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https://www.cenlanow.com/washington-dc/bill-seeks-to-put-cap-on-overdraft-fees/
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WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – For some people, overdraft fees are a frustrating inconvenience. For others, they pose crippling costs. Some lawmakers now want to change how they’re charged altogether.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced legislation called the “Overdraft Protection Act.” The bill includes provisions to cap the amount and number of fees a bank can charge.
“My bill tries to cut down on these unfair and deceptive practices,” the New York Democrat said.
Advocates like Elyse Crawford-Hicks with Americans for Financial Reform say overdraft fees hit low-income families and people of color the hardest.
“Overdraft fees are paid the most by people who can least afford them,” Crawford-Hicks said.
Others say over-drafting is a useful service because it can function like a short-term loan. Paul Kundert is the CEO of UW Credit Union, which recently reduced their overdraft fees and put more limits on how they charge them.
“When prices are fair, we believe consumers do benefit from access to the credit provided by overdraft fees,” Kundert said.
Recently, major banks like Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America have made changes themselves, by reducing their overdraft fees or eliminating them altogether.
Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, says that demonstrates the legislation is unnecessary.
“The market is naturally, naturally taking care of the issue without government intervention. And we do not need more rules from Washington,” Williams said.
Because banks make billions of dollars in revenue from overdraft fees, George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law Todd Zywicki argues the proposed changes would cost consumers.
“We’ll see higher bank fees, we’ll see higher minimum monthly deposits as basically insurance against over-drafting and we will see a loss of access to free checking,” Zywicki said.
Lawmakers like Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., are promising to continue pushing for the reforms.
“How can we perform such an abusive and predatory practice that punishes people simply for being poor?” Pressley said.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/sports/masters-report/jensen-castle-plays-for-augusta-national-womens-amateur-title/
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EVANS, Ga. (WJBF)– Despite weather delays, the second day of play at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur took place Thursday, showcasing some of the best amateur golfers in the game.
Rain delays couldn’t dampen the spirit of a golfer from just up the road. Jensen Castle is a junior at the University of Kentucky, but she hails from West Columbia, South Carolina. For Jensen and her family, playing ANWA is almost like a homecoming.
This year is Jensen Castle’s first ANWA appearance, but she is no stranger to the game. Castle is the winner of the 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship.
“It’s so special. Especially me being close to home. To have my family actually come to the event means so much,” Castle said.
Castle’s mom Elizabeth Castle says she loves to support her daughter wherever she plays.
“I’m just in awe. I’m her biggest fan most definitely and I get to watch from a cart path. These are certainly some amazing cart paths around,” Elizabeth Castle said.
After many tournaments with no patrons, Castle’s friends and family are ready to watch her play in person.
“Watching her play golf is a very emotional thing, not only for her but for all of us because we want her to do well, but we love her so much and we just want to be here to support her,” Castle’s friend Hayley Miller said.
“I know what kind of person she is, and I know how hard she works, so I’m excited to see it in person. We’ve got plans to go to some other tournaments for her so this is the first time I’ve seen her in person, so I’m excited,” Castle’s friend Susie Gilbert said.
Castle’s mom has seen her play countless times, and she says she’s excited to do just that once again.
“Any opportunity I have to watch Jenson play is my joy. Just following her around to see what she does and what she does best,” Elizabeth Castle said.
Castle says the support means the world to her as she competes for the ANWA title.
“To play Augusta National is everyone’s dream, including mine. So just to be able to do that is special and like I said, to see everyone out here is so cool. And to play against the best golfers in the world is really good,” Castle said.
Golfers weren’t able to tee off until 3 p.m. Thursday due to weather delays. They will return to Champions Retreat Friday morning to wrap up, before heading to Augusta National Golf Club for a practice round. Finals take place at Augusta National on Saturday.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/ap-strange-news/delta-pilots-land-jet-safely-after-cockpit-windshield-cracks/
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SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) — The pilots on a Delta Air Lines flight from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C. decided to bring their jet down in Denver after the cockpit windshield shattered above 30,000 feet. The crew repeatedly told passengers to remain calm until they landed.
“They came on the loudspeaker saying that the windshield had shattered, and we were diverting to Denver in about 10 minutes,” Rachel Wright, one of the 198 passengers on the plane, told KUTV.
A photo of the windshield taken by a passenger shows the glass, though lined with cracks, didn’t fall from its frame. Commercial airline pilots said jetliner windshields can be two inches thick, with several layered panes of glass, the station reported.
The crew announced the diversion about 90 minutes into the flight, after the plane reached cruising altitude, which is above 30,000 feet, passengers said.
“They kept coming on saying for everyone to stay calm, to be calm, and we were calm so being told to stay calm while we were calm made us feel a little panicky,” Wright said.
Passengers were able to see the shattered glass once they landed in Denver.
“I’m really good at playing what-if? And so, my mind goes to kind of what could have happened, worst case scenario and I’m grateful,” Wright said. “It could have been really bad, it could have gone very differently.”
Another passenger, Kirk Knowlton, snapped a pictureand tweeted that the crew had announced that the windscreen appeared to crack spontaneously.
Delta gave a statement to KUTV calling it “a maintenance issue mid-flight.”
“Out of an abundance of caution, the flight crew diverted into Denver and the plane landed routinely. Our team worked quickly to accommodate customers on a new plane, and we sincerely apologize for the delay and inconvenience to their travel plans,” the airline statement said.
Passengers boarded a new plane in Denver and continued on to Washington. Wright praised Delta for bringing the jet down safely, and said the airline was very accommodating.
“I’ve never been more grateful to spend an extra three hours in an airport,” Wright said.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/business/global-shares-mixed-as-japan-tankan-shows-weaker-outlook/
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NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are starting the second quarter with slight gains after the government reported another month of robust hiring. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite are heading toward gains for the week; the Dow Jones Industrial Average is also up Friday but still on track for a weekly decline. A resurgence of Russian attacks dashed hopes for a cessation of widespread violence in Ukraine. The Labor Department said the U.S. added 431,000 jobs last month, a resilient showing amid the highest inflation in four decades. U.S. crude oil dipped below $100 a barrel. Shares in Asia were mixed, while European benchmarks gained. Treasury yields are rising.
Wall Street is poised to open higher Friday after the government reported another month of robust hiring in the U.S., while a resurgence in Russian attacks dashed hopes for a cessation of widespread violence in Ukraine.
Futures for the Dow industrials and S&P 500 rose 0.5% in premarket trading and prices for U.S. crude oil dipped below $100 per barrel. Shares in Asia were mixed, while European benchmarks gained.
The U.S. economy added another 431,000 jobs in March, a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years. The Labor Department’s report Friday showed that last month’s job growth helped reduce the unemployment rate to 3.6%, the lowest level since the pandemic erupted two years ago.
Despite surging inflation, the U.S. economy has cranked out more than 400,000 jobs every month for nearly a year.
Shares in Europe rose despite a report that consumer prices in the 19 countries that use the euro currency rose by an annual rate of 7.5% in March, the fifth straight monthly record. Spiking energy costs are the main factor driving inflation in Europe, with those prices surging 44.7% last month, up from 32% in February, Eurostat said.
Oil and gas prices had already been rising because of increasing demand from economies recovering from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. They jumped higher after Russia, a major oil and gas producer, invaded Ukraine, on fears that sanctions and export restrictions could crimp supplies.
Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.4%, Germany’s DAX rose 0.5% and France’s CAC 40 added nearly 0.6% in midday trading.
In Asia, Bank of Japan’s closely watched quarterly gauge of business sector sentiment, the “tankan,” showed the benchmark indicator for large manufacturers dropped for the first time in seven quarters, losing three points from a survey in December to 14 points from 17 points.
The war in Ukraine, coming on top of supply chain disruptions at top manufacturers caused by COVID-19 restrictions and growing worries about inflation are clouding the outlook for already fragile growth in the world’s third-largest economy.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.6% to finish at 27,665.98.
Shares in electronics and energy giant Toshiba Corp. jumped 6.5% on news that Bain Capital might make an offer to acquire the company and take it private. Toshiba said it was not involved in any such talks.
South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.7% to 2,739.85. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down less than 0.1% to 7,493.80. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.2% to 22,039.55, while the Shanghai Composite jumped 0.9% to 3,282.72.
Rising COVID-19 cases in China are adding to the worries of a regional slowdown. The lockdown in Shanghaientered its second phase of extended restrictions, while restrictions were lifted in hard-hit Jilin.
Oil prices fell as President Joe Biden ordered the release of up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve. The move to pump more oil into the market is part of an effort to control energy prices, which are up nearly 40% globally this year.
U.S. benchmark crude fell $1.70 to $98.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell 7% on Thursday. Brent, the international pricing standard, shed $1.54 to $103.17 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 122.48 Japanese yen from 121.69 yen. The euro cost $1.1053, down from $1.1071.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/business/inflation-in-19-nations-using-euro-soars-to-record-7-5/
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LONDON (AP) — Inflation in Europe soared to another record, according to new EU figures released Friday, in a fresh sign that rising energy prices fueled by Russia’s war in Ukraine are squeezing consumers and adding pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates.
Consumer prices in the 19 countries that use the euro currency rose by an annual rate of 7.5% in March, according to the European Union statistics agency, Eurostat.
The latest reading smashed the high set just last month, when it hit 5.9%. It’s the fifth straight month that inflation in the eurozone has set a record, bringing it to the highest level since recordkeeping for the euro began in 1997.
Rising consumer prices are a growing problem around the world, making it more difficult for people to afford everything from groceries to their utility bills. Spiking energy costs are the main factor driving inflation in Europe, with those prices surging 44.7% last month, up from 32% in February, Eurostat said.
Oil and gas prices had already been rising because of increasing demand from economies recovering from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. They jumped higher after Russia, a major oil and gas producer, invaded Ukraine, on fears that sanctions and export restrictions could crimp supplies.
At an outdoor market this week in Cologne, Germany, shopper Andreas Langheim bemoaned how life was getting more expensive.
“I can see the effect of increasing prices, especially here at the market,” Langheim, 62, said as he picked up some bread from a bakery van. “Everything is more expensive now.”
The latest figures make it more urgent for the European Central Bank to get off the sidelines and take action, analysts said. The bank is balancing record inflation with the threat that the war may hurt an economy under pressure. Last month, it sped up its exit from economic stimulus efforts to combat inflation, but has not taken more drastic steps.
“We think that the ECB will soon conclude that it can’t wait any longer before starting to raise interest rates,” Jack Allen-Reynolds, senior Europe economist at Capital Economics, said in a report.
Other central banks have started raising rates, including in the U.S., where inflation has soared to a 40-yearhigh of 7.9%. European countries that don’t use the euro, including Britain, Norwayand the Czech Republic have done the same.
In the eurozone, there were price increases for other categories of spending besides energy. Food, alcohol and tobacco costs rose 5%, compared with 4.2% in the prior month, while prices for goods like clothing, appliances, cars, computers and books rose 3.4%, up from 3.1%; and service prices rose 2.7%, versus the previous 2.5%.
Italian Premier Mario Draghi, a former European Central Bank president, outlined how the problem hits households.
“Inflation is rising because raw materials prices are going up, in particular those for foodstuffs. Those are the ones that hit hardest a family’s buying power,’’ Draghi told foreign journalists Thursday. “Shortages in some raw materials creates a bottleneck in production and forces further price hikes.’’
Draghi said that as long as inflation remains temporary, governments can respond with budgetary measures, such as payments to help low income families with higher heating and electricity costs. But if it becomes a longer-term issue the response will have to be structural, he said.
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Associated Press journalists Daniel Niemann in Cologne, Germany, Frances D’Emilio in Rome and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/joint-investigation-leads-to-arrest-of-duo-on-child-pornography-charges-in-louisiana/
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LAKE CHARLES, La. (BRPROUD) – Two men from Lake Charles are behind bars after the completion of a joint investigation.
John Roark, 63 and Stephen Simmons, 42 were recently arrested and both face multiple counts of child pornography.
Roark “was arrested and charged with 20 counts of Pornography Involving Juveniles Under the Age of Thirteen. (possession), according to the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office.
Along with child pornography charges, Stephen Simmons is also facing multiple counts of bestiality.
According to the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office, Simmons “was arrested and charged with 100 counts of Pornography Involving Juveniles Under the Age of Thirteen (possession) and 10 counts of Sexual Abuse of an Animal.
These organizations took part in the investigation:
- The Louisiana Bureau of Investigation
- Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office
- Homeland Security Investigations
After their arrests, the two men from Louisiana were taken to the Calcasieu Parish Jail.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/ny-mobster-guilty-of-killing-3-escapes-federal-custody-in-florida/
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ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A New York mobster who killed three people and attempted to kill two others has escaped from federal custody.
The Bureau of Prisons website says Dominic Taddeo escaped on March 28.
The 64-year-old pleaded guilty in 1992 to racketeering charges that included the killings of three men during mob wars in the 1980s.
A federal judge in western New York denied Taddeo’s request for compassionate release last year.
Taddeo had been imprisoned at a medium-security lockup in Florida before being transferred to a residential halfway house in February.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson did not immediately return a call seeking information about Taddeo’s escape.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health/shanghai-moves-to-2nd-part-of-lockdown-as-testing-lines-grow/
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BEIJING (AP) — About 16 million residents in Shanghai are being tested for the coronavirus during the second stage of the lockdown that shifted Friday to the western half of China’s biggest city and financial capital.
Meanwhile, residents of Shanghai’s eastern districts who were supposed to be released from four days of isolation have been told their lockdowns could be extended if COVID-19 cases are found in their residential compounds.
The lockdown in Shanghai, being done in two phases over eight days to enable testing of its entire population, has shaken global markets worried about the possible economic impact. China’s manufacturing activity fellto a five-month low in March, a monthly survey showed, as lockdowns and other restrictions forced factories to suspend production.
For four days starting Friday, residents of Puxi on the west side of the Huangpu River dividing Shanghai cannot leave their neighborhoods or housing compounds. The gates at some compounds were locked from the outside, with groceries and meals delivered to collection points.
Government workers and volunteers wearing full protective equipment went door-to-door with megaphones in the city with 26 million people, calling on residents to report for testing at designated sites where they were met by long lines and waits of more than 90 minutes.
Veronica Wang, a resident of Pudong, as Shanghai’s eastern half is known, said she and many she knows were still under lockdown, with no word on when normal life will be restored.
Wang’s compound had been closed off even before the lockdown began. She said a large part of her days is now spent on trying to hop on to large group orders for groceries and items from soy sauce to toothpaste obtained through personal connections.
“For example, we have one (group order) set up for vegetables, one for eggs, one for bread,” she said.
Shanghai had not previously experienced a sweeping lockdown, although many residents chose to stay at home even without formal orders to do so.
This time, the “whole environment is rather tense,” Wang said, citing a neighbor who waited hours for an emergency call to be answered.
“The mood is different,” she said.
China’s National Health Commission said another 1,787 domestic cases of COVID-19 had been recorded on Thursday, including 358 in Shanghai. Another 5,442 tested positive for the virus without becoming ill, 4,144 of them in Shanghai.
People who tested positive without symptoms are being taken to temporary isolation centers, including gymnasiums and exhibition centers.
Public transport has been suspended and roads closed, bringing the normally bustling metropolis to a standstill. While city residents are being told to stay put, airports and train stations remain open.
The lockdown reflects China’s continuing adherence to its “zero-COVID” approach despite restrictions being eased elsewhere. China set the hard-line tone at the start of the pandemic in 2020 with the 76-day lockdown on the city of Wuhan where the virus was first detected.
The measures have been decried by some Chinese as excessive, although there has been little open defiance. Amid the grumbling, Shanghai authorities have conceded shortcomings in their handling of the surge driven by the omicron variant, after panic buying stripped store shelves of necessities.
“We didn’t prepare sufficiently enough,” Ma Chunlei, a senior Shanghai official said at a news conference Thursday. “We sincerely accept the criticisms from the public and are making efforts to improve it.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health/thousands-of-workers-return-home-as-malaysia-fully-reopens/
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Thousands of Malaysians working in Singapore returned home Friday as Malaysia fully reopened its borders after more than two years of pandemic closure.
Many had lined up at the border since late Thursday and crossed over at midnight on foot or by car and motorcycles. National news agency Bernama said fireworks can be heard in the background along with shouts of “welcome back” as families waited for their loved ones at the Johor Causeway linking the countries.
The Malaysia-Singapore land border, one of the busiest in the world, was partially reopened Nov. 29 but it was limited to only about 1,500 people one-way daily with strict rules. More than 350,000 people crossed the causeway daily before it was shut, mostly Malaysians working in Singapore.
Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said in a statement that more than 11,000 travelers passed through the checkpoints early Friday. Malaysian officials estimate some 400,000 people are expected to cross the border within the first week.
With most of its population vaccinated, Malaysia has lifted remaining coronavirus restrictions on businesses as it moves to restore pre-pandemic life and revive its economy.
New daily cases have hovered around 20,000, driven by the highly contagious omicron strain but less than 1% have been categorized as serious.
There will be no quarantine for fully vaccinated tourists but they need to take a PCR test two days before arrival. At Kuala Lumpur International Airport, staff wearing traditional costumes welcomed visitors. The first regular AirAsia flight from Jakarta in two years was given a water cannon salute upon landing.
The Malaysia-based low-cost carrier, the largest on the continent, said that 12 flights from within Asia arrived at Kuala Lumpur on Friday, marking the revival of its international operations since March 2020.
“Definitely it’s starting to feel a little normal again,” said Peter Miller, an American expatriate who arrived with his family for work. “Still have to do some testing here and there but … everyone’s learning how to deal with the new phase of the virus.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/international/ap-international/german-prosecutors-file-charges-over-major-child-porn-site/
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BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors said Friday they have filed charges against four men over their alleged involvement with a major international platform for child pornography that was taken down last year.
Investigators say the “BoysTown” platform, which operated on the darknet, had more than 400,000 members. Pedophiles used it to exchange and watch pornography of children and toddlers, most of them boys, from all over the world. It was shut down in April 2021.
The suspects are aged between 41 and 65, Frankfurt prosecutors said in a statement. Their names weren’t released, in keeping with German privacy rules. They face charges that include spreading and producing child pornography and sexual abuse of children.
Two of the men are accused of building the platform in 2019. One of them also allegedly sexually abused two children. The other was extradited in October from Paraguay, where he had lived for a few years.
A third suspect is accused of acting as an administrator and moderator for the platform as well as sexually abusing two children. Prosecutors say that the fourth man was “one of the most active users” of the platform. All four are in custody.
The Frankfurt state court now has to decide whether the case will go to trial and if so when. Prosecutors said investigations of other suspected members of the platform are continuing.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/international/ap-international/germany-charges-ex-reserve-officer-with-spying-for-russia/
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BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors say they have charged a former German military reserve officer with spying for a Russian intelligence service for several years.
Federal prosecutors said Friday that the indictment against the suspect, identified only as Ralph G. in line with German privacy rules, was filed March 16 at the state court in Duesseldorf.
They said that, in addition to his position in the German military, the suspect was a member of several German business committees thanks to his civilian job. They didn’t elaborate.
The suspect allegedly was in contact with Russian intelligence “via various people” by October 2014 and passed on information connected to his military and business activities until March 2020.
Prosecutors said that included information on the German Bundeswehr’s reserves and on civilian-military cooperation, as well as insights on the effect of sanctions imposed against Russia in 2014 on Germany, the European Union, and on the now-suspended Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.
The suspect also allegedly provided his handlers with private contact details for high-ranking military and business officials. He also provided an “overview” of the security and defense policy of the U.S. and its Western allies, according to prosecutors.
In return for his efforts, he received invitations to Russian official events, they said.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/international/ap-international/high-energy-costs-are-hitting-uk-its-about-to-get-worse/
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LONDON (AP) — Tia Rutherford is worried about her 3-year-old son.
As energy prices soared last fall, she tacked fleece blankets over her doors and windows to keep the cold out and started serving Jacob breakfast in his room so she didn’t have to heat the living room. But she’s consumed by worry that she can’t pay her utility bills and that her son isn’t warm enough.
“There are effects on his health,’’ said Rutherford, a 29-year-old single mother who lives in southeast London. “He’s constantly catching colds.”
People across the United Kingdom will face similar choices in coming months with energy costs for millions of households set to rise by 54% on Friday. It is the second big jump in energy bills since October, and a third may be ahead as rebounding demand from the COVID-19 pandemic and now Russia’s war in Ukraine push prices for oil and natural gas higher.
Energy costs are the main driver of rising consumer prices. While inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, it’s a bigger issue in Britain because it’s more exposed to rising natural gas prices than even its gas-reliant European neighbors, where utility bills and other costs also have soared. Prices for natural gas, which is used for electricity and heating, have more than doubled in the past year.
In the U.K., economists warn of the biggest drop in living standards since the mid-1950s, fueled byrocketing energy costs, food prices and preplanned tax increases. Disposable household incomes, adjusted for inflation, are expected to fall by an average 2.2% this year, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Those figures obscure the impact on low-income people being hit disproportionately by the crisis. Because they spend a larger percentage of their budgets on food and energy, the poorest quarter of British households will see their real incomes drop by 6% this year, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a think tank focused on improving living standards.
People who rely on government benefits and state pensions are being doubly squeezed because their annual cost-of-living adjustment was based on annual inflation figures through September — before consumer prices spiked.
That means benefits are set to rise by just 3.1% this year. But inflation jumped to a 30-year high of 6.2% in February and is expected to peak at around 8% this year as the war sends food and energy prices ever higher, the Bank of England predicted.
As costs rise, people are moving their beds near windows so they can read by the light of the streetlamps outside, said outreach workers at Christians Against Poverty, which offers counseling for those in debt. Divorced fathers skip meals so they can afford to buy food for their children when they visit, and an increasing number of people report the pressures make them contemplate suicide.
“The cost-of-living crisis is genuinely costing lives,” said Gareth McNab, the charity’s external affairs director. “Almost every single call to our new inquiries team is mentioning the energy crisis and an inability to cope. And yeah, it’s desperate out there.”
Energy prices for 22 million households will rise Friday as an update of the national price cap kicks in. Regulators adjust it every six months. Analysts expect a third consecutive jump in the cap later this year, which could leave consumers with utility bills that are more than double what they were a year earlier.
Britain relies more heavily on natural gas to meet its energy needs than European Union countries, having less nuclear and renewable energy. Britain also has been slower than its neighbors in insulating and sealing the nation’s aging housing stock, so it takes more energy to heat them.
Britain’s largest gas storage facility also was allowed to close five years ago, leaving the country with the capacity to store just 12 days of supply, compared with about 80 days in Germany, which is also heavily reliant on natural gas. That means in crisis, Britain is more dependent on buying gas through “spot markets” that reflect short-term price swings.
“In normal times, we’re using more energy than (the Europeans) are to heat their houses, but … the price is low enough that you don’t really notice a big difference in the cost of living,” said Arun Advani, an inequality expert at the University of Warwick. “Now that energy prices are going up, they are paying more, but we’re paying a lot more. And so that difference is magnified.”
Even so, some European governments have acted more aggressively than Britain in trying to limit costs. France forced a state-controlled utility to limit electricity price hikes to 4% this year. Spain imposed a tax on energy producers’ windfall profits that will be passed on to consumers.
Britain responded in February with a 9 billion-pound ($11.8 billion) package designed to help offset rising utility bills. Treasury chief Rishi Sunak announced more measures last week, including a cut in the tax on vehicle fuels. But he ignored calls to impose a tax on producers’ windfall profits or delay a planned 1.5 percentage point increase in income taxes, also set for April.
Sunak said the government has to keep spending under control amid uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine and after public debt last year rose to the highest level since 1963.
Lawmakers from all parties criticized Sunak for missing the point, suggesting he failed to understand the scale of the problem for low-income people. But he isn’t backing down.
Meanwhile, people who have little are trying to live on less. Chris Price, who runs a community charity called Pecan in south London, says food bank clients are passing up potatoes and other root vegetables because they need to be cooked.
“People are saying, ‘I need to have food which I can cook easily and cheaply because if I put something in the oven for too long, it takes up so much … electricity or gas,’’’ he said. “And they are really uncertain if they can afford it.’’
These are the people also hit hardest by the pandemic and recent cuts in government benefits, leaving them with little to fall back on in the new crisis, said Adam Scorer, chief executive of National Energy Action, a charity focused on fuel poverty.
“There’s no cutting back. There’s no smart decisions,” Scorer said. “You just don’t heat your home, and you don’t use your cooker, and you don’t heat water, and you don’t shower. You just don’t do those things because you can’t afford to do those things. There’s no choices for many people.”
Rutherford is one of those running out of choices.
She gets her energy through a prepaid meter, often the only option for people who fall behind on bills. Prepaid meters allow customers to control how much they spend, but they pay high prices and can be left without power if they run out of credit.
That has left her struggling to top up the meter, pay off debt she already owes her energy supplier and keep her son warm when he comes home from day care. She’s tried to save by turning off the lights, living in the dark except for strings of tiny white Christmas tree lights that use less electricity.
“I didn’t have to live like this before,” she said. “I literally have no money — and my electric is going to cut out.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/international/ap-international/in-serbia-pro-russia-is-seen-as-the-winning-election-stance/
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BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who has fostered close ties with Russia and refused to impose sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, is expected to extend his almost 10-year grip on power in the Balkan country when it holds national elections on Sunday.
Polls predict that Vucic, a populist who has boasted about his personal ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, will win another five-year term as president. His right-wing Serbian Progressive Party also is expected to continue to dominate the country’s parliament.
But polls indicated a close local government race in the capital, Belgrade. A loss for Vucic’s party there could undermine his increasingly autocratic rule.
Most political parties taking part in the presidential, general and municipal elections lean right, reflecting the conservative stands prevalent among Serbia’s 6.5 million voters. But a new Green-left coalition campaigning on the need to tackle long-neglected environmental problems also is fielding candidates.
Opposition party officials say Russia’s war in Ukraine has only strengthened Vucic’s dominance of Serbian politics and the mainstream media. Soon after Russian tanks entered Ukraine, the president’s election slogan changed to “Peace. Stability. Vucic.”
“The war has diverted public attention from what is happening in Serbia and of course, with media support, enabled Vucic to blame the crisis for everything that is wrong in Serbia,” Dragan Djilas, a leader of the biggest opposition coalition United Serbia, said in an interview.
“Articles are published here every day about how a kilogram of bread costs 9 euros in Italy and Germany, how they have no fuel, how they will have food stamps and how great we are,” Djilas said. “People are scared, and it always suits the authorities because people say, ‘Let’s not change anything now.’”
Serbia, a traditional Russian ally, has rejected calls from the European Union and the United States to join in sanctions against Moscow, citing national interests. The country’s representative to the United Nations did vote in favor of a resolution condemning Moscow’s attack on Ukraine as a violation of international law.
Despite the Serbian government saying it is seeking EU membership, Vucic and his allies have refrained from condemning Russia over the invasion, a possible sign they want to avoid alienating pro-Russia voters ahead of Sunday’s election.
Much of the pro-Russia sentiments among Serbs comes from their hatred of NATO; the Western military alliance bombed the country in 1999 to stop a bloody Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians seeking independence for Kosovo, a Serbian province at the time.
Former Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said that imposing sanctions on Russia would be tantamount to “political suicide” because Moscow has blocked U.N. membership for Kosovo which declared independence in 2008.
“If we are ready to give up Kosovo, then we can impose sanctions on Russia,” Dacic said. “But if we are not ready, then we cannot.”
Thousands of people in Serbia have turned out for pro-Putin rallies during the five-week invasion, waving Russian flags and displaying the letter Z – a symbol seen on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine. The support for Moscow makes Serbia somewhat of an outlier in Europe.
Opposition officials said that despite Vucic’s almost full control of the media and the pro-Russian narrative that has been created leading up to the elections, they expect a good result on Sunday.
“As far as we are concerned, the situation in Ukraine was very clear. It is about Russian aggression, and we immediately condemned it,” Dobrica Veselinovic, who is running for mayor of Belgrade as the candidate of the environmentalist We Must coalition.
Election polls predict Vucic will win the presidential election outright on Sunday. If he does not receive more that 50% of the vote, he would face an unpredictable runoff in two weeks, likely against opposition candidate Zdravko Ponos, a Western-educated former army general.
The election for National Assembly lawmakers was not scheduled until 2024, but Vucic called an early vote after criticism from the EU that Serbia’s 2020 election had not been free and fair. The opposition boycotted that election.
“I don’t see any difference between these elections and those two years ago,” political analyst Slobodan Stupar said. “A parliament will be formed in which Vucic will have fewer lawmakers than now. He will be able to tell Europe, ‘Yes, we are a democratic country. See how many enemies I have in parliament.'”
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Associated Press Writer Jovana Gec contributed.
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VIENNA — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says that Russian forces’ departure from the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant is “a step in the right direction” and the U.N. nuclear watchdog plans to be there “very, very soon.”
IAEA director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi says he will head a support mission to Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, and that further nuclear safety missions to Ukraine will follow.
Grossi spoke Friday after visits to Ukraine and Russia. He said Russian nuclear and foreign ministry officials didn’t discuss with him why Russian forces left Chernobyl.
Of the overall situation in the area, he said: “The general radiation situation around the plant is quite normal. There was a relatively higher level of localized radiation because of the movement of heavy vehicles at the time of the occupation of the plant, and apparently this might have been the case again on the way out.”
Ukraine’s state power company said Russian troops received “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches in the exclusion zone around the plant. But Grossi said “we don’t have any confirmation” that soldiers were contaminated.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
— Ukraine top of agenda as China, EU prepare to meet at summit
— Russians leave Chernobyl; Ukraine braces for renewed attacks
— UK, Russia foreign ministers visit India amid Ukraine crisis
— Kremlin decree says foreign currency can still buy natural gas
— War in Ukraine fuels fears among draft-age Russian youths
— African refugees see racial bias as US welcomes Ukrainians
— Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine for more coverage
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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
MOSCOW — Russian officials say their demand that natural gas be paid for in rubles doesn’t mean supplies will be immediately interrupted.
