the door a crack for an interest rate increase this year, said “we are sticking to our sequence,” with any rate hike following the end of the bond purchases meant to support the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. That could mean “anywhere between a week to several months,” Lagarde said, before the bank could decide on “an interest rate hike and subsequent hikes.”
Speaking by video news conference after testing positive for COVID-19 last week, Lagarde stressed the uncertainty over the war and the bank’s willingness to stay flexible in adjusting its policies, saying the experience with pandemic stimulus purchases showed “flexibility served us well.”
She noted that inflation “will stay high in the near term and then moderate to some extent” amid uncertainty from the war. While higher energy prices were fueling inflation, weaker growth could lower the price pressures in the economy, Lagarde said.
Her comments suggest the bond purchases will end in July followed by a first interest rate increase in September, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING bank. He called it “normalization at a snail’s pace” after large doses of stimulus applied during the depths of the pandemic.
The war has sent inflation surging to unexpectedly high levels. Prices for oil and gas have been rising on fears of a cutoff from Russia, which is the world’s largest oil exporter, and as the recovery from the pandemic increases demand for fuel.
As inflation grows worldwide, the U.S. Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark short-term rate last month and indicated it will continue raising it sharply this year. The Bank of England has raised raised its key interest rate three times since December.
Lagarde said the European and U.S. economies were not comparable. One reason is that “the euro area is going to be more exposed and will suffer more consequences as a result of the war by Russia against Ukraine … comparing our respective monetary polices is comparing apples and oranges.”
Economists say much of the U.S. inflation is homegrown — a side effect of massive federal stimulus and support spending during the pandemic. Europe’s inflation, on the other hand, is largely imported through higher oil prices, which are generally beyond the reach of interest rate policy that central banks control.
On top of that, higher inflation and supply bottlenecks are weighing on economic growth, leading to what some are calling “stagflation.” A combination of slow growth and high inflation, the phenomenon poses central banks with a dilemma: that the rate hikes needed to combat inflation could also hurt growth and jobs.
Stressing consumer purchasing power has helped French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist, narrow the polling gap against centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron in the campaign ahead of the runoff April 24.
The ECB’s benchmark rates are at record lows: zero for lending to banks and minus 0.5% on deposits from banks, a penalty rate aimed at pushing them to lend the money instead. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/european-central-bank-faces-pressure-from-record-inflation/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:31 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/european-central-bank-faces-pressure-from-record-inflation/ |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A major fertilizer company says the limits Union Pacific is putting on rail traffic to clear up congestion will delay shipments that farmers need during the spring planting season.
CF Industries said Thursday that the railroad ordered it to cut its shipments nearly 20%. Union Pacific has said it is limiting rail traffic and hiring aggressively as part of a plan to improve service after grain and ethanol shippers complained about shortcomings.
Federal regulators have announced plans to hold a hearing later this month aboutthe service problems along Union Pacific and other major U.S. railroads that have forced some grain mills and ethanol plants to curtail production while waiting on trains and left farmers without a place to sell their crops because grain elevators are having trouble shipping grain.
“The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers,” said CF Industries CEO Tony Will. “Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all.
CF Industries said the limits will affect fertilizer deliveries to Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and California from its plants in Louisiana and Iowa. The company said it believes it is one of just 30 companies Union Pacific imposed restrictions on.
Union Pacific spokeswoman Kristen South said the measures the Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad is taking are designed to address problems in the supply chain that have clogged rail shipments. The railroad has also brought 100 locomotives out of storage and shifted roughly 80 crew members to high-demand locations. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/fertilizer-company-complains-about-railroad-shipment-limits/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:37 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/fertilizer-company-complains-about-railroad-shipment-limits/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that Russia’s war against Ukraine was weakening the economic prospects for most of the world’s countries and called high inflation “a clear and present danger’’ to the global economy.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the consequences of Russia’s invasion were contributing to economic downgrades for 143 countries, although most of them should continue to grow. The war has disrupted global trade in energy and grain and is threatening to cause food shortages in Africa and Middle East.
Georgieva made her comments in a speech on the eve of next week’s spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.
An unexpectedly strong recovery from 2020’s pandemic recession has caught businesses by surprise, leaving factories, ports and freight yards unable to keep up with robust customer demand and forcing prices higher.
Chronically high inflation, which is forcing the world’s central banks to raise interest rates and likely slow economic growth in the process, amounts to “a massive setback for the global recovery,’’ Georgieva said.
Georgieva also warned of “the fragmentation of the world economy into geopolitical blocs,” with the West imposing far-reaching sanctions on Russia and China expressing support for the autocratic Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin.
“In a world where war in Europe creates hunger in Africa; where a pandemic can circle the globe in days and reverberate for years; where emissions anywhere mean rising sea levels almost everywhere — the threat to our collective prosperity from a breakdown in global cooperation cannot be overstated,” Georgieva said.
Before the war, Russia and Ukraine had supplied 28% of global wheat exports. And Russia and Belarus accounted for 40% of exports of the fertilizer potash.
“Now,’’ Georgieva said, “grain and corn prices are soaring, and leaders across Africa and the Middle East are telling me that supplies are running low. Food insecurity is a grave concern.
“We must act now with a multilateral initiative to bolster food security. The alternative is dire: More hunger, more poverty and more social unrest — especially for countries that have struggled to escape fragility and conflict for many years.’’
Georgieva called on the world to support the Ukrainians and noted that the IMF had delivered $1.4 billion in emergency financing to help Ukraine meet its immediate spending needs. The IMF is also offering assistance to Ukraine’s neighbors, including Moldova, which has accepted more than 400,000 war refugees.
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This story has been corrected to show that the IMF expects the Ukraine war to contribute to weaker economic growth for 143 countries, not 186. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/imf-chief-ukraine-war-and-inflation-threaten-global-economy/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:44 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/imf-chief-ukraine-war-and-inflation-threaten-global-economy/ |
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Every time someone is killed in the City of Raleigh, Police Chief Estella Patterson says she is immediately alerted -- day or night.
According to Patterson, that has happened 13 times so far this year.
It's an increase of five more people dead compared to this time last year.
"Very disturbing," Patterson said. "Anytime you have anyone who loses a life at the hands of someone else, that is disturbing to me. That is something that keeps me up at night."
This week, a teen was seriously wounded after being shot while at a convenience store on New Bern Avenue.
Patterson said officers are actively looking for the shooter, and they are receiving tips from the community.
"Any small bits of information, we will take," She said.
Aggravated assaults involving guns are up from last year.
According to RPD, police are getting more stolen guns off the street.
Patterson is urging gun owners to keep their guns stored and locked away from would-be thieves.
The chief told ABC11 that violent crime is happening all across the city, but in communities made up predominantly of Black and Latino residents, victims are dying at a higher rate.
Right now, she is working with federal partners and deploying officers to areas known for repeat violent offenders:
Neighborhoods such as those around New Bern Avenue, Poole Road, and Capitol Boulevard.
"I have set a goal of reducing our violent crime by 15 percent by the end of the year over where we were last year. We are putting all of our resources toward that," said Patterson, "We need the community to help us in our efforts to combat this violence."
Patterson said she supports the concept of paying people to be "violence interrupters."
It is something the city is exploring with the NAACP.
Staffing also remains a concern. The department is down 168 officers.
The chief hopes recruiting drives will help, and a city proposal for pay raises and bonuses will improve morale and staffing challenges.
Raleigh police chief says increase in homicides keeps her up at night
By Tim Pulliam
Copyright © 2022 WTVD-TV. All Rights Reserved. | https://abc11.com/raleigh-crime-police-officer-shortage-estella-patterson/11749289/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:45 | 1 | https://abc11.com/raleigh-crime-police-officer-shortage-estella-patterson/11749289/ |
CHICAGO -- It's been 50 years since the passing of Title IX, and 40% of all athletes are women despite the inequalities that continue.
Now, the second generation -- or the grandchildren of Title IX -- understand their part in pushing forward and knowing more is still possible.
Born 20 years after Title IX, professional hockey player Kendall Coyne never felt out of place on the ice.
"I was mostly surrounded by boys. I didn't realize that there weren't girls' teams, I just felt I was where I belonged. I was on a hockey team, and there just happened to be no other girls there," said Coyne.
Her sport had a ceiling until 1998 when women's hockey became an Olympic sport.
"I grew up wanting to play for the Blackhawks. Not realistic, but what is realistic," Coyne said. 'And then I saw Cammy Granado, that's what I want to do. I want to play in the Olympics."
RELATED: Title IX: Explaining the landmark civil rights law that codified gender equity in sports and beyond
At the time, the Olympics was the pinnacle but her career couldn't be contained by a medal podium. Coyne was the third overall pick in the inaugural National Women's Hockey League.
She would later become the first and only female to compete with the men in the NHL All-Star Skills Competition. It was an opportunity that opened doors for her as a Blackhawks development coach and T.V. analyst.
"Without Title IX, I don't think I go to Northeastern University on a full scholarship to play hockey and get an education. Without Title IX, I don't think that opportunity exists," Coyne said.
Chicago Sky forward Candace Parker cherishes the same opportunity as she recalls how the start of the WNBA completely changed her life.
"I didn't know they didn't let women play professionally - it blew my mind that that wasn't a thing already," Parker said. "I immediately switched from wanting to be like Michael Jordan to wanting to be like Cynthia Cooper."
RELATED: Title IX paved the way for Sterling High girls' basketball team's historic 1st championship win
Parker is now that icon for the next generation, sharing her story in her recently released documentary, "37 Words."
"I have a pro-career. All of this is made possible by legislature called Title IX," Parker said in the documentary. "I hope that people are able to realize how important this really is and that it's not something that's been done. So we've done our work. It's ever-evolving and it needs our conscious attention."
Parker is coming off a championship with the Sky and Coyne with a silver medal in Beijing. Both winning moments they cherish while recognizing the still frustrating inequalities.
"Everyone knows more is possible -- it can't just be good enough. How can we take Title IX and push it farther? How do we make sure that opportunity is equitable? That opportunity for the men and the women -- that it exists in the same space," Coyne said.
"I think, just in a sense, we're standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. Fifty years later, we're making steps in the right direction but we are not satisfied with where it is and where it needs to be," Parker added.
'Steps in the right direction': How Title IX changed the game for women in sports 50 years later
By Dionne Miller
Copyright © 2022 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved. | https://abc11.com/title-ix-what-is-kendall-coyne-candace-parker/11749023/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:51 | 1 | https://abc11.com/title-ix-what-is-kendall-coyne-candace-parker/11749023/ |
A former police officer who discussed Russia’s invasion on the phone. A priest who preached to his congregation about the suffering of Ukrainians. A student who held up a banner with no words — just asterisks.
Hundreds of Russians are facing charges for speaking out against the war in Ukraine since a repressive law was passed last month that outlaws the spread of “false information” about the invasion and disparaging the military.
Human rights groups say the crackdown has led to criminal prosecutions and possible prison sentences for at least 23 people on the “false information” charge, with over 500 others facing misdemeanor charges of disparaging the military that have either led to hefty fines or are expected to result in them.
“This is a large amount, an unprecedentedly large amount” of cases, said Damir Gainutdinov, head of the Net Freedoms legal aid group focusing on free speech cases, in an interview with The Associated Press.
The Kremlin has sought to control the narrative of the war from the moment its troops rolled into Ukraine. It dubbed the attack a “special military operation” and increased the pressure on independent Russian media that called it a “war” or an “invasion,” blocking access to many news sites whose coverage deviated from the official line.
Sweeping arrests stifled antiwar protests, turning them from a daily event in large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg into rare occurrences barely attracting any attention.
Still, reports of police detaining single picketers in different Russian cities come in almost daily.
Even seemingly benign actions have led to arrests.
A man was detained in Moscow after standing next to a World War II monument that says “Kyiv” for the city’s heroic stand against Nazi Germany and holding a copy of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” Another was reportedly detained for holding up a package of sliced ham from the meat producer Miratorg, with the second half of the name crossed off so it read: “Mir” — “peace” in Russian.
A law against spreading “fake news” about the war or disparaging the military was passed by parliament in one day and took force immediately, effectively exposing anyone critical of the conflict to fines and prison sentences.
The first publicly known criminal cases over “fakes” targeted public figures like Veronika Belotserkovskaya, a Russian-language cookbook author and popular blogger living abroad, and Alexander Nevzorov, a TV journalist, film director and former lawmaker.
Both were accused of posting “false information” about Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine on their widely followed social media pages -– something Moscow has vehemently denied, insisting that Russian forces only hit target military targets.
But then the scope of the crackdown expanded, with police seemingly grabbing anyone.
Former police officer Sergei Klokov was detained and put in pretrial detention after discussing the war with his friends on the phone. His wife told the Meduza news site that in casual conversation at home, Klokov, who was born in Irpin near Kyiv and whose father still lived in Ukraine when Russian troops rolled in, condemned the invasion.
Klokov was charged with spreading false information about the Russian armed forces and faces up to 10 years in prison.
St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko also faces up to 10 years in prison on the same charge: She replaced price tags in a grocery store with antiwar flyers. On Wednesday, a court ordered Skochilenko to pretrial detention for 1 1/2 months.
The Rev. Ioann Burdin, a Russian Orthodox priest in a village about 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) northeast of Moscow, was fined 35,000 rubles ($432) for “discrediting the Russian armed forces” after posting an antiwar statement on his church’s website and talking to a dozen congregants during a service about the pain he felt over people in Ukrain’e dying.
Burdin told AP his speech elicited mixed reactions. “One woman made a scene over the fact that I’m talking about (it) when she just came to pray, ” he said, adding that he believed it was one of those hearing the sermon who reported him to the police.
Marat Grachev, director of a shop that repairs Apple products in Moscow, similarly got in trouble when he displayed a link to an online petition titled, “No to war” on a screen in the shop. Many customers expressed support when they saw it, but one elderly man demanded it be taken down, threatening to report Grachev to the authorities.
Police soon showed up, and Grachev was charged with discrediting the military. A court ordered him to pay a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,236).
Another court ruled against Moscow student Dmitry Reznikov for displaying a blank piece of paper with eight asterisks, which could have been interpreted as standing for “No to war” in Russian — a popular chant by protesters. The court found him guilty of discrediting the armed forces and fined him 50,000 rubles ($618) for holding the sign in central Moscow in a mid-March demonstration that lasted only seconds before police detained him.
“It’s the theater of the absurd,” his lawyer Oleg Filatchev told AP.
A St. Petersburg court last week fined Artur Dmitriev for a sign containing President Vladimir Putin’s quote – albeit with a few words omitted for brevity – from last year’s Victory Day parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
“The war brought about so many unbearable challenges, grief and tears, that it’s impossible to forget. There is no forgiveness and justification for those who once again are harboring aggressive plans,” Putin had said, according to the Kremlin website.