Gas used for heating and electricity was still flowing from Russia to Europe on Friday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “payments on shipments in progress right now must be made not this very day, but somewhere in late April, or even early May.”
President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia would start accepting ruble payments Friday and gas supplies would be cut off if buyers don’t agree to the new conditions.
A decree he signed gave Russian authorities and Gazprombank 10 days to make arrangements. It also says countries could pay foreign currency to the bank, which would convert it to rubles in a second account.
The European Commission’s energy chief tweeted that the European Union was coordinating “to establish a common approach.” Western leaders have said they will keep paying in euros and dollars.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s general staff says the country’s armed forces have retaken control over 29 settlements in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, where Russia has pulled back some of its troops.
The Russian military in the northeast continues to block and shell Chernihiv and Kharkiv, the general staff said Friday.
In the southeast of the country the Russians are trying to seize the cities of Popasna, Rubizhne and Mariupol in order to expand the territory of separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to the Ukrainian military.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Authorities in Mariupol say it is not possible to enter the besieged Ukrainian city and that it is dangerous for people to try and leave it on their own.
“We don’t see a real desire from the Russians … to provide an opportunity for Mariupol residents to evacuate to territory controlled by Ukraine,” Petro Andryushchenko, adviser the mayor of the city, said Friday on the messaging app Telegram.
“Since yesterday, the occupiers have categorically not allowed any humanitarian cargo, even in small volumes, to enter the city,” he added.
Russian officials on Friday allowed 42 buses with Mariupol residents to depart from the neighboring occupied city of Berdyansk, which Mariupol residents were able to reach on their own.
A convoy of about 2,000 refugees, escorted by the Red Cross, on Friday afternoon was heading to the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is under Ukrainian control.
The Mariupol city council on Friday said Russia’s actions in Ukraine and in their bombed-out city amounted to genocide.
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WARSAW, Poland — Ukraine’s foreign minister says that now his country’s government is back in control of the Chernobyl nuclear site, it will work with the U.N. atomic agency to determine what the occupying Russians did there and mitigate any danger.
Russian troops left the heavily contaminated nuclear site early Friday after returning control to the Ukrainians.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the Russians behaved irresponsibly at the site during the more than four weeks that they controlled it, preventing staff at the plant from performing their full duties and digging trenches in contaminated areas.
Kuleba told a news conference in Warsaw that the Russian government had exposed its soldiers to radiation, endangering their health.
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ROME — Venice is preparing special material to send to Lviv’s National Art Gallery and other museums in the Ukrainian city so artworks can be better protected during the war.
Mariacristina Gribaudi, head of the Venice Civic Museums Foundation, said in a statement Friday that some 65,000 artworks and 2,000 sculptures have been placed in Lviv storerooms as a precaution, but the objects aren’t adequately protected.
The Venice foundation will oversee a shipment of special fabric that can cover paintings and graphic art as well as furniture, costumes and materials made from glass or marble to protect the objects from the majority of solvents and gasses. The fabric also impedes mold and fungus growth while the works are in storage.
Also being sent are polyethylene foam shock-resistant panels.
Venice museums experts also gave advice in a video call with the Lviv gallery’s management about how to best store artworks.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says that new sanctions against Russia are needed “to force (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to end this crazy aggression.”
Le Drian, who was in Estonia and spoke through an interpreter, also said Friday that “Russia cannot expect to win this war.”
Le Drian was to travel later in the day to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
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ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reiterated that he would like to host a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders in Istanbul, in the hope that it would “turn the negative course of events into a positive one.”
Erdogan made the comments on Friday hours before he was scheduled to hold a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the call, he was expected to renew an offer to host a leaders’ meeting.
Erdogan told reporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with whom he spoke on Thursday, had a “positive outlook” toward such a meeting in Turkey and that Putin’s attitude had been positive in the past.
Russian and Ukrainian delegations held a face-to-face meeting in Istanbul earlier this week during which Ukraine presented a list of proposals, including that it would have neutral status guaranteed by a range of foreign countries.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Talks between Russia and Ukraine have resumed via video link.
Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky published a picture of the talks under way Friday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office confirmed to The Associated Press that the negotiations had resumed.
Friday’s talks came three days after the last meeting, in Turkey, between Russian and Ukrainian delegations.
Medinsky, the Russian lead negotiator, said “our positions on Crimea and the Donbas are unchanged.”
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine in 2014. The Donbas is the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.
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BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive arm is proposing that the 27-nation bloc’s countries allow the millions of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine to exchange their hryvnia banknotes into the currencies of host member nations.
The European Commission said Friday its proposal aims at promoting a coordinated approach within the region.
“This approach was necessary in light of the fact that the National Bank of Ukraine had to suspend the exchange of hryvnia banknotes into foreign cash in order to protect Ukraine’s limited foreign exchange reserves,” the commission said.
“As a consequence, credit institutions in EU Member States have been unwilling to carry out the exchanges due to the limited convertibility of hryvnia banknotes and exposure to exchange rate risk.”
According to EU figures, more than 3.8 million of people fleeing the war have arrived in the European Union. More than 4 million have fled Ukraine.
The Commission proposed a maximum limit of 10,000 hryvnias (306 euros) per person, without charges, at the official exchange rate as published by the National Bank of Ukraine.
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BERLIN — The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog says he will head a team to the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine “as soon as possible.”
Rafael Mariano Grossi wrote on Twitter that the International Atomic Energy Agency “assistance and support” mission to Chernobyl “will be the first in a series of such nuclear safety and security missions to Ukraine.”
Grossi’s comments followed his visits to Ukraine and then to Russia this week. He didn’t elaborate on his plans or give a more precise timeframe. He was due to hold a news conference in Vienna later Friday.
Russian forces took control of Chernobyl, the site of a 1986 nuclear disaster, at the beginning of the war. But authorities say the troops have now left after returning control to the Ukrainians.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The Norwegian government is proposing a national 14.4 billion kroner ($1.7 billion) crisis package for the war in Ukraine, including spending on refugees and national defense.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told a press conference Friday, “We should take good care” of the Ukrainian refugees while they are in Norway. “This will demand the best of us,” he said.
If the proposal is passed by parliament, as expected, some 7.1 billion kroner ($815 million) will be spent on the refugees, police and the Norwegian immigration agency. Norway expects to receive 35,000 refugees this year.
Money is also going to strengthening the country’s military and civilian defense. Earlier the government has said it wants an extra allocation of 3.5 billion kroner ($402 million) for 2022 to strengthen NATO member Norway’s Armed Forces and civilian preparedness.
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin says reports that Ukrainian helicopter gunships attacked a fuel depot inside Russia, setting it ablaze, are not conducive to talks between the two sides in the war.
Asked if the reported incident could be viewed as an escalation of the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Certainly, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of the talks.”
Russia-Ukraine talks were expected to continue Friday via video link.
The governor of the Russian border region of Belgorod accused Ukraine of flying helicopter gunships into Russian territory early Friday morning and targeting the oil depot, in what if confirmed would be the first attack of its kind.
It was not immediately possible to verify the report.
Peskov said President Vladimir Putin had been informed about the reported fire. He told a daily conference call with reporters that Russian authorities were taking measures to ensure fuel supplies in the region were not disrupted.
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BEIJING — China is accusing the United States of instigating the war in Ukraine and says NATO should have been disbanded following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
“As the culprit and leading instigator of the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. has led NATO to engage in five rounds of eastward expansion in the last two decades after 1999,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a daily briefing Friday.
“The number of NATO members increased from 16 to 30, and they have moved eastward more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to somewhere near the Russian border, pushing Russia to the wall step by step,” Zhao said.
While China says it is not taking sides in the conflict, it has declared a “no limits” partnership with Moscow, has refused to condemn the invasion, opposes sanctions on Russia and routinely amplifies Russian disinformation about the conflict, including not referring to it as an invasion or a war in keeping with Russian practice.
Zhao’s comments came as Chinese and European Union leaders were meeting virtually for a summit at which Ukraine was expected to dominate discussions. EU officials say they are looking for a commitment from China not to undermine sanctions and assist in efforts to halt the fighting.
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GENEVA — The International Committee of the Red Cross says it’s not sure that a planned delivery of aid into Mariupol and an evacuation of civilians out of the besieged Ukrainian city will happen Friday.
Spokesman Ewan Watson told a U.N. briefing in Geneva that the humanitarian group has sent three vehicles toward Mariupol and a frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces, but two trucks carrying supplies for the city were not accompanying them.
Dozens of busses that have been put together by Ukrainian authorities to take people out also have not started approaching the dividing line, he said Friday.
Watson called it an “extremely complex” operation, adding that “not all details are in place to ensure that this happens today.”
He said the hope was that “thousands” of people could be ferried out, and their destination would be into parts of Ukraine less affected by the fighting that has been ongoing since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Europol, the European Union police agency, has sent teams to countries bordering Ukraine in an effort to protect refugees from criminals.
The Hague-based agency said Friday its teams are supporting local authorities by running secondary security checks and seeking to “identify criminals and terrorists trying to enter the EU in the refugee flow and exploit the situation.”
The Europol teams are operating in Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Moldova and are planning to deploy to Romania, too.
The agency says they also are gathering intelligence to feed into criminal threat assessments across Europe.
The United Nations says that more than 4 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Police in Norway say they have intensified information and intelligence gathering as a result of the security situation in Europe.
The move is to help “prevent and detect crime as a result of the migration flow and the tense security policy situation,” National Police Commissioner Benedicte Bjørnland said in a statement Friday.
She added that “we are particularly aware of the crime challenges that may arise as a result of the migration flow.” She did not elaborate.
More than 7,800 Ukrainians have sought asylum in Norway.
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TOKYO — Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi says he is heading to Poland later Friday to assess the need for the war-displaced Ukrainians in that country and assist those who seek refuge in Japan.
Hayashi, during his five-day trip through Tuesday, is set to meet with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and other top officials, as well as international organizations. Officials are still making arrangements for a possibility of his government plane bringing some Ukrainians on his way back, Hayashi said.
“In order to support the Ukrainian people facing the difficulty and to show our solidarity with Ukraine, Japan is pursuing our effort to accept those who fled to a third country,” Hayashi said.
Japan’s government last month launched a taskforce to prepare accepting Ukrainian war-displaced as part of humanitarian support — a rare move for a country known for its strict and reluctant refugee policy. Several municipalities, including Tokyo, Kanagawa, Ibaraki and Osaka, have offered to be their host towns and provide support for medical needs, education, jobs and housing.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky told reporters Friday that some 300 relatives of Ukrainian residents in Japan have been granted entry, and more arrivals are expected from next week.
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BRUSSELS — The president of the European Parliament says she is traveling to Kyiv.
Roberta Metsola announced the trip to the Ukrainian capital city on her Twitter account late Thursday, posting a picture of her standing in front of a railcar.
Metsola is the first president of an EU institution to travel to the Ukrainian capital since the war began on Feb. 24. Details about her travel plans and who she will meet have not been announced.
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SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday that his country will be sending armored Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine to help in its war against Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyyaddressed the Australian Parliament on Thursday and asked for the Australian-manufactured four-wheel-drive vehicles and other aid.
Morrison told reporters the vehicles will be flown over on Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport planes, but he didn’t specify how many Bushmaster vehicles would be sent or when.
“We’re not just sending our prayers, we are sending our guns, we’re sending our munitions, we’re sending our humanitarian aid, we’re sending all of this, our body armor, all of these things and we’re going to be sending our armored vehicles, our Bushmasters as well,” Morrison said.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has stripped two generals of their military rank.
Zelenskyy said “something prevented them from determining where their homeland was” and they “violated their military oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people.”
According to Zelenskyy, one of the generals had headed internal security at the SBU, the main intelligence agency.
He said the other general had been the SBU head in the Kherson region, the first major city to fall to the Russians.
Zelenskyy didn’t say anything about the fates of the two generals other than them being stripped of their rank.
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LVIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian government said Russian forces blocked 45 buses that had been sent to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city of Mariupol, and only 631 people were able to get out of the city in private cars.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said late Thursday that 12 Ukrainian buses with humanitarian aid left Melitopol for Mariupol, but the Russian forces stopped the buses and seized the 14 tons of food and medicines.
According to Ukrainian officials, tens of thousands of people have made it out of Mariupol in recent weeks along humanitarian corridors, reducing the prewar population of 430,000 to about 100,000 by last week.
Vereshchuk said about 45,000 Mariupol residents have been forcefully deported to Russia and areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
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LVIV, Ukraine — The last Russian troops left the Chernobyl nuclear plant early Friday, according to the Ukrainian government agency responsible for the exclusion zone around the plant.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian troops who dug trenches in the forest were exposed to radiation, but that could not be confirmed.
The Ukrainian nuclear operator company Energoatom said Thursday that Russian troops were headed toward Ukraine’s border with Belarus.
Energoatom said that the Russian military was also preparing to leave Slavutych, a nearby city where power plant workers live.
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CITLUK, Serbia (AP) — An accident Friday in a mine in central Serbia killed eight people and wounded 18 others, authorities said. It happened when part of the mine pit collapsed, releasing the methane gas inside and trapping the miners, state RTS television and local media reported.
The accident in the Soko coal mine happened shortly after 4 a.m. (0200GMT). Officials said an investigation is underway to determine exactly what happened.
“Inspectors, police and all relevant authorities are at the scene, doing what is necessary to determine the cause of this tragedy,” said the Mining and Energy Minister Zorana Mihailovic.
MIhailovic visited the site on Friday and expressed condolences to the families of the victims, promising state help. She denied reports of an explosion.
“Unfortunately, 8 miners suffocated,” said Mihailovic.
The Soko mine, 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Belgrade, the capital, has had several serious accidents since it started operating in the early 1900s. An accident in the mine in 1998 killed 29 miners.
Drago Milinkovic, the Soko coal mine manager, said initial information suggested there was a “sudden release of methane” gas into the mining area.
“Soko coal mine is a dangerous coal mine, dangerous from the aspect of methane,” he said. “Security measures are at the highest level in the coal mine, but this time there was a sudden release of methane and simply the monitoring and the equipment that were in place did not help.”
Doctors in nearby Aleksinac, where injured miners have been brought, said their injuries mostly are not serious. Town authorities declared a day of mourning to be held Saturday.
Near the mine, stunned locals stood in silence. One miner who identified himself only by his first name, Milan, said he usually worked in the overnight shift.
“I changed shifts because of my family,” he said. “It could have been me.”
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Friday made a historic apology to Indigenous Peoples for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools and said he hoped to visit Canada in late July to deliver the apology in person to survivors of the church’s misguided missionary zeal.
Francis begged forgiveness during an audience with dozens of members of the Metis, Inuit and First Nations communities who came to Rome seeking a papal apology and a commitment from the Catholic Church to repair the damage. The first pope from the Americas said he hoped to visit Canada around the Feast of St. Anna, which falls on July 26.
More than 150,000 native children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until the 1970s in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their homes and culture. The aim was to Christianize and assimilate them into mainstream society, which previous Canadian governments considered superior.
The Canadian government has admitted that physical and sexual abuse was rampant at the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages. That legacy of that abuse and isolation from family has been cited by Indigenous leaders as a root cause of the epidemic rates of alcohol and drug addiction now on Canadian reservations.
After hearing their stories all week, Francis told the Indigenous that the colonial project ripped children from their families, cutting off roots, traditions and culture and provoking inter-generational trauma that is still being felt today. He said it was a “counter-witness” to the same Gospel that the residential school system purported to uphold.
“For the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask forgiveness of the Lord,” Francis said. “And I want to tell you from my heart, that I am greatly pained. And I unite myself with the Canadian bishops in apologizing.”
The trip to Rome by the Indigenous was years in the making but gained momentum last year after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves outside some of the residential schools in Canada. The three groups of Indigenous met separately with Francis over several hours this week, telling him their stories, culminating with Friday’s audience.
Francis spoke in Italian and the Indigenous read his remarks in English translations. The president of the Metis National Council, Cassidy Caron, said the Metis elder sitting next her burst into tears upon hearing what she said was a long-overdue apology.
“The pope’s words today were historic, to be sure. They were necessary, and I appreciate them deeply,” Caron told reporters in St. Peter’s Square. “And I now look forward to the pope’s visit to Canada, where he can offer those sincere words of apology directly to our survivors and their families, whose acceptance and healing ultimately matters most.”
The spiritual adviser of the Assembly of First Nations’ delegation, Elder Fred Kelley, echoed the sentiment.
“Today is a day that we’ve been waiting for. And certainly one that will be uplifted in our history,” he said. “It’s a historical first step, however, only a first step.”
He and other Indigenous leaders said there was far more for the church to do on the path of reconciliation, but that for now Indigenous leaders insisted on being involved in organizing the papal visit to make sure Francis stops in places that hold spiritual importance to their people.
Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, thanked Francis for addressing all the issues the Indigenous had brought to him. “And he did so in a way that really showed his empathy towards the indigenous people of Canada,” he said.
Nearly three-quarters of Canada’s 130 residential schools were run by Catholic missionary congregations.
Last May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 gravesites near Kamloops, British Columbia, that were found using ground-penetrating radar. It was Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.
Even before the grave sites were discovered, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically called for a papal apology to be delivered on Canadian soil for the church’s role in the abuses.
In addition, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit involving the Canadian government, churches and the approximately 90,000 surviving students, Canada paid reparations that amounted to billions of dollars being transferred to Indigenous communities. The Catholic Church, for its part, has paid over $50 million and now intends to add $30 million more over the next five years.
Francis said he felt shame for the role that Catholic educators had played in the harm, “in the abuse and disrespect for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values,” he said. “It is evident that the contents of the faith cannot be transmitted in a way that is extraneous to the faith itself.”
“It is chilling to think of determined efforts to instill a sense of inferiority, to rob people of their cultural identity, to sever their roots, and to consider all the personal and social effects that this continues to entail: unresolved traumas that have become inter-generational traumas,” he said.
After the papal apology, the audience continued with joyous performances of Indigenous prayers by drummers, dancers and fiddlers that Francis watched, applauded and gave a thumbs up to. The Indigenous then presented him with gifts, including snowshoes.
Francis’ apology went far beyond what Pope Benedict XVI had offered in 2009 when an Assembly of First Nations delegation visited. At the time, Benedict only expressed his “sorrow at the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the church.” But he did not apologize.
The Argentine pope is no stranger to offering apologies for his own errors and for what he himself has termed the “crimes” of the institutional church. Most significantly, during a 2015 visit to Bolivia, he apologized for the sins, crimes and offenses committed by the church against Indigenous Peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas.
He made clear those same colonial crimes occurred far more recently in Canada at the Catholic-run residential schools.
“Your identity and culture has been wounded, many families separated, many children have become victims of this homogenization action, supported by the idea that progress occurs through ideological colonization, according to programs studied at the table rather than respecting the lives of peoples,” he said.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis heads to Malta this weekend, with the refugee exodus from Ukraine casting a haunting backdrop to the European migration drama that for years has focused on Malta and other Mediterranean countries and the plight of desperate people who arrive on boats seeking refuge.
Francis’ two-day visit to the Mediterranean island nation was always expected to focus on migration, given Malta’s frontline place in Europe’s refugee debate and Francis’ frequent calls for nations to show solidarity to those fleeing war, famine and poverty.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the forced exodus of 4 million people — half of them children — have added a new impetus to Francis’ trip, which was originally scheduled for May 2020 but postponed because of the pandemic.
Some in Malta see a double standard at play in the war in Ukraine, in terms of European refugee norms and the willingness of European countries to share the burden of accepting newcomers.
The 2003 Dublin Regulation stipulates that the European Union countries where would-be refugees first arrive generally must process asylum claims. This puts an enormous burden on front-line countries such as Malta, Italy and Greece to host migrants while the process plays out.
That rule has been set aside in the Ukraine exodus, with the EU for the first time adopting a “temporary protection directive,” allowing Ukrainians to resettle anywhere in the 27-nation bloc. Most have stayed in neighboring Poland, but many have travelled onward to find family members across Europe.
“The Dublin rule has been sort of ignored, and justly so because there is an unprecedented situation which needs flexibility,” said Malta Archbishop Charles Scicluna. “We would like to see that sort of flexibility when it comes to situations of emergency in the Mediterranean.”
In a telephone interview, Scicluna said he expected Francis to raise the migration issue, not least because of the welcome Malta showed the Apostle Paul when he was shipwrecked off Malta around AD 60, en route to Rome. According to the biblical account, Maltese people showed Paul “unusual kindness” — the type of welcome Francis has said he hoped would be extended to all migrants.
Francis is to meet with a group of migrants staying at a shelter on Sunday, at the end of his visit.
Malta has often come under fire by rescue groups for refusing entry to migrants crossing from Libya. It argues that it has one of the EU’s highest rates in processing first-time asylum applications relative to the population, and frequently urges other European countries to take them in.
Last year, some 832 migrants arrived by sea, a 63% decrease from the previous year; Malta currently has asylum applications pending for some 4,000 people, according to EU and U.N. data.
Just this week, a German aid group urged Malta to take in 106 migrants rescued off Libya; There was no immediate indication if Malta would grant port access to the Sea-Eye 4.
In February, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, insisted that Malta should not leave migrants at sea while negotiating their ultimate fate, saying this risked lives and violated Malta’s obligations to protect them.
In the same report, Mijatovic also demanded Malta bring to justice the killers of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who died on Oct. 16, 2017 when a powerful car bomb exploded as she was driving near her home. She had been investigating links between financial dealings indicated by the leaked Panama Papers documents and prominent political and business figures on the small EU nation.
Caruana Galizia’s murder sparked international outrage and prompted the European Parliament to send a fact-finding mission to Malta. A public inquiry found the Maltese state “has to bear responsibility” for the murder because of the culture of impunity that emanated from the highest levels of government.
Francis could well make reference to the slaying, given he has has long railed against corruption in politics, including on his frequent foreign trips.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni would not exclude that Francis would refer to the slaying or even meet with Caruana Galizia’s relatives. “It’s perfectly possible that themes will be confronted in diverse ways, with words or encounters,” Bruni said. Francis frequently holds private audiences during his foreign visits, which are confirmed only after they occur.
Maltese authorities have identified several suspects in the murder, and trials are ongoing.
Nadia Delicata, who is in charge of evangelization efforts in the Malta church, said the assassination laid bare divisions in Maltese society, with some in the overwhelmingly Catholic country nearly “canonizing” the journalist — a small vigil is held each month on the 16th in her memory — and others saying that such a polarizing figure should have seen it coming.
Delicata said the church, which spoke out strongly against the assassination, has perhaps unconsciously helped bridge the gap by becoming a more visible presence during the pandemic, with daily televised Masses beamed into Maltese homes.
“It actually helped heal this big divide that includes the divide around the memory of Daphne,” she told reporters.
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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.
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PARIS (AP) — The last surviving suspect from the 2015 Paris attacks has told a court he felt “ashamed” after failing to detonate his suicide bekt on the bloody night of Nov. 13.
“I didn’t go all the way,” Salah Abdelslam told a Paris court, showing no remorse. “I gave up trying to put on the (suicide) belt, not out of cowardice or fear. I didn’t want to, that’s all.”
He gave testimony this week as part of the trial into Paris’ deadliest ever peacetime attack. With thousands of plaintiffs, this trial is among the the biggest in modern French history.
His testimony was part of an exceptional week, when he and suspected accomplices were questioned for the first time about the day of the attacks itself. Lawyers and victims’ families see it as crucial for shedding light on what happened on Nov. 13, 2015.
On Friday, the court was played audio recordings and shown photos from inside the Bataclan theater that have never been made public before, to expose the horrors of what happened. Some survivors cried while watching images of corpses piled up inside the Bataclan concert hall.
About twenty other people left the courtroom in shock in between sounds of music still playing amid the fire of automatic weapons.
This week in court is crucial for the survivors and families of the 130 victims.
Abdelslam dropped off three attackers in a car, who then blew themselves up on the forecourt of the Stade de France moments after a France-Germany football match kick-off. Abdelslam said he subsequently drove to the north of Paris, bought a phone chip, took the metro across Paris to hide his explosives belt in the southern suburb of Montrouge after he claimed didn’t have the nerve to detonate it.
Abdelslam said he lied to his co-attackers that the belt had not worked “because I was ashamed of not having gone all the way. I was afraid of the eyes of others. I was simply ashamed.”
Abdelslam’s testimony contradicts that of a police explosives expert who has told the court that the suicide belt was faulty.
Extremists murdered 130 people in suicide bombings and shootings at the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and on street terraces of bars and restaurants.
Following the attacks, Abdeslam traveled to the Molenbeek district of Brussels, where he grew up, but was arrested in March 2016.
Other co-defendants are responding to charges including attack planning, the supply of weapons and giving logistical support.
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As Moscow’s forces bog down in Ukraine, many young Russians of draft age are increasingly jittery about the prospect of being sent into combat. Making those fears particularly acute is an annual spring conscription that begins Friday and aims to round up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu pledged at a meeting of the military brass this week that the new recruits won’t be sent to front lines or “hot spots.”
But the statement was met with skepticism by many in Russia who remember the separatist wars in the southern republic of Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, when thousands of poorly trained young men were killed.
“I don’t trust them when they say they won’t send conscripts into combat. They lie all the time,” said Vladislav, a 22-year-old who is completing his studies and fears he could face the draft immediately after graduation. He asked that his last name not be used, fearing reprisals.
All Russian men aged 18-27 must serve one year in the military, but a large share avoid the draft for health reasons or deferments granted to university students. The share of men who avoid the draft is particularly big in Moscow and other major cities.
Even as President Vladimir Putin and his officials say that conscripts aren’t involved in what Russian authorities call “the special military operation in Ukraine,” many appeared to have been taken prisoner during its initial days. Videos emerged from Ukraine of captured Russians, some being shown calling their parents, and were put on social media.
The mother of one of the prisoners said she recognized her 20-year-old draftee son in a video even though he was shown blindfolded.
“I recognized him by his lips, by his chin. You know, I would have recognized him by his fingers,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Lyubov, for security reasons. “I breastfed him. I raised him.”
The Defense Ministry was forced to walk back its statements and acknowledge that some conscripts were sent to Ukraine “by mistake” and were taken prisoner while serving with a supply unit away from the front.
There have been allegations that before the invasion, some conscripts were forced to sign military contracts that allowed them to be sent into combat — duty that is normally reserved only for volunteers in the army. Some of the captured soldiers said they were told by their commanding officers that they were going to a military exercise but suddenly found themselves fighting in Ukraine.
Lyudmila Narusova, a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament, spoke in early March about an entire company of 100 men who were forced to sign such contracts and were sent into the combat zone — and only four survived. Military officials did not comment on her allegation.
Svetlana Agapitova, the human rights commissioner in St. Petersburg, said Wednesday that relatives of seven soldiers had written to her to complain the men had been forced to sign the contract and sent to Ukraine against their will. She said two of them already had been brought back to Russia.
In recent years, the Kremlin has emphasized increasing the share of volunteer contract soldiers as it sought to modernize the army and improve its readiness. The force of 1 million now has over 400,000 contract soldiers, including 147,000 in the infantry. If the war drags on, those numbers could be insufficient to sustain the operations.
The Kremlin could eventually face a choice: Keep fighting with a limited number of troops and see the offensive stall, or try to replenish the ranks with a broader draft and risk public outrage that could fuel anti-draft sentiment and destabilize the political situation. Such a scenario occurred during the fighting in Chechnya.
Dmitry, a 25-year-old IT expert, has a deferment that should keep him out of the draft for medical reasons. But he’s still nervous like many others, fearing authorities could abruptly waive some deferments to bolster the military.
“I hate the war. I think it’s a total disaster,” said Dmitry, who also asked that he not be identified by has last name, fearing reprisals. “I fear that the government could change the rules and I could face the draft. They also were saying for months that they wouldn’t attack Ukraine, so why should I trust what they say about the draft now?”
Proposed legislation would facilitate the draft by allowing military recruiters to call up conscripts more easily, but the bill has been put on hold for now.
Still, it added to the public’s anxiety.
Alexei Tabalov, a lawyer who advises conscripts, said medical panels at recruitment offices often admit youths who should be exempt from service because of illness. Now, he added, their attitudes could grow even tougher.
“It’s quite probable that doctors may shut their eyes to conscripts’ illnesses and declare them fit for military duty,” Tabalov said.
In addition to lowering the medical standard for draftees, there are fears that the government could try to impose some sort of martial law that would ban Russian men from leaving the country and, like Ukraine, force them to fight.
“We have received a lot of calls from people fearing mobilization,” Tabalov said. “People now are afraid of everything in this situation. No one even thought before about the need to analyze the law on mobilization.”
The Kremlin has strongly denied any such plans, and military officials insist the army has enough contract soldiers to serve in Ukraine. Still, many Russians remain skeptical of the officials’ denials, given their track record.
“What kind of trust could there be if Putin says one day that conscripts will not be sent there … and then the Defense Ministry recognizes that they were there?” Tabalov asked.
An existing law allows for a 21-month alternative civil service in hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities for those who view military duty as incompatible with their beliefs, but military conscription offices often broadly ignore requests for such service.
After the war began, Tabalov said his group saw a large increase in inquiries about the alternative service law, which is vaguely phrased and allows military officials to easily turn down applications.
“We are worried that in the current militarist mood, military conscription offices can take a tougher attitude and reject appeals for the alternative civil service,” he said.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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WASHINGTON COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) — Two people are dead after a likely tornado touched down early Thursday morning in Washington County.
The possible tornado destroyed their home, as well as the homes of several of their neighbors along Gilbert’s Mill Road.
Residents are shocked and trying to figure out their next move, Washington County resident Donna Bratcher’s niece lost her home during the storm.
“Oh God, I’m just crying. We lost neighbors down the road. They’ve lost about everything,” Bratcher said.
Washington County residents were picking up the pieces of their homes, looking to rebuild their lives after the storm on Thursday morning.
Kim Gross said her family left their house minutes before the likely tornado destroyed it.
“Just couldn’t believe it. Still can’t believe it. I still can’t really process everything right now so it’s devastating,” Gross said. “We woke up to our phones going off saying there was a tornado in the area. And we jumped in the truck and left and it hit like two minutes after we left.”
When they returned, their roof was gone. Gross said she lost pictures and memories that couldn’t be replaced.
“It’s a little rough looking in there. There’s dirt and sheetrock. Everything all over everything,” Gross said.
She said she doesn’t have homeowners insurance and it’s still too fresh to comprehend the tragedy.
“Can’t really actually process everything right now. Still kind of in shock. And we lost our neighbors,” Gross said.
“They’re alive, God saved them. It didn’t happen down the street but God saved them,” Bratcher said.
While her family is safe, their neighbors lost their parents.
If you’d like to help out the Gross family, they have set up a GoFundMe for donations.
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DENVER (AP) — A federal jury’s $14 million award to Denver protesters hit with pepper balls and a bag filled with lead during 2020 demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis could resonate nationwide as courts weigh more than two dozen similar lawsuits.
The jury found police used excessive force against protesters, violating their constitutional rights, and ordered the city of Denver to pay 12 who sued.
Nationwide, there are at least 29 pending lawsuits challenging law enforcement use of force during the 2020 protests, according to a search of the University of Michigan’s Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.
The verdict in Denver could give cities an incentive to settle similar cases rather than risk going to trial and losing, said Michael J. Steinberg, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and director of the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative. It could also prompt more protesters to sue over their treatment at the hands of police.
“There’s no doubt that the large jury verdict in Denver will influence the outcome of pending police misconduct cases brought by Black Lives Matter protesters across the country,” said Steinberg, whose law students have been working on a similar lawsuit brought by protesters in Detroit.
Lawyers for the claimants argued that police used indiscriminate force against the nonviolent protesters, including some who were filming the demonstrations, because officers did not like their message critical of law enforcement.
“To the protest of police violence they responded with brutality,” one of their attorneys, Timothy Macdonald, told jurors.
People who took part in the protests have already made similar allegations in lawsuits filed across the country.
In Washington, DC, activists and civil liberties groups sued over the forcible removal of protesters before then-President Donald Trump walked to a church near the White House for a photo op. The claims against federal officials were dismissed last year but a judge allowed the case against local police to continue.
Several lawsuits alleging protesters were wrongfully arrested or that police used excessive force have been filed against New York City and its police department, including one brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James that claims police used excessive force and wrongfully arrested protesters. In Rochester, New York, people who protested the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who lost consciousness after being pinned to the street by officers during a mental health call in 2020, claim police used extreme force against them in a lawsuit that also alleges city officials have allowed a culture of police brutality against racial minorities to fester.
One of their attorneys, Donald Thompson, said he plans to raise the Denver award in settlement talks with the city and note that unlike most of the Denver protesters, some of his clients suffered lasting injuries including the loss of an eye and scarring from being hit in the face with a tear gas canister. Thompson also thinks the Denver verdict shows that the public, in the age of cellphone and body camera videos, is not as willing to give police the benefit of the doubt anymore.
“Now people see how this policing really works. You can’t be naïve,” he said.
A spokesperson for Rochester did not return a call and an email seeking comment. When the case was filed, the city said it had already revised the way police responds to protests.
Over the last two months, the city of Austin, Texas has agreed to pay a total of $13 million to four people who were hit in the head with bean bag rounds fired by police.
Even before the Denver ruling last week, the police department made some changes in response to criticism that arose from the protests, including eliminating the use of 40mm foam rounds for crowd control and changing the way officers are permitted to use pepper balls.
Denver’s Department of Public Safety, which includes the police department, said in a statement that the city was not prepared for the level of sustained violence and destruction. During the trial, lawyers and witnesses said over 80 officers were injured as some in the crowds hurled rocks, water bottles and canned food at them.
The department said it continues to evaluate its policies to “better protect peaceful protestors while addressing those who are only there to engage in violence.”
Still, the large award is not expected to lead to an overhaul of how officers respond to what experts say are inherently chaotic situations that are difficult to prepare for.
Ed Obayashi, a use-of-force consultant to law enforcement agencies and a deputy sheriff and legal adviser in Plumas County, California, said society may have to bear the cost of such settlements because innocent people can be injured during protests as outnumbered police try to react on the fly, including to people intent on violence.
“It really goes south in an instant because there are individuals out there who want to cause chaos,” he said.
Obayashi said there is not much police training for protests, which have been relatively rare. He said it would be prohibitively expensive to have officers practice deploying equipment such as tear gas canisters. Because projectiles used in crowds and considered “less lethal” by police, such as rubber bullets and pepper balls, have less velocity and less power to hurt people, it is harder to ensure they hit their intended target, he said.
Lawyers representing people who have also alleged police misconduct and violation of their constitutional right to protest can now use the Denver damage award as part of their own settlement negotiations, said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented some of the winning Denver protesters.
The decision came nearly two years after thousands of people angry about Floyd’s death took the streets nationwide, a relatively quick result for the legal system and soon enough for others who allege misconduct by police to file a claim. In Colorado and many other states, there is a two-year statute of limitations for such lawsuits Silverstein said, leaving only a few months for others to sue.
The city attorney’s office said it has not decided whether to appeal the verdict, but appeals in such big cases are common, said Gloria Browne-Marshall, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Outside lawyers will also scrutinize the case to try to determine if there are unique circumstances that may have led to a “lightning in a bottle” verdict that is less likely to be repeated.
However, she thinks the verdict sends a significant message that regular people respect the right of protest and demand change from the government, which she believes police and prosecutors have been undermining.
“It should send a message to both, but whether or not they listen is a different issue,” Browne-Marshall said.
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Wilfred Tebah doesn’t begrudge the U.S. for swiftly granting humanitarian protections to Ukrainians escaping Russia’s devastating invasion of their homeland.
But the 27-year-old, who fled Cameroon during its ongoing conflict, can’t help but wonder what would happen if the millions fleeing that Eastern Europe nation were a different hue.
As the U.S. prepares to welcome tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing war, the country continues to deport scores of African and Caribbean refugees back to unstable and violent homelands where they’ve faced rape, torture, arbitrary arrest and other abuses.
“They do not care about a Black man,” the Columbus, Ohio, resident said, referring to U.S. politicians. “The difference is really clear. They know what is happening over there, and they have decided to close their eyes and ears.”
Tebah’s concerns echo protests against the swift expulsions of Haitian refugeescrossing the border this summer without a chance to seek asylum, not to mention the frosty reception African and Middle Eastern refugees have faced in western Europe compared with how those nations have enthusiastically embraced displaced Ukrainians.
In March, when President Joe Biden made a series of announcements welcoming 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, granting Temporary Protected Statusto another 30,000 already in the U.S. and halting Ukrainian deportations, two Democratic lawmakers seized on the moment to call for similar humanitarian considerations for Haitians.
“There is every reason to extend the same level of compassion,” U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley, of Massachusetts, and Mondaire Jones, of New York, wrote to the administration, noting more than 20,000 Haitians have been deported despite continued instability after the assassination of Haiti’s president and a powerful earthquake this summer.
Cameroonian advocates have similarly ratcheted up their calls for humanitarian relief, protesting in front of the Washington residence of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the offices of leading members of Congress this month.
Their calls come as hundreds of thousands in Cameroon have been displaced in recent years by the country’s civil war between its French-speaking government and English-speaking separatists, attacks by the terrorist group Boko Haram and other regional conflicts.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch, in a February report, found many Cameroonians deported from the U.S. suffered persecution and human rights violations upon returning there.
Tebah, who is a leading member of the Cameroon American Council, an advocacy group organizing protests this month, said that’s a fate he hopes to avoid.
Hailing from the country’s English-speaking northwest, he said he was branded a separatist and apprehended by the government because of his activism as a college student. Tebah said he managed to escape, as many Cameroonians have, by flying to Latin America, trekking overland to the U.S.-Mexico border and petitioning for asylum in 2019.
“I will be held in prison, tortured and even killed if I am deported,” he said. “I’m very scared. As a human, my life matters too.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TPS and other humanitarian programs, declined to respond to the complaints of racism in American immigration policy. It also declined to say whether it was weighing granting TPS to Cameroonians or other African nationals, saying in a written statement only that it will “continue to monitor conditions in various countries.”
The agency noted, however, that it has recently issued TPS designations for Haiti, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan — all African or Caribbean nations — as well as tomore than 75,000 Afghans living in the U.S. after the Taliban takeover of that Central Asian nation. Haitians are among the largest and longest-tenured beneficiaries of TPS, with more than 40,000 currently on the status.
Other TPS countries include Burma, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, and the majority of the nearly 320,000 immigrants with Temporary Protected Status hail from El Salvador.
Lisa Parisio, who helped launch Catholics Against Racism in Immigration, argues the program could easily help protect millions more refugees fleeing danger but has historically been underused and over-politicized.
TPS, which provides a work permit and staves off deportation for up to 18 months, doesn’t have limits for how many countries or people can be placed on it, said Parisio, who is the advocacy director for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
Yet former President Donald Trump, in his broader efforts to restrict immigration, pared down TPS, allowing designations for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea in West Africa to expire.
Although programs like TPS provide critical protections for vulnerable refugees, they can also leave many in legal limbo for years without providing a pathway to citizenship, said Karla Morales, a 24-year-old from El Salvador who has been on TPS nearly her whole life.
“It’s absurd to consider 20 years in this country temporary,” the University of Massachusetts Boston nursing student said. “We need validation that the work we’ve put in is appreciated and that our lives have value.”
At least in the case of Ukraine, Biden appears motivated by broader foreign policy goals in Europe, rather than racial bias, suggests María Cristina García, a history professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, focused on refugees and immigrants.
But Tom Wong, founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, said the racial disparities couldn’t be clearer.
“The U.S. has responded without hesitation by extending humanitarian protections to predominately white and European refugees,” he said. “All the while, predominately people of color from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia continue to languish.”
Besides Cameroon, immigrant advocates also argue that Congo and Ethiopia should qualify for humanitarian relief because of their ongoing conflicts, as should Mauritania, since slavery is still practiced there.
And they complain Ukrainian asylum seekers are being exempted from asylum limits meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while those from other nations are being turned away.
“Black pain and Black suffering do not get the same attention,” says Sylvie Bello, founder of the D.C.-based Cameroon American Council. “The same anti-Blackness that permeates American life also permeates American immigration policy.”
Vera Arnot, a Ukrainian in Boston who is considering seeking TPS, says she didn’t know much about the special status until the war started and wasn’t aware of the concerns from immigrants of color. But the Berklee College of Music sophomore hopes the relief can be extended to other deserving nations.
Arnot says TPS could help her seek an off-campus job with better pay so she doesn’t have to rely on her family’s support, as most in Ukraine have lost their jobs due to the war.
“Ukrainians as a people aren’t used to relying on others,” she said. “We want to work. We don’t want welfare.”
For Tebah, who is staying with relatives in Ohio, TPS would make it easier for him to open a bank account, get a driver’s license and seek better employment while he awaits a decision on his asylum case.
“We’ll continue to beg, to plead,” Tebah said. “We are in danger. I want to emphasize it. And only TPS for Cameroon will help us be taken out of that danger. It is very necessary.”
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Associated Press video journalist Patrick Orsagos in Columbus, Ohio contributed to this story.
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America’s employers extended a streak of robust hiring in March, adding 431,000 jobs in a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years.
The Labor Department’s report Friday showed that last month’s job growth helped shrink the unemployment rate to 3.6%, the lowest level since the pandemic erupted two years ago.
Despite the inflation surge, persistent supply bottlenecks, the damaging effects of COVID-19 and now a war in Europe, employers have added at least 400,000 jobs for 11 straight months. In its report Friday, the government also revised sharply up its estimate of hiring in January and February by a combined 95,000 jobs.
In an encouraging sign for the economy, 418,000 people began looking for a job in March, and many found one. Since the pandemic struck in 2020, many people have remained on the sidelines of the job market, a trend that has contributed to a chronic worker shortage in many industries.
Across the economy in March, hiring gains were widespread. Restaurants and bars added 61,000 jobs, retailers 49,000, manufacturers 38,000 and hotels 25,000.
Average hourly pay is up a strong 5.6% over the past 12 months. Though that is welcome news for employees, it is contributing to surging inflation pressures that have put the Federal Reserve on track to raise rates multiple times, perhaps aggressively, in the coming months. Those rate hikes will result in more expensive loans for many consumers and businesses.
For now, though, the job market has continued to rebound with unexpected speed from the coronavirus recession. Job openings are at a near-record level, and applications for unemployment benefits have dropped to near their lowest point since 1969.
The still-solid U.S. job market reflects a robust rebound from the brief but devastating coronavirus recession, which wiped out 22 million jobs in March and April 2020 as businesses shut down or cut hours and Americans stayed home to avoid infection.
But the recovery has been swift. Fueled by generous federal aid, savings amassed during the pandemic and ultra-low borrowing rates engineered by the Federal Reserve, U.S. consumers have spent so fast that many factories, warehouses, shipping companies and ports have failed to keep pace with their customer demand. Supply chains have snarled, forcing up prices.
As the pandemic has eased, consumers have been broadening their spending beyond goods to services, such as health care, travel and entertainment, which they had long avoided during the worst of the pandemic. The resulting high inflation is causing hardships for many lower-income households that face sharp price increases for such necessities as food, gasoline and rent.
It’s unclear how long the economy can maintain its momentum of the past year. The government relief checks are gone. The Fed raised its benchmark short-term interest rate two weeks ago and will likely keep raising it well into next year. Those rate hikes will result in more expensive loans for many consumers and businesses.
Inflation has also eroded consumers’ spending power: Hourly pay, adjusted for higher consumer prices, fell 2.6% in February from a year earlier — the 11th straight month in which inflation has outpaced year-over-year wage growth. According to AAA, average gasoline prices, at $4.23 a gallon, are up a dizzying 47% from a year ago.
Squeezed by inflation, some consumers are paring their spending. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that consumer spending rose just 0.2%% in February — and fell 0.4% when adjusted for inflation — down from a 2.7% increase in January.
Still, the job market has kept hurtling ahead. Employers posted a near-record 11.3 million positions in February. Nearly 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs, a sign of confidence that they could find something better.
Even so, so many jobs were lost in 2020 that the economy still remains 1.6 million shy of the number it had just before the pandemic struck. Over the past year, employers have added an average of 541,000 jobs a month. At that pace — no guarantee to continue — the nation would recover all the jobs lost to the pandemic by June. (That still wouldn’t include all the additional hiring that would have been done over the past two years under normal circumstances.)
Brighter job prospects are beginning to draw back into the labor force people who had remained on the sidelines because of health concerns, difficulty finding or affording daycare, generous unemployment benefits that have now expired or other reasons.
Over the past year, 3.6 million people have joined the U.S. labor force, meaning they now either have a job or are looking for one. But their ranks are still nearly 600,000 short of where they stood in February 2020, just before the pandemic slammed into the economy.
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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico is bringing sales of recreational marijuana to the doorstep of Texas, the largest prohibition state, as the movement toward broad legalization sweeps up even more of the American West.
As of Friday in New Mexico, anyone 21 and older can purchase up to 2 ounces (57 grams) of marijuana — enough to roll about 60 joints or cigarettes — or comparable amounts of marijuana liquid concentrates and edible treats.
New Mexico has nurtured a medical marijuana program since 2007 under tight restrictions. Friday’s changes still represent a sea change for local law enforcement, taxation officials, commercial growers and residents who thought full-blown legal access to pot would never come.
Across the state, would-be marijuana farmers are bidding for water rights and learning to raise their first cannabis crops, as experienced medical cannabis producers ramp up production and add new retail showrooms.
New Mexico is among 18 states that have legalized pot for recreational use, with implications for cannabis tourism and conservative Texas, where legalization efforts have made little headway.
In Clovis, New Mexico, a high plains town of about 40,000 residents less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Texas, Earl Henson and two business partners have pooled resources to convert a former gun shop and shooting range into a cannabis store and companion growing room at a Main Street address.
“I can’t explain how happy I am,” said Henson, a former real estate agent who says his affection for marijuana was a burden in the past. This week, he began harvesting the first crop for a cannabis store titled Earl and Tom’s. “I think these cities that are near Texas, for the next two years it is going to change their economies.”
In the state capital of Santa Fe, marijuana is going on sale across the street from the city’s newly built visitors center on a block lined with galleries, clothing boutiques and restaurants.
LeRoy Roybal, manager of Minerva Canna’s downtown cannabis store, said he hopes the stigma of cannabis use quickly fades.
“I think we’re liberating a lot of hearts and souls,” he said. “It’s going to be like getting a cup of joe at Starbucks.”
Supportive lawmakers hope that broad legalizing of marijuana will stamp out black markets, boost employment and provide stable new sources of government income.
Consumers initially will rely heavily on supplies from 35 legacy marijuana businesses that took root over the past 15 years. Cannabis regulators have issued more than 230 new marijuana business licenses so far — to growers, retailers and manufacturing facilities for extracts and edibles.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday said that broad marijuana legalization responds to popular demands and is generating small business opportunities.
“This is what consumers want,” said Lujan Grisham, up for reelection in November. “We have the potential for 11,000 more workers, jobs in places where young people can work and stay, like Torrance County and Texico and Tucumcari and Raton.”
Local governments can’t ban cannabis businesses entirely, though they can restrict locations and hours of operation. Public consumption is prohibited under threat of a $50 fine for first-time infractions.
New business licenses for cannabis cafes or lounges haven’t been requested yet — leaving people to indulge in their homes or designated hotels, casinos and cigar shops.
In southern New Mexico, Mayor Javier Perea of Sunland Park says marijuana retailers can set up anywhere across the small city flanked by the Rio Grande and fencing along the U.S. border with Mexico.
He said about 30 marijuana business have sought authorization in the city of just 17,000 residents, banking on tourism from nearby El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.
Perea hopes the industry creates economic opportunity and tax income to bolster city services. Local governments will receive a minority share of the state’s 12% excise tax on recreational marijuana sales, along with a share of additional sales taxes. Medical cannabis remains tax-free.
“The one thing that we are going to struggle with is we are going to run out of buildings” for new businesses, he said.
Legal experts warn that people who purchase cannabis in New Mexico and chose to return home to other states could risk criminal penalties, arrest and incarceration — most notably in Texas.
Paul Armento, deputy director of the drug policy group NORML, said Texas is among the leading states for marijuana-possession arrests, and that possession of marijuana concentrates, which are legal in New Mexico, is punishable in Texas by up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Marijuana also remains illegal under federal law to possess, use or sell — a standard that applies across vast tracks of federal land and Indian Country in New Mexico.
New Mexico’s cannabis industry, still reliant on cash to avoid running afoul of federal law, is gaining access to banking services through an alternative certification system for credit unions and banks supported by state attorneys general.
The state also plans to underwrite $5 million in low-interest loans to small cannabis businesses that can’t access traditional credit.
Lawmakers in New Mexico have sought to reverse harm inflicted by marijuana criminalization on minority communities and poor households by automatically dismissing or erasing past cannabis convictions, encouraging social and economic diversity in employment and reducing financial barriers for startup businesses.
The state’s micro-business license to cultivate up to 200 plants for a flat $1,000 fee is attracting first-time commercial growers such as recently retired U.S. Marine Kyle Masterson and wife Ivy, a Hispanic Army veteran with business consulting experience. They are raising three children and making a mid-life career shift into cannabis.
The Mastersons, residents of suburban Rio Rancho, searched more remote areas for an affordable building to cultivate high-grade marijuana under lights, settling on a vacant former movie theater in tiny Cuba, New Mexico, at the base of the Jemez Mountains.
“It felt right, it felt good and out of a vision of what we could do,” said Kyle, who served in four combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’re used to working out of austere environments without much direction and doing our best.”
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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s justice minister said Friday that the government will recommend that an Istanbul court close a trial in absentia against 26 Saudi nationals charged in the slaying of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and transfer the case to Saudi Arabia.
Bekir Bozdag spoke a day after a Turkish prosecutor requested the transfer, in line with a request from the kingdom.
The request, which came as Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been working to improve ties, raised fears of a possible coverup of the killing that triggered an international outcry and cast a cloud of suspicion over Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
A panel of judges hearing the case made no ruling on the surprise request by the prosecutor on Thursday but said it would seek the Justice Ministry’s opinion. Trial was adjourned until April 7.
“We will send our opinion today,” the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Bozdag as saying. “We will provide a positive opinion concerning the transfer of this case.”
Amnesty International has urged Turkey to press ahead with the trial, arguing that the case would be placed under wraps if moved to Saudi Arabia.
Bozdag said, however, that should the case be moved to the kingdom, the Turkish court would evaluate any verdict reached by a Saudi court. The Turkish judiciary would then drop the case if it is satisfied with the verdict reached in Saudi Arabia or resume proceedings if the defendants are acquitted, Anadolu reported.
The trial’s transfer to Saudi Arabia “does not abolish the jurisdiction of the Turkish courts,” Anadolu quoted the minister as saying.
Moving Khashoggi’s trial to Saudi Arabia would provide a diplomatic resolution to a dispute that exemplified the wider troubles between Ankara and the kingdom since the 2011 Arab Spring.
Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported Islamists as the uprisings took hold, while Saudi Arabia and its ally the United Arab Emirates sought to suppress such movements for fear of facing challenges to their autocratic governments. Meanwhile, Turkey sided with Qatar in a diplomatic dispute that saw Doha boycotted by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Khashoggi, who wrote critically of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, disappeared on Oct. 2, 2018, after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, seeking documents that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee. He never emerged.
Turkish officials allege that the Saudi national, who was a United States resident, was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate by a team of Saudi agents sent to Istanbul. His body has not been found.
Turkey began prosecuting the defendants in absentia in 2020 after Saudi Arabia rejected requests for their extradition.
In arguing for the transfer, the prosecutor told the court that the Saudi chief public prosecutor’s office requested the Turkish proceedings be transferred to the kingdom in a letter dated March 13, and that international warrants issued by Ankara against the defendants be lifted, according to the private DHA news agency.
The prosecutor said that because the arrest warrants cannot be executed and defense statements cannot be taken, the case would remain inconclusive in Turkey.
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BRUSSELS (AP) — China on Friday renewed its criticism of Western sanctions against Russia, as top European Union officials sought assurances from Beijing that it would not help Moscow circumvent the economic measures imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also laid blame for the war in Ukraine at least partially on the United States for pushing to expand the NATO military alliance closer to Russia’s borders. Twenty-one of the EU’s 27 countries are also NATO member states.
At a virtual summit, European Council President Charles Michel, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell sought signs from Chinese President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang that Beijing would help to end the war in Ukraine.
“China disapproves of solving problems through sanctions, and we are even more opposed to unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing as they met.
Zhao said when it comes to Ukraine, Beijing would not be forced to “choose a side or adopt a simplistic friend-or-foe approach. We should, in particular, resist the Cold War thinking and bloc confrontation.”
“As the culprit and leading instigator of the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. has led NATO to engage in five rounds of eastward expansion in the last two decades after 1999,” he said, adding that NATO membership almost doubled from 16 to 30 countries, and pushed “Russia to the wall step by step.”
China says it is not taking sides in the conflict but it has declared a “no limits” partnership with Russia and refuses to condemn the invasion. Beijing routinely amplifies Russian disinformation about the conflict, and does not refer to it as an invasion or a war in keeping with Russian practice.
In a news release following a first summit session, Li was quoted as affirming the importance of China-EU ties, saying he hoped the two “remain open to each other, steadily expand market access, protect fair competition and promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation.”
“China hopes that the EU will also provide a sound business environment to Chinese businesses investing and developing in Europe,” Li was quoted as saying.
Prior to the summit, EU officials said they would look for signs that Beijing is willing to cooperate on ending the war. The meeting takes place amid rising negative sentiment within the bloc fueled by China’s aggressive foreign policies and trade practices.
“The international community notably China and the EU have a mutual responsibility to use their joint influence and diplomacy to bring an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the associated humanitarian crisis,” Michel tweeted.
Underlying the EU’s expectations for China is the possibility of penalties against Chinese companies that undermine measures taken against Russia. EU officials point out that 13.7% of China’s total trade is done with the 27-nation bloc, and 12% with the United States, compared with just 2.4% with Russia.
Officials said they also wish to emphasize the impact the war is having on the availability of fertilizer and global energy and food prices, which are hitting the poorest countries in Africaand the Middle East hardest.
Other topics include China’s travel ban on members of the European Parliament; Beijing’s economic boycott of EU member Lithuania over its Taiwan relations; the fate of a stalled investment agreement; and civil and political rights under China’s authoritarian Communist Party regime.
Beijing has dismissed European criticisms as biased and driven by an anti-China agenda being pursued by its chief global rival, the United States.
Beijing also sanctioned some European Union lawmakers last year after the EU, Britain, Canada and the United States launched coordinated sanctions against officials in China over human rights abuses in the far western Xinjiang region.
The European Parliament responded by saying it will not ratify a long-awaited business investment deal as long as the sanctions remain in place.
Rights groups have also urged the EU to take a more assertive stand with China over repression in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and elsewhere and the persecution of Chinese dissidents including Sakharov Prize winner Ilham Tohti and Chinese-Swedish publisher Gui Minhai.
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Moritsugu reported from Beijing.
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Follow all AP stories about developments in Russia’s war on Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.
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DETROIT (AP) — New vehicles sold in the United States will have to travel an average of at least 40 miles per gallon of gasoline in 2026 under new rules unveiled Friday by the government.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its fuel economy requirements will undo a rollback of standards enacted under President Donald Trump. The new requirements increase gas mileage by 8% per year for model years 2024 and 2025 and 10% in the 2026 model year.
For the current model year, standards enacted under Trump require the fleet of new vehicles to get just over 24 miles per gallon in real-world driving.
Agency officials say the requirements are the maximum that the industry can achieve over the time period and will reduce gasoline consumption by more than 220 billion gallons over the life of vehicles, compared with the Trump standards.
Trump’s administration rolled back fuel economy requirements so they rose 1.5% per year, which environmental groups said was inadequate to limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change.
But the new standards won’t immediately match those adopted through 2025 under President Barack Obama. NHTSA officials said they will equal the Obama standards by 2025 and slightly exceed them for the 2026 model year.
The Obama-era standards automatically adjusted for changes in the type of vehicles people are buying. When they were enacted in 2012, 51% of new vehicle sales were cars and 49% SUVs and trucks. Last year, 77% of new vehicle sales were SUVs and trucks, which generally are less efficient than cars.
Some environmental groups said the new requirements from NHTSA under President Joe Biden don’t go far enough to fight global warming.
“Climate change has gotten much worse, but these rules only require automakers to reduce gas-guzzling slightly more than they agreed to cut nine years ago,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Center at the Center for Biological Diversity.
He said the final rule is about 2 mpg short of the strongest alternative that NHTSA considered.
Officials said that under the new standards, owners would save about $1,400 in gasoline costs during the lifetime of a 2029 model year vehicle. Carbon dioxide emissions would drop by 2.5 billion metric tons by 2050 under the standards, the NHTSA said.
The agency did not give figures for how much the standards would increase the cost of vehicles. Auto dealers say more stringent requirements drive up prices and push people out of an already expensive new-car market.
The NHTSA sets fuel economy requirements, while the Environmental Protection Agency develops limits on greenhouse gas emissions. NHTSA officials said their requirements nearly match rules adopted in December by the EPA, so automakers don’t have to comply with two rules.
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This year’s Final Four includes quite a collection of big-name programs — but this hasn’t been a particularly dominant group this season.
In fact, the top three teams — and five of the top six — in the current Pomeroy rankings are absent. That’s a change from last year, when Gonzaga and Baylor were terrific all season and then met in the title game.
Here’s a statistical look at this season’s accomplished-but-flawed Final Four quartet, using advanced stats. Many of the stats cited in this piece can be found at kenpom.com and are becoming more and more common in mainstream basketball analysis.
KANSAS (32-6)
Pomeroy Rank: 4
Strengths: The Jayhawks rank seventh in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency, and perhaps more importantly, they aren’t really deficient in any major category. They’re 18th in adjusted defensive efficiency, and their offense ranks in the top 70 in field goal percentage from both inside and outside the arc.
Weaknesses: Kansas doesn’t have many glaring problems, but the Jayhawks are only 159th in defensive rebounding percentage, meaning a team that can attack the offensive glass could be a problem. Kansas is also 116th in turnover percentage on offense — not awful, but a good bit worse than the other three teams in this Final Four.
In This Tournament: Opponents have made only 29.6% of their 3-pointers against Kansas this season. That’s the type of thing that could even out over time — but it hasn’t in this tournament so far. In the Sweet 16, Providence went 4 of 23 from long distance in a five-point loss to the Jayhawks. In the regional final, Miami went 3 of 21 against Kansas.
DUKE (32-6)
Pomeroy Rank: 7
Strengths: The Blue Devils are the top team in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency, and they’ve shown it in the tournament. They scored 78 points in 67 possessions in the Sweet 16 against Texas Tech, which has the country’s top defense. Duke doesn’t rely that heavily on the 3, which makes sense since the Blue Devils are shooting 56.3% from inside the arc, the eighth-best mark in the nation.
Weaknesses: The defense is 45th in adjusted efficiency. Specifically, Duke isn’t good at forcing turnovers and has some issues on the defensive boards.
In This Tournament: It’s been an offensive show for the Blue Devils. In addition to that game against Texas Tech, Duke scored 85 points in 66 possessions against Michigan State in the second round, and 78 in 70 against Arkansas in the regional final. The Blue Devils are shooting 60% from 2-point range in this tournament.
VILLANOVA (30-7)
Pomeroy Rank: 9
Strengths: Foul Villanova at your own risk. Wildcats are shooting 83% on free throws, meaning they have a chance to break the Division I record of 82.2% set by Harvard in 1984.
Weaknesses: Villanova shoots only 49.9% from 2-point range, which isn’t a huge problem given how much damage the Wildcats can do from 3, but it’s an issue. Villanova is also another team that isn’t great on the defensive glass.
In This Tournament: The Wildcats rely a lot on the 3, and they also allow a lot of 3-point attempts. That arrangement tends to work out in Villanova’s favor, and it has over the past four games. The Wildcats have made 35 3-pointers in the tournament, and opponents have made only 17.