Dmitriev was fined 30,000 rubles for discrediting the Russian military. That prompted him to post Friday on Facebook: “The phrase by Vladimir Putin, and ergo he himself … are discrediting the goals of the Russian armed forces. From this moment on, (internet and media regulator) Roskomnadzor must block all speeches by Putin, and true patriots -– take down his portraits in their offices.”
Net Freedoms’ Gainutdinov said that anything about the military or Ukraine can make a person a target. Even wearing a hat with the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag or a green ribbon, considered a symbol of peace, have been found to discredit the military, the lawyer added.
Reznikov, who is appealing his conviction for the poster with asterisks, said he found the crackdown scary. After his first misdemeanor conviction, a second strike would result in criminal prosecution and a possible prison term of up to three years.
Both Burdin and Grachev, who also are appealing, received donations that exceeded their fines.
“I realized how important it is, how valuable it is to receive support,” Grachev said.
Burdin said the publicity about his case spread his message far beyond the dozen or so people who initially heard his sermon — the opposite of what the authorities presumably intended by fining him.
“It’s impossible to call it anything other than the providence of God,” the priest added. “The words that I said reached a much larger number of people.”
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/kremlin-crackdown-silences-war-protests-from-benign-to-bold/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:51 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/kremlin-crackdown-silences-war-protests-from-benign-to-bold/ |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is facing renewed pressure from a hedge fund to speed up its transition to digital publishing and consider adding new digital-savvy leaders to its board after successfully fighting off a hostile takeover from a different hedge fund.
Lee’s largest shareholder, Cannell Capital, this week disclosed buying nearly 20,000 more of the company’s shares, giving it a 9.1% stake. The fund’s head, Carlo Cannell, said he thinks Lee needs new board members and executives with experience running a digital publishing business.
“I have some confidence in (Lee’s) management — not a lot,” Cannell said in an interview. “I have great or very little confidence in the board depending on which board member you are referring to.”
Cannell Capital has been prodding Lee to make changes for several years. That includes running a 2019 campaign encouraging shareholders to vote against three board members, including Lee Chairman Mary Junck, and announcing last September that it planned to vote against all incumbent Lee board members.
Cannell Capital and another hedge fund that owns a large stake in Lee, Praetorian Capital, also questioned the amount Lee spent on advisors as it was fending off a $24 per share takeover offer from another hedge fund, Alden Global Capital. But the investor who leads Praetorian, Harris Kupperman, has indicated that he is more comfortable with the company’s current direction.
Cannell estimated that Lee spent somewhere between $3 million and $5 million on advice from investment bankers and lawyers during the proxy fight with Alden — an amount he suggested might have been better spent on the company’s journalists. Kupperman agreed.
“I think the shareholders would have voted for the current guys, and they could have saved a few million dollars,” Kupperman said.
Lee publishes dozens of newspapers including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and nearly every other daily newspaper in Nebraska. The chain expanded significantly in 2020 when it bought all of Berkshire Hathaway’s newspapers and Warren Buffett endorsed Lee as the best long-term steward for the publications.
Lee executives have defended the progress they are making in the company’s digital transition. Lee representatives declined to respond to Cannell’s questions Thursday, but the company will update investors again next month when it releases its next earnings report.
Lee said last quarter that it had 450,000 digital-only subscribers and it expects that number to grow to 900,000 by 2026. The Davenport, Iowa-based company said its digital ad and subscription revenue grew 17%, although its profit in the three-month period that ended Dec. 26 declined nearly 20% to $13.2 million.
Kupperman said he is making a long-term investment with his 7.3% stake in the business and he thinks Lee is “on the right path in terms of growing the digital subscribers.”
The pressure on Lee isn’t likely to let up anytime soon, said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean of Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school and the former president of the Poynter Institute, the media think tank and nonprofit owner of the Tampa Bay Times. He noted hedge funds aren’t known for their patience in waiting for companies to grow their stock prices or profit margins.
But he said Lee — like all print media companies — is in the middle of the difficult transition from relying on print publication revenue to digital. The newspaper industry has been contracting for years as more readers shift online and companies cut back on print ads.
“All news organizations, including Lee, are trying to walk this balancing act of preserving as much of their print revenue as they possibly can at the same time that they’re trying to grow digital revenue,” Franklin said. “And that needs to be done with great delicacy because the fate of news organizations may hang in the balance of getting this right.”
Lee fought strongly against Alden’s takeover bid because the New York-based hedge fund has a reputation for imposing extreme cost cuts and deep layoffs at the newspapers it owns, which includes all the Tribune papers it bought last year.
Alden hasn’t said what its plans are for its 6.3% Lee stake after its takeover bid failed, and an Alden spokeswoman didn’t respond to questions this week. The two other hedge funds with larger stakes in Lee have said they believed the company is worth significantly more than what Alden offered.
Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s media analyst, said it appears that investors expected Alden to raise its bid or a bidding war to break out because Lee’s share price soared to $44.43 early this year before falling back to $25.51 Thursday. That might open the door for another potential buyer. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/news-publisher-lee-faces-renewed-pressure-from-hedge-funds/ | 2022-04-15T02:40:58 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/news-publisher-lee-faces-renewed-pressure-from-hedge-funds/ |
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Recreational marijuana sales in New Jersey for those 21 and older will begin April 21, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday.
“This is a historic step in our work to create a new cannabis industry,” said Murphy, who made the announcement via Twitter.
The news comes just three days after state regulators greenlighted permits for seven facilities, which already sell medical cannabis, to begin retailing recreational marijuana. It’s also about a year after the state’s regulatory commission started operating, and a year and a half after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot question to allow recreational marijuana for people 21 and older.
New Jersey and 17 others states, along with the District of Columbia, have legalized recreational marijuana. Thirty-seven states, including New Jersey, have legalized medical marijuana.
New Jersey’s recreational sales are slated to begin ahead of New York, where sales are not expected to start until the end of the year, state officials have said.
Neighboring Pennsylvania has medical cannabis but not recreational. Some cities, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have passed ordinances to decriminalize marijuana or make it a low law enforcement priority. Legislation to permit recreational marijuana in Delaware was defeated last month in the Legislature.
Three of the seven New Jersey facilities, known as alternative treatment centers, are in the northern part of the state. Three are in the south, and one is in its central.
To get approval, the centers agreed that the coming influx of recreational buyers won’t interrupt access for patients. The facilities said they would reserve parking spaces for patients as well as keep hours specifically for patients only.
There are about 130,000 medical marijuana patients in the state, with an estimated roughly 800,000 potential recreational consumers, and fewer than 800,000 estimated “tourism” consumers, according to the commission.
Ben Kovler, the CEO of Green Thumb Industries, which operates dispensaries in several states, is preparing for the start of recreational sales at facilities in Paterson and Bloomfield. Kovler said he expects a “tidal wave” of demand.
“We are witnessing the end of prohibition 2.0,” he said in an emailed statement.
The alternative treatment centers that already had medical cannabis retail sales are getting a head start in the recreational market, but regulators have attached strings to their advantage. The centers have to meet social equity standards, such as providing technical knowledge to new marijuana businesses, especially social equity applicants — those located in economically struggling parts of the state or people who have had cannabis-related offenses.
“We remain committed to social equity,” Cannabis Regulatory Commission Chair Dianna Houenou said in a statement. “We promised to build this market on the pillars of social equity and safety. Ultimately, we hope to see businesses and a workforce that reflect the diversity of the state.”
How much tax revenue New Jersey gets from recreational marijuana isn’t clear. Murphy’s fiscal year 2023 budget, which is pending before the Democrat-led Legislature, estimates revenues of just $19 million in a nearly $49 billion budget. In 2019, as legalization of recreational marijuana was still just pending before voters, he had estimated about $60 million in revenue.
Legislation governing the recreational market calls for the 6.625% sales tax to apply, with 70% of the proceeds going to areas disproportionately affected by marijuana-related arrests. Black residents were likelier — up to three times as much — to face marijuana charges than white residents. Towns can also levy a tax of up to 2%. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/nj-to-start-recreational-marijuana-sales-april-21/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:05 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/nj-to-start-recreational-marijuana-sales-april-21/ |
Pfizer said Thursday it wants to expand its COVID-19 booster shots to healthy elementary-age kids.
U.S. health authorities already urge everyone 12 and older to get one booster dose for the best protection against the newest variants — and recently gave the option of a second booster to those 50 and older.
Now Pfizer says new data shows healthy 5- to 11-year-olds could benefit from another kid-sized shot.
In a small study, 140 youngsters who’d already gotten two shots were given a booster six months later, and researchers found the extra shot generally revved up their immune response. But a closer look at 30 of the children found a 36-fold increase in virus-fighting antibodies, levels high enough to fight the super-contagious omicron variant, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said in a press release.
The data has not been published or vetted by independent experts.
Pfizer tested the kid booster while omicron was surging this winter. While COVID-19 cases now are at much lower levels in the U.S., in recent weeks an even more contagious version of omicron, called BA.2, has become the dominant type locally and around the world.
In the coming days, the companies plan to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize a booster for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds. They also plan to share the data with European and other regulators.
Vaccinations are generally less effective against the omicron variant than earlier versions of the coronavirus — but they do still offer strong protection against severe disease. While COVID-19 is a bigger threat to adults, youngsters can get seriously ill. But regulators will have to decide if healthy elementary-age kids really need a booster, and if so, when.
The Pfizer shots are the only vaccine available to U.S. children. Those ages 5 to 11 receive one-third of the dose given to everyone 12 and older. Just over a quarter in the younger age group have gotten two doses since vaccination opened to them in November, shortly before omicron struck.
The U.S. hasn’t yet allowed vaccinations for children under 5. But certain 5- to 11-year-olds — those with severely weakened immune systems — already are supposed to get three doses, to give that high-risk group a better chance of responding.
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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. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/pfizer-to-seek-covid-booster-for-healthy-5-to-11-year-olds/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:11 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/pfizer-to-seek-covid-booster-for-healthy-5-to-11-year-olds/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Retail sales rose modestly in March, but higher prices for food, gasoline and other basics took a big share of consumers’ wallets.
Retail sales increased 0.5% after registering a revised 0.8% increase from January to February, reported the U.S. Commerce Department Thursday. Spending has been fueled by wage gains, solid hiring and more money in banking accounts. January’s increase of 4.9% was the biggest jump in spending since March 2021, when American households received a final federal stimulus check of $1,400. But soaring prices on everything, particularly at the gas pump, are making shoppers choosier about how they spend their money.
Excluding an 8.9% increase at gas stations, overall retail sales slipped 0.3% last month.
Overall, the retail sales picture was mixed, but shoppers still showed resilience in spending, economists said. Business at general merchandise stores was up 5.4%, while sales at clothing stores rose 2.6%. Restaurants had a 1% increase. But online sales dropped 6.4%, while auto sales were down 1.9% as auto companies faced a vehicle shortage. Major retailers will be issuing quarterly earnings reports next month, which will give a fuller picture of the state of the consumer.
“They are spending selectively this month, and the gasoline price spike from the Russian-Ukraine war was where most of the expenditures were made,” said Christopher S. Rupkey, chief economist at research firm FWDBONDS LLC.
But he added, “Inflation is not going away, but it will likely stop getting worse and that means less of a headwind for spending.”
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, agreed that shoppers are nervous about inflation. He added that online purchases are taking a hit because he believes they’re more discretionary and easy to cut back. He also thinks the pullback online could be a consequence of shoppers assessing higher delivery charges.
The retail report covers only about a third of overall consumer spending and doesn’t include services such as haircuts, hotel stays and plane tickets, areas that have been rebounding from the depths of the pandemic.
Retailers are closely monitoring Russia’s war with Ukraine and how it could weigh on shoppers’ confidence but also worsen inflation. The conflict has already limited supplies of wheat, vegetable oils, and electronic components like chips. It’s pushed up fertilizer prices that were already high, made scarce supplies even harder to find and squeezed farmers, especially those in the developing world. In addition to the Russian invasion, rising COVID-19 cases and renewed restrictions in China could worsen supply chain issues.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index jumped 8.5% in March from 12 months earlier, the sharpest year-over-year increase since 1981. Prices have been pushed up by bottlenecked supply chains, robust consumer demand and disruptions to global food and energy markets worsened by the war. From February to March, inflation rose 1.2%, the biggest month-to-month jump since 2005. Gasoline prices drove more than half that increase.
According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gasoline — $4.07 — is up 42% from a year ago, though it’s dipped in the past couple of weeks.
The March inflation numbers were the first to fully capture the surge in gasoline prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Moscow’s attacks have triggered far-reaching Western sanctions against the Russian economy.
The acceleration of inflation is happening in an otherwise strong economy. In March, employers added a robust 431,000 jobs — the 11th straight month in which they’ve added at least 400,000. For 2021, they added 6.7 million jobs, the most in any year on record. In addition, job openings are near record highs, layoffs are at their lowest point since 1968 and the unemployment rate is just above a half-century low.
Matt Shay, CEO of National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, said that “consumers are adapting and shopping smarter for themselves and their families.” He believes the strength of the consumer can carry the economy through this economic uncertainty if policy makers implement measured policies and “don’t overreact to current conditions.”
NRF said the challenge for the Federal Reserve is to cool off demand without pushing the economy into a dramatic slowdown.
To protect themselves against any consumer spending downturn, retailers are cutting back on expenses, while taking a measured approach to ordering merchandise as well as adding surcharges.
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will add a 5% “ fuel and inflation surcharge ” to fees it charges third-party sellers who use the e-commerce giant’s fulfillment services. The Seattle-based company said on its website that the added fees, which take effect April 28, are “subject to change” and will apply to both apparel and non-apparel items.
Gary Friedman, CEO of upscale furniture chain RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware, told analysts in late March that the company has seen consumer demand weakening in the company’s first quarter, which started in late January, that coincided with Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“I don’t think anybody really understands how high prices are going to go everywhere, in restaurants, in cars, in everything,” Friedman said. “If you’re going into a very difficult unpredictable time, you just got to be super flexible. You’ve got to be able to improvise, adapt, overcome, and kind of be ready for anything.”
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AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/retail-sales-up-0-5-in-march-despite-soaring-inflation/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:18 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/retail-sales-up-0-5-in-march-despite-soaring-inflation/ |
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s central bank on Thursday kept its main interest rate unchanged for a fourth month even as surging inflation has hit a 20-year high and eroded people’s purchasing power.
In a statement following a monetary policy committee meeting, the bank said it was keeping its policy rate “constant” at 14%.
The decision was in line with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opposition to high borrowing costs in a bid to boost growth, investment and exports. The Turkish leader insists that raising interest rates cause inflation — a position that contradicts established economic thinking.