NORTH CAROLINA (28—9)
Pomeroy Rank: 16
Strengths: North Carolina is a tricky team to evaluate because its season stats are pedestrian for a Final Four team — but the Tar Heels seem to have turned a corner over the past month. According to the rankings at barttorvik.com, North Carolina has been the most efficient team in the country since March 1. If you look at the NCAA Tournament games only, the Tar Heels are fourth in adjusted offensive efficiency and eighth in adjusted defensive efficiency — the only team in the top 10 in both.
Weaknesses: On the season, North Carolina has an effective field goal percentage (eFG) of just 52.0. Only Villanova is worse among Final Four teams, and the Wildcats can make up for it by being excellent at the free throw line. The Tar Heels’ defense has allowed an opposing eFG of 48.8%, and the other three remaining teams are at 47.0% or lower.
In This Tournament: In the NCAA Tournament, North Carolina’s offensive eFG is 51.9%, not much different from the rest of the season. But the team’s defensive eFG is an impressive 40.9%. And that’s not just because the Tar Heels blew out 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s. They also held top-seeded Baylor to an eFG of 40.1%. Duke should be a huge test of how far North Carolina’s defense has come.
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Follow Noah Trister at https://twitter.com/noahtrister
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More AP college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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EVANS, Ga. (WJBF) – The second round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur resumed at 7:30 a.m. Friday morning at Champions Retreat Golf Club in Evans after being suspended due to darkness Thursday evening.
Overnight co-leader Beatrice Wallin of Sweden, a senior at Florida State, was in the first group to finish its round at 18 Friday morning. Par left her with a round of 71 and the clubhouse lead at even-par.
Moments later, Latanna Stone, a junior at LSU, parred her final hole at the ninth to finish at 72 and join Wallin in the clubhouse at even-par.
The top 30 at the end of the second round advance to Saturday’s final round at Augusta National Golf Club.
After today’s round the entire field will travel to Augusta National for a practice round Friday afternoon.
This story will be updated throughout the day.
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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) — Mets ace Jacob deGrom was scratched from his scheduled start Friday morning and will get an MRI after feeling tightness in his pitching shoulder, putting his status for opening day in jeopardy.
New York manager Buck Showalter told reporters Thursday night at spring training in Florida that deGrom would probably be scratched Friday afternoon against the St. Louis Cardinals. He began to feel the tightness while playing catch Thursday.
“We are going to see how he is in the morning before we scratch him,” Showalter said, according to MLB.com. “But he has to be pretty convincing to pitch him tomorrow. I’ll be surprised if he pitches tomorrow — rain or no rain.”
The two-time Cy Young Award winner is slated to start the season opener next Thursday in Washington.
It’s concerning news for the Mets, who have big plans this season after signing fellow ace Max Scherzer to join deGrom atop a terrific rotation.
After getting off to a sensational start last year, deGrom didn’t pitch during the second half because of a sprained elbow. He was 7-2 with a 1.08 ERA in 15 outings, but New York collapsed without him to finish 77-85 after leading the NL East for 103 days. His final start was July 7 against Milwaukee.
The right-hander reported to camp healthy this year and has permitted one run over five innings in Grapefruit League games, striking out 10. His most recent outing was Sunday against the Cardinals.
Earlier in camp, deGrom said he plans to opt out of his contract after this season and become a free agent.
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More AP MLB coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NCAA President Mark Emmert said investigations into allegations of major violations against several high-profile men’s college basketball programs — including 2022 Final Four participant Kansas — have taken “way too long.”
What solutions might be on the table to speed it up, Emmert did not say, but there appears to be increasing acknowledgement that the current process is broken.
“It’s just been really slow in getting through that new independent process that’s wound up reinvestigating the entire case,” Emmert said, referring to the Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP).
The IARP was created out of proposals from the commission led by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2018 to reform the sport. It began looking into allegations against Kansas, Arizona, LSU, Louisville and North Carolina State on the heels of a federal investigation into corruption in college sports that resulted in convictions of shoe company executives, a middle man who worked with them and some assistant college coaches.
Of those FBI cases nearly five years ago, only one — North Carolina State, tied to its recruitment of one-and-done star Dennis Smith Jr. — has actually gone through the IARP system to completion andreceived a rulingthat resulted in probation for one year, some vacated victories and penalties for previous coaches.
The four other cases are still pending in the IARP structure, while Auburn went through the more traditional processand received four years of probation in December from an NCAA infractions committee panel.
In the meantime, this year’s NCAA Tournament could be tainted should Kansas win the national championship and subsequently have an unfavorable decision come down in a now half-decade-old investigation.
Created to handle complex cases, the IARP includes independent investigators and decision-makers with no direct ties to NCAA member schools, and rulings cannot be appealed.
Emmert said NCAA institutions need to come up with a process that has “got to be fair. It’s got to be swift. And it’s got to not punish the innocent. … That’s where the membership’s got to be in all of this, as they shape a new process or rebuild the one that’s in place.”
The Kansas case hinges on whether Adidas representatives were considered boosters — the school contends they were not — when two of them arranged payments to prospective recruits. Kansas does not dispute the payments. Kansas asked for referral to the IARP instead of having the NCAA’s infractions committee handle the matter.
While the lengthy IARP process has been going on,Self agreed to a new contract on April 2, 2021, that will keep him with the school until he retires.
The five-year deal adds one additional year after the conclusion of each season — in effect, making it a lifetime contract. It guarantees him $5.41 million per year with a base salary of $225,000, professional services contract of $2.75 million and an annual $2.435 million retention bonus.
The contact also includes a clause that says the school cannot terminate him for cause “due to any current infractions matter that involves conduct that occurred on or prior to” the signing of the new contract. Instead, he would forfeit half of his base salary and professional services pay while serving any Big 12 or NCAA suspension.
Emmert declined to weigh on on Kansas’ decision to double down on Self.
“I’ll leave it to the school to make decisions about their coaches’ contracts,” said Emmert, who also spoke at the women’s Final Four on Wednesday. “That’s their business, obviously. They can do that as they see fit.”
The infractions process has also come up with the Division I Transformation Committee, which is working to recommend ways to modernize and reform NCAA governance and regulatory policies.
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey, who chairs the committee along with Ohio athletics director Julie Cromer, said the group is looking at both the overall infractions process and the IARP structure as part of its work.
“I don’t know fully what was envisioned and what wasn’t envisioned,” said Sankey, who has served on the NCAA infractions committee. “But we have to have timely outcomes, both for those accused and for those competing against those who are accused. That has to be a point of emphasis.”
Later, Sankey added: “I was on an implementation working group, and I disagreed with elements of the approach. So I think some of these problems were foreseeable. We have an opportunity to correct and enhance the process. That doesn’t mean everybody will like the process.”
Among other topics Emmert addressed:
NATIONAL NIL RULES
Emmert offered an urgent plea to Congress to craft what he said was needed, uniform national legislation governing financial endorsements for athletes known as name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.
“This tournament’s put on full display the beauty of college sport,” Emmert said. “People love it and enjoy it, and we’ve got to work with the schools and with Congress to make sure we can continue that.
“We’ve got again a relatively short window of time — in my estimate, one and two years,” Emmert continued. “These decisions have to be made because of the dynamics that are underway right now that are far beyond the control of schools, coaches, (athletic directors) or presidents.”
Currently, more than 30 states have been working on their own NIL laws.
TRANSGENDER LEGISLATION
With a number of states considering or passing legislation restricting participation of transgender athletes, Emmert was asked whether the NCAA would bar those states from hosting championship events.
The NCAA has largely followed the Olympic model that allows transgender athletes to compete if they’ve had certain biomedical treatments, including hormone therapies, meant to promote fairness.
Emmert said the NCAA currently requires communities which wish to host events “to explain how it is that they’re going to make sure that the participants in that sport will be allowed to do that in a nondiscriminatory way. … If they can do that, then we’ll be in those states.”
TRANFER RULES
Emmert said the current transfer rules continue to draw a lot of scrutiny and complaints from coaches and could be adjusted over time.
“The only thing that I can say right now is that it’s clear that students are getting more opportunities to play. They’re getting more freedom of movement in some respects,” Emmert said.
But he added that officials are keeping an eye on how the rules affect “students being able to finish their degrees in a timely fashion and go on and lead productive lives, because we know how few of them will be professional basketball players. It’s a constant point of discussion. I don’t anticipate it going away too soon.”
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AP Sports Writers Aaron Beard, Dave Skretta and John Marshall contributed to this report.
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More AP college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Rainbow flags could be taken from fans at the World Cup in Qatar to protect them from being attacked for promoting gay rights, a senior leader overseeing security for the tournament told The Associated Press.
Major General Abdulaziz Abdullah Al Ansari insisted that LGBTQ couples would be welcomed and accepted in Qatar for the Nov. 21-Dec. 18 FIFA showpiece despite same-sex relations remaining criminalized in the conservative Gulf nation.
But Al Ansari is against the overt promotion of LGBTQ freedoms as symbolized by the rainbow flag that FIFA and World Cup organizers had previously said would be welcome across Qatar’s eight stadiums.
“If he (a fan) raised the rainbow flag and I took it from him, it’s not because I really want to, really, take it, to really insult him, but to protect him,” Al Ansari told the AP. “Because if it’s not me, somebody else around him might attack (him) … I cannot guarantee the behavior of the whole people. And I will tell him: ‘Please, no need to really raise that flag at this point.’”
Al Ansari is director of the Department of International Cooperation and Chairman of the National Counterterrorism Committee at the Ministry of Interior where he discussed World Cup planning for an hour with the AP.
“You want to demonstrate your view about the (LGBTQ) situation, demonstrate it in a society where it will be accepted,” he said. “We realize that this man got the ticket, comes here to watch the game, not to demonstrate, a political (act) or something which is in his mind.
“Watch the game. That’s good. But don’t really come in and insult the whole society because of this.”
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said this week in Doha that “everyone will see that everyone is welcome here in Qatar, even if we speak about LGBTQ.”
Al Ansari said he is not telling LBGTQ fans to stay away from Qatar or warning them of facing prosecution.
“Reserve the room together, sleep together — this is something that’s not in our concern,” he said. “We are here to manage the tournament. Let’s not go beyond, the individual personal things which might be happening between these people … this is actually the concept.
“Here we cannot change the laws. You cannot change the religion for 28 days of World Cup.”
When it was pointed out that visiting fans and teams could take offense to the comments, Al Ansari said he did not view himself as being discriminatory.
“I am risking … a minority view against a majority,” he said. “We have to be close to the problem before it erupts and gets out of control. … If somebody attacks you, then I have to get involved and it will be too late.”
FIFA chief social responsibility and education officer Joyce Cook told the AP in 2020 that “rainbow flags, T-shirts will all be welcome in the stadium — that’s a given. They understand very well that is our stance.” World Cup chief executive Nasser Al-Khater also said “we will respect” FIFA guidelines on allowing rainbow flags.
But Al Ansari’s comments about the confiscation of fans’ rainbow flags have created confusion for activists, including Chris Paouros, a member of the English Football Association’s inclusion advisory board and trustee with the anti-discrimination group, Kick It Out, which want a safe and inclusive tournament.
“This inconsistency and the continued lack of detail in terms of how that will be provided beyond the rhetoric of ‘everyone is welcome’ is concerning to say the least,” Paouros said.
The FARE network, which monitors games for discrimination, called for the freedoms of fans to be respected at the World Cup.
“The idea that the flag, which is now a recognized universal symbol of diversity and equality, will be removed from people to protect them will not be considered acceptable, and will be seen as a pretext,” FARE executive director Piara Powar said. “I have been to Qatar on numerous occasions and do not expect the local Qatari population or fans visiting for the World Cup to be attacked for wearing the rainbow flag. The bigger danger comes from state actions.”
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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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EDINBURGH, Ind. (WXIN) – Scientists believe the loud boom that was heard across several counties in South Central Indiana recently was caused by a meteor explosion.
Scientists at Purdue watched surveillance videos that captured the noise and believe the boom can be attributed to an “air burst.”
“Essentially when a meteor is entering the atmosphere it will essentially explode in the atmosphere and they can make a loud boom,” Purdue planetary scientist Brandon Johnson said.
Johnson said it’s likely similar to the “air burst” that happened in the skies over Chelyabinsk in Russia back in 2013. That incident lit up the sky and caused major damage on the ground.
“If it was big enough to make that loud an explosion it should’ve been seen but it was a pretty cloudy day,” Johnson said. “If there was enough cloud cover it’s possible that no one saw it but it still did occur above the clouds.”
The boom was large enough to show up on seismic scales at Indiana University.
“There was a significant pulse of seismic energy recorded on our instruments at 12:44 p.m. yesterday,” geophysics professor Michael Hamburger said. “If this coincides with the timing of the reports, it is likely the result of the sonic disturbance experienced by local residents.”
The American Meteor Society said it took two reports of meteor sightings yesterday afternoon. One of those reports came in from Columbus, the other from Bloomington.
Based on those reports the society was able to triangulate the impacted location and said it was likely a “fireball meteor.”
Johnson said it’s a good reminder that a lot happens out in space.
“It’s a reminder that we need to stay vigilant and know how to protect ourselves and detect these before they happen,” Johnson said.
Johnson said that if it was a meteor then it’s likely that parts of it made it to the ground.
He said they’ll likely be small rocks with a black coating on them.
The American Meteor Society is encouraging anyone who saw anything to report it to them. You can report those at amsmeteors.org.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/border-report-tour/at-least-10000-in-juarez-waiting-for-title-42-rollback-chance-at-u-s-asylum/
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JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Myrna and Julio Flores fled El Salvador after gang members levied a “tax” on their home-based business and threatened harm if they didn’t pay up.
“We had a baby on the way. That motivated us to close our business, quit our jobs and come to the United States,” Myrna said, holding her now 8-month-old daughter.
The couple crossed the Rio Grande at Reynosa, Mexico, but didn’t have a chance to plead their case for asylum. The U.S. Border Patrol fingerprinted them at a processing center near McAllen, Texas, put them on an airplane to El Paso and expelled them to Mexico under the Title 42 public health rule last month.
Immigration advocates say Title 42 exposes migrants to violent crime in Mexican border cities like Juarez. The Flores couple can attest to that.
On Feb. 12, armed gunmen allegedly belonging to a cell of the Aztecas gang arrived at a church in South Central Juarez where a funeral was being held for a rival. The gunmen murdered six funeral-goers including a 12-year-old boy and wounded several other people. The Floreses were staying at a small migrant shelter in the back of that church and escaped the fusillade.
“When we went out, we had to step over the dead because there were several dead and wounded. We found refuge in the house across (the street),” Myrna said. “The church had to close to because of threats.”
Seeing days go by at a Juarez shelter, the couple is looking forward to the termination of Title 42, which news reports out of Washington, D.C., say will happen on May 23.
“We were fleeing violence and we found more violence,” Julio said. “I hope they let us apply for asylum (in the United States). Most of us are fleeing because there are too many problems in our countries. The violence in El Salvador has exploded. […] There’s a 6 p.m. curfew in most towns (because of gang violence). People cannot come out of their homes.”
Enrique Valenzuela, head of the Chihuahua Population Council (COESPO), says between 10,000 and 12,500 migrants are in Juarez waiting for the end of Title 42.
“The shelters are at 80 percent capacity. That’s between 2,000 and 3,000 people, but for every migrant that comes to us for assistance, there are four to five that do not,” said Valenzuela, whose office oversees Juarez’s Migrant Assistance Center.
The council in 2019 helped U.S. Customs and Border Protection bring order to a then-chaotic border in which flash mobs frequently materialized across from U.S. ports of entry and hustlers sold places in line.
Back then, COESPO helped manage access to international bridges and provided guidance to migrants as to what documents CBP expected of them.
This time, though, it’s still not known what shape that cooperation will take.
“At this point, we don’t know how much of an influx we will have or how the United States chooses to handle that flow,” Valenzuela said. “It’s important for people to know they have to wait for official information, for them not to be tricked that it will be an easy way into the United States now that Title 42 is going to be lifted. No, that is not the case.”
But Valenzuela said Chihuahua Gov. Maru Campos has instructed his office and other state agencies to continue helping migrants regardless of where they come from. That includes Mexican families displaced by a bloody drug war in several regions, Central and South Americans already in the city or on the way, and those whom the United States continues to expel daily.
“It’s our duty to provide humanitarian attention to people arriving at this border. We work with allies that include all three levels of government (in Mexico), the United Nations, local and international NGOs,” he said. “Our primary duty is to provide them shelter – a place to stay – and also medical and mental health screenings.”
Meantime, Myrna and Julio Flores hope to finally soon have a chance to state their case and flee the violence in El Salvador and Mexico. “Our hope is that at least they let us apply for asylum in the United States. Most of us are on the run, running from problems because our countries are too conflictive,” Julio said.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/eight-year-old-boy-in-stable-condition-after-being-shot-in-head-in-yazoo/
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YAZOO CITY, Miss. (WJTV) – An eight-year-old boy, who was shot in the head while playing on his porch, was listed in stable condition on Thursday, March 31.
Dylan Johnson’s father, Ben Johnson, said his son was playing outside in his usual spot on Monday, March 28.
“He was playing on our back porch in Yazoo City, his safe place without a care in the world, and our house was hit with three random shots,” said Johnson.
One of those rounds struck Dylan in the head.
“He’s stable right now. He did have a critical, critical wound, and he’s making it through, and he’s keeping his head together, and he’s fighting.”
The tragic incident has Johnson calling for something to be done about the nationwide spike in gun violence.
“Too many people that don’t have sense that have weapons and that’s the problem in this country. It’s not all about us who know what to do, it’s the people who don’t know what to do and act out on it irresponsibly. So again, here we are. Same story, different city, different day, different year, another eight-year-old, and I just hope we find somebody for it,” said Johnson.
According to Yazoo City Detective Nolan Warrington, police are looking into potential suspects. Since the shooting, the family has received a lot of support from the community.
“It’s been pretty amazing. I’ve been having to tell people to stop. I don’t need another hamburger. They’re really doing a good job. They’re really coming forward, and we really appreciate it. We put our faith in this hospital, because we believe in them, and they’re showing that,” said Johnson.
According to Johnson, violence has been on the rise in Yazoo City. Now that its impacted his family, he’s lost faith in the community.
“I’m not hopeful anymore we’re out. I can’t wait around anymore. Whatever we were trying to do in that community is not happening fast enough for us. I’ve done a lot of crying already, and now I think this is anger. I think where I’m at and me talking to you now is anger and not sadness. I’ve had a lot of that too but now I’m angry.”
Dylan is being treated at Children’s of Mississippi hospital in Jackson.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/rade-k-9-traffic-stop-leads-to-1-2-lb-methamphetamine/
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ALEXANDRIA, La. (WNTZ) – On Wednesday 5:30 pm, deputies assigned to the Rapides Area Drug Enforcement K-9 Unit were patrolling the area of Texas Avenue near Elliott Street when they observed a vehicle being driven by a wanted person William Kevin Jones, 30 of Alexandria.
Deputies were familiar with Jones and had knowledge he had an active warrant through the Alexandria Police Department for contempt of court. Deputies conducted a traffic stop on Jones to take him into custody for the warrants and during the course of the traffic stop, a R.A.D.E. K-9 alerted on the vehicle. The K-9 continued to search the vehicle and alerted on the driver’s seat where Jones had been sitting. As deputies were conducting a hand search of Jones subsequent to the warrant arrest, approximately ½ pound of crystal methamphetamine was located in Jones undergarments.
Alexandria man charged with sex trafficking and 100 counts of 1st degree rape
Jones was placed under arrest on the outstanding warrants as well as the narcotics violation. Jones was transported and booked into the Rapides Parish Detention Center where he remains at the time of this release being held on a $51,000.00 bond.
Earlier today, Agents with the Alexandria District of Louisiana Probation and Parole learned of Jones arrest and placed a Parole Violation detainer on him as well.
William Kevin Jones of Alexandria is charged with Contempt of Court (APD warrant), Possession with intent to distribute (methamphetamine), Possession drug paraphernalia, and Parole Violation
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/registered-sex-offender-arrested-again-in-louisiana/
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HOUMA, La. (BRPROUD) – A convicted felon who happens to be a registered sex offender is in trouble with the law once more.
Richard Vito, 46, of Houma, is currently in the Terrebonne Parish Jail after a recent arrest.
The investigation started on March 28 when “deputies took a complaint involving two juvenile females that reported unwanted and inappropriate sexual encounters with Vito.”
A short investigation ensued and Vito was arrested two days after the initial complaints were received by the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office.
With a search warrant in hand, deputies searched Vito’s home.
“During the search, Detectives recovered firearms along with evidence of the sex crimes,” according to the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Vito is facing these charges:
- One count of Third-Degree Rape
- Two counts Contributing to the Delinquency of a Juvenile
- Two counts of Molestation of a Juvenile
- One count Indecent Behavior with a Juvenile
- Two counts of Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon
Bond is set at $460,000 for Richard Vito.
If you have any information that could help with this ongoing investigation, please call the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office Special Victim’s unit at (985) 876-2500.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health-2/allergies-vs-covid-how-to-tell-symptoms-apart/
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(NEXSTAR) – For many, springtime can mean a return of seasonal allergies. But how can you tell if it’s pollen or the latest COVID-19 variants that’s making you sneeze?
The most common symptoms associated with the omicron variant (which makes up nearly all COVID-19 cases in the U.S. right now) are runny nose, headache, fatigue, sneezing and sore throat, according to the ZOE Covid Study, which has been tracking COVID-19 symptoms in the United Kingdom.
Some of those symptoms overlap with allergies, which can make it confusing (and stressful) when you start to feel bad.
The best way to answer the question of whether you have the coronavirus or just allergies is to take a COVID test – either a rapid at-home test or a PCR test at a testing location.
While you wait for your results, you can also compare the most common symptoms of allergies and COVID-19, as explained by the Mayo Clinic:
You could also have a common cold or the flu. For more on those possibilities, check out the Mayo Clinic’s breakdown of symptoms.
The symptoms of omicron made it harder to distinguish from other ailments than previous variants of the virus, like delta. The loss of smell or taste, for example, used to be a sure sign you had the coronavirus, but was found to be much less common with omicron.
People vaccinated against COVID-19 are also more likely to experience cold-like symptoms with an omicron infection, whereas unvaccinated people are more likely to report flu-like symptoms and shortness of breath.
In the U.S., the BA.2 subvariant of omicron has started to overtake the BA.1 type of omicron that caused the recent winter surge, but both types of omicron cause the same symptoms.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/sports/geaux-nation/lsu-baseball-falls-in-game-one-vs-auburn-6-5/
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BATON ROUGE, La. – Auburn erased a 2-0 deficit with a six-run fifth inning Thursday night and held on for a 6-5 win over No. 12 LSU in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.
Auburn improved to 18-8 overall, 4-3 in the SEC, while LSU dropped to 18-8 overall and 3-4 in conference play.
The teams meet in Game 2 of the series at 6:30 p.m. CT Friday in a contest that will be broadcast on affiliates of the LSU Sports Radio Network and streamed on SEC Network +.
LSU starting pitcher Blake Money (2-2) was charged with the loss as he allowed six runs – five earned – on six hits in five innings with three walks and five strikeouts.
Auburn reliever Carson Skipper (2-0) earned the win, as he limited LSU to two runs on four hits in 3.1 innings with one walk and three strikeouts.
Blake Burkhalter picked up his fifth save of the season, working the final 1.2 innings and allowing one run on two hits with no walks and two strikeouts.
“Our team has responded well to adversity all season, and we expect our players to respond to this setback in a positive way,” said LSU coach Jay Johnson. “We have to keep working on fundamentals; these are good kids, we just have to get them better at baseball.”
LSU grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first inning on a leadoff homer by shortstop Cade Doughty, his seventh of the season. Catcher Hayden Travinski launched his third homer of the year – all in the past five games – to give LSU a 2-0 advantage through four innings.
However, Auburn struck for six runs in the top of the fifth in a rally that was highlighted by a three-run homer from shortstop Brody Moore, who hit his second dinger of the year.
Skipper blanked LSU over the next three innings before designated hitter Brayden Jobert blasted a two-run shot in the bottom of the eighth, narrowing the gap to 6-4.
Doughty led off the bottom of the ninth with a single, and he moved to third on first baseman Tre’ Morgan’s single. Centerfielder Dylan Crews followed with a sacrifice fly to score Doughty, but Burhalter retired the next two hitters to end the game.
LSU received a strong relief effort from right-hander Bryce Collins, who replaced Money after the fifth inning and fired 3.2 shutout frames with five strikeouts.
“There’s no problem with the effort that’s being put forth by our players,” Johnson said. “We just have to keep working hard, make good decisions and improve each day.”
(Recap via LSU Athletics)
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/new-bill-introduced-promises-to-protect-louisiana-crawfish-industry/
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BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Senator Bill Cassidy introduced a bill on Thursday that he said will protect the Louisiana crawfish industry.
“One, it’s our culture, two, it’s unfair,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy joins other lawmakers to introduce the China Trade Cheating Restitution Act, which according to a press release would “direct Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to pay $38.5 million from the interest on anti-dumping duties received from Chinese imports to certain agricultural sectors harmed by China’s illegal trade practices, including $10.6 million for crawfish producers.”
“What Customs Border and Protection does is that they put tariffs or levees or fees upon the Chinese for dumping their crawfish they are by federal law supposed to share that with the crawfish producers to hold them honest. So we want the money to come, which under federal law should from those tariffs fees going to our crawfish farmers,” Cassidy said.
The bill would:
- Require CBP to distribute under CDSOA an estimated $35.6 million in accrued delinquency interest on the antidumping duties that CBP collected and wrongfully withheld
- Amend the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 to move the date of interest collected by the CBP to be dispersed from October 1, 2014 to October 1, 2000 to account for substantial interest withheld by CBP beginning in 2000
The owner of Capital City Crawfish, Will Boutte, said he only purchases local crawfish. During crawfish season, he purchases roughly 16,000 pounds of crawfish a week.
“We go to four farms every day,” Boutte said.
According to Cassidy’s press release, the Chinese producers have participated in an act called “dumping,” in which crawfish is exported to the U.S. at a price below the cost of production, driving Louisiana crawfish producers out of business.
In 2000, Congress passed the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA) which instructed CBP to pay all collected anti-dumping duties and accrued interest to the U.S. producers that were injured by dumped imports. CDSOA applies to imports that entered the U.S. through September 30, 2007, but due to a range of delays, CBP is still assessing and collecting anti-dumping duties and interest on many of these imports.
Boutte said he supports a bill that protects the local economy.
“It would help everybody in Louisiana,” Boutte said. “We need to get away from all the imports. To have our local community, all of our local fisherman supporting their families.”
At the end of the day, Boutte says nothing beats Louisiana crawfish.
“Verified Louisiana Cajun I mean that’s the best thing you can go with. Anything outside of that is… not good,” Boutte said.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/weather/weather-headlines/man-wakes-up-to-tornado-finds-home-destroyed-besides-bedroom/
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WASHINGTON COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) — John Plitsas’ home was destroyed by Thursday morning’s severe weather, and he almost slept through it.
“I was asleep,” Plitsas said. “I heard a bunch of noise. I went to get up. I open the door to my bedroom. No house left. Gone.”
But his bedroom was left untouched by the storm.
“There’s somebody or a higher power who wants me here,” Plitsas said.
When he first woke up he said he didn’t believe what he was seeing.
“I think I turned around and I was going to go back to sleep,” Plitsas said. “I said this is a dream. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t.”
His roof and walls were gone. Plitsas said he found his clothes across the street.
Now he is working with insurance to rebuild his home.
“Blessed,” Plitsas said. “That’s how I feel, that’s how I feel. Because if that would have moved over six inches I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/border-report-tour/dhs-says-title-42-ending-on-may-23-but-removals-of-ineligible-migrants-will-continue/
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EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The Department of Homeland Security on May 23 will no longer expel migrants on public health grounds.
In a statement Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the policy implemented in March 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent cross-border spread of COVID-19 is coming to an end on that date.
“Once the Title 42 Order is no longer in place, DHS will process individuals encountered at the border pursuant to Title 8, which is the standard procedure we use to place individuals in removal proceedings,” Mayorkas said. “Nonetheless, we know that smugglers will spread misinformation to take advantage of vulnerable migrants. Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”
Mayorkas said the administration has “put in place a comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to manage any potential increase in the number of migrants encountered at our border.” That includes increasing capacity to process new arrivals, evaluate asylum requests and remove those who do not qualify for protection.
“We will increase personnel and resources as needed and have already redeployed more than 600 law enforcement officers to the border. We are referring smugglers and certain border crossers for criminal prosecution,” he said.
Title 42 remains in place over the next eight weeks or so, and during that time DHS will apply COVID-19 protocols and ramp up vaccination programs.
Mayorkas said the administration will continue addressing the root causes of migration flows to the United States, which he said have been increasing since at least over a decade ago.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to pursuing every avenue within our authority to secure our borders, enforce our laws and stay true to our values,” Mayorkas said. “Yet a long-term solution can only come from comprehensive legislation that brings lasting reform to a fundamentally broken system.”
Officials outline preparations for expected new migrant surge
In a Friday call on background with reporters, DHS and State Department officials outlined preparations to cope with the May 23 termination of the Title 42 program.
They said they are anticipating and preparing for an increase in migrants coming across the border but that not everyone may be eligible to remain in the United States.
“Families and single adults who cross the border and are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the U.S. will be placed in removal proceedings and will be removed. This is how border management was done before, so we will be returning to status quo,” an administration official said.
In the meantime, administration officials emphasized that Title 42 will continue to be implemented. “Individuals arriving at out border before May 23 will be expelled,” the DHS official said.
Efforts to ramp up COVID-19 vaccination of migrants at processing and detention centers will be ramped up starting now, with the goal of expanding vaccinations from 2,000 a day at 11 processing centers along the U.S.-Mexico border to at least 6,000 in 27 facilities. Those who refuse the Pfizer or Moderna shots will either be referred for removal or released with more stringent conditions, the officials said.
The administration had been anticipating a rollback of Title 42 for some time and has begun working with non-government organizations and local governments to manage the transition.
“We’ve taken a number of concrete steps to respond quickly and efficiently to any increase in migratory flows and leverage partners at the state and local levels and other key stakeholders,” the State Department official said.
Planning is ongoing to contract “soft-sided” facilities such as tents to process an overflow of migrants and additional DHS personnel is being sent to the border. Also, federal agencies will solicit volunteers to assist with the effort as needed.
The State Department official said an interagency task force would also be in place to ensure smugglers and migrants who may represent a danger be routed for prosecution by the Department of Justice. “We will continue to work actively with them, and also with the government of Mexico, to interdict smuggling organizations with an all-of-government approach to human smuggling,” she said.
The officials also anticipate a continued and even expanded use of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” that a federal court has directed the Biden administration to keep in place.
“MPP is one of the Title 8 processing pathways,” one official said. “We will continue to increase enrollments in MPP in the next few months.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/business/in-company-1st-nyc-amazon-workers-vote-to-unionize/
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NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize on Friday, marking the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history and handing an unexpected win to a nascent group that fueled the union drive.
Warehouse workers cast 2,654 votes in favor of a union, giving the fledgling Amazon Labor Union enough support to pull off a victory. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which is overseeing the process, 2,131 workers rejected the union bid.
The 67 ballots that were challenged by either Amazon or the ALU were not enough to sway the outcome. About 57% of the more than 8,300 workers on the voter list cast their ballots.
Federal labor officials said the results of the count won’t be verified until they process any objections that both parties may file. Any objections are due by April 8.
The victory was an uphill battle for the independent group, made up of former and current workers who lacked official backing from an established union and were out-gunned by the deep-pocketed retail giant. Despite obstacles, organizers believed their grassroots approach was more relatable to workers and could help them overcome where established unions have failed in the past.
Tristan Dutchin, who began working for the online retailer about a year ago, is hopeful that the new union will improve working conditions at his workplace.
“I’m excited that we’re making history,” Dutchin said. “We’re about to unionize a multibillion, trillion-dollar company. This will be a fantastic time for workers to be surrounded in a better, safer working environment.”
Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon employee who has been leading the ALU in its fight on Staten Island, bounded out the NLRB building in Brooklyn on Friday with other union organizers, pumping their fists and jumping, chanting “ALU.” They uncorked a bottle if Champagne.
Meanwhile, Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, appear to have rejected a union bid but outstanding challenged ballots could change the outcome. The votes were 993-to-875 against the union. A hearing to review 416 challenged ballots is expected to begin in the next few days.
The union campaigns come at a time of widespread labor unrest at many corporations. Workers at more than 140 Starbucks locations around the country, for instance, have requested union elections and several of them have already been successful.
John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, said the early vote counts in New York have been “shocking.” The nascent Amazon Labor Union, which is leading the charge on Staten Island, has no backing from an established union and is powered by former and current warehouse workers.
“I don’t think that many people thought that the Amazon Labor Union had much of a chance of winning at all,” Logan said. “And I think we’re likely to see more of those (approaches) going forward.”
After a crushing defeat last year in Bessemer, when a majority of workers voted against forming a union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union got a second chance to organize another campaign when the NLRB ordered a do-over after determining that Amazon tainted the first election.
Though RWDSU is currently lagging in the latest election, Logan said the early results were still remarkable because the union has made a good effort narrowing its margin from last year.
Amazon has pushed back hard in the lead-up to both elections. The retail giant held mandatory meetings, where workers were told unions are a bad idea. The company also launched an anti-union website targeting workers and placed English and Spanish posters across the Staten Island facility urging them to reject the union. In Bessemer, Amazon has made some changes to but still kept a controversial U.S. Postal Service mailbox that was key in the NLRB’s decision to invalidate last year’s vote.
In a filing released on Thursday, Amazon disclosed it spent about $4.2 million last year on labor consultants, which organizers say the retailer routinely solicits to persuade workers not to unionize. It’s unclear how much it spent on such services in 2022.
Both labor fights faced unique challenges. Alabama, for instance, is a right-to-work state that prohibits a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them.
The union landscape in Alabama is also starkly different from New York. Last year, union members accounted for 22.2% of wage and salary workers in New York, ranked only behind Hawaii, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s more than double the national average of 10.3%. In Alabama, it’s 5.9%.
The mostly Black workforce at the Amazon facility, which opened in 2020, mirrors the Bessemer population of more than 70% Black residents, according to the latest U.S. Census data.
Pro-union workers say they want better working conditions, longer breaks and higher wages. Regular full-time employees at the Bessemer facility earn at least $15.80 an hour, higher than the estimated $14.55 per hour on average in the city. That figure is based on an analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual median household income for Bessemer of $30,284, which could include more than one worker.
The ALU said they don’t have a demographic breakdown of the warehouse workers on Staten Island and Amazon declined to provide the information to The Associated Press, citing the union vote. Internal records leaked to The New York Times from 2019 showed more than 60% of the hourly associates at the facility were Black or Latino, while most of managers were white or Asian.
Amazon workers there are seeking longer breaks, paid time off for injured employees and an hourly wage of $30, up from a minimum of just over $18 per hour offered by the company. The estimated average wage for the borough is $41 per hour, according to a similar U.S. Census Bureau analysis of Staten Island’s $85,381 median household income.
A spokesperson for Amazon said the company invests in wages and benefits, such as health care, 401(k) plans and a prepaid college tuition program to help grow workers’ careers.
“As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/smpso-man-driving-chevy-dually-steals-264-gallons-of-diesel-in-st-martin-parish/
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ST. MARTIN PARISH, La. (KLFY) — The St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s help in a felony theft investigation.
According to Sheriff Becket Breaux, detectives are seeking information on the owner and whereabouts of a gold or light brown Chevy dually pickup truck who they believe stole approximately 264 gallons of diesel fuel from a property in the 7300 block of Main Hwy., in St. Martinville. The theft occurred around 8 p.m. on March 21, Breaux said.
He said the suspect is a white male with a goatee who was wearing a red shirt and camouflage cap. The estimated cost of the stolen fuel is approximately $1200, Breaux said.
Anyone with information as to the identity of this individual is asked to contact St. Martin Crime Stoppers by calling (337) 441-3030 or via the free P3 Tips App. All callers remain anonymous and if your tip leads to an arrest, you will be eligible for a cash reward.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health-2/house-approves-bill-legalizing-marijuana/
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(The Hill) — The House passed legislation on Friday to legalize marijuana nationwide and eliminate the longstanding criminal penalties for anyone who distributes or possesses it.
Lawmakers passed the bill largely along party lines, 220-204, with three Republicans joining all but two Democrats in support.
The measure now goes to the Senate, where Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is working with fellow Democrats to introduce a marijuana legalization bill as soon as this spring.
But it’s not clear a bill to broadly legalize marijuana could clear the necessary 60 votes to advance in the Senate.
Schumer may not have enough support within his own Democratic caucus. At least two Democrats who represent states ravaged by the opioid epidemic, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), have expressed skepticism about the proposal.
So far, nine Senate Republicans have signed on as cosponsors to Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-Ore.) companion bill in the upper chamber.
House Democrats previously passed a bill to legalize marijuana in December 2020. But that measure didn’t go anywhere in the Senate, which was still under GOP control at the time.
The bill, titled the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, would clear marijuana-related convictions from people’s records and formally remove it from the federal list of controlled substances.
The legislation would also impose a federal tax on marijuana sales to fund programs aimed at helping communities harmed by the so-called “war on drugs” policies that established harsh punishments for distributing and using drugs.
The sales tax would start at 5 percent, and gradually increase to 8 percent over five years.
Proponents argued that it’s past time for the federal government to catch up to the majority of states that have legalized marijuana to at least some extent.
“For far too long, we have treated marijuana as a criminal justice problem instead of as a matter of personal choice and public health,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chief sponsor of the bill.
“If states are the laboratories of democracy, it is long past time for the federal government to recognize that legalization has been a resounding success and the conflict with federal law has become untenable,” Nadler said.
Before final passage, the House rejected an amendment from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to clarify that people can’t be denied security clearances over marijuana use due to 12 Democrats joining all but two Republicans in opposition.
Democrats further framed the measure as a way to reverse the disproportionate impact of criminalizing marijuana on racial minorities. Black Americans are nearly four times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession despite both races using the drug at roughly the same rate, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Make no mistake. Yes, it is a racial justice bill,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair and member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Republicans argued that marijuana is enough of a mind-altering substance to pose a threat to society.
“Record crime, record inflation, record gas prices, record number of illegal immigrants crossing our southern border, and what are Democrats doing today? Legalizing drugs. Legalizing drugs and using American tax dollars to kick start and prop up the marijuana industry. Wow,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
At least 37 states, four territories and the District of Columbia allow the use of marijuana for medical use, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures. About half that number – 18 states, two territories and the nation’s capital – allow it for non-medical use.
Some Republicans who support legalizing marijuana opposed House Democrats’ bill on Friday, arguing there should have been a more bipartisan approach.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) called for bringing the legislation on the House floor on Friday closer to her own marijuana legalization bill, which would limit marijuana use to people above the age of 21 and establish a lower sales tax that would not rise for ten years.
“I have incentives for states not to sell to kids or market or advertise to kids,” Mace told The Hill. “My tax is a lot lower at 3 percent. Theirs is eight after three years, and we all know that you’re going to guarantee illicit markets if you make taxes too high.”
Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), a Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair, wrote in an op-ed for Marijuana Moment, a publication that focuses on marijuana policy, that he would not support the bill on Friday either.
“To responsibly end prohibition, the federal government must simultaneously issue a regulatory framework that works in conjunction with states’ specifics needs. The MORE Act lacks this critical element or any meaningful and immediate regulatory safeguards at all, leaving individual states to sort out issues typically reserved for federal agencies in the interim,” Joyce wrote.
The House has passed legislation multiple times in the past year to allow legally operating marijuana businesses to access banking services and credit cards, so that they don’t have to be cash-only. So far, nine Senate Republicans have signed on as cosponsors to Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-Ore.) companion bill in the upper chamber for more narrow marijuana legalization.
Emily Brooks contributed.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/local-news/lsua-and-cltcc-sign-22-articulation-memorandu/
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ALEXANDRIA, La – LSU of Alexandria and Central Louisiana Technical Community College have signed a “2+2 Business Articulation” memorandum of understanding (MOU) that creates a clear and guaranteed transfer pathway from CLTCC’s Associate of Science in Business Administration to LSUA’s Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
CLTCC students who have met the requirements of the Associate of Science in Business Administration and who apply and are admitted to LSUA will be able to transfer all 60 of their earned hours to LSUA’s Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
“CLTCC students entering LSUA’s Business Administration program can specialize in a variety of concentrations such as management, marketing, entrepreneurship, financial analysis, international business, information systems, and agribusiness,” said College of Business Dean, Dr. Randall Dupont.
The MOU was developed in the spirit of the attainment goal established by the Board of Regents in its most recent Master Plan. The plan calls for 60% of all working-age adults (ages 25-64) in Louisiana to hold a degree or high-value credential by 2030. Both LSUA and CLTCC hope that the transfer pathway created by the agreement will contribute to statewide efforts to meet this goal.
“Many students enter CLTCC with the intent of transferring from our community college to a 4-year college. Unfortunately, the path to college graduation can be challenging for some students,” said Dr. Heather Poole, Executive Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at CLTCC. “This agreement with LSUA will help students navigate the transfer pitfalls to ensure an easier, more successful transition. This partnership will save the students time and money.”
“Our goal at LSUA is to reach every CENLA student we can who is interested in pursuing a career requiring a 4-year degree,” said LSUA Chancellor Paul Coreil. “Partnering with CLTCC to achieve this goal is a significant step forward that will result in major benefits to students and to advancing workforce development across the region.”
Written by Adam Lord, LSUA Division of Strategic Communications
Photo credit – Daenel Vaughn-Tucker, CLTCC
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https://www.cenlanow.com/local-news/turek-tells-lcu-crowd-it-takes-a-lot-of-faith-to-be-unbeliever/
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Frank Turek, a Christian apologist and co-author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist,” was the featured speaker for Louisiana Christian University’s Christ, Church and Culture event Monday night.
Turek said in order to prove Christianity is true, only four questions need to be answered. Does truth exist? Does God exist? Are miracles possible? Is the New Testament true?
“This Christian worldview is a worldview you can investigate and see if its really true,” Turek said.
He began his presentation with the first question: ‘Does truth exist?’
He explained if there is no truth then Christianity, along with atheism, cannot be true. Turek said the phrase “there is no truth” is a self-defeating statement.
“A self-defeating statement doesn’t meet its own standard.” Turek said. “A self-defeating statement violates the law of non-contradiction.”
He said the best way to handle people who use such statements is to turn the claim on itself. He used the example of responding to the phrase “all truth is relative” by asking if the phrase itself is a relative truth.
“I know this going to be not well received in our culture today, but there is no such thing as your truth,” said Turek. “There’s no such thing as my truth. There is just the truth.”
He said many people say they think Christianity is true because they have faith. Turek went on to say a person’s faith does not change whether or not God exists or if Jesus rose from the dead. He said people cannot just believe something in order for it to be true.
Turek used the example of gravity to explain this concept. He said even if a person said they do not believe in gravity, it is still going to exist.
He then transitioned to the second question: ‘Does God exist?’
Turek’s first supporting argument for the question was a cosmological argument. He said scientist view the cosmic beginning as a problem because it leads to a supernatural creator.
“If there is a cosmic beginning to nature, then whatever created nature can’t be made of nature,” said Turek. “It must be something beyond nature, something you would call super-nature.”
Turek’s second supporting argument was a teleological argument. He said everything is too fine-tuned to be created by chance, every intricate piece of the universe points to a designer.
“All of nature is going in a direction,” said Turek. “If its going in a direction, it must have a director.”
Turek’s third supporting argument was a moral argument. He said that all laws legislate morality, but the only question is whose morality is being legislated.
He said if God is not real, there are no human rights, only preferences. Turek used the example of love and rape: if there is no higher morality, there is no difference between love and rape, just preference.
Turek said something cannot be evil unless something is good.
“You cannot complain about problem of evil if there is no God,” said Turek. “If there is no God, then there is no such thing as good or evil.”
He said if evil exists, God exists.
Turek moved on to the final question of his presentation: ‘Are miracles possible?’ He said if the first verse of the Bible, the beginning of the creation story, is possible, then everything else in the Bible is possible. Turek said people believe in a lot of things they have never seen, such as their minds, justice, and love.
Turek used the example of gravity again to explain that people do not believe in gravity see it, they believe in it because they see its effects.
“I know God by his effects,” said Turek as he listed things he considers effects of God such as creation and moral law. “We’re reasoning from effect back to law. That’s what scientists
do.”
Students were very receptive to Turek’s message and were able to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the event.
Billi Barber, a junior vocal music education major at Louisiana Christian University, said the last question was one she needed to hear the most.
“The last question was ‘how do you respond to someone who’s gone through recent tragedy and blames God for it?’” she said. “It helped me prepare to answer those questions to other people who don’t believe because even on a Christian campus, there are people who don’t believe, and it’s a matter of us taking the first step and changing our hearts to actually do something about it.”
Turek also spoke in Chapel Tuesday morning, finishing his presentation by answering the last question, ‘Is the New Testament true?’
Turek broke down several reasons why the New Testament is true including ‘Embarrassing Stories’ and ‘Excruciating Deaths.’
Turek used these as proof as to why there was no reason for the New Testament to be made up. What would the writers get in exchange for making such stories up?
President Rick Brewer said having Turek visit LCU was monumental for the university. “We planned Dr. Turek’s visit for a year,” Brewer said. “We hope to have him back and others like him because we need to be equipping our minds and our hearts. Dr. Turek made us think tonight, it was pretty intense, which was good. I’ve never seen students as engaged as I have tonight.”
By Lexi Rachal and Victoria Watson, Wildcats Media
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/biden-administration-boosts-mileage-standards-slashed-by-trump/
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(The Hill) — The Transportation Department on Friday announced that it boosted car efficiency standards that had been cut by the Trump administration.
The department finalized standards that would require automakers to produce fleets of cars and light trucks averaging 49 miles per gallon in model year 2026.
The new standards are more stringent than the Trump-era standards, which would have required 40 miles per gallon for the 2026 fleet.
However, the real-world totals may look slightly different under each standard, as the department has noted that real-world fuel economy levels are typically lower than the test conditions under which the standards are applied.
Nevertheless, the standards are expected to have both climate and consumer benefits, and officials made the case on Friday that they will also improve the country’s energy independence by decreasing our reliance on oil.
“We cannot let families’ futures or our national economy be decided in oil company board rooms,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters. “Today’s rule is going to save 234 billion gallons of fuel by 2050 and move us into a less dependent future.”
On climate change, the rule is also expected to have significant impacts. Buttigieg said that it would prevent 5.5 trillion pounds of planet-warming carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere by 2050.
The transportation sector is the largest contributor to climate change in the U.S., and light-duty vehicles are responsible for more than half of those emissions.
The move comes after the Environmental Protection Agency late last year also reversed the Trump administration’s cuts to regulations on how much planet-warming carbon dioxide cars can emit through their tailpipes.
The set of clean car standards is expected to push automakers towards producing more electric vehicles.
Friday’s standards are expected to result in 8 percent annual increases for model years 2024 and 2025 and a 10 percent increase for 2026.
The requirements come as some industry players have announced in recent months that they plan to incorporate a greater share of electric vehicles into their fleets, and President Joe Biden has called for 50 percent of vehicle sales to be electric in 2030.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/jetblue-flight-from-jfk-to-laguardia-fuhgeddaboudit/
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QUEENS, N.Y. (WPIX) — Why sit in New York City traffic when you can fly over it instead?
JetBlue announced Friday a new “Queens Express” nonstop flight that will take passengers from JFK Airport in Jamaica, New York, to LaGuardia Airport in Jackson Heights, New York.
“Need to get from Jamaica to Jackson Heights, but the Van Wyck is jammed? Take our newest route, The Queens Express, the fastest way to get across NYC’s biggest borough,” the company tweeted.
For anyone who’s actually been stuck in city traffic before, this sounds like a dream come true. Except there’s one major issue — it’s not true!
Friday is April Fools’ Day.
The company’s website offered more tantalizingly fake information, including the clever tag line: “Swap the HOV lane for a JetBlue plane.”
“You asked. We listened. From loads of legroom to free unlimited wi-fi, it’s the JetBlue experience for New Yorkers looking for a new way to travel across the city’s biggest borough. Street traffic? Subway delays? Fuhgeddaboudit. We’ll whisk you from Jamaica to Jackson Heights in a New York minute,” the company wrote before ultimately admitting to the April Fools joke at the bottom of the webpage.
Most folks on Twitter were quick to pick up on the joke, but some admitted to being duped.
“It’s only 9:00 AM and I’m already sick of the April Fools stuff on Twitter,” one user wrote.
“Hahaha you kinda’ got me. But I did think to myself ‘that’s stupid y’all…’ Good one though,” another user wrote.
“Well, I just got April Fooled. Good one @JetBlue,” another user wrote.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/psaki-to-leave-white-house-for-msnbc/
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(The Hill) — White House press secretary Jen Psaki will leave her job for MSNBC this spring, two sources familiar with the deal told The Hill.
Psaki’s upcoming departure was first reported by Axios on Friday, with the sources confirming it to The Hill. Psaki will leave the White House for the network around May, according to Axios.
The news follows speculation over whether the press secretary was looking for a job at MSNBC or CNN and while Psaki has been out of the briefing room this week with COVID-19.
Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has also been out with COVID-19. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield has held most of the briefings, which was seen as an opportunity to effectively audition for the post.
Psaki has worked with the White House counsel’s office about her departure and no contracts have been signed yet, Axios reported. Additionally, she has talked to senior officials about the move but has not formally announced it to the press team.
Psaki was asked at a briefing last month if she could confirm whether she was looking for a new job, but she indicated at the time that she was not ready to leave the podium yet.
“I have more than enough on my plate here. So you can’t get rid of me quite yet. Sorry, Peter, for you on that,” she replied to Fox News’s Peter Doocy.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to the Hill for comment.
Psaki wouldn’t be the first official to leave the White House for MSNBC. Symone Sanders, former spokesperson for Vice President Harris, was hired by MSNBC in January as a host for a new weekend program.
Amie Parnes and Dominick Mastrangelo contributed reporting.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/watch-texas-cyclist-hit-by-car-that-sped-off/
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AUSTIN (KXAN) — An Austin man’s evening bike ride almost turned deadly, as shown in a video of a car hitting the cyclist in front of witnesses and then speeding off.
The video captured by a bystander shows cyclist Nick Gardiner riding in the street when a car appearing to change lanes hits him and drives off. He said it happened a little before 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Austin Police said the incident occurred near the 700 block of W. Riverside Drive.
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO BELOW
You can see Gardiner roll over almost three times after impact before he makes his way to the sidewalk and collapses on a grassy area.
In the video, bystanders run by to attend to the cyclist and make sure he is OK. The hit and run was captured on camera by Scott Thigpen, who can be seen calling 911 in the video.
Gardiner said the driver was “harassing” him for about half a mile. He said at one point, the driver was rolling down his window to yell at Gardiner.
“It was a clear-cut case of road rage,” he said. “No reasonable person would do that.”
Gardiner told KXAN he filed a police report with the Austin Police Department in hopes of finding the driver. He described the car as a white coupe and guesses it is an early 2000s model of a Honda Accord.
Austin Police said the case is being investigated as aggravated assault with a motor vehicle.
The cyclist said he does not have any broken bones but has other injuries, including a severe rash from impact with the road, a golf ball-sized lump on his knee, bruising on his palm and other cuts.
“I got lucky. If it went any other way, I don’t think I’d be talking to you right now,” he said.
According to Texas bicycle laws, all bicyclists must ride alongside streets and roadways, as opposed to sidewalks, when a designated bike line is unavailable.
“It’s not going to stop me from cycling. It’s just going to stop me from cycling on the roads here. I think I’m gonna be trying to go somewhere where cars can’t be, and I think that’s the responsibility of the City of Austin to maintain that,” Gardiner said. “To provide us with an opportunity to not get murdered.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/windshield-shatters-during-delta-flight-from-salt-lake-city-to-d-c/
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SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX) – A flight heading from Salt Lake City to Washington D.C. had to be diverted Thursday due to a shattered windshield.
Passengers aboard the flight say the plane made an unexpected landing in Denver due to the incident.
“We were on our way to the ACC meeting when it was announced that we would need to make an unplanned landing in Denver because the windshield cracked,” wrote passenger Kirk Knowlton in a tweet. “Apparently, it was spontaneous. Fortunately, we landed safely and are about to get back in air. We are grateful for safe flights.”
In a statement, Delta confirmed the unscheduled landing.
“Delta flight 760 from Salt Lake City to Washington D.C. experienced a maintenance issue mid-flight. Out of an abundance of caution, the flight crew diverted into Denver and the plane landed routinely. Our team worked quickly to accommodate customers on a new plane, and we sincerely apologize for the delay and inconvenience to their travel plans.”
Delta says the 198 passengers on board were flown to D.C. on a new plane.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/owner-seeks-help-finding-missing-who-dat-chanting-parrot-named-mr-bingle-who-escaped-after-arabi-tornado/
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NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — The owner of a missing Quaker Parrott named “Mr.Bingle” is asking for the public’s help in locating his pet.
Randy Slavich, the owner of the parrot, hasn’t seen his pet since March 22, when the tornado hit the Arabi community.
Family members think Mr.Bingle flew away after the tornado.
Mr.Bingle is one year old, blue/ green colored, and knows a lot of words according to Slavich who said he misses him dearly.
“He knows the word treat! He says Mr. Bingle is a good boy! All kinds of stuff! I will miss him dearly! Great personality! I hope someone out there will notice him and maybe call his name and maybe catch him! I will give a reward if anyone catches him, although that is asking a lot!” said Slavich.
According to Mr.Slavichs daughter, Mr.Bingle answers to “Mr.Bingle” and will fly to you when you say “Mr.Bingle come.”
Family members also said the Parrot also knows the Who Dat chant.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/terrebonne-parish-men-busted-for-crabbing-during-illegal-hours/
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BATON ROUGE, La. (KLFY) — A pair of Terrebonne Parish men were cited after Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) officials caught them tending crab traps during illegal hours on March 21.
Earnest A. Autin Jr., 67, of Montegut, and Carl A. Plaisance Jr., 34, of Chauvin, could face up to 120 days in jail and fines between $400 and $950, according to LDWF Public Information Officer Adam Einck.
Agents were on patrol in Bayou Terrebonne around 5 a.m. on March 21 when they observed a bright light bar from a vessel heading north into Madison Bay, said Einck. Agents stopped the vessel with Autin operating and Plaisance as a passenger, finding three boxes of blue crabs and three crab traps on board.
Tending of crab traps is prohibited from a half-hour past legal sunset until a half-hour before legal sunrise. The legal sunrise on March 21 was 6:53 a.m.
Agents seized the three boxes of blue crabs and returned them back to the water.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/border-report-tour/34-migrants-rescued-from-cargo-trailers-in-separate-smuggling-attempts/
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EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — U.S. Border Patrol agents rescued 18 migrants crammed inside a U-Haul trailer with little ventilation early Tuesday morning.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said a U-Haul pickup pulling the trailer stopped at the Border Patrol checkpoint on NM Highway 185, which runs parallel to Interstate 25. Agents found 17 migrant adults and one unaccompanied child inside the trailer.
Agents linked the smuggling scheme to a driver who had crossed the checkpoint minutes before the U-Haul and was found to have a 9 mm handgun, an AK-47 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, ammunition, and a flare gun.
Agents arrested both drivers on suspicion of conspiracy to transport migrants.
On Sunday, a resident alerted border agents to a possible human smuggling scheme after spotting a tractor-trailer parked along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near the Texas-New Mexico state line in Northeast El Paso.
Agents responded and freed 15 adult migrants and one unaccompanied child inside a poorly ventilated cargo container.
The rescued migrants, agents said, were from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Some of them ended up at the Central Processing Center, and agents expelled the others to Mexico under Title 42.
According to a news release, agents referred the driver to the El Paso Sector Integrated Targeting Team and the Texas Department of Public Safety as part of an ongoing interagency investigation.
CBP said that since Fiscal Year 2022 began in October, Border Patrol agents from the El Paso Sector have disrupted approximately 525 smuggling schemes.
“Ruthless human smugglers continuously endanger human lives as one of their tactics is to smuggle migrants in confined spaces with restricted oxygen,” El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez said in a statement. “I am extremely proud of the actions of our El Paso Sector Border Patrol Agents as they often encounter situations, where if not for their involvement, events as these would turn into tragedies. Our Border Patrol Agents are true heroes as they display compassion and professionalism (every day) in our very complex mission of border security.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/business/before-the-filet-o-fish-mcdonalds-had-a-wildly-different-idea-in-mind/
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(NEXSTAR) – McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc didn’t exactly have high hopes for the Filet-O-Fish sandwich.
In fact, he was betting against it.
In the early 1960s, McDonald’s only offered a handful of items, including hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, milkshakes, soft drinks, coffee and milk. This presented a problem for McDonald’s franchisee Lou Groen, whose clientele in Cincinnati largely abstained from eating meat on Fridays.
“That area was 87% Catholic,” Groen once explained to the Cincinnati Enquirer. “On Fridays we only took in about $75 a day.”
Inspired by the sales of a competitor’s fish sandwich, Groen decided to develop his own, made with fried halibut and tartar sauce. But first, he had to get it OK’ed by the suits at McDonald’s, many of whom had reservations because of its “more complicated cooking process,” according to the chain.
Ray Kroc was among the skeptics. Plus, he already had plans for his own meat-free “Hula Burger,” consisting of a slice of grilled pineapple and cheese. (He also believed that McDonald’s restaurants would be “stunk up with the smell of fish” as a result of Groen’s idea, Groen once told the Cincinnati Business Courier.)
Lucky for Groen, Kroc was willing to try both ideas and let the sales speak for themselves.
“Ray said to me, ‘Well, Lou, I’m going to put your fish sandwich on (the menu) for a Friday. But I’m going to put my special sandwich on, too. Whichever sells the most, that’s the one we’ll go with,’” Goren told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Kroc also made a “side bet” with Fred Turner, another McDonald’s executive, that the Hula Burger would sell better than the Filet-O-Fish — the stakes being a brand-new suit.
On the day of the test, Groen’s restaurant sold 350 fish sandwiches and only six Hula Burgers. So not only was Kroc wrong about the Filet-O-Fish, but he now owed his colleague a new suit.
Kroc wasn’t too bummed, of course, because “McDonald’s got the Filet-O-Fish,” according to McDonald’s historian Mike Bullington.
After a little bit of tweaking (e.g., halibut was swapped for Atlantic cod, a slice of cheese was added), the new McDonald’s fish sandwich began to be embraced by franchisees across the country. In 1965, it was added to the restaurant’s permanent nationwide offerings, becoming the first new addition to the original McDonald’s menu.
Groen, meanwhile, enjoyed continued success as a McDonald’s franchisee into the 1980s, operating dozens of restaurants in Ohio and Kentucky. He passed in 2011, but remained a fan of the Filet-O-Fish throughout his final years — but he still preferred his original version to the sandwich that ended up on the nationwide menu.
“My halibut sandwich far outshines that one,” he remarked to the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2007.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/16-year-old-indicted-faces-adult-murder-charge-for-december-2021-shooting/
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OPELOUSAS, La. (KLFY) — A St. Landry Parish 16-year-old will be tried as an adult after being indicted by a grand jury for a shooting death on New Year’s Eve in 2021, according to Sheriff Bobby Guidroz.
Michael J. Zachary, 16, of Washington, faces charges of second-degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm by a juvenile. He was booked into the St. Landry Parish Jail on a bond of $251,500. He was indicted on March 28 in the shooting death of Keith Adam Joseph, 38, of Washington. Zachary was 15 years old at the time of the alleged shooting.