Turkey’s central bank has cut rates by 5 percentage points since September despite high inflation, then has paused them since January. The series of rate cuts last year triggered a currency crisis and rising consumer pricesthat have been aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and soaring energy costs.
Yearly inflation hit 61.14% in March, deepening the squeeze on households that were already struggling to purchase basic goods. The Turkish lira lost 44% of its value against the U.S. dollar last year.
In an effort to soften the blow on households, the government has implemented tax cuts on basic goods and has adjusted electricity tariffs.
In comparison, the United States, United Kingdom and the 19 countries that use the euro currency have seen decades-high levels of inflation — 8.5%, 7% and 7.5%, respectively — but are nowhere close to Turkey’s eye-watering rate. Central banks in the U.S. and U.K. have raised interest rates to combat inflation. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/turkeys-central-bank-keeps-rate-steady-amid-high-inflation/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:25 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/turkeys-central-bank-keeps-rate-steady-amid-high-inflation/ |
LONDON (AP) — British authorities have authorized a coronavirus vaccine for adults made by French drugmaker Valneva, despite the government’s decision last year to cancel an order for at least 100 million doses.
The U.K. is the first country to authorize Valneva’s vaccine, which is also under review by the European Medicines Agency. Britain’s medicines regulator said Thursday that the two-dose vaccine is intended for adults ages 18 to 50, with the second dose given about a month after the first.
The Valneva vaccine is made with the decades-old technology used to manufacture shots for flu and polio. It is the sixth COVID-19 vaccine the U.K. has cleared and the only one that utilizes a “killed” virus; scientists grow the coronavirus in a lab and then inactivate the virus so it cannot replicate or infect cells.
The U.K. government scrapped an agreementwith Valneva in September to purchase at least 100 million doses, saying at the time that British regulators probably would not cleared the shot. Valneva said Britain canceled the deal because of supply concerns.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said in September that he couldn’t go into details because of commercial issues but that the deal was spiked because “it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval.”
Britain was an early backer of the Valneva vaccine, agreeing to invest millions of pounds in a production facility in Scotland. As part of the contract, the U.K. had agreed to buy 100 million doses with options for another 90 million.
Even without the Valneva vaccine, the government has acquired more than enough doses to fully vaccinate everyone in the country twice. To date, nearly 60% of the British population has received three doses.
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/uk-clears-6th-covid-shot-despite-canceling-deal-for-doses/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:33 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/uk-clears-6th-covid-shot-despite-canceling-deal-for-doses/ |
UnitedHealth Group delivered a better-than-expected first quarter and raised its 2022 forecast, as growth in Medicare Advantage and care delivery once again helped the health care giant.
The nation’s largest health insurance provider said Thursday that enrollment in its Medicare Advantage plans grew nearly 9% to about 6.9 million people, and the company also booked growth in other government-funded coverage. Its larger commercial enrollment stayed nearly flat.
UnitedHealth is the biggest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately run versions of the federally funded Medicare program.
The company runs UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance business that covers more than 50 million people mostly in the United States. It also has been squeezing more growth out of its Optum segment, which runs one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers and a growing number of clinics and urgent care and surgery centers.
First-quarter operating earnings, which don’t count interest expense and taxes, slid for the company’s health insurance business but jumped almost 20% to $3.2 billion for Optum compared to last year.
UnitedHealth said the revenue it drew per customer from its care-providing Optum Health business grew by 33% as the company expanded deeper into value-based care. That involves reimbursing doctors based more on the patient’s health instead of for each service provided.
UnitedHealth and competitors like the drugstore chains CVS Health and Walgreens are all trying to become regular sources of care for more customers, especially those with Medicare Advantage plans.
The idea is that regular care will keep patients with chronic health problems like diabetes healthy and out of expensive hospitals. It’s an approach gaining favor with bill payers like insurers and employers.
Overall, UnitedHealth earnings grew more than 3% to $5.03 billion in the first quarter, even though the company’s largest expense, medical costs, climbed 17%.
Company leaders told analysts Thursday morning that UnitedHealth started the quarter with about 40,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations in January. That marked the highest total of any month since the pandemic started more than two years ago.
That total then dwindled to about 2,000 hospitalizations by March, as the omicron surge of virus faded.
UnitedHealth’s adjusted results totaled $5.49 per share in the first quarter, and total revenue jumped more than 14% to $80.1 billion.
Analysts expected, on average, earnings of $5.36 per share on $78.73 billion in revenue in the second quarter, according to FactSet.
For the full year, UnitedHealth now expects adjusted earnings of $21.20 to $21.70 per share. That’s an increase of 10 cents on both ends of the range from a forecast it laid out late last year.
FactSet says analysts expect earnings of $21.61 per share for 2022.
UnitedHealth’s forecast hike was conservative compared to how much the company beat first-quarter expectations, Jefferies analyst David Windley said in a research note. But he added that this was expected given the unknown nature of the pandemic.
Shares of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. climbed slightly to $538.09 in Thursday afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, of which UnitedHealth is a component, also rose slightly.
UnitedHealth’s share price has more than doubled over the past couple years.
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Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/unitedhealth-tops-q1-forecasts-raises-2022-outlook/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:39 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/unitedhealth-tops-q1-forecasts-raises-2022-outlook/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking unemployment benefits ticked up last week but remained at a historically low level, reflecting a robust U.S. labor market with near record-high job openings and few layoffs.
Jobless claims rose by 18,000 to 185,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, after nearly touching the lowest level since 1968 in the previous week. The four-week average of claims, which levels out week-to-week ups and downs, edged up from 170,000 to 172,000.
“Claims are still at very low levels, underscoring historically tight labor market conditions,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “We expect initial claims to remain below (200,000) in the weeks ahead, as employers, who continue to struggle to attract and retain workers, will keep layoffs to a minimum.”
Two years after the coronavirus pandemic sent the economy into a brief but devastating recession, American workers are enjoying extraordinary job security. Weekly applications for unemployment aid, a proxy for layoffs, have remained consistently below the pre-pandemic level of 225,000.
Last year, employers added a record 6.7 million jobs, and they’ve added an average of 560,000 more each month so far in 2022. The unemployment rate, which soared to 14.7% in April 2020 in the depths of the COVID-19 recession, is now just 3.6%, barely above the lowest point in 50 years. And there is a record proportion of 1.7 job openings for every unemployed American.
The resilience of the job market and the overall U.S. economy is striking in light of a still-destructive pandemic, the economic consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the highest consumer inflation in 40 years.
Fewer than 1.48 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits in the week of April 2. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/us-jobless-claims-rise-but-remain-near-a-half-century-low/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:46 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/us-jobless-claims-rise-but-remain-near-a-half-century-low/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates continued to climb this week as the key 30-year loan rate reached 5% for the first time in more than a decade amid persistent high inflation.
The average 5% rate on the 30-year mortgage was up from 4.72% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday. The average rates in recent months have been showing the fastest pace of increases since 1994. By contrast, a year ago the 30-year rate stood at 3.04%.
The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, popular among those refinancing their homes, jumped to 4.17% from 3.91% last week.
With inflation at a four-decade high, rising mortgage rates, elevated home prices and tight supply of homes available for sale, the goal of homeownership has become the most expensive in a generation, Freddie Mac says. And this comes as the spring homebuying season begins.
Home prices are up about 15% over the past year and as much as 30% in some cities. Available homes had been in short supply even before the coronavirus pandemic started just over two years ago.
A government report Wednesday showed that the surging cost of energy pushed up wholesale prices a record 11.2% last month from a year earlier — another sign that inflationary pressure is widespread in the U.S. economy. Energy prices, which soared worldwide after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, were up 36.7% from March 2021. The wholesale inflation report was issued a day after the Labor Department disclosed that consumer prices in March jumped 8.5% from a year earlier, the fastest annual clip since December 1981. | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/us-long-term-mortgage-rates-rise-30-year-loan-reaches-5/ | 2022-04-15T02:41:53 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/business/us-long-term-mortgage-rates-rise-30-year-loan-reaches-5/ |
An Ohio man charged with storming the U.S. Capitol and stealing a coat rack testified that he joined thousands of protesters in ransacking the building last year on what he thought were orders from the president, Donald Trump.
Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, of Columbus, Ohio, said Wednesday he took to websites after being laid off from his exterminator job in March 2020 and in his pandemic doldrums fell under Trump’s sway as he bought into conspiracy theories and “went down the rabbit hole on the internet.”
On trial in U.S. District Court in Washington, Thompson testified that the claim that the election was stolen seemed credible to him because it was coming from the president. His defense team is the first to argue that Trump and those connected to him were responsible for the actions of the mob that day.
“It seems like everyone was attacking him (Trump). He needed someone to stand up for him, and I was trying to do that,” Thompson said.
Under questioning by the prosecution, Thompson acknowledged that he ignored signs he shouldn’t be at the Capitol — broken glass, alarms, chemical irritants in the air — and said he stole the coat rack to keep others from using it as a weapon. He also said he witnessed fierce fighting between police and rioters outside the building, and later ran away from officers. He said he realized weeks later that what he had done was wrong and now feels shame for his actions.
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. Thompson’s defense team is the first to argue that Trump and those connected to him were responsible for the actions of the mob that day.
“If the president is giving you almost an order to do something, I felt obligated to do that,” Thompson testified.
Thompson’s lawyer sought subpoenas to call Trump and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as witnesses, but U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton rejected that request. Jurors on Wednesday began listening to recordings of speeches that Trump and Giuliani delivered at a rally before the riot. They were expected to finish listening to recordings Thursday morning and begin deliberations later in the day.
Thompson’s wife, Sarah Thompson, testified that she voted for Democrat Joe Biden, as well as Democratic presidential nominees Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She said her husband’s views were more moderate then but shifted during the Trump years as he started encountering conspiracy theories. She said she did not share his views but helped arrange his travel to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House because he had a right to protest and she enjoyed having a quiet house.
Much of the prosecution’s case was built around testimony from several Capitol Police officers placing Thompson at the scene, wearing a bulletproof vest that he said he found, and carrying a coat rack he took from the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office.
More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. 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 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 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.
A co-defendant, Robert Lyon, 27, pleaded guilty in March to theft of government property and disorderly conduct. Both counts are misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of one year imprisonment. Walton is scheduled to sentence Lyon on June 3. | https://www.wivb.com/news/capitol-riot-defendant-i-was-following-trumps-instructions-2/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:00 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/capitol-riot-defendant-i-was-following-trumps-instructions-2/ |
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – A grand jury indicted 43-year-old Steven Gonzalez Wednesday on sex trafficking charges that carry a minimum of 15 years in prison if convicted.
U.S. attorneys allege Gonzalez, also known as Steven Hernandez and Unc, conspired with others to coerce two minors to engage in sex trafficking between 2012 and 2015 by using force or the threat of force.
The indictment charges Gonzalez with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, sex trafficking of a minor, sex trafficking by coercion, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, and possession with intent to distribute and distribution of controlled substances.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said Gonzalez was previously indicted in May 2020 on separate drug charges, including distribution of heroin, fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl causing death. Gonzalez faces the threat of life in prison and a $1 million fine in that case, which is still pending.
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Nick Veronica is a Buffalo native who joined the News 4 team as a Digital Executive Producer in 2021. He previously worked at NBC Sports and The Buffalo News. You can follow Nick on Facebook and Twitter and find more of his work here. | https://www.wivb.com/news/crime/buffalo-man-indicted-for-alleged-sex-trafficking-of-minors/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:07 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/crime/buffalo-man-indicted-for-alleged-sex-trafficking-of-minors/ |
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Agricultural workers in the east and Horn of Africa are preparing for their most severe drought in 40 years, as authorities warn that higher temperatures and less than normal rainfall was recorded by weather agencies in March and April this year.
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development said rains will likely fail for a fourth consecutive year, triggering fears of increased cases of malnutrition, threats to livelihoods and severe risks for 29 million people in the region. Meteorologists are linking the unfolding drought to human-caused climate change which is leading to increased warming in the Indian Ocean, causing more frequent cyclones.
Like most of Africa, the east and the Horn’s economic mainstay is agriculture, which is rain-fed, making it vulnerable to extreme weather events. Mama Charity Kimaru, who practices mixed farming by rearing livestock and planting cereals and vegetables in her 30-acre farm in Nyandarua, some 80 miles (126 kilometers) north of Nairobi, is among the farmers who are preparing for the worst outcomes. Kimaru says that increased temperatures recorded over the past few months have denied her livestock pasture and the crops she had planted in anticipation of the long rains season have failed.
The weather agency previously said in February that the region should prepare for a “wetter than average” long rains season, which normally pours from March to May, but the agency revised its previous forecasts this week.
“The March, April, May rains are crucial for the region and, sadly, we are looking at not just three, but potentially four consecutive failed seasons,” Workneh Gebeyehu, the executive secretary of the intergovernmental agency, said. “This, coupled with other stress factors such as conflicts in both our region and Europe, the impact of COVID-19, and macro-economic challenges, has led to acute levels of food insecurity across the greater Horn of Africa.”
Below average rainfall for 2022 are likely to prolong the already extremely dry conditions which have not been experienced to this degree since 1981. Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — which will be severely impacted by the reduced rains — are already in the midst of a dire famine.
Lack of rainfall during the short rains season late last year and the ongoing drought during the current long rains season has already led to crop failures and livestock deaths, causing high food prices and intercommunal conflicts over scarce pasture and dwindling water resources.
“Whenever we have intense cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean, we always prepare for a long drought season in eastern and the Horn regions,” Evans Mukolwe, the former science director at the U.N., said. “This is because the cyclones suck much of the moisture depriving the region of the much-needed precipitation. It has been the pattern for decades.”
Aid organizations are already concerned about how worsening climate change impacts will affect the region in future decades.
“This is not the Horn’s first drought, nor is it likely to be its last,” said Sean Granville-Ross, the regional director for Africa for the aid agency Mercy Corps. “As the climate emergency worsens, droughts will become more frequent and severe. People affected by climate change cannot wait for one crisis to end before preparing for the next.”
“The international response must prioritize immediate needs while allocating additional resources to long-term, smart interventions that will result in long-term change and assist communities in becoming more drought-resistant.”
The U.N. humanitarian office warned last week that the current drought “risks becoming one of the worst climate induced emergencies in recent history in the Horn of Africa.” It also said that the $1.5 billion drought response appeal required to assist some 5.5 million people in Somali remains seriously underfunded.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.wivb.com/news/east-and-horn-of-africa-prep-for-worst-drought-in-decades/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:13 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/east-and-horn-of-africa-prep-for-worst-drought-in-decades/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday issued an emergency use authorization for what it said is the first device that can detect COVID-19 in breath samples.
The InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer is about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, the FDA said, and can be used in doctor’s offices, hospitals and mobile testing sites. The test, which can provide results in less than three minutes, must be carried out under the supervision of a licensed health care provider.
Dr. Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, called the device “yet another example of the rapid innovation occurring with diagnostic tests for COVID-19.”
The FDA said the device was 91.2% accurate at identifying positive test samples and 99.3% accurate at identifying negative test samples.
“InspectIR expects to be able to produce approximately 100 instruments per week, which can each be used to evaluate approximately 160 samples per day,” the agency said. “At this level of production, testing capacity using the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer is expected to increase by approximately 64,000 samples per month.” | https://www.wivb.com/news/fda-authorizes-1st-breath-test-for-covid-19-infection/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:20 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/fda-authorizes-1st-breath-test-for-covid-19-infection/ |
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban into law Thursday as the state joined a growing conservative push to restrict access to the procedure ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could roll back abortion rights in America.
“This will represent the most significant protections for life that have been enacted in this state in a generation,” DeSantis said as he signed the bill at an evangelical church in the city of Kissimmee.
Republicans nationwide have moved to place new restrictions on abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court signaled it would uphold a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks. The high court’s decision, expected this summer, could potentially weaken or overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a nationwide right to abortion.
The law DeSantis signed Thursday also deals a blow to overall abortion access in the South, where Florida has provided wider access to the procedure than its regional neighbors.
The new law, which takes effect July 1, contains exceptions if the abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life, prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow for exemptions in cases where pregnancies were caused by rape, incest or human trafficking, despite several Democratic attempts to amend the bill. Under current law, Florida allows abortions up to 24 weeks.
Debate over the proposal grew deeply personal and revealing inside the legislature, as lawmakers recalled their own abortions and experiences with sexual assault in often tearful speeches on the House and Senate floors. Republicans have repeatedly called the 15-week ban reasonable.
A federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said about 2% of the nearly 72,000 abortions reported in Florida in 2019 were performed after 15 weeks. That same year, 2,256 out-of-state residents got abortions in Florida, with the majority, or about 1,200 coming, from Georgia and more than 300 from Alabama, according to the CDC. The origin of the remaining patients was not clear.
Democrats were quick to criticize the new law after the signing.
“Politicians have no business getting between a patient and her doctor,” House Democratic Leader Evan Jenne said. “This 15-week abortion ban takes away every woman’s right to make personal decisions that should only be made by themselves, with their family, their doctor, and their faith.”
The legislation came a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority indicated it would uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban. There also has been substantial support among the conservative justices for getting rid of Roe altogether.
If Roe is overturned, 26 states are certain or likely to quickly ban or severely restrict abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights. During the debate over the Florida legislation, as well as at the bill’s signing ceremony, Republicans said they want the state to be well placed to limit access to abortions if the Supreme Court upholds Mississippi’s law.
“The reality of the Roe decision is that men on the Supreme Court proclaimed that women, in order to achieve equality with men, must be able to kill their own children,” said Republican Rep. Erin Grall, the bill’s sponsor. “As a woman, I refuse to accept such a perverse version of equality.”
Elsewhere in the U.S., Republican lawmakers have introduced new abortion restrictions, some similar to a Texaslaw that bans abortion after roughly six weeks and leaves enforcement up to private citizens.
OklahomaRepublican Gov. Kevin Stitt recently signed a bill to make it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to a decade in prison. ArizonaRepublican Gov. Doug Ducey in March signed legislation to outlaw abortion after 15 weeks if the U.S. Supreme Court leaves Mississippi’s law in place.
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AP writer Adriana Gomez Licon contributed from Miami. | https://www.wivb.com/news/florida-governor-expected-to-sign-abortion-restriction-bill/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:27 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/florida-governor-expected-to-sign-abortion-restriction-bill/ |
Easter’s message of renewal will be especially poignant this year for four U.S. congregations rebounding from disasters.
Their churches were destroyed by a tornado in Kentucky, gutted by a blaze in New York City, shattered when Hurricane Ida hit the Louisiana coast, and filled with smoke and ash by the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. For the pastors, Easter’s promise of hope couldn’t be more timely.
KENTUCKY
Members of Mayfield First United Methodist Church won’t be celebrating Easter in their 100-year-old sanctuary. They can’t.
A Dec. 10 tornado ripped apart their stately buildingas it carved a deadly path through the western Kentucky community of about 10,000 people. A demolition crew tore down the rest.
Instead, on Easter Sunday, members will walk into their temporary home, Christ United Methodist Church, to mark the holy day.
“That’s going to be tough,” said the Rev. Joey Reed. He rode out the storm at Mayfield First, wondering if he would live to officiate his daughter’s wedding.
Reed started ministering soon after, encouraging his roughly 100 church members to pivot from suffering to servanthood. Congregants walked through the disaster zone assessing needs, passing out gift cards, helping residents rescue belongings.
“The example of Jesus Christ is the suffering servant,” he said. “When we turn away from our own difficulties … we are able to let go of our own pain for a minute and focus on our neighbor.”
Only in recent weeks – after performing his daughter’s wedding, escaping to a cabin with his wife, mourning the death of their cat – did Reed realize he was still carrying around trauma from the storm.
But there has been hope amid the despair, like the pieces of the church’s baptismal font rescued from a landfill. “We are all about finding those bright spots,” Reed said.
NEW YORK CITY
The Middle Collegiate Church gospel choir swayed to the beat of a live band during a joyful rehearsal at a synagogue that has become their new home.
“It’s Passover and our Jewish friends are exercising the most radical hospitality,” said the Rev. Jacqui Lewis, the church’s senior minister.
Her church was gutted by a fire on Dec. 5, 2020, a grim coda to year of pandemic-related challenges. As the church rebuilds, its congregants were recently welcomed to gather in-person at the East End Temple.
“It was very clear when the tragedy fell on Middle Collegiate Church that we needed to live out our values, open our doors,” said Rabbi Joshua Stanton, who will offer prayer during the church’s Easter celebration.
On Palm Sunday, the choir belted out hymns in preparation for Easter.
“It feels like a miracle, going through the fire and the pandemic worldwide, all that we’ve gone through… to now have a place to call home,” said Joy Lau, a member of the Jerriese Johnson gospel choir.
The multicultural congregation aspires to “take-it-to-the-streets activism.” Members have provided meals to people with AIDS, worked on storm recovery, demonstrated for racial justice and for LGBTQ and women’s rights.
The church’s belfry housed New York’s Liberty Bell, which tolled to mark the country’s birth in 1776 and has rung in remembrance of the 9/11 terror attacks. The bell and the skeletal façade were the only parts of the sanctuary to survive.
Amid the grief of losing their church, Lewis asks parishioners to “worship God with joy” and embrace Easter’s promise of hope.
“For Middle, this is a time of resurrection,” she said.
LOUISIANA
The windows at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic church were blown out, and its ceiling, sacristy and vestibule crumbled after Hurricane Ida blasted ashore in August, hitting the small fishing community of Point-aux-Chenes, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans.
Since then, its pastor, the Rev. Rajasekar Karumelnathan, has celebrated Mass in the rectory and under a tent in the parking lot. Attendance dwindled after the storm: from about 80 people who used to attend Sunday services to about 15 now.
Celebrating Christmas under the ruins was especially emotional for the congregation, the pastor said. But he expects a lighter mood for their first, post-Ida Easter service, with its promise of eternal life.
“We have lots of hope,” he said. “Easter strengthens us.”
Parishioner Teddy Neal, who lives a half mile from the church, is still rebuilding his storm-damaged home. He would love to see his church and home restored.
“I see Easter as a new beginning,” said Neal, a truck driver. “I’m pretty much humbled, where it doesn’t matter what the conditions are — as long as I’m present with Jesus during the Eucharist.”
COLORADO
At the charred remains of Bill and Jackie Stephens’ home in Superior, where they raised four kids and made countless memories over 22 years, the daffodils are blooming again.
When he looks at the green shoots and yellow blossoms, Bill Stephens sees rebirth. He also feels grief anew: for the house, the incinerated photos, the beloved yard.
“As a pastor I see this and go, this is an Easter illustration. It’s life out of the death,” Stephens said. “In some ways it’s beautiful, and in other ways it’s the reminder of, dang, we lost a lot.”
The lead pastor at Ascent Community Church in neighboring Louisville and his loved ones are one of 26 families in the congregation who lost their homes Dec. 30 in a wind-whipped wildfire that destroyed 1,084 residences in Denver-area suburbs.
The church itself, a cavernous space inside a former Sam’s Club, was largely spared. The flames wrapped around the building, scorching trees and shrubs. But ash and smoke seeped in through skylights and ventilation shafts, coating everything in sooty charcoal.
Volunteers hauled out everything that wasn’t nailed down to be washed before a building-wide deep clean. Ascent returned in February after two months of worshipping in a hotel ballroom.
In the early days, police used Ascent’s parking lot as a staging area for displaced residents. Thousands showed up and were met by church members, therapy dogs and meals.
Stephens said suffering his own loss positioned him to minister to others. While he stresses that there’s still a long road to recovery, he sees special meaning in Christ’s resurrection this year.
“That Jesus conquered the grave, conquered the sin … and breathed life on Easter Sunday,” Stephens said, “there’s something really powerful about thinking about ours as just a minor version of that.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. | https://www.wivb.com/news/for-churches-hit-by-disasters-easter-brings-promise-of-hope/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:34 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/for-churches-hit-by-disasters-easter-brings-promise-of-hope/ |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s latest attempt to fuel its huge moon rocket for a countdown test was thwarted Thursday by a hazardous hydrogen leak, the latest in a series of vexing equipment trouble.
The launch team had just begun loading fuel into the core stage of the rocket when the leak cropped up. This was NASA’s third shot at a dress rehearsal, a required step ahead of a test flight to the moon.
This time, the launch team managed to load some super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen into the core stage of the 30-story Space Launch System rocket, but fell far short of the full amount. Liquid hydrogen is extremely hazardous, with officials noting that the systems had been checked for leaks prior to the test.
Technicians deliberately left the smaller upper stage empty, after discovering a bad valve last week. The helium valve inside the upper stage cannot be replaced until the rocket is back in its hangar at Kennedy Space Center.
Two previous countdown attempts were marred by balky fans and a large hand-operated valve that workers mistakenly left closed at the pad last week.
Officials said via Twitter that they’re assessing their next steps.
NASA had been targeting June for the launch debut of the 322-foot (98-meter) SLS rocket. The empty Orion capsule on top will be sent on a four- to six-week mission around the moon and back.
Astronauts will strap in for the second test flight around the moon, planned for 2024. That would be followed as early as 2025 with the first lunar landing by astronauts since 1972. NASA plans to announce the crews for these two missions this summer.
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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. | https://www.wivb.com/news/fuel-leak-thwarts-nasas-dress-rehearsal-for-moon-rocket/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:41 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/fuel-leak-thwarts-nasas-dress-rehearsal-for-moon-rocket/ |
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Dozens of Republican leaders in Ohio are mounting a last-minute effort to urge former President Donald Trump not to endorse JD Vance in the crowded upcoming primary for an open Senate seat.
A draft letter circulating among Republicans and obtained by The Associated Press calls on Trump to remain neutral in the race. It was written following a news report that Trump was going to endorse Vance, a step the former president has not yet taken.
But the letter is a sign of anxiety among some Republicans about which candidate Trump may pick in advance of the state’s May 3 primary. Vance has come under particular scrutiny from some of Trump’s most loyal supporters for criticizing the former president in the past, something the Republicans highlighted in their letter.
In bullet points, they remind Trump of Vance’s past comments, including references to potentially supporting Hillary Clinton and comparing the former president to “another opioid.”
“We know there are many qualified candidates in this race who have stood up for the America First agenda over the years and have carried the Trump mantle over the years, again with the notable exception of JD Vance,” they wrote. “While we were working hard in Ohio to support you and Make America Great Again, JD Vance was actively working against your candidacy.”
The letter, signed by GOP party leaders, including a slew of county chairs, tells the former president that “an endorsement that cuts against your support and legacy in Ohio will only serve to confuse or upset voters” and may even suppress Republican turnout in the fall.
Representatives for Vance, who has said he regrets his past comments, did not return an email seeking comment. Trump representatives declined to comment.
David Johnson, chairman of the Columbiana County Republican Party, who helped to draft and circulate the letter, said the effort came together in a series of phone calls between party chairs Thursday.
Johnson, who has endorsed former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken for Senate, said the letter has now been signed by between 40 and 50 people, including supporters of Timken, former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, Cleveland investment banker Mike Gibbons and state Sen. Matt Dolan. Two other candidates round out a seven-way primary to replace Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman.
“All of us think it’s just not a smart thing to do for winning that seat. That’s the objective,” he said. | https://www.wivb.com/news/gop-leaders-in-ohio-try-to-block-trump-endorsement-of-vance/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:47 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/gop-leaders-in-ohio-try-to-block-trump-endorsement-of-vance/ |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is sticking with its coronavirus vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, but it won’t happen until at least the summer of 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration announced Thursday.
Last year, California was the first state to announce it would require all schoolchildren to receive the coronavirus vaccine. But it hasn’t happened yet because Newsom said he was waiting for regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to give final approval to the vaccine for school-aged children.
At the time, Newsom estimated the mandate would take effect for the start of the 2022-23 school year. But while federal regulators have authorized use of the coronavirus vaccine for children as young as 5 in an emergency, it has still not given final approval to anyone younger than 16.
As the calendar inches closer to the fall, school administrators had worried they would not have enough time to implement the vaccine mandate.
“So based on these two facts — we don’t have full FDA approval, and we recognize the implementation challenges that schools and school leaders would face — that we are not moving to have a vaccine requirement for schools in this coming academic year and no sooner than July 2023,” California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in an interview.
The move comes at a time when coronavirus cases and hospitalizations remain low following the winter surge of the omicron variant, but also as authorities struggle to convince parents to vaccinate their children against the virus.
While nearly 75% of California’s population has been vaccinated, rates for children 17 and under are much lower. Just under 34% of children between the ages of 5-11 have received the vaccine, while just over 66.4% of children ages 12-17 have gotten it, according to state data.
“From a perspective of keeping children in schools, this was the right move,” said Christina Hildebrand, president and founder of A Voice for Choice Advocacy, a group that opposes vaccine mandates. “The number of children that are unvaccinated, and if they were removed from school, would have been a much bigger disaster.”
California and Louisiana are the only states that have announced a vaccine mandate for K-12 schools, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. The District of Columbia also has a mandate.
Louisiana’s mandate includes an opt-out for parents, while California’s mandate would allow exemptions for medical reasons and personal beliefs. A medical reason often requires proof from a doctor. But a personal belief exemption is easier to obtain, often requiring a letter from the student or parent stating their objections.