Guidroz said the incident began on Dec. 31, 2021, at a local store when Joseph was asked by an unidentified juvenile to purchase cigars. Joseph instead used the juvenile’s money to buy alcohol. The juvenile followed Joseph home in an attempt to get the alcohol and was eventually involved in an altercation with a member of Joseph’s household. The juvenile later reported the incident to their parent.
Later that day, the juvenile and Zachary allegedly returned to Joseph’s residence, and though Joseph apologized to the juvenile, he got into an altercation with Zachary that Guidroz said ended in the fatal shooting of Joseph, allegedly with a .22 caliber revolver. Zachary then fled the scene.
Guidroz said Zachary told detectives that Joseph had grabbed his friend’s arm, and when Zachary confronted Joseph about touching his friend, Joseph allegedly reached for a gun that was later determined to be a BB gun and Zachary allegedly retaliated. Zachary admitted to the shooting to deputies.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/child-dies-after-ingesting-enough-fentanyl-to-kill-10-adults-parents-charged/
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BRIGHTON, Colo. (KDVR) – Police in Colorado have arrested two people following the death of their 23-month-old daughter, whose blood was found to contain 10 times the amount of fentanyl known to be fatal to an intolerant adult user.
Officials with the Brighton Police Department said they were called to a home in early January when Alonzo Ray Montoya, 31, and Nicole Danielle Casias, 30, reportedly found their child not breathing and unresponsive.
Several local agencies, including fire, EMS and police officials, attempted to perform life-saving measures to save the toddler. She was ultimately pronounced dead.
Detectives from BPD and the North Metro Drug Task Force began an investigation into her death in January. It was determined that her death was caused by fentanyl ingestion.
Earlier this week, the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Colorado announced that felony charges had been filed against Montoya and Casias: child abuse resulting in death, and distribution of a controlled substance — schedule I or II.
In a news release, the DA’s office said the parents allegedly participated in drug activity in their home, with the toddler present, prior to her death.
Casias and Montoya were taken into custody on Wednesday. They are scheduled to appear in Adams County court on Thursday.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/it-seems-obvious-mr-jones-was-not-headed-to-sunday-school-louisiana-man-arrested-for-the-6th-time/
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BOGALUSA, La. (BRPROUD) – A deputy with the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office was recently on patrol when they noticed something that might be considered suspicious.
The deputy noticed a vehicle parked in a church parking lot with no other cars in sight.
It appeared that nothing was scheduled to take place at the church so the deputy made their way to the corner of the parking lot.
According to the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office, “As the deputy approached the vehicle, he observed the driver attempting to place something under the seat.”
The deputy made contact with 26-year-old Hunter Lane Jones.
Jones was the driver of the vehicle and WPSO says he “appeared to be under the influence of something.”
The 26 year-old confessed to the fact that there was heroin inside the vehicle.
A subsequent search of the vehicle uncovered heroin along with a syringe.
Jones was taken to the Washington Parish Jail and bonded out the next day.
It seems obvious Mr. Jones was not headed to Sunday School,” stated Sheriff Randy Seal, “although that would be a good destination for him. Heroin use is a good example of someone who needs help with their lifestyle choices. I suggest he obtain that help.”
This is not the first time that Hunter Jones has been incarcerated over the years.
Prior to the most recent arrest, Jones was arrested 5 times between 2012 and 2017.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/crime/pizzeria-owner-accused-of-killing-partner-stashing-body-for-nearly-2-weeks/
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(NEXSTAR) – The owner of a pizza parlor in Pennsylvania has been charged with criminal homicide after she admitted to shooting her partner and hiding his body in their house, police said.
Anna Maria Tolomello, 48, has been charged with criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and possession of an instrument of a crime in connection with the death of Giovanni Gallina, 65, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
Police began an investigation into Gallina’s disappearance after the victim’s son, who lives in Italy, told authorities his father had stopped responding to their daily WhatsApp conversations in mid-March, according to a criminal complaint. Tolomello told Gallina’s son that his father was out of town on business but “left his cell phone at Pina’s Pizza Shop,” which the young man found to be suspicious, police said.
Meanwhile, Tolomello had arranged for another person — identified in the police report as “CS” — to dig a large hole in the driveway of her house, but “would not provide any reason for needing the hole, only that she wanted to bury one or more items.”
Police said they observed the excavation of the hole by CS, who was cooperating with authorities. CS also recorded a conversation in which she asked where Gallina was, only to be told by Tolomello that he was “away.”
Officers with the Hilltown Township Police and authorities from Bucks County arrived at Tolomello’s home on March 29, at which point she told officers she “knew” why they were there.
She then said told police (“unprompted,” according to a police affidavit) that she had shot Gallina in self-defense, and that his body was in the bedroom. Inside the home, officers found the body of a deceased male wrapped in a tarp and a comforter.
Tolomello later claimed Gallina was strangling her when she shot him. She also admitted that she planned to bury Gallina in the hole, and that she had disposed of evidence, including the couple’s mattress and the spent shell casing, per the police affidavit.
Tolomello is currently being held without bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 19, 2022
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https://www.cenlanow.com/entertainment-news/jim-carrey-probably-retiring-from-acting-ive-done-enough/
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(NEXSTAR) – Jim Carrey is “probably” retiring from acting, he casually announced this week.
In an interview with Access Hollywood, Carrey told correspondent Kit Hoover he would likely be taking an indefinite break from showbiz after “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.”
His remarks came after Hoover, who recently interviewed Dolly Parton, claimed that Parton wanted Carrey to portray Porter Wagoner in a biopic based on her life.
“Well, I’m retiring,” he told Hoover. “Yeah, probably.”
When Hoover asked if he was being serious, Carrey indeed said he was.
“I’m being fairly serious,” he remarked.
Carrey, 60, didn’t rule out a return to acting altogether, saying he might be swayed by the right script.
“It depends,” he said. “It depends if the angels bring some sort of, you know, script that’s written in gold ink, that says to me that it’s going to be really important for people to see, I might continue down the road. But I’m taking a break,” he said.
“I really like my quiet life, and I really love putting paint on canvas. And I really love my spiritual life. And I feel like — and this is something you might never hear another celebrity say as long as time exists — I have enough. I’ve done enough. I am enough.”
Carrey, however, said that if Dolly Parton were to approach him about a project, he would “always” be open to talk.
“Dolly is just, to me, an otherworldly talent,” he said.
Carrey’s comments came just days after giving an interview on “CBS Mornings” in which he claimed he was sickened by the standing ovation that Will Smith received upon winning his Oscar, despite Smith slapping presenter Chris Rock a short while before.
“I felt like Hollywood is just spineless, en masse,” he told interviewer Gayle King. “It really felt like this is a really clear indication that we’re not the cool club anymore.”
In Thursday’s interview with Access Hollywood, Carrey said he planned to continue producing artwork and discussed his upcoming website “Magic Hour,” where he planned to present “kooky art that is a mix of painting and spoken word.” He also discussed spending time with his grandson.
“I’m going to continue to be in the world, no matter what,” he said. “And we have more of an effect on the world than we know. We don’t have to be multi-hyphenates to affect the world.”
Carrey is next appearing in “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.” He was also part of a memorial for late comedian Bob Saget in January, which is being turned into a Netflix special.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health/coronavirus/study-pregnancy-nearly-doubles-risks-of-breakthrough-covid-19/
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(The Hill) — A study published on Thursday found that pregnancy nearly doubles the risk of breakthrough COVID-19 cases, closely followed in risk by a solid organ transplant.
The study conducted by Wisconsin-based company Epic found that among the comorbidities that increase the risk of a breakthrough COVID-19 infection, pregnancy increased this risk the most by 1.91 times, which analyzed data from over 140 million patients from 161 of the company’s organizations.
Individuals were 1.83 times more likely to have a breakthrough COVID-19 infection if they had a solid organ transplant; those with an immune system deficiency were 1.63 times more at risk, according to the study.
Other comorbidities that increased the risk of a breakthrough infection, though to a lesser degree, included those who had kidney disease, liver disease or mental health issues, among others.
“… we did not find that cancer or Down syndrome increased the risk of breakthrough infection. This is consistent with other research on the rates of COVID-19 in populations with cancer versus populations without,” the study said.
“These findings support the CDC’s recommendation that patients with a high-risk comorbidity may need to use enhanced infection prevention control beyond vaccination to minimize the risk of a COVID-19 breakthrough infection.”
The development comes more than two years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/fbi-state-investigators-join-search-for-missing-navarre-woman/
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UPDATE (7:28 p.m.): The Santa Rosa County sheriff said Thursday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined in the search for a mother who’s been missing for four days.
Cassie Carli was last seen Sunday, March 27 in the parking lot of Juana’s Pagodas handing off her daughter to Marcus Spanevelo during a custody exchange.
Carli was reported missing by her father Monday, March 28. On March 29, deputies found Carli’s car in the parking lot. Carli’s purse was left inside the car, which alarmed investigators.
“I’ve been married 32 years and I’ll tell you my wife goes nowhere without a purse so to think she just left it there and walked off, that’s what concerns us,” said Sheriff Bob Johnson.
On Wednesday, March 30, Spanevelo was found in Birmingham, Ala. along with Saylor, Carli’s daughter. Saylor was then taken in by Alabama Child Services.
Spanevelo was believed to be in Birmingham for a job when he was interviewed by local law enforcement. Santa Rosa County investigators believe Spanevelo was the last person to see Carli.
“He was the last one to see her that we’re aware of it so obviously we are intent on speaking with him again,” said Johnson.
Carli’s friends and family have been searching the area with jet skis and drones every day. They said they won’t give up until they find her. Johnson said local law enforcement is working to search several areas, but he could not give exact locations.
“We don’t know what happened to her,” said Johnson. “We don’t have any evidence specifically pointing to homicide or abduction or any of those. We just know the way she’s gone missing concerns us greatly.”
A $3,000 reward is being offered for information leading to Cassi’s whereabouts. You’re asked to call Crime Stoppers at 850-437-STOP.
ORIGINAL STORY
NAVARRE, Fla. (WKRG) — The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office is scheduled to hold a news conference about a Navarre woman who was last seen on March 27. The news conference is scheduled for 3 p.m. at the main office in Milton.
Cassie Carli, 37, was last seen on March 27 in Navarre Beach. Her daughter, 4-year-old Saylor, was also missing. SRCS deputies located Cassie’s car on March 29 and on March 30 Saylor was located.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/gold-mine-1950-census-records-to-be-released-could-fill-gaps-in-family-trees/
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It was the first census after World War II. The baby boom had begun. The Great Migration of Black residents from the Jim Crow South to places like Detroit and Chicago was in full swing. And some industrial cities reached their peak populations before Americans started moving to the suburbs.
Starting Friday, genealogists and historians can get a microscopic look at those sweeping historical trends when individual records on 151 million people from the 1950 census are released.
Researchers view the records as a gold mine, and amateur genealogists see it as a way to fill gaps in family trees, a field of research that has seen dramatic growth in recent years through the popularity of home DNA testing kits.
“This is genealogy heaven when a census is rolled out,” said Matt Menashes, executive director of the National Genealogical Society. “People are waiting anxiously. It’s hard to overstate.”
For privacy reasons, records identifying people by name can’t be made public until 72 years after they are gathered during the once-a-decade U.S. head count. The 1940 records were released a decade ago.
For Wendy Kalman, an amateur genealogist in Atlanta, the 1950 records will help her solidify details about her parents and grandparents and their relatives. She has traced her father’s side of the family back to 18th century Ukraine, and her research has put her in touch with previously unknown third and fourth cousins in the U.S. whom she talks to regularly.
“It’s an interesting journey to find out where you are from and the census records help you find information that isn’t always available,” said Kalman, 55. “Family stories aren’t always passed down and the census records give you a snapshot in time. It helps put together a picture.”
Ronnie Willis’ relatives from both sides of his grandparents’ families were itinerant farmers who traveled through Texas and Oklahoma as a blended group throughout the 1930s and 1940s. But they broke into nuclear family units after World War II. Willis hopes the 1950 census records help him piece together what happened to those relatives who settled in other states.
“That will help get me 10 years closer to putting the puzzle together, a little bit,” said Willis, 53, a software company executive who lives in Greenville, South Carolina.
The records released by the National Archives and Records Administration will be indexed into a searchable website. The digitized, handwritten forms have information about household members’ names, race, sex, age, address, occupations, hours worked in the previous week, salaries, education levels, marital status and the country in which their parents were born. The website will include a tool allowing users to fix any incorrect names or add missing names.
Claire Kluskens, a digital projects archivist at the National Archives, acknowledged that what will be on the website starting Friday is “a first draft,” in which specific people are most likely to be found initially only by searching for whoever was listed as the head of their household.
Two outside genealogical groups, Ancestry and FamilySearch, a division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have teamed up to serve as a quality check on the records by creating their own index separate from the National Archives.
At Ancestry, scores of workers will be ready at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday to start downloading the more than 6.5 million digital images of the census files. The Utah-based company will scan the millions of surveys, using artificial intelligence to decipher sloppy handwriting and converting the information into readable database form.
“We are so excited to dive into the census,” said Crista Cowan, corporate genealogist at Ancestry.
Anywhere from 400,000 to 800,000 volunteers across the U.S., under the coordination of FamilySearch, will then double-check the entries with the actual digital images. If the digital record of the 1950 census form says “Wilhelmina” but has been entered as “William” in the index, that will be corrected, said David Rencher, director of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and FamilySearch’s chief genealogy officer.
The effort could take six to nine months, he said.
“We believe we will get better accuracy because we are having humans look at it,” Rencher said.
The new data will flesh out the contours of a dramatically different world.
In 1950, the U.S. had less than half of the 332 million residents it has today. Households were larger, with an average of 3.5 people, compared with 2.6 people per household in 2019. Just 9% of households had someone living alone in 1950, compared with 28% in 2019. Adults were also more likely to be married, with more than two-thirds of adult men and women being married in 1950 compared with less than half of men and women in 2019, said Marc Perry, a senior demographer at the Census Bureau.
Elaine Powell is excited because this is the first release in which she will see herself in the census records. The president of the Central Florida Genealogical Society was born in 1946 and grew up in the St. Louis area.
“It’s just exciting. I remember the first time I found my parents in the census, you could hear me whooping and hollering in the library,” Powell said. “It verifies what you have been told by your parents and grandparents.”
It can also correct the record left by family lore. After all, as Powell noted, “genealogy, without documentation, is mythology.”
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/student-loan-forgiveness-heres-where-the-us-stands/
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(NEXSTAR) – For over two years, most federal student loan borrowers haven’t had to make a monthly payment after both Trump and Biden enacted pauses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with payments (possibly) beginning again in May, many are hoping their loans will instead be forgiven.
A recent analysis found close to $200 billion was saved by student loan borrowers under the repayment freeze, The Hill reports, but those borrowers could struggle when the pause lifts.
Although borrowers “will likely face a healthier economy going forward, Direct loan holders have higher debt balances, lower credit scores, and were making less progress on repayment than … prior to the pandemic,” the researchers wrote. The average student loan debt balance now exceeds $37,000, with Americans owing roughly $1.6 trillion to the government.
On Thursday, 96 lawmakers – 21 Senators and 75 members of the House – sent a letter to President Biden, calling on him to not only extend the payment moratorium but to “cancel student debt now.”
“Canceling a meaningful amount of student debt will provide long-term benefits to individuals and the economy, helping families buy their first homes, open a small business, or invest in their retirement. More broadly, canceling student debt would add tens of billions of dollars in GDP growth,” the letter reads.
Does Biden have the power to forgive student loans?
While he and Trump had the power to freeze student loan payments, it’s hard to say whether Biden has the power to forgive loans.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said Biden lacks the legal authority. Instead, she said, “That would be an act of Congress.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, has argued that Biden could under the same legal provision Trump used to delay payments and interest accrual at the start of the pandemic, The Hill reports.
Earlier this year, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “We’re still looking at administrative options, but Congress can also send the president a bill that would provide $10,000 in debt relief, and he’d be happy to sign that bill.”
In addition to calling on Biden to cancel upward of $50,000 in student debt per borrower, lawmakers are mulling multiple legislative proposals to forgive student loans, make it easier to refinance, or continue the pause on payments.
Who is already eligible for student loan forgiveness?
Whether or not another pause (more on that later) or loan forgiveness is on the horizon, some borrowers can already have some debt relief.
The Department of Education recently announced nearly 100,000 people are eligible for student loan cancelation due to changes made to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program in October. The move amounted to roughly $6.2 billion in relief, according to The Hill.
Under the PSLF program, eligible borrowers were promised that their debt would be canceled if they made payments over the course of 10 years. To be eligible for the program, you must work full-time for the government or a not-for-profit organization, have Direct Loans, repay them under an income-driven repayment plan, and make 120 qualifying payments.
Teachers, certain volunteers, and individuals working in specific industries may qualify for student loan cancellation. There are a number of other cases in which your student loans could be forgiven, canceled, or discharged.
Could another payment pause happen?
The Department of Education has reportedly directed companies that service federal student loans not to send notices about payments resuming in May, CNBC reports. According to NPR, the department does have a legal obligation to reach out to borrowers at least six times before payments begin – by telling companies to hold off on reaching out, some believe the administration was signaling another payment moratorium.
This came shortly after White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Biden wanted to decide on debt cancellation before payments restarted, “or he’ll extend the pause.”
Pushing out another payment pause may also be beneficial for Democrats heading into the midterm elections.
There are, of course, critics of another student loan payment pause. Many point to the costs the deferment has put on the federal government, and taxpayers, which amounts to nearly $50 billion a year.
As it stands now, the student loan payment pause is set to end on May 1.
The Associated Press and NewsNation’s Leland Vittert contributed to this report.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/the-nickel-in-your-coins-is-now-worth-more-than-5-cents-but-you-cant-cash-in/
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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Amid war in Ukraine and market chaos, nickels are now worth more in melted metal than their face value. But before you empty the piggy bank and fire up a smelter in the yard, there are a few things you should know.
According to McKinsey & Company, Russia was the largest exporter of raw nickel in the world before the war, with 21.1% of the global supply of nickel mined in the country. The next highest was Canada, with 17.1% of raw nickel mining in the world. The war in Ukraine has injected instability into the global market causing the value of the metal to shoot up as much as 250% in a single day in March, according to the London Metal Exchange.
On Reddit, some Americans have discussed the value of hoarding nickels as a potential investment and a hedge against inflation. Nickel has value outside of coin production, it is used in car batteries, among other products.
If you were to melt down a single nickel today, the metal would be worth approximately $0.079, or nearly 60% more than the coin’s face value. At those values, a $2.00 roll of nickels, containing 40 coins, would be worth $3.18.
There are also a few problems with the thinking behind nickel-hoarding, one of which concerns the legality of melting coins. Melting nickels, dimes, quarters and pennies for the purpose of simple destruction, creating art, or other non-economic purposes is still legal in the U.S. — but it’s illegal to melt nickels to sell the metal itself.
It’s also worth noting that today’s nickels are only made with 25% of the metal they’re named for, according to the U.S. Mint. The rest of the coin is made with copper. (Ironically, pennies are mostly zinc instead of copper. The copper-plated coin has only contained 2.5% of the valuable metal since 1982.)
So even if you stuff nickels under the mattress to hedge against inflation, only a small part of the coin’s value would rise with the cost of raw nickel.
In reality, the 5 cent nickel has been expensive to produce for some time. The U.S. Mint reported the nickel’s unit cost rose by 14.8% in Fiscal Year 2021. For the 16th year in a row, nickels were more expensive to produce than they were worth as cash.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/whistleblower-hertz-using-police-as-repo-men-prompting-false-arrests/
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(NewsNation) — Rental car company Hertz is under fire from lawmakers after hundreds of customers say they were pulled over by police and told the rental car they were driving had been reported as stolen.
Those customers say they rented their cars legally and paid for them but were arrested and sometimes thrown in jail.
Now, a whistleblower is shedding light on what is going on behind the scenes at the company.
Daniel Stokes worked for Hertz for 11 years from 1996 till 2007 and was a branch and city manager in charge of 24 different Hertz locations.
“Being a city manager and knowing what the processes were and learning more about what actually happens to the people, quite honestly, it pissed me off that knowing that it was still going on,” Stokes told NewsNation investigative reporter Rich McHugh.
Stokes believes the way Hertz is managing this current process is wrong.
“I don’t see how it’s legal,” Stokes said.
He says Hertz should not be involving police in most of these cases, but a collections company, instead.
In cases where customers have rented a car and not returned it on the due date, “Hertz is actually using the police department as a repo company and the court system as a collection company,” Stokes said. “All of these supposed embezzlement by thefts are collection issues. They’re not actual thefts.”
In other cases, he says, the car reported as stolen has already been returned and the customer who returned it late has paid restitution. It’s the next person who rents the car, not knowing the car’s history, that gets in trouble, he said.
“It’s after the fact … people are getting arrested,” Stokes said. “That’s pretty jarring to a person’s life.” And he said that’s because Hertz simply isn’t working with computer systems or record keeping that are rapid enough to clear a car’s history before it’s returned to service, leading innocent people to be falsely arrested.
Stokes said he realized the severity of the problem when this happened to him. He says he was out on medical leave and had a Hertz car. He was arrested, prosecuted for embezzlement and ultimately fired as a result of it. He says he’s coming forward now because he has nothing to gain except for goodwill in telling people about this.
Hertz did not respond to NewsNation’s request for comment regarding Stokes’ claims.
The company has issued the same statement since last year, saying in part: “The vast majority of these cases involve renters who were many weeks or even months overdue returning vehicles and who stopped communicating with us well beyond the scheduled due date.”
Hundreds of people are suing Hertz over accusations of mental and emotional damages, including a former federal agent.
The former agent, who would prefer not to be named due to previous undercover work, said Oklahoma City police handcuffed him a few hours after he rented a car in May 2021. The encounter was captured on bodycam footage.
“I’m thinking to myself, this can’t be happening,” he said.
The former agent was later released but told he might get arrested again.
“I thought, ‘This is insanity,'” he said.
He returned the car the next morning and Hertz refunded his money.
Another man, Julius Burnside, was arrested and spent seven months in jail before a Georgia court, after looking at all the evidence, ruled that Burnside had in fact paid for his rental and dismissed the case entirely.
Francis Malofiy is an attorney representing more than 250 Hertz customers suing the company over false arrest. McHugh caught up with him on Capitol Hill as two senators — Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren — have now asked for a congressional investigation.
“Hertz made it clear that unless a court or Congress makes them change their ways, they’re not going to do so,” Malofiy said. “And that’s why we’ve met with many congressional offices and committees — to get broad support on both sides of the aisle.”
A court has ordered Hertz to turn over a database it was trying to block the release of. That database shows that they have reported about 3,000 cars stolen each year for the past few years.
“If the country knew how our taxpayer dollars and our police systems (are) being used … I promise you, I’m sure more legislators would probably involved in stopping this,” said the former agent.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/are-you-hungry-satisfy-your-taste-buds-at-the-st-tammany-hamburger-festival/
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COVINGTON, La. (WGNO) — A new festival is coming to the Northshore this year!
The inaugural St. Tammany Hamburger Festival is scheduled to take place in Southeast Louisiana in May.
The festival, founded by the Team of Twenty Productions, LLC is bringing their prevalent experience in festival productions on to the Northshore. “Bringing something innovative and different to the community is
a great way for everyone to come together from all walks of life.”I’m excited to do this for this remarkable parish!”Joe Freeman, Vice President of Team of Twenty Productions
The festival is set to kick off Friday, May 20, and go through May 22 at the St. Tammany Parish Fair Grounds.
A crowd of over 40, 000 people is expected at the event.
Amanda Shaw, Tommy G., Sam Warren, Sharon Rock, Connie G, Soul Revival Band, T Broussard, and more musical acts have been scheduled to perform non-stop on 2 stages throughout the festival weekend.
Planted across the grounds will be 30 hamburger stands, carnival rides, local arts, and handmade crafts, various food vendors, and fun activities for both kids and adults.
The festival starts on Friday, May 20th, and Sunday, May 21st is 4:00 p.m., and 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 21.
Local businesses are encouraged to sponsor or participate as vendors in the first of many festivals.
Registration is happening now for the best burger contest with a $1000 cash prize to go along with the winning title and, of course, a year’s worth of bragging rights.
For more information and to register, click here.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/elderly-louisiana-man-allegedly-kills-wife-at-ascension-home/
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PRAIRIEVILLE, La. (AP) — An 83-year-old man has been released on bond after allegedly shooting his wife in their home in Louisiana.
Ascension Parish sheriff’s deputies arrested Marvin Stephens on Wednesday after the shooting at the couple’s property off Highway 42 east of Airline Highway, news outlets reported.
The victim, identified as Patricia Stephens, was airlifted to a hospital where she later died. Her husband was booked for second-degree murder and illegal use of a weapon. He was released Thursday after posting $85,000 bond. It was unknown if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Chief of Criminal Operations Donald Capello said the Stephens family told investigators the suspect suffers from dementia.
“It was said by some of the family members, obviously a medical professional would have to confirm that. You know he was an 83-year-old male, so he was a little older, frail like an 83-year-old person would be,” Capello said.
Deputies released no other details as to what may have led to the shooting.
“It’s just a tragic event, it’s never pleasant to see a domestic violence incident, especially with people of that age and that stature, obviously dealing with two older people it’s sad to see that and my heart goes out to the family, I really feel for the family, that really hits hard for all of the family members.”
District attorney Ricky Babin said if this case goes to trial, and the family still claims Stephens has dementia, a mental competency test will be performed.
The case remains under investigation.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/ella-goodies-car-found-in-missouri/
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ST. JOSEPH, MO. (KLFY) – The car belonging to Ella Goodie was found this morning in St. Joseph, Missouri.
According to Louisiana State Police, Ella Goodie’s vehicle, a black 2012 Audi Q5 was found by the St. Joseph Police Department in St. Joseph Missouri. Detectives and investigators with Louisiana State Police, Scott Police, and St. Joseph Police Department will continue to work alongside each other to locate Goodie who is still missing.
If you have any additional information concerning the whereabouts of Ella Quiana Goodie, please contact the Louisiana State Police at (318) 484-2194 or Scott Police Department at (337) 233-3715.
FBI, US Marshals Service now involved in search for missing Scott woman Ella Goodie
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https://www.cenlanow.com/state-news/symposium-on-racial-and-health-equity-in-nola-april-7/
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New Orleans, La – (March 31, 2022) – The Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI) and Healthy Blue are committed to addressing the racial and health inequities that continue to impact the social wellbeing, health, and health outcomes of our communities throughout Louisiana. The commitment began last year and continues again this year with the Second Annual Symposium on Racial and Health Equity in Louisiana.
There is a continuing need to address systemic inequities to achieve racial and health equity across the country and in Louisiana. Communities need foundational knowledge and understanding of Louisiana’s rich and complicated history to carry forward effective conversations and collective action to address inequities that impact communities of color and improve overall health outcomes. The Symposium will bring together participants from a variety of different fields to ensure intentionality in addressing race and health inequities in Louisiana’s policies, practices, and culture. The event offers a mix of expert speakers, breakout sessions, peer exchanges, and opportunities to commit to action through partnerships, investments, and more.
WHEN: Thursday, April 7
9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
WHERE: Virtual
WHO: Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG, President and CEO, Morehouse School of Medicine
Christy Valentine, MD, MBA, Plan President, Healthy Blue Louisiana
Shelina Davis, CEO, Louisiana Public Health Institute
Terri Ricks, Deputy Secretary, Department of Children and Family Services
Davante Lewis, Director of Public Affairs and Outreach, Louisiana Budget Project
Dr. Rochelle Head-Dunham, Medical Director, Metropolitan Human Services District
Archie Chaisson, President, Lafourche Parish Council
Dr. David Holcombe, Regional Administrator/Medical Director, Louisiana Office of Public Health (Region 6)
Natalie Jayroe, President and CEO, Second Harvest Food Bank
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https://www.cenlanow.com/washington-dc/fight-for-covid-funding-resumes-as-fda-oks-second-booster/
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WASHINGTON (Nexstar) — The FDA authorized an optional second booster shot against the virus for millions of Americans, and the Biden administration is laying out a new strategy to help Americans live with COVID-19.
The White House strategy involves a comprehensive website and new places where people can get tests and anti-viral pills. The administration is asking for $22 billion in new funding to make it work.
COVID.gov is a one-stop shop for COVID-19 resources and a tool meant to help Americans live with the pandemic.
“It means COVID-19 no longer controls our lives, that’s what it means,” Biden said.
With the click of a button, people can find tests, vaccines, and treatments in one place. But to keep those resources available, the president is again asking Congress for $22 billion in new funding.
“Without more funding, we risk running out of the supplies by this fall,” he said.
About $15 billion in COVID spending was recently stripped out of the omnibus bill, and many members of Congress — especially republicans — are resistant to the idea of more pandemic spending.
“Democrats flooded the economy with unnecessary government money and the economy overheated as a result,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD).
“We don’t know where the waste and fraud is going,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said.
Meanwhile, the White House is also working to facilitate the rollout of a second booster shot after the FDA approved a second booster for people 50 and older and those who are immunocompromised.
“It’s clear that after a period of time that you can get a benefit of an optimal amount of protection if you get an additional boost,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical advisor.
Biden has received his second booster and Fauci encourages people with health problems to get it, too.
“We want to stay ahead of this virus,” Fauci said. “We don’t want to be chasing it.”
A bipartisan group of senators is still negotiating a possible COVID funding package, although it appears the amount may be smaller than what the president is asking for.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/washington-dc/jackson-likely-to-be-confirmed-to-scotus-as-vote-approaches/
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WASHINGTON (Nexstar) — Nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson spent the week meeting with senators on Capitol Hill and appears poised to make history and be confirmed as the first Black woman Supreme Court justice.
Jackson only needs a simple majority vote in the Senate to be confirmed, meaning she can be confirmed to the Supreme Court if every Democrat votes in her favor.
And one Republican senator has already shown support.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced this week that she will vote in favor of confirming Jackson to the Supreme Court.
“I decided that she had the qualifications, the experience and the credentials that we require of a Supreme Court Justice,” Collins said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who last year voted in favor of confirming Jackson to the U.S. Court of Appeals, says he will vote against her confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“My decision is based upon her record of judicial activism, flawed sentencing methodology regarding child pornography cases,” Graham said.
Republicans alone can’t stop what would be the historic confirmation of the first Black woman to the supreme court.
While not all senators have announced how they will vote, not a single Democrat senator has said they will not vote to confirm.
“I look forward to supporting her on the floor,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).
“She’s going to make an outstanding justice, and certainly has the right judicial temperament,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).
Still, all eyes are on other moderate Republicans to see how much bipartisan support Jackson will get.
“I’m looking at her record and judicial philosophy and will make a decision, and will announce that when I have it but probably not until the day of the vote,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
The senate judiciary committee is scheduled to vote on advancing Jackson’s nomination on Monday. If that vote ends in a tie, the first Black woman vice president would cast the tie-breaking vote to advance Jackson’s historic nomination to the Supreme Court.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/ap-strange-news/oldest-u-s-active-park-ranger-retires-at-100/
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RICHMOND, Calif. (AP) — The nation’s oldest active park ranger is hanging up her Smokey hat at the age of 100.
Betty Reid Soskin retired Thursday after more than 15 years at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, the National Park Service announced.
Soskin “spent her last day providing an interpretive program to the public and visiting with coworkers,” a Park Service statement said.
She led tours at the park and museum honoring the women who worked in factories during wartime and shared her own experience as a Black woman during the conflict. She worked for the U.S. Air Force in 1942 but quit after learning that “she was employed only because her superiors believed she was white,” according to a Park Service biography.
“Being a primary source in the sharing of that history – my history – and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” Soskin said in the Park Service statement. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”
Soskin won a temporary Park Service position at the age of 84 and became a permanent Park Service employee in 2011. She celebrated her 100th birthday last September.
“Betty has made a profound impact on the National Park Service and the way we carry out our mission,” Director Chuck Sams said. “Her efforts remind us that we must seek out and give space for all perspectives so that we can tell a more full and inclusive history of our nation.”
Soskin was born Betty Charbonnet in Detroit in 1921 but recalled surviving the devastating Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 while living with her Creole family in New Orleans, according to the Park Service biography.
Her family then moved to Oakland, California, and Soskin remained in the San Francisco Bay Area, where in 1945 she and her first husband founded one of the first Black-owned record stores in the area, the biography said.
She also was a civil rights activist and took part in meetings to develop a general management plan for the Home Front park. She has received several honors.
She was named California Woman of the Year in 1995.
In 2015, Soskin received a presidential coin from President Barack Obama after she lit the National Christmas tree at the White House.
In June 2016, she was awakened in her home by a robber who punched her repeatedly in the face, dragged her out of her bedroom and beat her before making off with the coin and other items. Soskin, then 94, recovered and returned to work just weeks after the attack. The coin was replaced.
Soskin also was honored with entry into the Congressional Record. Glamour Magazine named her woman of the year in 2018.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/border-report-tour/police-id-murder-suspect-caught-driving-across-rio-grande/
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EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – A man who was captured by U.S. Border Patrol Agents near Cesar Chavez/Loop375 after trying to cross the Rio Grande in his truck, has been identified by law enforcement.
31-year-old Patricio Sabas Gomez was wanted in the September 30, 2021 shooting death of 41-year-old Michael Martinez in Wichita, Kansas.
Police say the shooting was a result of a botched drug deal, outside a Wichita hotel. Gomez and his alleged accomplice, Shae Roberts, fled the area following the shooting. Roberts was later captured and was charged with First-Degree Murder and Attempted Distribution of meth.
According to Border Patrol officials, on Monday, March 28, Gomez attempted to enter the U.S. illegally by driving his pickup truck across the Rio Grande from Juarez.
Gomez is being held without bond in the El Paso County Detention Center, awaiting extradition to Kansas to face charges.
MORE INFO: Kansas murder suspect gets truck stuck in mostly dry Rio Grande
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- AG announces gun trafficking charges amid crackdown
For local and breaking news, sports, weather alerts, video and more, download the FREE KTSM 9 News App from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/entertainment-news/oscars-producer-says-police-offered-to-arrest-will-smith/
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oscars producer Will Packer said Los Angeles police were ready to arrest Will Smith after Smith slapped Chris Rock on the Academy Awards stage.
“They were saying, you know, this is battery, was a word they used in that moment,” Packer said in a clip released by ABC News Thursday night of an interview he gave to “Good Morning America.” “They said we will go get him. We are prepared. We’re prepared to get him right now. You can press charges, we can arrest him. They were laying out the options.”
But Packer said Rock was “very dismissive” of the idea.
“He was like, ‘No, no, no, I’m fine,” Packer said. “And even to the point where I said, ‘Rock, let them finish.’ The LAPD officers finished laying out what his options were and they said, ‘Would you like us to take any action?’ And he said no.”
The LAPD said in a statement after Sunday night’s ceremony that they were aware of the incident, and that Rock had declined to file a police report. The department declined comment Thursday on Packer’s interview.
In the longer version on “Good Morning America,” Packer said he initially believed the slap was an orchestrated bit. “I thought it was part of something that Chris and Will were doing on their own. I thought it was a bit. I wasn’t concerned at all.”
Packer said he went up to Rock after the incident. “I said, ‘Did he really hit you?’” the producer asked Rock. “And he looked at me and he goes, ‘Yeah, I just took a punch from Muhammad Ali,’ as only Chris can. He was immediately in joke mode, but you could tell that he was very much still in shock.”
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences met Wednesday to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Smith for violations against the group’s standards of conduct. Smith could be suspended, expelled or otherwise sanctioned.
The academy said in a statement that “Mr. Smith’s actions at the 94th Oscars were a deeply shocking, traumatic event to witness in-person and on television.”
Without giving specifics, the academy said Smith was asked to leave the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre, but refused to do so.
Smith strode from his front row seat on to the stage and slapped Rock after a joke Rock made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, when he was on stage to present the Oscar for best documentary.
On Monday, Smith issued an apology to Rock, the academy and to viewers, saying “I was out of line and I was wrong.”
The academy said Smith has the opportunity to defend himself in a written response before the board meets again on April 18.
Rock publicly addressed the incident for the first time, but only briefly, at the beginning of a standup show Wednesday night in Boston, where he was greeted by a thunderous standing ovation. He said “I’m still kind of processing what happened.”
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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https://www.cenlanow.com/entertainment-news/tiger-king-files-for-divorce-in-santa-rosa-co/
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SANTA ROSA COUNTY, Fla. (WKRG) — Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as the “Tiger King,” has filed for divorce from his husband Dillon Passage. The petition to dissolve the marriage was made March 31, 2022, in Santa Rosa County.
Maldonado-Passage has been married to Dillon Passage for four years. Their relationship was documented in the Netflix series “Tiger King,” where Maldonado-Passage is also referred to as Joe “Exotic.”
Maldonado-Passage summoned his husband to court, where he filed to dissolve the marriage.
Although Dillon Passage announced that he filed for divorce on social media, he did not serve any papers to Maldonado-Passage, according to a news release from Autumn Beck Blackledge, who represents Joe “Exotic.”
Maldonado-Passage tried to contact Dillon Passage to continue with the divorce but was unable to reach him. The pair “last live together as a married couple with the internet to remain in Gulf Breeze,” according to the release.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health/house-passes-35-a-month-insulin-cap-as-dems-seek-wider-bill-2/
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has passed a bill capping the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for insured patients, part of an election-year push by Democrats for price curbs on prescription drugs at a time of rising inflation.
Experts say the legislation, which passed 232-193 Thursday, would provide significant relief for privately insured patients with skimpier plans and for Medicare enrollees facing rising out-of-pocket costs for their insulin. Some could save hundreds of dollars annually, and all insured patients would get the benefit of predictable monthly costs for insulin. The bill would not help the uninsured.
But the Affordable Insulin Now Act will serve as a political vehicle to rally Democrats and force Republicans who oppose it into uncomfortable votes ahead of the midterms. For the legislation to pass Congress, 10 Republican senators would have to vote in favor. Democrats acknowledge they don’t have an answer for how that’s going to happen.
“If 10 Republicans stand between the American people being able to get access to affordable insulin, that’s a good question for 10 Republicans to answer,” said Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., a cosponsor of the House bill. “Republicans get diabetes, too. Republicans die from diabetes.”
Public opinion polls have consistently shown support across party lines for congressional action to limit drug costs.
But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., complained the legislation is only “a small piece of a larger package around government price controls for prescription drugs.” Critics say the bill would raise premiums and fails to target pharmaceutical middlemen seen as contributing to high list prices for insulin.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Democrats could have a deal on prescription drugs if they drop their bid to authorize Medicare to negotiate prices. “Do Democrats really want to help seniors, or would they rather have the campaign issue?” Grassley said.
The insulin bill, which would take effect in 2023, represents just one provision of a much broader prescription drug package in President Joe Biden’s social and climate legislation.
In addition to a similar $35 cap on insulin, the Biden bill would authorize Medicare to negotiate prices for a range of drugs, including insulin. It would penalize drugmakers who raise prices faster than inflation and overhaul the Medicare prescription drug benefit to limit out-of-pocket costs for enrollees.
Biden’s agenda passed the House only to stall in the Senate because Democrats could not reach consensus. Party leaders haven’t abandoned hope of getting the legislation moving again, and preserving its drug pricing curbs largely intact.
The idea of a $35 monthly cost cap for insulin actually has a bipartisan pedigree. The Trump administration had created a voluntary option for Medicare enrollees to get insulin for $35, and the Biden administration continued it.
In the Senate, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are working on a bipartisan insulin bill. Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has introduced legislation similar to the House bill, with the support of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Stung by criticism that Biden’s economic policies spur inflation, Democrats are redoubling efforts to show how they’d help people cope with costs. On Thursday,the Commerce Department reported a key inflation gauge jumped 6.4% in February compared with a year ago, the largest year-over-year rise since January 1982.
But experts say the House bill would not help uninsured people, who face the highest out-of-pocket costs for insulin. Also, people with diabetes often take other medications as well as insulin. That’s done to treat the diabetes itself, along with other serious health conditions often associated with the disease. The House legislation would not help with those costs, either. Collins says she’s looking for a way to help uninsured people through her bill.
About 37 million Americans have diabetes, and an estimated 6 million to 7 million use insulin to keep their blood sugars under control.It’s an old drug, refined and improved over the years, that has seen relentless price increases.
Steep list prices don’t reflect the rates insurance plans negotiate with manufacturers. But those list prices are used to calculate cost-sharing amounts that patients owe. Patients who can’t afford their insulin reduce or skip doses, a strategy born of desperation, which can lead to serious complications and even death.
Economist Sherry Glied of New York University said the market for insulin is a “total disaster” for many patients, particularly those with skimpy insurance plans or no insurance.
“This will make private insurance for people with diabetes a much more attractive proposition,” said Glied.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/health/south-korea-eases-distancing-amid-slowing-omicron-spread/
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea will ease some of its pandemic restrictions starting next week as officials express cautious hope the worst of its omicron outbreak has passed.
The limit on private social gatherings will be raised from eight to 10 people starting Monday, while restaurants, bars and other indoor spaces can stay open an hour later, until midnight, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Friday.
Officials said most social distancing restrictions could be removed, except for an indoor mask mandate, if the outbreak further slows and the medical response remains stable over the next two weeks.
Kim’s announcement from a government anti-virus meeting came after the country reported a daily average of 316,000 new coronavirus cases in the past seven days, a modest decrease from the average of 357,800 a week before. The one-day record was 621,187 on March 17.
While Kim said the country has likely passed the peak of infections, there’s still worry about the pressure on hospitals, given the week or longer intervals between infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Officials also say the highly transmissible omicron subvariant called BA.2 is slowing the decline in overall infections.
“Fortunately, the outbreak has slowed for the second consecutive week,” Kim said. “But there’s persisting concern about an increase in serious cases and deaths that might come after time lags, the spread of ‘stealth omicron,’ or BA.2, which has become the dominant strain, and an expected increase in travel during spring weather.”
The country has averaged 328 deaths in the past week, including 360 in the latest 24 hours, while around 1,300 virus patients were in serious or critical condition. More than 64% of South Korea’s 2,800 intensive care units designated for COVID-19 treatment were occupied.
Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said social distancing measures have clearly become less effective because omicron is much more contagious than previous variants of the virus.
“Even if we ease social distancing, the increase in infections is expected to be only around 10 to 20%,” he said during a briefing.
Quarantine requirements for close contacts, hospitalization for mild cases and proof of vaccination or negative tests when entering public spaces were some of the measures eased or lifted earlier.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/international/ap-international/russians-leave-chernobyl-ukraine-braces-for-renewed-attacks/
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Talks to stop the fighting in Ukraine resumed Friday, as another desperate attempt to rescue civilians from the encircled city of Mariupol failed and the Kremlin accused the Ukrainians of launching a helicopter attack on a fuel depot on Russian soil.
Ukraine denied responsibility for the fiery blast, but if Moscow’s claim is confirmed, it would be the war’s first known attack in which Ukrainian aircraft penetrated Russian airspace.
“Certainly, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of the talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, five weeks after Moscow began sending upwards of 150,000 of its own troops across Ukraine’s border.
Meanwhile, Russia continued withdrawing some of its ground forces fromareas around Kyiv after saying earlier this week it would reduce military activity near the Ukrainian capital and the northern city of Chernihiv to promote trust at the bargaining table.
While the Russians kept up their bombardment of those two zones, Ukrainian troops exploited the pullback on the ground by mounting counterattacks and retaking a number of towns and villages.
Still, Ukraine and its allies warned that the Kremlin is not de-escalating but resupplying and shifting its troops to the country’s east for an intensified assault on the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region in the country’s east, which includes Mariupol.
The latest negotiations took place by video. At a round of talks earlier in the week, Ukraine said it would be willing to abandon a bid to join NATO and declare itself neutral — Moscow’s chief demand — in return for security guarantees from several other countries.
The invasion has left thousands dead and driven more than 4 million refugees from Ukraine.
Mariupol, the shattered and besieged southern port city, has seen some of the worst suffering of the war. Its capture would be a major prize for Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving his country an unbroken land bridge to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Mariupol’s fate could determine the course of the negotiations to end the war, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think tank Penta.
“Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance,” Fesenko said, “and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table.” The fall of Mariupol, he said, “will open the way to a peace agreement.”
On Friday, the International Committee for the Red Cross said it was unable to carry out an operation to bring civilians out of Mariupol by bus. It said a team had been on its way but had to turn back.
City authorities said the Russians were blocking access to Mariupol.
“We do not see a real desire on the part of the Russians and their satellites to provide an opportunity for Mariupol residents to evacuate to territory controlled by Ukraine,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He said Russian forces “are categorically not allowing any humanitarian cargo, even in small amounts, into the city.”
Around 100,000 people are believed left in the city, down from a prewar 430,000, and weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting have caused severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
“We are running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that residents in Mariupol have suffered,” Red Cross spokesperson Ewan Watson said.
On Thursday, Russian forces blocked a 45-bus convoy attempting to evacuate people from Mariupol and seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies bound for the city, Ukrainian authorities said.
As for the fuel depot explosion, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said two Ukrainian helicopter gunships flew in extremely low and attacked the civilian oil storage facility on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the Ukraine border.
The regional governor said two workers at the depot were wounded, but the Rosneft state oil company denied anyone was hurt.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, said on Ukrainian television: “For some reason they say that we did it, but in fact this does not correspond with reality.”
Russia has reported cross-border shelling from Ukraine before, including an incident last week that killed a military chaplain, but not an incursion of its airspace.
Amid the Russian pullback on the ground and its continued bombardment, Ukraine’s military said it had retaken 29 settlements in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.
Russian forces in the northeast also continued to shell Kharkiv, and in the southeast sought to seize the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne as well as Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said.
Meanwhile, Russia on Friday began its annual spring conscription, which aimed at rounding up 134,500 men for a one-year tour of military duty. Russian officials say new recruits won’t be sent to the front lines or “hot spots,” but many young Russians are skeptical and fear they’ll be drawn into the war.
On the outskirts of Kyiv, where Russian troops have withdrawn, damaged cars lined the streets of Irpin, a suburban area popular with young families, now in ruins. Emergency workers carried elderly people on stretchers over a wrecked bridge to safety.
Three wooden crosses next to a residential building that was damaged in a shelling marked the graves of a mother and son and an unknown man. A resident who gave her name only as Lila said she helped hurriedly bury them on March 5, just before Russian troops moved in.
“They were hit with artillery and they were burned alive,” she said.
An Irpin resident who gave his name only as Andriy said the Russians packed up their equipment and left on Tuesday. The next day, they shelled the town for close to an hour before Ukrainian soldiers retook it.
“I don’t think this is over,” Andriy said. “They will be back.”
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`Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Andrea Rosa in Irpin, Ukraine, and 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
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https://www.cenlanow.com/international/ap-international/solomon-islands-says-china-deal-wont-include-military-base/
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Seeking to counter international fears over its new security alliance with China, the Solomon Islands said Friday it won’t allow China to build a military base there.
But that insistence will do little to ease concerns about the pact from the nation’s traditional partners that include New Zealand, Australia and the United States.
The leader of neighboring Micronesia added his voice to those expressing trepidation by invoking the bloody battles of World War II and warning that the pact could again see the South Pacific region become a battleground for much larger powers.
The Solomon Islands government said Thursday a draft agreement of the new security pact had been initialed by representatives from the Solomons and China and would be “cleaned up” and signed.
In a statement Friday, the Solomon Islands government said that “contrary to the misinformation promoted by antigovernment commentators” the agreement did not invite China to establish a military base.
“Government is conscious of the security ramification of hosting a military base, and it will not be careless to allow such initiative to take place under its watch,” the statement said.
The statement seemed to more emphatically rule out the possibility of a base after Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare had earlier told parliament it had no intention of asking China to build a base.
Sogavare said his nation sought only peace and prosperity, citing its foreign policy mantra: “We are friends to all and enemies to none.” He said it wasn’t a secret deal but a sovereign issue.
Under the terms of the draft agreement, China could send police, military personnel and other armed forces to the Solomon Islands “to assist in maintaining social order” and for a variety of other reasons. It could also send warships to the islands for stopovers and to replenish supplies, which had led to speculation about the possibility of China establishing a naval base on the South Pacific islands.
China has denied seeking a military foothold in the islands and accused others of raising tensions.
Apparently referring to the U.S. and its allies, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Friday blamed others for militarizing the South Pacific and said the agreement with the Solomon Islands was predicated on maintaining the safety of lives and property and “does not have any military overtones.”
“When it comes to the militarization of the South Pacific region, individual countries, despite strong opposition from regional countries, are bent on creating a militarized coterie and seriously threatening regional security and stability by introducing the risk of nuclear proliferation into the South Pacific,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing.
“That wantonly trampled on and damaged the existing stability mechanism in the region,” Zhao said.
China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Micronesia President David Panuelo wrote a letter to Sogavare saying Micronesia had “grave security concerns” about the “novel and unprecedented” arrangement.
He said the two small nations had become battle grounds during World War II and that it could happen again as China, the U.S. and Australia asserted themselves in the region.
“And is it plausible that, once the spheres have been carved out, that our concerns about climate change — today’s problem — would manifest into all-too-real concerns about a war in our backyards, with our people, our islands, as the playground for children playing as adults?” Panuelo wrote to Sogavare.
Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton said Friday that while it respected the Solomons’ sovereignty, the deal showed that China was acting aggressively in the region.
“We need to be very cautious here because the Chinese are incredibly aggressive, the tactics that they’re deploying into small island nations are quite remarkable,” he told Sky News.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern this week described the possibility of Chinese military forces stationed on the Solomon Islands as “the potential militarization of the region.” And the U.S. State Department said Washington did not believe China’s security forces and methods needed to be exported.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday that “relevant parties should see the China-Solomon Islands security cooperation objectively and rationally and stop making irresponsible remarks.”
“Attempts to provoke, obstruct and undermine China’s friendly relations with the island countries is not popular and will not succeed,” Wang told reporters at a daily briefing.
“China-Solomon Islands cooperation does not target any third party and is not in conflict with Solomon Islands’ cooperation with other countries. Instead, it complements the existing regional cooperation mechanisms in a positive way,” he added.
The Solomon Islands, home to about 700,000 people, switched its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019 — a contributing factor to riots in November last year between residents of different islands within the country.
Australian police have been in the capital, Honiara, maintaining peace since then under a bilateral security treaty established in 2017. It provides a legal basis for the rapid deployment of Australian police, troops and associated civilians in the event of a major security challenge.
Chinese police are already on the islands conducting a training mission.
The Federated States of Micronesia is home to about 100,000 people. It has diplomatic relations and considers itself a “friend” of China, as well as having a close relationship with the U.S. under a compact of free association.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/disputed-school-admissions-policy-okd-pending-appeal/
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court has granted a request from a northern Virginia school system to continue using a challenged admissions policy at a highly selective high school while it appeals a ruling that found the policy discriminates against Asian American students.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling Thursday that Fairfax County Public Schools can continue to use its new admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton rejected the new policy in a February ruling, saying that impermissible “racial balancing” was at its core. Commonly known as “TJ,” the prestigious school near the nation’s capital is often ranked as one of the best public high schools in the country.
Earlier this month, Hilton also rejected a request from the school system to delay the implementation of his ruling. But the 4th Circuit, in a 2-1 ruling, said the school board had met the legal requirements for a suspension of Hilton’s order while its appeal is pending.
The 4th Circuit panel agreed with school officials who argued that because the selection process for the incoming freshman class is well underway, implementing Hilton’s ruling now would throw the process into chaos.
Judge Toby Heytens wrote that he has “grave doubts” about Hilton’s conclusions “regarding both disparate impact and discriminatory purpose” of the new admissions policy.
“In my view, appellant Fairfax County School Board is likely to succeed in its appeal,” Heytens wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Allison Jones Rushing said putting Hilton’s ruling on hold while the school board appeals his decision is not in the public interest. Jones said any logistical difficulties or inconvenience associated with changing the admissions policy at this late date “simply do not outweigh the infringement of constitutional rights.”
“And everyone — even temporarily frustrated applicants and their families — ultimately benefits from a public-school admissions process not tainted by unconstitutional discrimination,” Rushing wrote.
The case has been closely watched as courts continue to evaluate the role that racial considerations can play when deciding who should be admitted to a particular school. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar case alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in its admissions process.
Fairfax County Public Schools said the order from the 4th Circuit allows the school board to continue with the current application process to select the Class of 2026 this spring.
“For the 2,500+ students in this application pool, this means the race blind process set out by the School Board in October 2020 will remain in place as an appeal challenging the February court decision plays out,” the board said in a news release.
The parents’ group Coalition for TJ, which filed the lawsuit, said the 4th Circuit judges have made a “grave error” in allowing the school system to continue to use its new admissions process.
“If the judges’ decision stands, we would see Fairfax County Public Schools usher in a second class of students to America’s No. 1 public high school through an unconstitutional race-based admissions process,” the coalition said in a statement.
For decades, Black and Hispanic students have been woefully underrepresented in the student body. After criticism over its lack of diversity, the school board scrapped a standardized test that had been at the heart of the admissions process and opted instead for a process that sets aside slots at each of the county’s middle schools. It also includes “experience factors” like socioeconomic background.
The parents’ group argued in its lawsuit that Asian Americans, who constituted more than 70% of the student body, were unfairly targeted in the new policy.
The school’s current freshman class, which was admitted under the new policy, saw a significantly different racial makeup. Black students increased from 1% to 7%; Hispanic representation increased from 3% to 11%. Asian American representation decreased from 73% to 54%.
The school system has insisted that its new policies are race neutral, and the panel evaluating applicants is not even aware of applicants’ race as it conducts its reviews.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former minor league pitcher ran a major league illegal sports betting operation in California that used other former pro athletes to take bets and took wagers from players still in the game, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Wayne Nix, who threw for Oakland Athletics farm teams, used his connections to recruit three former Major League Baseball players and a former pro football player as fellow bookies, prosecutors said.
The MLB began looking into the matter when it learned of it Thursday, but was unaware any of those involved other than Nix, a spokesman said.
Court records offered no names of the players who worked for Nix or those who placed bets with his business, but they provide a glimpse of the kind of money being wagered, earned and lost.
A professional football player paid Nix $245,000 for gambling losses in 2016. An MLB coach paid $4,000 in losses that same year. It was not disclosed if either bet on their own games or their own sports.
MLB prohibits players from betting on baseball or gambling illegally on sports. They can bet on other sports if it’s legal. The National Football League policy bars all personnel from betting on football games.
A Los Angeles check cashing business that has agreed to plead guilty to failing to prevent money laundering in the scheme cashed over $18 million in checks from two single bettors, prosecutors said.
One client wagered $5 million on the Super Bowl but it was not revealed if that gambit paid off.
Sports betting is legal in 30 states, but not in California. However, voters will have a chance to legalize it at the polls in November.
Nix, 45, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to run an illegal gambling operation and faces up to eight years in prison. He also admitted he failed to report $1.4 million in income in 2017 and 2018. He has agreed to pay back taxes and interest of $1.25 million and forfeit $1.3 million seized from bank accounts.
Nix began the sports bookmaking business about 20 years ago after his six-year minor league career — with stops in Arizona, Texas and California — ended, prosecutors said.
His client list was created from contacts he had made in the sports world and included current and former pro athletes. The agents he hired helped expand that clientele.
The operation eventually began using a Costa Rican business, Sand Island Sports, to create accounts where bets could be placed and tracked and credit limits set, prosecutors said. Bets were placed online or through a call center, though Nix paid winners and kept most of the money from losing bets.
Those who exceeded credit limits were shut off, though exceptions were made, according to court documents.
A sports broadcaster’s account was reactivated in February 2019 after he told Nix he was refinancing his home mortgage to pay off his gambling debts.
In September 2019, Nix increased the credit limit to a baseball player with debts so he could make additional bets.
In November, 2019, Nix’s partner, Edon Kagasoff, told a business manager for a professional basketball player that he would increase the maximum wager he could place to $25,000 per NBA game.
Kagasoff, 44, faces the same conspiracy charge as Nix. He also agreed to plead guilty and forfeit over $3 million in funds seized from his home and bank accounts.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/national/police-student-kills-peer-at-south-carolina-middle-school/
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GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — A 12-year-old student was shot and killed Thursday by another 12-year-old student inside their South Carolina middle school, authorities said.
The shooter was found hiding under a deck at a home not far from Tanglewood Middle School in Greenville about an hour after the shooting and was still armed, Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis said.
The boy is charged with murder, possession of a firearm at a school and possession of a weapon by someone under 18. He was taken to a juvenile prison in Columbia, Lewis said.
“He was hiding. He’s a young man, probably didn’t understand the consequences of what had just happened,” the sheriff said at a news conference. “I don’t think he knew what to do, honestly, except for to leave the school.”
The boys knew each other, but the sheriff said investigators are still trying to figure out what led to the shooting in a front part of the school and how the boy got the gun.
No one else was injured in the shooting.
The family of the boy killed released a statement saying he was Jamari Cortez Bonaparte Jackson and asking people to respect their privacy as they grieve.
“We are all devastated by today’s tragedy. We love Jamari dearly,” the family said in a statement released by community justice group Fighting Injustice Together.
A police officer at the school called in the shooting and requested emergency backup around 12:30 p.m. and more than 200 deputies and other law enforcement officers rushed to the school, Lewis said.
Helicopter footage from WYFF-TV showed dozens of officers walking around outside the school with more than two dozen buses lined up. Some students were slowly boarding the buses.
Everyone on campus, including teachers, were taken to a nearby church.
Greenville County Schools Superintendent Burke Royster said he doesn’t have any idea how the gun ended up at school and a student killed.
“I’m not sure after a full and thorough law enforcement investigation anyone will really know what was going through the mind of that young person who took this rash act,” Royster said.
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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott put in motion abuse investigations into the parents of some transgender kids, child welfare supervisor Randa Mulanax said what happened next strayed from normal protocols.
There was unusual secrecy, with texts and emails discouraged. Allegations about trans kids received elevated status. In Texas, fewer than three in 10 child welfare investigations end with findings that harm likely occurred — classified as “reason to believe” — but the changes looked to Mulanax like these cases would be predetermined from the start.
“It was my understanding that they wanted to be found ‘reason to believe,’” Mulanax told The Associated Press in her first interview since leaving the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, where she worked for six years until quitting last month. “That’s why we were having to figure out a way to staff it up and see how we go about it, since it doesn’t match our policy right now.”
As early as Friday, the Texas Supreme Court could decide whether the state can resume at least nine investigations into the parents of transgender children. They are the first to fall on the radar of child welfare authorities since Texas’ Republican governor in February directed the state to begin handling reports of gender-confirming care for kids as child abuse — the first such order issued in the U.S.
The court fight in Texas comes as Republicans across the country are leaning into policies aimed at transgender Americans, most prominently through bans on transgender athletes on girls sports teams. But Texas is the only state where a GOP governor has greenlighted abuse cases against the parents of transgender children, which several current and departing Texas child welfare workers say was rushed into action and has sunk already low morale at their troubled state agency even deeper.
It is unclear how many Texas child welfare investigators — who are tasked with carrying out Abbott’s directive — have quit in protest. Mulanax is one of at least two state Child Protective Services workers who are leaving and added their names this week to a court brief that urged Texas’ justices to keep the investigations sidelined. Five other investigators who remain at the agency also signed on.
Abbott’s instructions to Texas child welfare officials takes aim at treatments for children that include puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, declined comment Thursday, citing the ongoing lawsuit.
“We’re being so closely monitored on those type of cases that you wouldn’t be able to just say, ‘Oh, nothing to see,’” said Shelby McCowen, a child welfare investigator who called the directive the ‘last straw’ and is quitting after less than a year at the agency.
Texas completed more than 157,000 child welfare investigations in the last fiscal year, according to state data. McCowen said the cases involving parents of transgender families were drawing the same attention as child death investigations, and like Mulanax, said instructions were given not to discuss the cases through state emails or phones — only on personal devices, or face-to-face.