State Sen. Richard Pan, a Democrat from Sacramento who is also a pediatrician, had authored a bill in the state Legislature this year that would have blocked students from using the personal belief exemption to avoid the coronavirus vaccine. But on Thursday, Pan announced he was holding the bill — meaning it will not become law this year — though he said there should still be a focus on boosting child vaccination rates.
“Until children’s access to COVID vaccination is greatly improved, I believe that a state-wide policy to require COVID vaccination in schools is not the immediate priority, although it is an appropriate safety policy for many school districts in communities with good vaccine access,” Pan said in a news release.
Pan did not say he pulled the bill because of a lack of support. A poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, found 64% of registered voters support coronavirus vaccine requirements for schools — including 55% of voters who are the parents of school-aged children. The poll was published in February based on a sampling of 8,937 California registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
This is the second vaccine-related bill to fail in the California Legislature this year before it even got to a vote. Last month, Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks withdrew a bill that would have forced all California businesses to require coronavirus vaccines for their employees — a decision she attributed to “a new and welcome chapter in this pandemic, with the virus receding for the moment.”
As coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have declined, state officials have removed most virus restrictions, no longer requiring masks in schools or other public places.
“Definitely a lot of parents are excited that Sen. Pan is pulling this bill. It’s one less thing that they have to worry about,” said Jonathan Zachreson, the parent of three high-school children who founded the advocacy group Reopen California Schools. “The fact is kids ages 5-11 have had access to vaccines for quite some time and their low vaccination rates, I think, is evident of how parents feel about the vaccine.”
Other vaccine-related bills are still alive in the California Legislature, including one that would let schoolchildren 12 and older receive the coronavirus vaccine without their parents’ permission. Currently, California requires parental permission for vaccines unless they are specifically to prevent a sexually transmitted disease.
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Associated Press reporter Don Thompson contributed. | https://www.wivb.com/news/health-news/california-delays-coronavirus-vaccine-mandate-for-schools/ | 2022-04-15T02:42:54 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/health-news/california-delays-coronavirus-vaccine-mandate-for-schools/ |
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong will ease some social distancing measures later this month, allowing people to dine in at restaurants in the evening and lifting restrictions on private gatherings, as the number of COVID-19 infections declined in recent weeks.
From April 21, restaurants will be able to operate until 10 p.m. with a maximum of four people per table, officials said Thursday.
Other businesses that were ordered to temporarily close due to Hong Kong’s fifth wave of infections, such as beauty parlors, gyms, theme parks and cinemas, will also be allowed to re-open, although capacity will be limited to 50%. Bars and pubs will remain closed.
Restrictions that currently only allow two households to gather will also be lifted.
“To relax these measures, to allow some degree of normal activities in society, with more interactions among citizens, inevitably they will come with some transmission risks,” Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said during a news conference Thursday.
Lam appealed to the public to comply with the social distancing measures that remain in place and to get vaccinated.
“While the number of positive cases reported every day has dropped to a relatively low level, in absolute terms they are still rather high,” she said.
The city reported 1,260 cases in the community on Wednesday, down more than 95% from the peak of the outbreak in March, when over 30,000 daily infections were reported.
Lam said the city is now “much, much better prepared” to handle another wave if it hits, due to increased levels of vaccination and more facilities to handle patients, such as community isolation and treatment centers.
Lam also said the government has not given up on mass testing for the city, but that timing was important.
Other restrictions will be also lifted later this month. Local tours will be allowed to resume and public gatherings of four people instead of two will also be permitted. | https://www.wivb.com/news/health-news/hong-kong-to-ease-covid-19-restrictions-as-infections-fall/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:01 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/health-news/hong-kong-to-ease-covid-19-restrictions-as-infections-fall/ |
The missile cruiser Moskva, named in honor of the Russian capital, was launched during the Cold War, saw service during conflicts in Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States.
Now the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has sunk in those waters off Ukraine while being towed to port after a fire onboard, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.
It was an inglorious demise for the vessel initially christened the Slava, or “glory.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WARSHIP?
The Russian Defense Ministry said the heavily damaged Moskva sank in a storm Thursday under tow after being gutted by fire. It previously said the blaze set off some of its weapons and forced the crew to evacuate. It denied there had been an attack by Ukraine on the ship, which would normally have about 500 sailors aboard.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odesa region, said Ukraine struck the ship late Wednesday with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.” Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, later said he was unable to confirm its fate or if it even had been hit by Ukrainian forces.
It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different accounts, and cloud cover made it impossible to locate the ship or determine its condition from satellite photos. The U.S. was unable to confirm Ukraine’s claims.
The Moskva was about 69 miles (100 to 104 kilometers) due south of Odesa when the fire occurred, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments.
WHAT WAS THE WARSHIP’S CAPABILITY?
The Moskva could carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its loss will greatly reduce Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea.
Its sinking represents a major blow to Russian prestige seven weeks into a war that already is widely seen as a historic blunder.
WHAT WAS ITS HISTORY?
The warship was launched as the Slava from a shipyard in Mykolaiv in what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine in July 1979, according to open-source intelligence firm Janes. Commissioned in late December 1982, it was 611.5 feet (186 meters) long. It was designed to carry a crew of 476 with an additional 62 officers.
The Slava served as the flagship of the Soviet fleet in the Black Sea. It carried both surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, deck guns, torpedoes and mortars. It also had a helicopter deck.
During the Cold War, it also carried nuclear weapons. In 1989, under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. and Soviet scientists took part in a joint test abroad the Slava in the Black Sea to measure the emission of neutrons and gamma rays from a nuclear warhead on a cruise missile.
In late 1989, the Slava was supposed to host a meeting off Malta between Gorbachev and then-President George H.W. Bush, but gale force winds prompted the Soviet-hosted side of the talks to be held instead on the docked cruiser Maxim Gorky.
FROM SLAVA TO MOSKVA
The Slava underwent repairs from 1990-1999. During that time, the Soviet Union collapsed, an independent Ukraine emerged and Russia’s economy foundered. Finally overhauled and rechristened the Moskva, the ship hosted both President Vladimir Putin and then-Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi during a 2003 visit to Sardinia.
“Thank God, our cruisers can still go on their own, our planes and missiles can fly,” Putin said at the time.
Putin’s later comments at the La Maddalena naval base show how much has changed. He described the Moskva’s presence as a sign that “the level of trust between Russia and the NATO countries is rising.” NATO’s eastward expansion and Russian security were among the reasons Putin cited for sending troops to Ukraine.
During Russia’s war in its former republic of Georgia in 2008, the Moskva took part in operations in the Black Sea, and Georgia said it was involved in an attack on the country.
In 2014, as Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, the Moskva blocked Ukrainian naval vessels from leaving Lake Donuzlav.
In 2015-16, it was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to provide support for the Russian military campaign backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war. Its sailors were decorated for their service there and in the war on Georgia.
The Moskva underwent repairs and modernization from 2018 to July 2020, according to Janes.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Moskva took part in an attack on Zmiinyi — or Snake — Island, which sits about 35 kilometers (21 miles) off the coast. In an audio widely circulated online, a Ukrainian soldier responds: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”
The Associated Press cannot independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Instagram account posted a photo of him holding commemorative stamps marking the purported moment. They show a lone Ukrainian soldier on a beach, rifle in one hand, the other giving the middle finger to the passing Moskva, its “121” ship number visible on it.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jongambrellAP | https://www.wivb.com/news/in-wars-cold-and-hot-the-moskva-has-sailed-through-history/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:08 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/in-wars-cold-and-hot-the-moskva-has-sailed-through-history/ |
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams cannot immediately begin raising and spending unlimited campaign contributions under astate law passed last year because she is not yet her party’s nominee, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
Abrams and her One Georgia committee filed a lawsuit last month challenging the constitutionality of the new law, which allows certain top elected officials and party nominees to create “leadership committees” that can raise campaign funds without limits. But they also asked the judge to order the state ethics commission not to take any action against them if they continue to raise money before the primary next month.
“This Court will not rewrite Georgia law to enable One Georgia to stand in the same shoes as a leadership committee that, in Plaintiffs’ view, is operating in violation of the First Amendment,” U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen wrote in his order.
The law allows the governor and lieutenant governor, opposing major party nominees, and both party caucuses in the state House and Senate to form leadership committees. Unlike traditional political action committees, they are allowed to coordinate with a candidate’s campaign.
Leadership committees can also collect unlimited contributions, while candidates for statewide office cannot collect more than $7,600 from an individual donor for a primary or general election and $4,500 for a runoff election.
The lawsuit noted that the new law allows Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to raise unlimited funds while Abrams is constrained by the contribution limits.
Abrams is the only Democrat who qualified to run for governor, which means she is effectively the party’s nominee, her lawyers argued. State party chair U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams submitted a sworn statement saying that Abrams is the party’s nominee.
But state law is unambiguous in requiring a candidate to be selected in a primary election to be considered the nominee, Cohen wrote. Georgia’s primary election is set for May 24.
Abrams and her committee could have followed the path chosen earlier this year by former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who is challenging Kemp in the Republican primary. Perdue sought to stop Kemp’s leadership committee Georgians First from soliciting or receiving contributions and to stop it from spending money to promote his reelection.
Cohen ruled in February that Kemp could not spend any more money from the committee on his primary campaign. But he said the committee could continue to receive contributions and spend money in support of other public officials in accordance with campaign finance laws. Kemp has appealed the ruling.
Cohen wrote that Abrams and her committee chose an “untenable option” by asking to be allowed to raise unlimited funds under a law that they contend is unconstitutional. He also rejected the attempt to prevent a Georgia state agency from enforcing a law that says a nominee for governor is chosen in a primary.
Cohen’s ruling was not a surprise. He was clearly skeptical of Abrams’ requests at a hearing earlier this week. | https://www.wivb.com/news/judge-denies-abrams-bid-to-seek-unlimited-contributions/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:15 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/judge-denies-abrams-bid-to-seek-unlimited-contributions/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Ohio man who claimed he was only “following presidential orders” from Donald Trump when he stormed the U.S. Capitol was quickly convicted Thursday of obstructing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Taking less then three hours, a federal jury also found Dustin Byron Thompson, 38, guilty of five other offenses including stealing a coat rack from an office inside the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 of last year. The maximum sentence for the obstruction count, the lone felony, is 20 years imprisonment.
Jurors rejected Thompson’s novel defense, in which he blamed Trump and members of the president’s inner circle for the insurrection and for his own actions.
The judge didn’t buy that defense either, though he cast his own blame in Trump’s direction after the verdict was announced.
“I think our democracy is in trouble,” said District Judge Reggie Walton, adding that “charlatans” like Trump don’t care about democracy, only about power.
“And as a result of that, it’s tearing our country apart,” the judge said.
Prosecutors did not ask for Thompson to be detained immediately, but Walton ordered him held and he was led away handcuffed. The judge said he didn’t believe Thompson’s story, felt he was a flight risk and was a danger to the public. Sentencing was set for July 20.
Thompson’s jury trial was the third among hundreds of Capitol riot cases prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department. In the first two cases, jurors convicted both defendants of all charges.
Thompson, an exterminator who lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, was the first Capitol riot defendant to mount a trial defense blaming Trump and members of his inner circle for the insurrection.
Jurors heard attorneys’ closing arguments earlier in the day.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Dreher said that Thompson, a college-educated exterminator who lost his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, knew he was breaking the law when he joined the mob that attacked the Capitol and, in his case, looted the Senate parliamentarian’s office. The prosecutor told jurors that Thompson’s lawyer “wants you to think you have to choose between President Trump and his client.”
“You don’t have to choose because this is not President Trump’s trial. This is the trial for Dustin Thompson because of what he did at the Capitol on the afternoon on Jan. 6,” Dreher said.
Defense attorney Samuel Shamansky said Thompson hasn’t avoided taking responsibility for his conduct that day.
“This shameful chapter in our history is all on TV,” Shamansky told jurors.
But he said Thompson, unemployed and consumed by a steady diet of conspiracy theories, was vulnerable to Trump’s lies about a stolen election. He described Thompson as a “pawn” and Trump as a “gangster” who abused his power to manipulate supporters.
“The vulnerable are seduced by the strong, and that’s what happened here,” Shamansky said.
Thompson’s jury trial is the third among hundreds of Capitol riot cases prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department. In the first two cases, jurors convicted the defendants of all charges.
Judge Walton barred Thompson’s lawyer from calling Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as trial witnesses. But the judge ruled that jurors could hear recordings of speeches that Trump and Giuliani delivered on Jan. 6, before the riot erupted. A recording of Trump’s remarks was played.
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.”
Dreher told jurors that neither Trump nor Giuliani had the authority to “make legal” what Thompson did at the Capitol.
Thompson, who testified on Wednesday, admitted that he joined the mob’s attack and stole the coat rack and a bottle of bourbon from the Senate parliamentarian’s office. He said he regretted his “disgraceful” behavior.
“I can’t believe the things that I did,” he said. “Mob mentality and group think is very real and very dangerous.”
Thompson said he believed Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen and was trying to stand up for the lame duck president.
“If the president is giving you almost an order to do something, I felt obligated to do that,” he testified.
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.
The obstruction count is the only felony charge. The rest are misdemeanors.
Thompson drove from Ohio to Washington with a friend, Robert Lyon, who also was arrested less than a month after the riot. Lyon pleaded guilty in March to two misdemeanors — theft of government property and disorderly conduct — and is to be sentenced June 3.
Thompson and Lyon took an Uber ride into Washington on the morning of Jan. 6. After Trump’s speech, they headed to the Capitol.
Thompson was wearing a bulletproof vest when he entered the building and went to the parliamentarian’s office, 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!”
“(Trump) didn’t force you to go. He didn’t force you to walk every step of the way to the Capitol building, did he?” Dreher asked Thompson on Wednesday.
“No,” Thompson said.
“You chose to do that?” Dreher asked.
“I was following presidential orders, but yes,” Thompson said.
More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes arising from the riot. 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. Last month, a jury convicted a Texas man, Guy Reffitt, of storming the building 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.
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Associated Press reporter Jacques Billeaud contributed from Phoenix. | https://www.wivb.com/news/man-blaming-trumps-orders-for-riot-actions-awaits-verdict/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:22 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/man-blaming-trumps-orders-for-riot-actions-awaits-verdict/ |
(ABC4) – Over one million hot glue guns have been recalled due to fire and burn hazards, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced on Thursday.
The glue guns, which were recalled by Dollar Tree, can malfunction when plugged in.
Dollar Tree received several reports of electrical malfunctions when using the products, some of the reports included fire. One report indicated resulting skin irritation.
The hot glue guns were sold nationwide at Dollar Tree from August 2020 through February 2022 and at Family Dollar stores nationwide January-February 2022 for about $1.
The CPSC said consumers should immediately unplug and stop the Crafter’s Square Glue Gun and return it to any Dollar Tree or Family Dollar store for a full refund.
Official say online purchasers will be contacted directly with further instructions.
About 1,025,000 hot glue guns have been recalled. | https://www.wivb.com/news/national/over-1-million-hot-glue-guns-sold-at-dollar-tree-recalled-due-to-fire-hazard/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:30 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/national/over-1-million-hot-glue-guns-sold-at-dollar-tree-recalled-due-to-fire-hazard/ |
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A top Republican candidate for Nebraska governor faced an onslaught of criticism Thursday after several women, including a GOP state lawmaker, alleged that he groped them at public events and forcibly kissed one woman.
The accusations drew widespread condemnation from Charles W. Herbster’s primary opponents, Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, and the 13 women from both parties who serve in the Legislature.
“This is beyond horrible,” said Ricketts, who has clashed publicly with Herbster. “Charles W. Herbster should beg forgiveness of the women he has preyed upon and seek treatment. Sexual assault is criminal behavior and should disqualify anyone from elected leadership.”
The allegations were first reported by the Nebraska Examiner. The online news outlet interviewed six women who claimed that the 67-year-old Herbster groped their buttocks, outside of their clothes, during political events or beauty pageants. A seventh woman said Herbster once cornered her privately and kissed her forcibly.
The Nebraska Examiner did not identify any of the women except for state Sen. Julie Slama. It reported that it corroborated six of the women’s accounts with at least one witness to each incident. And it said all of the incidents happened between 2017 and this year, and each woman was in her late teens or early 20s.
Herbster fervently denied the allegations, calling them a “dirty political trick” orchestrated by Ricketts and his preferred GOP candidate, University of Nebraska Regent Jim Pillen. Ricketts cannot run for reelection because of term limits and has backed Pillen as his replacement while painting Herbster as unqualified for the job.
“It’s only after I’ve threatened the stranglehold the establishment has on this state (that) they stoop to lies this large,” Herbster said in a statement. “This story is a ridiculous, unfounded dirty political trick being carried out by Pete Ricketts and Jim Pillen.”
John Gage, a spokesman for Pillen, called Herbster’s statement “unhinged.” And a spokeswoman for Ricketts referred back to his original statement, saying the women should be commended for coming forward. In a statement, Pillen said: “Sexually assaulting women should be disqualifying for anyone seeking to serve as a leader. Suzanne and I are praying for the women targeted by Charles W. Herbster.”
Herbster is widely viewed as a top contender for governor and has won the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, a close ally who remains popular in Republican-dominated Nebraska. He has cast himself as a political outsider with experience as the owner of major farming and agribusiness operations.
Slama, a conservative Republican, said Herbster sexually assaulted her in 2019, when she was 22 years old. Slama said Herbster reached up her skirt and touched her inappropriately as she walked past him at the Douglas County Republican Party’s annual Elephant Remembers dinner.
Slama briefly recounted the experience in a February floor speech after another Republican senator was accused of inappropriate behavior, but she didn’t mention Herbster by name. She said at the time that she didn’t want to relive the trauma or have the incident define her career.
“I am not seeking media attention or any other gain, I simply was not going to lie and say it did not occur,” Slama said in a statement Thursday, asking for privacy.
Jane Kleeb, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said the allegations show there’s a need to change who gets elected.
“Reprehensible behavior seems to have become commonplace in the Republican Party,” said Kleeb, urging voters to support Democratic state Sen. Carol Blood in the governor’s race.
Slama’s female counterparts in the Legislature also issued a joint statement condemning Herbster.
“Sexual assault is despicable and damaging,” said the statement, signed by all 13 senators. “This is not a question of politics — it is an issue of character and basic human decency.”
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Follow Grant Schulte on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrantSchulte | https://www.wivb.com/news/nebraska-gop-governor-hopeful-accused-of-groping-women/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:36 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/nebraska-gop-governor-hopeful-accused-of-groping-women/ |
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, a guided-missile cruiser that became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war, sank Thursday after it was heavily damaged in the latest setback for Moscow’s invasion.
Ukrainian officials said their forces hit the vessel with missiles, while Russia acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze.
The loss of the warship named for the Russian capital is a devastating symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regroup for a renewed offensivein eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital, Kyiv.
In his nightly video address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to the sinking as he told Ukrainians they should be proud of having survived 50 days under attack when the Russians “gave us a maximum of five.”
Listing the many ways Ukraine has defended against the invasion, he noted “those who showed that Russian warships can sail away, even if it’s to the bottom” of the sea. It was his only reference to the missile cruiser.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the ship sank in a storm while being towed to a port. Russia earlier said the flames on the ship, which would typically have 500 sailors aboard, forced the entire crew to evacuate. Later it said the blaze had been contained.
The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. It’s also a blow to Moscow’s prestige in a war already widely seen as a historic blunder. Now entering its eighth week, the invasion has stalled amid resistance from Ukrainian fighters bolstered by weapons and other aid sent by Western nations.
During the first days of the war, the Moskva was reportedly the ship that called on Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender in a standoff. In a widely circulated recording, a soldier responded: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”
The Associated Press could not independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating it.
The news of the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war — at a horrific cost to civilians.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that 1,026 Ukrainian troops surrendered at a metals factory in the city. But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, rejected the claim, telling Current Time TV that “the battle over the seaport is still ongoing today.”
It was unclear how many forces were still defending Mariupol.
Russian state television broadcast footage that it said was from Mariupol showing dozens of men in camouflage walking with their hands up and carrying others on stretchers. One man held a white flag.
Mariupol has been the scene of the some the war’s worst suffering. Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP in an interview Thursday that people are being “starved to death” in the besieged city.
Mariupol’s mayor said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000, after weeks of attacks and privation left bodies “carpeted through the streets.”
Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.
The Russian military continues to move helicopters and other equipment together for such an effort, according to a senior U.S. defense official, and it will likely add more ground combat units “over coming days.” But it’s still unclear when Russia could launch a bigger offensive in the Donbas.
Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independenceof the rebel regions in the Donbas.
The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wide-ranging offensive.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odesa region, across the Black Sea to the northwest of Sevastopol, said the Ukrainians struck the ship with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire, without saying what caused the blaze. It said the “main missile weapons” were not damaged. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had air-defense missiles and other guns.
The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine and based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the missiles can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would have put the Moskva within range, based on where it was when the fire began.
Launched as the Slava in 1979, the cruiser saw service in the Cold War and during conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States. During the Cold War, it carried nuclear weapons.
In 1989, the Slava was supposed to host a meeting off Malta between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush, but gale-force winds moved the talks to the docked cruiser Maxim Gorky.
On Thursday, other Russian ships that were also in the northern Black Sea moved further south after the Moskva caught fire, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.
Before the Moskva sank, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, told AP its removal would mean “we can only have a sigh of relief.”
While the U.S. was not able to confirm Ukraine’s claims of striking the warship, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a big blow to Russia.”
“They’ve had to kind of choose between two stories: One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them,” Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 and has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.
It has also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.
Also Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters some 11 kilometers (7 miles) across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo, in Russia’s Bryansk region. Russia’s Investigative Committee said seven people, including a toddler, were wounded.
Russia’s state security service had earlier said Ukrainian forces fired mortar rounds at a border post in Bryansk as refugees were crossing, forcing them to flee.
The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukrainian security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an air strike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, some 55 kilometers (35 miles) from the border.
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Associated Press 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 | https://www.wivb.com/news/neighbors-back-ukraine-demand-accountability-for-war-crimes/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:43 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/neighbors-back-ukraine-demand-accountability-for-war-crimes/ |
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — The school closures, stay-at-home mandates and curfews that Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine imposed early in the pandemic still infuriate Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters. His dismissal of the former president’s stolen election lieand criticism that Trump “poured gas on the fire” before the U.S. Capitol riot put him at odds with many GOP voters.
But that may not be enough to topple DeWine in the state’s upcoming May 3 primary.
Despite some notable splits with Trump, he is entering the final stretch of the campaign in a strong position to win the GOP’s nomination for another four-year term. He’s facing challenges from three lesser-known conservatives who could essentially split the far-right faithful, with DeWine potentially emerging as a Republican who crossed Trump’s base and managed to survive.
“Whatever happens in the election happens, but this was a crucial time in our history,” DeWine, 75, said in an interview, referring to his management of the pandemic.
The dynamics harken back to an era when Ohio prized middle-of-the-road candidates, making it a bellwether for presidential elections for decades. But that reputation for moderation eroded under Trump, who won the state in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The higher-profile race for an open U.S. Senate seat is perhaps more reflective of Ohio’s rightward shift as candidates have spent months trying to out-Trump one another as they seek his coveted endorsement.
So far, the former president has stayed quiet in the governor’s race, a credit to DeWine’s ability to walk a fine line of expressing support for Trump while also keeping him at a distance. Despite their different approach to the pandemic, which Trump sought to minimize, there was only one hint of a genuine rift between the two men.
That was when DeWine suggested in November 2020 that it was time for Trump to acknowledge that Joe Biden had won the White House. Trump’s response was a tweet wondering who would challenge DeWine in this year’s primary. “Will be hotly contested!” Trump predicted.
Trump announced this week he’ll be in Ohio for an April 23 rally ahead of the GOP primary. DeWine said on Thursday that he’s not sure if he’ll be able to make it because he already committed to attending a 200th birthday celebration for another ex-president, Ohio native Ulysses S. Grant.
Former U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, who served four terms in Congress, was thought to be DeWine’s biggest threat, especially if he could win an endorsement from Trump after getting his backing four years ago in a failed U.S. Senate bid. But some recent polls show Renacci splitting the anti-DeWine vote with Joe Blystone, a farmer who jumped in the race early and built a following in rural Ohio.
Much of the frustration toward DeWine has bubbled up in Republican-dominated rural counties where mask mandates and school shutdowns were met with resistance. Those areas hold the fewest votes yet carry significant weight because Republicans often pile up big enough margins to negate the strong Democratic turnout in the state’s big cities.
“They say in politics people forget things. Down here they haven’t forgotten,” said Dennis Cooper, a member of the Clermont County Republican Party, which overwhelmingly endorsed Renacci over DeWine earlier this year. “It wasn’t just one thing. It was one thing on top of another that made no sense.”
Still, DeWine has a huge fundraising advantage and a network of supporters built from a political career spanning more than 40 years. Both are why more prominent Republicans in the state decided against challenging him even as dissatisfaction grew.
Ryan Stubenrauch, a former DeWine policy adviser who’s now a GOP consultant, thinks the anger is coming from a vocal minority.
“There’s a whole lot of people mad at a lot of things. The last two years have been really rough on people,” he said. “I don’t know if the party has changed or all of our politics have shifted over the last two years.”
One thing that hasn’t changed, he said, is DeWine. “He values life just about over everything,” Stubenrauch said.
He’s an old-school conservative who just months into his first term as governor signed into law what at the time was one of the most stringent abortion restrictionsin the nation.
DeWine has leaned on his pro-life stance to explain why that also includes protecting people from COVID-19. He was widely praised early in 2020 for not downplaying the pandemic when he became the first governor to shut down schools statewide.
But the mood soured among Republicans who quickly tired of mask mandates and health orders that closed many small businesses but allowed large retailers to remain open. They saw him putting in restrictions that ran counter to what they were hearing from Trump and conservative governors such as Ron DeSantis in Florida and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem.
A hostile state Legislature dominated by DeWine’s own party overrode his veto of a bill weakening the governor’s ability to respond to public health emergencies.
Renacci said DeWine prioritized “fear over freedom.”
Some conservatives have vowed never to vote for DeWine again, according to a handful of county GOP chairs, even if that means sitting out in November.
The winner of the Republican primary will face the Democratic nominee, either former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley or ex-Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley.
“They’re not going to vote again for someone who has disappointed them and not represented them well,” said Shelby County Republican Chairwoman Theresa Kerg. “I think people are frustrated and tired of just accepting whoever is given to them.”
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Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report. | https://www.wivb.com/news/ohios-gop-governor-aims-to-overcome-anger-in-party-base/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:50 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/ohios-gop-governor-aims-to-overcome-anger-in-party-base/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Frank James posted dozens of videos ranting about race, violence and his struggles with mental illness. One stands out for its relative calm: A silent shot of a packed New York City subway car in which he raises his finger to point out passengers, one by one.
Even as police arrested James on Wednesday in the Brooklyn subway shooting that wounded 10 people, they were still searching for a motive from a flood of details about the 62-year-old Black man’s life.
An erratic work history. Arrests for a string of mostly low-level crimes. A storage locker with more ammo. And hours of rambling, bigoted, profanity-laced videos on his YouTube channel that point to a deep, simmering anger.
“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,” says James in a video where he takes on the moniker “Prophet of Doom.”
After a 30-hour manhunt, James was arrested without incident after a tipster — thought by police to be James himself — said he could be found near a McDonald’s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Mayor Eric Adams triumphantly proclaimed “We got him!” Police said their top priority was getting the suspect, now charged with a federal terrorism offense, off the streets as they investigate their biggest unanswered question: Why?
A prime trove of evidence, they said, is his YouTube videos. He seems to have opinions about nearly everything — racism in America, New York City’s new mayor, the state of mental health services, 9/11, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Black women.
A federal criminal complaint cited one in which James ranted about too many homeless people on the subway and put the blame on New York City’s mayor.
“What are you doing, brother?” he said in the video posted March 27. “Every car I went to was loaded with homeless people. It was so bad, I couldn’t even stand.”
James then railed about the treatment of Black people in an April 6 video cited in the complaint, saying, “And so the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting.”
In a video posted a day before the attack, James criticizes crime against Black people and says things would only change if certain people were “stomped, kicked and tortured” out of their “comfort zone.”
Surveillance cameras spotted James entering the subway system turnstiles Tuesday morning, dressed as a maintenance or construction worker in a yellow hard hat and orange working jacket with reflective tape.
Police say fellow riders heard him say only “oops” as he set off one smoke grenade in a crowded subway car as it rolled into a station. He then set off a second smoke grenade and started firing, police said. In the smoke and chaos that ensued, police say James made his getaway by slipping into a train that pulled in across the platform and exited after the first stop.
Left behind at the scene was 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, police said.
That key led investigators to James, and clues to a life of setbacks and anger as he bounced among factory and maintenance jobs, got fired at least twice, moved among Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.
Investigators said James had 12 prior arrests in New York and New Jersey from 1990 to 2007, including for possession of burglary tools, criminal sex act, trespassing, larceny and disorderly conduct.
James had no felony convictions and was not prohibited from purchasing or owning a firearm. Police said the gun used in the attack was legally purchased at an Ohio pawn shop in 2011. A search of James’ Philadelphia storage unit and apartment turned up at least two types of ammunition, including the kind used with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, a taser and a blue smoke cannister.
Police said James was born and raised in New York City. In his videos, he said he finished a machine shop course in 1983 then worked as a gear machinist at Curtiss-Wright, an aerospace manufacturer in New Jersey, until 1991 when he was he was hit by a one-two punch of bad news: He was fired from his job and, soon after, his father — with whom he had lived in New Jersey — died.
Records show James filed a complaint against the aerospace company in federal court, soon after he lost his job, alleging racial discrimination, but it was dismissed a year later by a judge. He says in one video, without offering specifics, that he “couldn’t get any justice for what I went through.”
A spokesperson for Curtiss-Wright didn’t immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
James describes going in and out of several mental health facilities, including two in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s.
“Mr. Mayor, let me say to you I’m a victim of your mental health program in New York City,” James says in a video earlier this year, adding he is “full of hate, full anger and bitterness.”
James says he later was a patient at Bridgeway House, a mental health facility in New Jersey, although that could not be immediately confirmed. Messages left with the facility were not returned.
“My goal at Bridgeway in 1997 was to get off Social Security and go back to f—— work,” he says in a video, adding that he enrolled in a college and took a course in computer-aided design and manufacturing.
James says he eventually got a job at telecommunications giant Lucent Technologies in Parsippany, New Jersey, but says he ended up getting fired and returned to Bridgeway House, this time not as a patient but as an employee on the maintenance staff. A message seeking comment was sent to Lucent Technologies.
“I just want to work. I want to be a person that’s productive,” he said.
Touches of that earnest, struggling man showed up after James’ parked car was hit in Milwaukee. Eugene Yarbrough, pastor of Mt. Zion Wings of Glory Church of God in Christ next door to James’ apartment, said James was impressed that the pastor owned up to hitting the car. Neither James nor anyone else was there to see the accident. And James called him up to say so.
“I just couldn’t believe it would be him,” Yarbrough said. “But who knows what people will do?”
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AP reporters Michael Balsamo in Washington, Deepti Hajela in New York, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia, Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, and Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
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On Twitter, follow Bernard Condon at twitter.com/bernardfcondon, Michael Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak and Michael Kunzelman at twitter.com/Kunzelman75 and send confidential news tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/. | https://www.wivb.com/news/police-search-for-motive-in-brooklyn-subway-suspects-videos/ | 2022-04-15T02:43:57 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/police-search-for-motive-in-brooklyn-subway-suspects-videos/ |
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis washed the feet of a dozen inmates at a prison near Rome in a Holy Thursday ritual that symbolizes humility and service and highlights his papacy’s attention to those on society’s margins.
He arrived in a motorcade that included Italian police cars at the prison in Civitavecchia, a port city, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Rome. The ritual was closed to the public for security reasons and to protect the privacy of the inmates.
But afterwards, the Vatican said the pope performed the foot-washing, following Jesus’ example, “in a sign of love inspired by love” aimed at service and humility. The 12 inmates included men and women of various ages and of different nationalities, it said.
Symbolizing the number of Jesus’ apostles, the twelve sat on chairs on a raised platform. The pontiff washed, dried, then kissed the feet of each of the inmates, all who were wearing masks against the spread of COVID-19. Some inmates leaned over to kiss the pope’s hands in gratitude.
In the prison chapel, the pope celebrated a Mass attended by inmates, some prison staff and Italy’s justice minister, the Vatican said in a statement.
The Vatican did not say what accommodations might have been made to enable the pope, who has been hobbled of late by a knee-ligament problem, to perform the foot-washing ceremony. For years, Francis has also suffered from sciatica, a nerve inflammation that can cause back and leg pain.
Earlier, during a Holy Thursday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Francis advised the 1,800 priests in attendance not to focus on worldly concerns such as power or status but exhorted them to “serve, with a clear conscience, the holy and faithful people of God.”
Francis made no reference to decades of scandals involving Catholic priests who sexually abused children and were often transferred from parish to parish by bishops who tried to avoid embarrassment rather than protect minors.
During the Holy Thursday Mass, large urns of oil are blessed for use in ceremonies in churches in the Rome area. When Francis went to bless the oil by breathing into it, an aide helped him rise from his chair and walk toward the silver urn. At the end of the ceremony, Francis descended the steps down from the altar clinging to an aide’s arm, and even while assisted limped his way out of the basilica.
Holy Week, which draws hundreds of thousands of faithful to the Vatican, began with Palm Sunday Mass on April 10 in St. Peter’s Square and culminates this Sunday at Easter, when the faithful mark the resurrection of Jesus.
This year, the Good Friday torch-lit Way of the Cross procession in Rome returns to its traditional venue at the ancient Colosseum after a two-year absence due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Vatican has invited a Russian woman and a Ukrainian woman, who work together at a Rome hospital, to carry a cross together during the procession. That has angered some Ukrainians, including the country’s ambassador to the Holy See and the archbishop of Kyiv. Their objections center on whether such a gesture, implying reconciliation, is suitable, given Russia’s invasion of its neighbor and its ongoing war against the country’s people.
The Vatican is still going ahead with the procession’s lineup of participants, who take turns carrying a lightweight cross during the procession, which is presided over by the pontiff and recalls Jesus’ death by crucifixion. | https://www.wivb.com/news/pope-marks-holy-thursday-ahead-of-prison-feet-washing-ritual/ | 2022-04-15T02:44:04 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/pope-marks-holy-thursday-ahead-of-prison-feet-washing-ritual/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has called Russia’s war on Ukraine a genocide and accused Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes. But his administration has struggled with how much intelligence it is willing to give the Ukrainian forces that are trying to stop the Russian leader.
Since the war began in late February, the Biden administration has made multiple changes to a classified directive that governs what U.S. agencies are supposed to share with Ukraine. Much of what the United States collects is shared; some is not. Where the line is drawn depends on protecting the sources and methods of the intelligence, but also trying to limit the risk of escalation with a nuclear-armed Russia.
The latest changes occurred last week when U.S. intelligence officials lifted some geographic limits on the transfer of actionable information — the kind of information used in minute-by-minute decisions on the battlefield. According to several people familiar with the issue who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, officials removed language that had limited the specific locations of potential targets in parts of eastern Ukraine.
The shifts in the intelligence rules reflect the administration’s changing calculations of what Putin might consider escalatory. The U.S. is also trying to step up support to Ukrainian forces that have surprised much of the world in how they have held back Russia but remain undermanned and outgunned. The Pentagon this week also announced $800 million in new military assistance that could include more powerful weapons and defensive equipment.
Some people familiar with the directive say there is ambiguity about the new limits. One question is whether the U.S. would delay or limit information about a possible Russian target in areas internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory but that Moscow or its proxies controlled before the war, including the Crimean Peninsula and parts of the Donbas. U.S. personnel have at times limited intelligence that they believed Ukrainian forces could use to retake previously lost territory.
The directive still limits information given to Ukrainians about forces in Russia or neighboring Belarus, where Russian forces have staged and previously attacked from Ukraine’s north.
“We are intensely sharing timely intelligence with the Ukrainians to help them defend themselves throughout their country, including in areas held by Russia before the 2022 invasion,” said one U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the classified directive. The Wall Street Journal first reported the directive had been changed.
Another U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters said the administration was “providing detailed, timely intelligence to the Ukrainians on a range of fronts.”
A letter sent Monday by Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee — after the new guidance — urges Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, to “proactively share intelligence with the Ukrainians to help them protect, defend, and retake every inch of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, which includes Crimea and the Donbas.”
The senators said they “remain deeply concerned that not enough is being done to share critical intelligence that would assist the Ukrainians as Russian forces move to secure territory in the southern and eastern parts of the country.”
Unlike a Feb. 9 letter to Biden urging intelligence sharing “to the fullest extent possible,” Democrats on the committee did not join this week’s letter, reflecting apparent divisions in how members view the administration’s current guidance.
The White House insists it is providing information in line with Ukraine’s current goals. Analysts say the war is shifting from a conflict fought across the country to a stronger focus on the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine that Russia has seized or attacked recently. One expected point of focus is the strategic port city of Mariupol, whose mayor says more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the Russian siege.
In addition to its own intelligence capabilities, Ukraine relies on U.S. and Western support to help it plan and repel attacks. Before and during the war, the U.S. has publicly and privately shared intelligence about what it believes are Putin’s battle plans in the hopes of undercutting Russia and building support for a forceful Western response.
Lawmakers from both parties have spoken broadly about the limits since the Russian invasion.
Rep. Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a television interview in March that the White House was holding back some real-time intelligence “because that steps over the line to making us participating in the war.” A spokesperson for Smith, D-Wash., declined an interview request Wednesday.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., on March 1 accused the White House of delaying intelligence due to “overly-lawyered processes,” adding that “information about where an invading Russian tank was 12 hours ago does squat to prevent civilian bloodshed.”
The directive has been changed to limit delays, officials said. The latest update, according to one intelligence official, is intended to give U.S. officers “added clarity” allowing for faster and more fulsome cooperation with Ukraine.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week if the U.S. was giving Ukraine intelligence to carry out operations in Crimea or parts of the Donbas previously controlled by Russian proxies.
“We want to make sure that’s clear to our force, and so updated guidance that goes out today will make sure that’s clear,” Austin said, adding: “Certainly the current guidance was not clear in that regard, so we’ll make sure it’s clear.”
Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, late last month asked Gen. Tod Wolters, the supreme NATO commander for Europe, whether he was satisfied with the speed of information getting to Ukraine.
“Congressman, I’m comfortable, but I want it to speed up,” Wolters said. “And I always will say that even if it occurs in one second, I want it tomorrow to be in a half a second.”
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LaPorta reported from Wilmington, North Carolina. | https://www.wivb.com/news/pressure-on-us-to-give-ukraine-more-intelligence-on-russia/ | 2022-04-15T02:44:11 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/pressure-on-us-to-give-ukraine-more-intelligence-on-russia/ |
WARWICK, R.I. (AP) — After the Capitol riot, longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin said he thought briefly that the foolishness and recklessness of dividing the country would finally stop. That didn’t happen, and the Rhode Island Democrat says it’s one reason why he’s leaving Congress.
Langevin saw some of his Republican colleagues saying enough is enough. He said he hoped they would all rededicate themselves to finding common ground, recognizing that as Americans, “we’re in this together.”
Instead, Langevin said, the country became further divided. It was disheartening to see “far too few” Republicans holding the former president accountable for pointing the crowd toward Congress and firing them “like a cannon,” he added.
Langevin narrowly missed being in the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
His staff suggested he go to his office near the House floor, so he’d be nearby when called to witness the vote count and certification firsthand for President Joe Biden. Langevin said thankfully he decided to work at the congressional office building.
Shortly after the insurrection’s one-year anniversary, Langevin announced he wouldn’t seek a 12th term.
Langevin, the first quadriplegic to serve in Congress, said he wants to be with his family and friends, the commute has taken a physical toll and he wants to try something new closer to home while he’s healthy and young enough to do so.
The polarization shown by Jan. 6 and its aftermath was a factor, too. In nearly 22 years in Congress, Langevin always tried to work across the aisle.
“I don’t want to overplay it and say that, you know, all of a sudden my mind changed because of Jan. 6. That would not be accurate, but has it had an impact? Public service, it’s changed,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Things are different, the political environment is different. And I’m not the political guy for the most part, I’m a policy wonk. I like rolling up my sleeves and solving problems. I thrive on working in a bipartisan environment.”
Langevin leads a bipartisan caucus on career and technical education with Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania. Thompson said one of the reasons they work well together is that neither has “surrendered” to the “extreme voices” in their parties.
“We’re part of the folks in the middle,” he said. “Neither one of us are show horses, we’re work horses. And we want to work. We want to get things done for the American people.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, of Texas, said Congress needs more people like Langevin. The two co-founded the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus together.
“I never saw him as a Democrat or Republican,” McCaul said. “He was just a guy that really cared about the country, cared about the national security policies of the country, and just wanted to get good things done.”
McCaul hopes the departure of Langevin and centrists like him doesn’t signal the end of an era, turning the legislature into a divisive body that’s far left and far right.
“I think most Americans are kind of center, maybe a little center right, but they’re in the middle,” McCaul said. “And Jim really represented that well. I try to do that as well. And he’s the person I can work with and a person I can trust. And you know, trust is a hard thing to find in Washington.”
Langevin, who turns 58 this month, was elected to Rhode Island’s Constitutional Convention in 1986 while still in college. He wanted to serve the people of Rhode Island because of the way they rallied around him after an accident when he was a 16-year-old police cadet.
Two officers at the Warwick Police Department were looking at a new gun. One of them, not realizing it was loaded, pulled the trigger to test it and a bullet struck Langevin’s neck, severing his spinal cord.
After the constitutional convention, Langevin served in Rhode Island’s legislature, then overhauled Rhode Island’s elections system as the nation’s youngest secretary of state.
When he got to Congress in 2001, Langevin said, “Congress wasn’t quite ready for me yet.”
Temporary ramps and door openers were added. His desk was raised. Movable speaker’s lecterns were mounted. A holder was added to his voting card so he could slide it into the machine.
Nearly two decades later, two lifts were added by the speaker’s rostrum in the House so Langevin could become the first wheelchair user to serve as speaker pro tempore. He presided as the chamber marked 20 years of the Americans with Disabilities Act — a seminal moment in his career.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called him “a force for Americans with disabilities.” Langevin worked to pass legislation to make air travel and local transit more accessible, and to strengthen the ADA.
Langevin is proud of voting for the Affordable Care Act to ensure coverage for millions of Americans and make health care more affordable. He regrets that some provisions in the House version weren’t in the final law, such as a public option to ensure competition in every state.
For his last months in office, Langevin is focused on helping people get through the pandemic. He’s deeply concerned about the war in Ukraine. His late great-grandmother immigrated to the United States from Ukraine.
There’s speculation Langevin will be the next president of his alma mater, Rhode Island College. Langevin said the position hasn’t been offered, though he’d like to consider it after the rest of this term if the college thinks he’d be a good fit.
Langevin met his mentor, Rhode Island U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, at the college and became his intern. Langevin has tried to emulate the late senator’s statesmanship. Langevin is also a big fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“How could I not be, right,” he said. “… FDR was never a person that made his disability the focus of who he was or what he did. He just did his thing.”
That’s what Langevin says he sought to do too.
“I hope I’ve made a significant contribution to making people’s lives better, the people of Rhode Island, the people of our country,” he said.
Langevin is hopeful for the future and for the chances of restoring bipartisanship to Congress.
“I believe that the pendulum does come back to the center eventually,” he said, “and we will be able to find that common ground.” | https://www.wivb.com/news/rep-langevin-public-service-has-changed-since-capitol-riot/ | 2022-04-15T02:44:18 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/rep-langevin-public-service-has-changed-since-capitol-riot/ |
DENVER (AP) — When former members of the U.S. snowboarding team wanted to report sex-abuse allegations against a longtime coach, they received conflicting information that left them unsure of where to turn — or whether they wanted to pursue the cases at all.
An Instagram post during the Olympics by a former U.S. team member led to allegations that coach Peter Foley had molested them, coerced them into taking naked pictures, crawled into bed with them and nurtured an atmosphere in which women were treated as sex objects.
The episode has raised questions as to whether the reporting system for sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports, redesigned in the wake of former gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s abuse of hundreds of athletes, is working the way it should some five years since the overhaul.
Foley has denied wrongdoing. His attorney, Howard Jacobs, said that as of March 30 — 10 days after Foley was fired by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard federation and more than seven weeks after the allegations began surfacing — the 56-year-old coach had not been contacted by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the organization formed to investigate claims such as those involving Foley.
“We only received the allegations from the U.S. Center for SafeSport after I emailed them to request that they provide them,” Jacobs said.
The Associated Press reviewed a series of emails between the athletes, an attorney at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard federation and employees at the U.S. Center for SafeSport that ensued after the initial social-media post by snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof. The correspondence painted a picture of athletes who didn’t trust their own sports federation to handle the cases appropriately and a SafeSport center that had received information on the case but would not pursue it unless it heard from the accusers themselves.
One email to USSS attorney Alison Pitt sent by a SafeSport intake coordinator said athletes “need to be educated that if they are not willing to come forward, be named and participate in the process, they are in effect choosing to participate in a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that nothing can or will be done to the accused.”
The email continued by saying accusers “seem to believe they can throw out allegations and Foley will be removed.”
That correspondence conflicts with the center’s own bylaws, which state “nothing in this Code shall be construed to require a victim of child abuse or other misconduct to self-report.” The bylaws also warn that anonymous reports can limit the center’s ability to respond.
Asked for details about this and other emails, spokeswoman Annie Skinner said the center does not comment about particular cases “to protect the integrity of the process and the confidentiality of affected individuals.”
“Correspondence with an NGB about a particular matter should not be considered a comprehensive representation of the center’s information or investigative intentions,” Skinner said.
While the SafeSport Center asked, and waited, for victims to come forward, Pitt, the USSS lawyer, might have had a potentially chilling effect on one athlete’s decision about whether to contact the center. An ESPN report that detailed the allegations quoted an unnamed Olympic medalist as saying the attorney described an “extensive and challenging” reporting process.
“It did make me question whether I wanted to go through with that process,” the athlete said.
USSS CEO Sophie Goldschmidt told AP that Pitt was “transparent that the process may take time” in her discussion with the athlete, but assured her that reporting to the SafeSport Center was the only way for the case to be resolved.
It took more than five weeks for either oversight organization to take decisive action against Foley: U.S. Ski & Snowboard fired him as a result of its own workplace investigation on March 20, two days after the SafeSport Center put him on temporary suspension pending its abuse investigation.
The SafeSport Center was formed after dozens of athletes across several sports detailed decades of abuse allegations that were not handled properly by U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the sports organizations it oversaw. One reason it was formed was to prevent conflicts of interest that arose when executives or employees of a sports organization tried to resolve sex-abuse disputes involving athletes in their sport.
What happened between Chythlook-Sifsof’s initial accusations and the now-current investigation into Foley drew the attention of Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who sent USSS a letter suggesting it was skirting rules that call for the center to have exclusive jurisdiction in investigating sex-abuse complaints.
In his letter, Grassley said USSS interfered by conducting its own investigation instead of filtering the entire process through the SafeSport Center, and “has failed to make notifications regarding sexual misconduct to the center.”
USSS responded to Grassley with its own letter that says there is a “grave misunderstanding” about the actions the federation took when it first heard of the allegations.
AP reviewed several emails and documents that show USSS contacted the SafeSport center immediately upon learning of Chythlook-Sifsof’s Instagram post.
But the initial contact between USSS and the SafeSport Center did not result in any sanction for Foley by the center. Though the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee had imposed “temporary measures” to restrict Foley’s contact with athletes through the end of the Olympics, USSS grew more concerned as the snowboard team approached a trip to Austria for a post-Olympics competition in early March. The USOPC’s measures expired after the Olympics.
In a Feb. 16 email to Pitt, SafeSport Center vice president Bobby Click says “based on the information the center has, we have chosen not to implement any types of measure.”
The next day, an intake coordinator at the center emailed Pitt and said she had interviewed five “claimants,” all of whom denied misconduct.
“If I do not get a participating claimant soon, we will be closing” the case, the coordinator wrote.
The emails further pressing the athletes to come forward were sent March 14.
Over the same span, a USSS board member, Lisa Kosglow, contacted the former Olympic medalist interviewed in the ESPN story and told her “Peter is so devastated” about the allegations. ESPN reported Kosglow told the medalist Foley had asked Kosglow to reach out to her. The medalist told Kosglow she was one of the women hurt by Foley.
USSS acknowledged that Kosglow did not report any of this to the SafeSport Center and had subsequently resigned her seat.
“This was a mistake, which we regret,” USSS said in a statement.
But USSS stood firm on its decision to temporarily suspend and eventually fire Foley while it opened and then resolved its own investigation on workplace bullying and a toxic environment — a probe that stemmed from the initial sex-abuse allegations.
“Inevitably there was some overlap between the center’s sexual misconduct investigation and the U.S. Ski & Snowboard investigation into other workplace misconduct,” the federation said.
Meanwhile, as emails between USSS and the center went back and forth, a handful of athletes, including Chythlook-Sifsof, took their cases to the center, which opened an investigation that led to Foley’s temporary suspension. It came two days before his firing and more than five weeks after the original Instagram post.
“If not for USSS’s determination that Coach Foley’s conduct (even outside of the Center’s investigation into sexual misconduct) did not comport with the values of USSS, Coach Foley would have continued to have contact with athletes until the Center decided to act nearly four weeks later,” Goldschmidt wrote in the USSS’s response to Grassley.
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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.wivb.com/news/snowboard-abuse-case-exposes-flaws-in-new-reporting-system/ | 2022-04-15T02:44:25 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/snowboard-abuse-case-exposes-flaws-in-new-reporting-system/ |
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankans shared milk rice and oil cakes to celebrate their traditional new year on Thursday opposite President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s office, where they camped out for a sixth day demanding his resignation over the worst economic crisis in memory.
Soldiers who were disabled in the island nation’s civil war lit a hearth, Buddhist monks chanted religious verses and others set off firecrackers amid chants of: “Victory to the people’s struggle!”
Protesters are occupying the entrance and surroundings of Rajapaksa’s office, holding him responsible for the economic situation. They also are calling for his powerful family to leave power, accusing them of corruption and misrule.
“Other days our children go to their grandparents to celebrate the new year, but today we brought them here to show them the real situation in the country,” said Dilani Niranjala, who attended the protest with her husband and two sons aged 10 and 8.
“We don’t want to lie to them about what’s going on in the country and go to our village to celebrate the new year. From their younger days, they should see the truth and live with the truth,” she added.
Niranjala’s husband, Usitha Gamage, who works as a taxi driver, said he had been discouraged watching the news every morning about skyrocketing living costs.
“I am so happy that this struggle is taking place and it gives me new hope and energy,” he said.
“The new year — after we chase them out — is going to be great for us. This is what I have told my children,” he added.
Sri Lankans in recent months have endured fuel and food shortages and daily power outages. Most of those items are paid for in hard currency, but Sri Lanka is on the brink of bankruptcy, saddled with dwindling foreign reserves and $25 billion in foreign debt due for repayment over the next five years. Nearly $7 billion is due this year.
They have been forced to wait in long lines to buy cooking gas, fuel and milk powder, and doctors have warned there is a potentially catastrophic shortage of essential medicines in government hospitals.
Tharushi Nirmani, a 23-year-old student who was helping distribute food to protesters, said the movement was uniting Sri Lankans from different backgrounds.
“All these years, the new year was celebrated by only two ethnic groups — Sinhalese and Tamils — but most of the people who were with us last night were Muslims,” she said, referring to her fellow volunteers. “There is an amazing togetherness.”
The government announced Tuesday that it is suspending repayments of foreign debt, including bonds and government-to-government borrowing, pending the completion of a loan restructuring program with the International Monetary Fund.
The government says the World Bank has provided $10 million to buy essential medicine and equipment and the health ministry is in discussions with the World Health Organization and Asian Development Bank for additional funding. The government has also appealed to Sri Lankans living and working overseas to donate medicines or money to purchase them.
The World Bank said Wednesday that it is concerned about the uncertain economic outlook in Sri Lanka and is working to provide emergency support for poor and vulnerable households to help them weather the economic crisis.
Much of the anger expressed in weeks of protests has been directed at the Rajapaksa family, which has held power for most of the past two decades. Critics accuse the family of having the government borrow heavily to finance projects that have earned no money, such as a port facility built with Chinese loans.
The president and his older brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, continue to hold power, despite their politically powerful family being the focus of public ire. The Rajapaksas have refused to resign but the crisis and ongoing protests have prompted many Cabinet members to quit. Four ministers were sworn in as caretakers, but many key government portfolios are vacant.
Parliament has failed to reach a consensus on how to deal with the crisis after nearly 40 governing coalition lawmakers said they would no longer vote according to coalition instructions, significantly weakening the government.
But with opposition parties divided, they have been incapable of forming a majority to take control of Parliament. | https://www.wivb.com/news/sri-lankan-protesters-mark-new-year-near-presidents-office/ | 2022-04-15T02:44:32 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/news/sri-lankan-protesters-mark-new-year-near-presidents-office/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Mayor Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain, took office this year with a central focus on making the city feel safe and trying to return it to some sense of normalcy post-pandemic.
But the first 3 1/2 months of his administration have been beset by a string of high-profile violent incidents, with Tuesday’s shooting on a subway train the most terrifying and public of all.
The morning rush-hour attack, in which 10 people were shot on a system that serves as the arteries of New York, complicates Adams’ push to address crime and persuade people that the city of nearly 9 million is safe. It also occurred amid a broader, multi-year debate about policing and crime, and how the city should respond.
In New York City, like many places around the country, violent crime rates have climbed since the pandemic, though they remain far below rates seen three decades ago during the city’s notoriously grittier era, or even just a decade ago.
The mayor has been among Democrats who’ve pushed back on calls from liberals to cut police budgets and instead route resources to social services, and he has sought to bring back some controversial policing tactics, saying they can be employed as useful tools without a return to past abuses.
Adams has a unique perspective. He’s not only a former New York City police captain and transit officer, but is a Black man who in the past has criticized his own department’s unjust practices, and he is someone who was brutally beaten by police as a teenager.
Since he took office Jan. 1, he’s been speaking about policing and crime frequently, as the list of frightening incidents piled up quickly.
The city saw a rash of random shootings, the killing of two police officers and attacks that included a woman shoved to her death in front of a train by a stranger.
“This has been particularly brutal. And I feel for him. I think he’s done a fine job, especially as he’s just getting used to it,” said Adams’ predecessor and fellow Democrat, Bill de Blasio.
Most of the violence the city has experienced has not been in the subways but in neighborhoods, particularly in communities of color. But attacks on the subway, a vital sprawling network millions of New Yorkers rely upon, loom large in public perceptions of safety.
Adams rode the subway to City Hall on his first day as mayor, calling 911 to report a fight near the train platform before he even boarded the train. He admitted later that he didn’t feel safe on the train after encountering a yelling passenger and several homeless people, and said the city needs to tackle “actual crime” and “the perception of crime.”
Adams had already announced plans earlier this year to boost the number of police officers on subway platforms and trains and to address crime generally. He has brought back a controversial police anti-gun unit, called for help from the federal government cracking down on ghost guns and pushed for changes to New York’s bail laws.
Critics contend that focusing just on beefing up police isn’t a solution to making the city safe, but more investment is needed in mental health programs and other social services.
Frank James, the 62-year-old suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting, spoke of his own mental health struggles in a series of YouTube videos in which he described going in and out of mental health facilities, including some in New York City.
Before Tuesday’s attack, Adams had started sending out social work teams to try to connect people on the streets with mental health help and other services. The mayor also announced plans to significantly expand a summer youth job program designed to put young people in paid jobs when school is on break, with the aim of diverting them from activities that could lead to arrest or violence.
After this week’s subway shooting, Adams, in a series of interviews, discussed plans to increase the number of police officers patrolling the subways and suggested metal detectors could be installed in stations — a decision that ultimately would rest with the transit authority, which falls under state control.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for the nonprofit Riders Alliance representing New York City bus and subway passengers, said that despite a high-profile incident like the shooting, the subway is still the safest way to get around the city, with traffic accidents and pedestrians being struck by cars a far more likely hazard.
Rather than explore metal detectors and other ways to scrutinize passengers, he said New York needs a better transit system overall that gets more people on board and provides safety with strength in numbers.
“By having transit that is faster and more reliable and gets to more places that people want to go is a way to boost ridership,” he said.
De Blasio praised Adams’ attempts to address both crime and perceptions of crime, and said public safety experts recommend the best way to make the city feel safe is “more normalcy, more recovery from COVID.”
Getting people back on trains and back in the city is not just a reminder of New York’s resiliency, but also an added layer of eyes and ears to compliment the police, the former mayor said.
“The overall reality is NYPD has actually done a very good job over the years of making the subway safer and safer,” he said. “Police can do so much, but they can’t do it alone. They need eyes and ears — and cooperation of the public.”
Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said it’s difficult to have a discussion about how to prevent Tuesday’s shooting without knowing more about the alleged perpetrator and his motivation and mental health, and that makes it difficult to link it to a broader examination of other violent crime in New York.
“One of the challenges with crime is you can get three people shot in one night and they’re all shot for different reasons that have different solutions and different responses,” Quinn said.
She said Adams, with his law enforcement background, understands that crime and criminals are not one-size-fits-all. And while guns may be involved in a lot of crimes and more illegal guns need to be taken off the street, other incidents can stem from gang issues, mental health issues or other factors.
Confronting crime generally requires a multi-faceted response, she said, and help from many layers of government.
“There are very few things that one elected official can fix alone,” she said. “Even in a big city like New York, a lot of what exists here is also controlled by the state and the feds.”
“But there is no bigger bully pulpit and convening power—short of the president of the United States—than that of the mayor of the city of New York. And we know Eric Adams is not afraid to use that,” she said. | https://www.wivb.com/news/subway-shooting-heightens-nyc-mayors-focus-on-rising-crime/ | 2022-04-15T02:44:39 | 1 | https://www.wivb.com/news/subway-shooting-heightens-nyc-mayors-focus-on-rising-crime/ |