The cases were to be referred to as “special assignments” rather than using a case name or number, according to McCowen. She said upper managers told investigators a survey would be sent out internally to address questions about the directive, but none ever arrived.
“I don’t know how many times they go into the cases, but we’re told that if we get one of these cases, the documentation has to be almost instant because it’s being monitored,” she said.
Abbott’s directive goes against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions filed in statehouses nationwide. On Thursday, President Joe Biden marked Transgender Day of Visibility by denouncing such legislation, saying “the onslaught of anti-transgender state laws attacking you and your families is simply wrong.”
In pressing that the investigations in Texas be allowed to continue, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office wrote that “if DFPS cannot investigate possible child abuse, children may be harmed — perhaps irreversibly — in the interim.”
Mulanax said if the investigations were to resume, she considers it unlikely that any children would be removed from their homes around Texas’ biggest cities, which are controlled by Democrats and where some county officials have already said they would reject such cases.
But in the event of a finding of harm, Mulanax said, putting in place what are usually other safety plans don’t make sense to her either. She said those options typically include required parental supervision or services such as therapy, which Mulanax said some of the families might already be doing.
“It was just a complete betrayal of the department,” she said.
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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A prosecutor urged jurors Friday to convict four men in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, saying they were anti-government extremists “filled with rage” and intent on touching off a civil war in the final weeks of the polarizing 2020 general election.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler summed up the evidence on the 15th day of trial, tracing the group’s secretly recorded words as well as testimony from agents, an extraordinary informant and two star witnesses who pleaded guilty.
Defense attorneys, meanwhile, panned the government’s case: One said the men were turned into “terrorists” by rogue investigators, while another pleaded with jurors to put the brakes on the FBI.
After listening to hours of closing arguments, the weary jury said its deliberations would start Monday.
Kessler began his final remarks by saying there are boundaries when it comes to scorn for people in power.
“If you don’t like your elected representatives, you can vote them out at the ballot box. That’s what makes this country great,” Kessler told the jury. “What we can’t do is kidnap them, kill them or blow them up. That’s also what makes America great.”
Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta are charged with conspiracy to kidnap. Three of them also face charges related to weapons.
The men were arrested in October 2020 amid talk of raising $4,000 for an explosive that could blow up a bridge and stymie police responding to a kidnapping, according to trial evidence. Fox twice traveled to northern Michigan to scout the area; one of those trips included Croft and undercover agents.
Kessler said the group’s motive was to spark the “boogaloo,” a reference to a U.S. civil war, by kidnapping Whitmer.
“That’s what bound these defendants together. … They were filled with rage,” the prosecutor said. “They were paranoid because they knew what they were doing was illegal and were afraid of getting caught.”
The four men deny any scheme to abduct Whitmer from her vacation home, though they clearly were livid with the government and with restrictions imposed by the governor during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty and testified against the men, said the goal was to get Whitmer before the election and create enough chaos to stop Joe Biden from winning the presidency.
Kessler took the jury back to events in summer and fall 2020: a national meeting of militias in Ohio, training in Wisconsin and Michigan, and a September night excursion to see the governor’s property on Birch Lake and inspect the bridge.
The men had constructed a crude “shoot house” in Luther, Michigan, to replicate Whitmer’s home and practiced going in and out with guns, according to evidence.
The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a militia, the Wolverine Watchmen, to maintain his firearm skills. Chappel testified that he was alarmed when he started hearing talk about attacking police and agreed to become an FBI informant.
“Thank God for Dan Chappel. … He went back at great personal risk,” Kessler told the jury.
But jurors got a different view from the defense. Fox’s attorney, Christopher Gibbons, hammered away at Chappel, who was paid roughly $50,000 by the FBI, including expenses, and talked to Fox almost daily for months, recording their conversations.
Gibbons said Fox was a hapless man living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, smoking marijuana whenever possible — and totally incapable of leading the wild plot.
“The plan was utter nonsense. It wasn’t real to Adam Fox. He was LARPing,” Gibbons said, using an acronym for live action role playing. “Adam Fox is usually impaired. He’s just playing his game. … A person cannot accidentally enter into a conspiracy.”
He accused the government of “radicalization.”
“Inviting citizens that they think are susceptible to a theater where they are given full senses of who and what they are, and somebody rattles the chains, somebody beats the drum and gets them all worked up,” Gibbons said.
“That’s unacceptable in America,” he said. “That’s not how it works. They don’t make terrorists so we can arrest them.”
Croft, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, vented on social media about hanging governors for treason, and he was repeatedly recorded talking about violence and explosives. Prosecutors noted that he made four trips by car to the Midwest.
His attorney, however, called it “crazy talk” from a “stoned pirate,” referring to marijuana and Croft’s three-cornered hat, not a plan to attack Whitmer.
“I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States. … This investigation was an embarrassment,” Joshua Blanchard told the jury.
Lawyers for Harris and Caserta emphasized that neither man went to Elk Rapids with Croft and Fox to surveil Whitmer’s home during the training weekend in Luther.
Julia Kelly said Garbin and Kaleb Franks, who both testified against the group, are “liars,” though they pleaded guilty and are facing prison.
The defense used a big screen to complement closing remarks. Some jurors smiled when attorney Michael Hills showed a cartoon bobblehead dog to highlight that Caserta supposedly nodded in agreement to the kidnapping plan but wasn’t recorded as saying he was in.
Whitmer, a Democrat, rarely talks publicly about the plot, though she referred to “surprises” during her term that seemed like “something out of fiction” when she filed for reelection on March 17.
She has blamed former President Donald Trump for fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn right-wing extremists like those charged in the case. Whitmer has said Trump was complicit in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
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Find AP’s full coverage of the Whitmer kidnap plot trial at: https://apnews.com/hub/whitmer-kidnap-plot-trial
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White reported from Detroit.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize on Friday, marking the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history and handing an unexpected win to a nascent group that fueled the union drive.
Warehouse workers cast 2,654 votes — or about 55% — in favor of a union, giving the fledgling Amazon Labor Union enough support to pull off a victory. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which is overseeing the process, 2,131 workers — or 45% — rejected the union bid.
The 67 ballots that were challenged by either Amazon or the ALU were not enough to sway the outcome. Federal labor officials said the results of the count won’t be verified until they process any objections — due by April 8 — that both parties may file.
The victory was an uphill battle for the independent group, made up of former and current workers who lacked official backing from an established union and were out-gunned by the deep-pocketed retail giant. Despite obstacles, organizers believed their grassroots approach was more relatable to workers and could help them overcome where established unions have failed in the past. They were right.
Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon employee who has been leading the ALU in its fight on Staten Island, bounded out of the NLRB building in Brooklyn on Friday with other union organizers, pumping their fists and jumping, chanting “ALU.” They uncorked a bottle of Champagne, and Smalls hailed the victory as a call to arms for other Amazon workers across the sprawling company.
“I hope that everybody’s paying attention now because a lot of people doubted us,” he said.
Smalls hopes the success in New York will embolden workers at other facilities to launch their own organizing campaigns. Even his group will soon shift their attention to a neighboring Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, where a separate union election is scheduled to be held in late April. Organizers believe Friday’s win is going to make it easier for them to win there, too.
Amazon posted a statement on its company website Friday saying that it was evaluating its options following the election.
“We’re disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees,” the post said. “We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election.”
The company did not elaborate but it signaled it might challenge the election based on a lawsuit filed in March by the NLRB, which sought to force Amazon to reinstate a fired employee who was involved in the union drive.
NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado responded to Amazon’s statement by noting that the independent agency has been authorized by Congress to enforce the National Labor Relations Act.
“All NLRB enforcement actions against Amazon have been consistent with that Congressional mandate,” she said.
Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University, said he doesn’t see how workers will benefit from a unionized Amazon facility and called the overall push to unionize companies misguided. He said that Amazon is a “highly disciplined and regimented” business willing to pay premium wages and good benefits, but it also demands tremendous output from its workers who work 10-hour shifts.
“Amazon is not going to change their culture because there is now a union in their midst,” Cohen said. ”“They might be forced to let people work eight hours but those people will make less money.”
The successful union effort on Staten Island stood in contrast to the one launched in Bessemer, Alabama by the more established Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Workers at an Amazon warehouse there appeared to have rejected a union bid but outstanding challenged ballots could change the outcome. The votes were 993-to-875 against the union. A hearing to review 416 challenged ballots is expected to begin in the next few days.
The union campaigns come at a time of widespread labor unrest at many corporations. Workers at more than 140 Starbucks locations around the country, for instance, have requested union elections and several of them have already been successful.
But Amazon has long been considered a top prize for the labor movement given the company’s massive size and impact. The results in Staten Island reverberated all the way to the White House.
“The president was glad to see workers ensure their voices are heard with respect to important workplace decisions,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Friday’s briefing about the vote. “He believes firmly that every worker in every state must have a free and fair choice to join a union and the right to bargain collectively with their employer.”
John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, said the union win was a potential tipping point two years into a pandemic that has shifted the labor landscape.
“We knew that unions were having a moment, but this is much bigger,” Logan said “There is no bigger prize than organizing Amazon.”
He added that the ALU’s win defies traditional thinking that only national unions can take on big companies. But the group might still have a fight ahead of it, according to Erin Hatton, a sociology professor at the University of Buffalo in New York.
“Getting Amazon to the bargaining table will be another feat all together,” Hatton said. “Oftentimes the union will fizzle out because the company doesn’t come to the bargaining table in good faith as they’re obliged to do.”
Rebecca Givan, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, said the victory is just the first step in a likely protracted battle against Amazon.
“It’s clear Amazon will keep fighting, they’re not conceding that workers have a right to organize,” she said. “It looks like the legal questions they’ve raised this afternoon suggest they’re trying to undermine entire authority of NLRB.”
Amazon has pushed back hard in the lead-up to both elections in Staten Island and Bessemer. The retail giant held mandatory meetings, where workers were told unions are a bad idea. The company also launched an anti-union website targeting workers and placed English and Spanish posters across the Staten Island facility. In Bessemer, Amazon has made some changes to but still kept a controversial U.S. Postal Service mailboxthat was key in the NLRB’s decision to invalidate last year’s vote.
Both labor fights faced unique challenges. Alabama, for instance, is a right-to-work state that prohibits a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them.
The union landscape in Alabama is also starkly different from New York. Last year, union members accounted for 22.2% of wage and salary workers in New York, ranked only behind Hawaii, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s more than double the national average of 10.3%. In Alabama, it’s 5.9%.
Amazon workers in Staten Island are seeking longer breaks, paid time off for injured employees and an hourly wage of $30, up from a minimum of just over $18 per hour offered by the company. The estimated average wage for the borough is $41 per hour, according to a similar U.S. Census Bureau analysis of Staten Island’s $85,381 median household income.
Ross Harrison, who voted in favor of organizing on Staten Island, was hopeful that the union could improve things at work, but was unsure about its greater impact.
“Life is a lot bigger than a union,” said Harrison as he reported for his shift Friday. “Amazon’s a great job, and the union is a great opportunity for the people that’s looking forward to it.”
Tinea Greenaway voted against unionizing but said she would reserve judgment for now.
“We can’t take back our votes,” she said. “I’ll give things a chance, but let’s see if they deliver on what they promised.”
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Associated Press staff writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military needs to adjust its planning, training, targeting and use of weapons in order to better avoid widespread civilian deaths and damage such as the devastating 2017 battle to liberate the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State militants, a new RAND report said Thursday.
The report requested by the Pentagon reflects criticism of the military’s airstrike campaign that, according to some estimates, killed more than 1,600 civilians in Raqqa, as the U.S.-led coalition worked to destroy the Islamic State caliphate that wrested control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the report, which lays out a series of recommendations to improve military procedures and strategy, will be used as the department develops its own broader plan to reduce civlian harm.
“No other military works as hard as we do to mitigate civilian harm, and yet we still cause it,” said Kirby. ”We’re going to continue to try to learn from past issues.”
RAND concluded that the battle for Raqqa provided important lessons.
Michael McNerney, lead author of the RAND report, called Raqqa “a cautionary tale about civilian harm in urban combat.” He said it “should serve as an extra incentive to the DoD to strengthen its policies and procedures to mitigate, document and respond to civilian harm.”
The RAND report noted that there has been a wide range of estimated civilian casualties during the seige, but also said it believes that 60%-80% of Raqqa was left uninhabitable by the time the city was liberated in October 2017.
Initially the U.S.-led coalition estimted that it was responsible for 38 incidents involving 240 civilian casualties — including 178 who were killed. A consortium of local Syrian and international groups, including Amnesty International and Airwars, put the number of casualties at a “high estimate” of 1,600, but said that about 774 of them could specifically be “verified” by data as the result of coalition action.
The report makes it clear that several thousand more civilians likely died, based on the number of bodies uncovered by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, but many were probably killed by IS or other fighters on the ground.
“Our report focuses on U.S. actions in Raqqa, but the actions of the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian partners undoubtedly contributed far more to civilian harm and suffering in Syria overall,” McNerney said.
The report noted that the challenges in Raqqa were compounded by limits on the number U.S. troops that could be there, as well as where they could be positioned. U.S. troops on the ground could have provided better targeting and civilian information, including on Islamic State militants’ efforts to use civilians as human shields, the report said.
RAND recommended that the U.S. military provide more extensive training and guidance on the need to avoid civilian harm, and plan and execute operations in ways to achieve those goals. Changes could include improved planning, better assessments of potential collateral damage, increased mission rehearsals, improved intelligence gathering, and more selective use of air strikes and munitions that minimize bomb fragmentation.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/politics/ap-politics/arizona-governor-wont-say-transgender-people-exist/
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PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey refused to say Thursday if transgender people actually exist, twice dodging direct questions on the subject just a day after he signed legislation limiting transgender rights.
The Republican worked instead to defend his signatures on bills that bar transgender girls and women from playing on girls high school and women’s college sports teams and barring gender affirming surgery for anyone under age 18.
When specifically asked if he believed that there “are really transgender people,” the governor paused for several seconds before answering.
“I’m going to ask you to read the legislation and to see that the legislation that we passed was in the spirit of fairness to protect girls sports in competitive situations,” Ducey said, referring to the new law that targets transgender girls who want to play on girls sports teams. “That’s what the legislation is intended to do, and that’s what it does.”
Asked again if he believed there are “actual transgender people,” he again answered slowly and carefully.
“I … am going to respect everyone, and I’m going to respect everyone’s rights. And I’m going to protect female sports. And that’s what the legislation does,” Ducey said.
Ducey’s response was “appalling,” according to the Arizona director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights group that advocates for equality for LGBTQ people. The organization worked to ensure families and transgender young people came to the Capitol to testify against the bills as the Republican-led House and Senate considered them this session.
“It’s quite shocking that he can’t even address trans people or even say that he thinks they exist,” Bridget Sharpe said.
Wednesday’s signing of the two transgender bills and a third that bars abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and is currently unconstitutional put Ducey right in the middle of two top issues national Republicans are highlighting in the runup to November’s midterm elections.
Ducey also signed election legislation that minority Democrats said amounted to voter suppression by requiring longtime Arizonans to be thrown off the voter rolls if they did not prove their citizenship and residence location.
The governor leads the Republican Governors Association, which is charged with helping elect GOP chief executives in U.S. states. He in is the last year of his second term as Arizona governor and term limits bar him from seeking reelection.
The top Democrat in the state House, Rep. Reginald Bolding, called Wednesday “probably one of the darkest days we’ve seen in the history of Arizona.”
“With the stroke of a pen, Gov. Ducey has hurled Arizona backwards to its ugliest past,” Bolding said Wednesday. “And today, he put in jeopardy pregnant people, transgender youth in danger and curtailed voting rights for people of color.”
Social conservative groups and the Arizona Republican Party praised Ducey’s action. The Center for Arizona Policy, whose president shepherded the abortion and women’s sports bills through the Legislature, called it a victory.
“Thank you, Governor Ducey, for taking a bold stand for women athletes, vulnerable children, and the unborn by putting your signature on (the bills) in the face of intense opposition from activists,” Center for Arizona Policy president Cathi Herrod said in a news release she posted on Twitter.
She said the legislation protects the unborn, ensures a level playing field for female athletes and shows that “Arizona will do everything it can to protect vulnerable children struggling with gender confusion” by enacting the surgery ban.
Ducey said the surgery ban protects children from irreversible decisions.
“These are permanent surgeries of reassignment that are irreversible, and those discussions can happen once adulthood is reached,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Association has vowed to sue over the surgery ban. U.S. Supreme Court precedent currently says women have a constitutional right to abortion until about 24 weeks of pregnancy, although it is considering whether to uphold a 15-week ban enacted in Mississippi and may overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision enshrining a woman’s right to choose.
Arizona joins 13 other states in enacting laws preventing transgender girls and women from playing on girls teams. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed a transgender sports ban in his state, saying it would harm transgender girls, but the Legislature overrode the veto. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb also vetoed a sports bill, but lawmakers hope to override his action as well.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers have moved to the brink of shaking hands on a scaled-back bipartisan compromise providing a fresh $10 billion to combat COVID-19, a deal that could set up final congressional approval next week.
The price tag was down from an earlier $15.6 billion agreement between the two parties that collapsed weeks ago after House Democrats rejected cutting unused pandemic aid to states to help pay for it. President Joe Biden requested $22.5 billion in early March. With leaders hoping to move the package through Congress quickly, the lowered cost seemed to reflect both parties’ calculations that agreeing soon to additional savings would be too hard.
The effort, which would finance steps like vaccines, treatments and tests, comes as Bidenand other Democrats have warned the government is running out of moneyto counter the pandemic. At the same time, the more transmissible omicron variant BA.2 has been spreading quickly in the U.S. and abroad.
“We’ve reached an agreement in principle on all the spending and all of the offsets,” Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the lead Republican bargainer, told reporters Thursday, using Washington-speak for savings. “It’s entirely balanced by offsets.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and others were more circumspect.
“We are getting close to a final agreement that would garner bipartisan support,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. He said lawmakers were still finalizing the bill’s components and language, and awaiting a cost estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Senate health committee and another bargainer, said, “I’m hoping,” when asked about Romney’s assessment.
Once clinched, an agreement would represent a semblance of bipartisan cooperation in battling the pandemic that dissolved a year ago, when a far larger, $1.9 trillion measure proposed by the new president cleared Congress with only Democratic votes. That bill was laden with spending to help struggling families, businesses and communities, while this one would be aimed exclusively at public health.
Many Republicans have been willing to go along with the new expenditures but have insisted on paying for them with unspent funds from previous bills Congress has enacted to address the pandemic.
Half the new measure’s $10 billion would be used for treatments, said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who has helped negotiate the agreement. He said top federal health officials would be given wide discretion on spending the rest of it but it would include research and other steps for battling the disease, which has killed around 975,000 Americans and millions across the world.
Romney and others said savings the two parties had agreed to for the new bill would not include the cuts in state assistance that House Democrats opposed. He said some unused funds would be culled from another pandemic program that gives state and local governments funds for grants to local businesses.
Blunt said both sides had also agreed to savings that include pulling back an unspent $2.2 billion for aiding entertainment venues closed during the pandemic and more than $2 billion still available for assisting aviation manufacturing.
Romney said the $10 billion might include $1 billion for vaccines, treatments and other support for countries overseas. Blunt said that figure seemed unresolved. One third of the earlier, $15.6 billion measure had been slated to go abroad.
The lowered figure for assisting other countries encountered opposition in the House, where some Democrats wanted to boost the figure. Epidemiologists have cited the need to vaccinate more people around the world and reduce the virus’ opportunities for spinning off new variants.
“It’s a problem,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters. “It’s a shame.”
Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, said officials were “very hopeful” an agreement would be reached and prodded lawmakers to include funds to help other countries cope with the disease.
“We’re not going to be able to put this pandemic behind us until we stop the spread and proliferation of new variants globally,” Bedingfield said.
Leaders hope Congress can approve the legislation before lawmakers leave for a spring recess after next week.
Republicans have leverage in the Democratic-controlled, 50-50 Senate because 60 votes are needed to pass most major bills. Romney and Blunt both said they believed a finalized package they described would attract significantly more than the 10 GOP votes needed.
Since the pandemic began, Congress has approved more than $5 trillion to address the economic and health crises it produced. Only a small fraction of that has been for public health programs like vaccines.
In an interview earlier Thursday with Punchbowl News, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the measure’s price tag seemed to have fallen to $10 billion because Democrats weren’t agreeing to additional savings.
Minutes later, Schumer took to the Senate floor and mentioned no figures but suggested its size could fall.
“I’m pleading with my Republican colleagues, join us,” Schumer said. “We want more than you do, but we have to get something done. We have to get something done.”
Asked if he thought an agreement could be reached before lawmakers’ recess, McConnell said, “We’ll see. Hope so.”
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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/politics/ap-politics/epa-upholds-trump-era-decision-not-to-regulate-contaminant/
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Upholding a Trump-era environmental policy, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will not regulate a drinking water contaminant that has been linked to brain damage in infants.
The agency said the Trump administration’s decision in 2020 not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water was made with the “best available peer reviewed science.” The chemical is used in rocket fuel and fireworks.
At the time, Trump’s EPA said perchlorate was not found widely enough in drinking water or “at levels of public health concern” to warrant federal regulation. The decision was one of many Trump-era rollbacks or eliminations of existing or pending public health and environmental protections. The Biden administration ordered a review of that decision at the start of his term.
EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox said the agency was “applying the right tools to support public health protections.”
Environmental groups slammed the Biden administration’s decision.
“The Trump EPA gave perchlorate a pass; it was a bad decision then, and it’s a bad decision now,” said Erik Olson of the Natural Resources Defense Council advocacy group. “Tap water across America will remain contaminated by this toxic chemical.”
Perchlorate from runoff contaminates the drinking water of as many as 16 million Americans, the Obama administration said in 2011 when it announced the EPA would for the first time set maximum limits for the chemical compound. It has been used in the U.S. for decades, particularly by the military and defense industries, and is commonly found in munitions, fireworks, matches and signal flares.
Exposure to the compound can damage the development of fetuses and children and cause measurable drops in IQ in newborns, the American Academy of Pediatrics said in 2019, when it called for stringent federal limits. It damages human development by disrupting the functioning of the thyroid gland.
In its 2020 review, the EPA said state-level regulations and cleanup activities at contaminated sites had lowered the health risks posed by the compound. Massachusetts and California, for example, limit perchlorate in drinking water to 2 parts per billion and 6 parts per billion, respectively.
“But the problem is that for the rest of the country the states have not set standards,” said Olson of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He said the compound is in “the top tier of problematic chemicals in our water.”
In the Southwest, perchlorate has been detected in groundwater that entered Lake Mead in Nevada. Manufacturing facilities in Henderson, Nevada, were the source of the chemical. The EPA said cleanup activities at two industrial sites in the state between 2002 and 2006 resulted in reduced levels of perchlorate in data provided since then by Nevada environmental and water agencies.
The EPA said Thursday it was considering other steps besides a federal drinking water limit, such as setting standards at open burning and detonation sites, where severe perchlorate contamination is generated from the burning of hazardous byproducts from weapons manufacturing and munitions. One such site is in Colfax, Louisiana, where environmentalists have long advocated for reform.
But environmental advocates said such measures fall short of what’s needed.
“Simply put, toxic chemicals used in rocket fuel do not belong in our drinking water,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney with Environment America.
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AP reporter Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/environment
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https://www.cenlanow.com/politics/ap-politics/taraji-p-henson-chris-paul-named-to-black-colleges-board/
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is naming actor Taraji P. Henson and the NBA’s Chris Paul to a presidential advisory board on historically Black colleges and universities.
They are among nine men and nine women Biden is appointing to the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the White House announced Thursday.
Several HBCU presidents, the president of United Airlines and the first Black woman to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency are among Biden’s selections.
They will join Tony Allen, the president of Delaware State University, and Glenda Glover, the president of Tennessee State University, who are serving, respectively, as chairperson and vice chairperson of the board, which was established during the Carter administration.
Henson is a Washington, D.C., native who studied acting at Howard University, a historically Black school and the alma mater of Vice President Kamala Harris. Paul is a 12-time NBA All-Star with the Phoenix Suns and two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Besides Allen and Glover, the presidents of five other HBCUs will also join the board. They are Virginia State University, Norfolk State University in Virginia, Alabama State University, Prairie View A&M University in Texas and Dillard University in New Orleans.
Lisa Jackson, who became the EPA’s first Black administrator in the Obama administration, and United Airlines President Brett Hart will also join the board.
Biden also intends to appoint Paige Blake, a 20-year-old junior at Bowie State University, an HBCU in Maryland.
The White House said the administration has committed $5.8 billion in support to these historically Black colleges and universities through a combination of pandemic relief funding, grants and forgiving capital improvement debt.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/science/ap-science/wwf-report-says-online-wildlife-trade-on-rise-in-myanmar/
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BANGKOK (AP) — A report by the World Wildlife Fund shows illegal purchases of wildlife online are growing in Myanmar in a threat both to public health and to endangered species.
Thereport issued Fridayfound that enforcement of bans on such transactions has weakened amid political turmoil following a 2021 military takeover.
The number of such dealings rose 74% over a year earlier to 11,046, nearly all of them involving sales of live animals. For the 173 species traded, 54 are threatened with global extinction, the report said.
Researchers identified 639 Facebook accounts belonging to wildlife traders. The largest online trading group had more than 19,000 members and dozens of posts per week, it said.
The animals and animal parts bought and sold involved elephants, bears and gibbons, Tibetan antelope, critically endangered pangolins and an Asian giant tortoise. The most popular mammals were various species of langurs and monkeys, often bought as pets.
Most of the animals advertised for sale were taken from the wild. They also included civets, which along with pangolins have been identified as potential vectors in the spread of diseases such as SARS and COVID-19.
Shaun Martin, who heads the WWF’s Asia-Pacific regional cybercrime project, said monitoring of the online wildlife trade shows different species being kept close together, sometimes in the same cage.
“With Asia’s track record as a breeding ground for many recent zoonotic diseases, this sharp uptick in online trade of wildlife in Myanmar is extremely concerning,” he said.
The unregulated trade in wild species and resulting interactions between wild species and humans raise the risks of new and possibly vaccine-resistant mutations of illnesses such as the COVID-19 that could evolve undetected in non-human hosts into more dangerous variants of disease, experts say.
COVID-19 is one of manydiseases traced back to animals. The killing and sale of what is known as bushmeat in Africa was thought to be a source for Ebola. Bird flu likely came from chickens at a market in Hong Kong in 1997. Measles is believed to have evolved from a virus that infected cattle.
“Illegal wildlife trade is a serious concern from the point of view of biodiversity preservation and conservation and its potential impact on health security,” said Mary Elizabeth G. Miranda, an expert on zoonotic diseases and illness and CEO of the Field Epidemiology Training Program Alumni Foundation in the Philippines.
Social media and other online platforms have joined a worldwide effort to crack down on the thriving trade in birds, reptiles, mammals and animal parts. In Myanmar, much of the trade in wildlife is through Facebook, which as a member of the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking online has taken action to block or remove accounts of people engaged in such transactions.
But as is true elsewhere, new accounts often pop up just as soon as old ones are shut down, hindering enforcement, the report noted. Easy online access to the animals also is driving up demand, worsening the problem.
Discussions of purchases of protected species often took place in open Facebook groups, suggesting that such dealings remain “largely risk-free,” the report said. Since payments and deliveries often are done using messenger apps, controlling the problem is doubly difficult.
Highlighting the lack of enforcement, people in the illegal wildlife trade in Myanmar often use rudimentary methods of moving the animals and animal products around — with buses being the usual form of transport.
The study by WWF in Myanmar focused on trade online of animals and other creatures inside the country, though there were some imports from neighboring Thailand, mainly of birds such as cockatoos and parrots and of crocodiles, to India.
Some deals might involve animals or parts being sent into China, it said.
The conservation group said it plans future studies to better understand Myanmar’s role in the global trade in endangered species.
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https://www.cenlanow.com/sports/coach-k-builds-blue-devils-into-his-final-final-four-team/
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In one of his tried-and-true motivational speeches, Mike Krzyzewski outlined his four pillars of team building: making everyone feel important, taking ownership in the team, adapting to setbacks and playing with feeling.
Duke perfected the first three to help Coach K reach his 13th and most amazing Final Four. Next comes the “feeling” part.
Now that the record-setting, 75-year-old coach is in New Orleans, he knows he must walk a fine line between enjoying the moment and letting it overwhelm both him and his team.
“I’ve always thought that shared emotion is the best,” Krzyzewski said Thursday, as his team settled in for its run at the coach’s sixth national title.
The Blue Devils (32-6) meet archrival North Carolina on Saturday in a national semifinal matchup plucked straight from a screenwriters’ script.
When Duke lost two games over the span of a week in early March, starting with the 94-81 setback to the Tar Heels in Krzyzewski’s final home game, the thought he might be coaching at the Final Four this weekend felt like a dream only a Blue Devils fan could believe.
But once the NCAA Tournament began, Duke started playing better. Wins over Cal-State Fullerton and Michigan State propelled the Blue Devils into the Sweet 16. There, they knocked off Texas Tech, then Arkansas. Krzyzewski passed John Wooden by qualifying for his record 13th Final Four. On Saturday he looks to improve on a record he already holds, by notching a 1,203rd career victory.
One of Krzyzewski’s keys to the turnaround was convincing his players that the rest of this season was about them, not him.
“This is our season, too,” Duke’s Wendell Moore Jr., said before the team’s win over Michigan State.
In many ways, Coach K’s final team is fulfilling the vision he shared back in 2015 when, fresh off a championship after his 12th run to the Final Four, he gave the keynote address to a gathering of U.S. Olympic athletes and administrators in Colorado Springs.
“You are not paying rent. You’re here, it’s yours,” Krzyzewski told the rapt audience as he moved through his four pillars of team building.
He talked about his first Olympic experience, back in 1992, when he was an assistant to Chuck Daly on the Dream Team. Krzyzewski was coming off back-to-back titles with Duke and thought he was a “hot ticket.”
His eyes were opened when none other than Michael Jordan approached him after a practice one day. Krzyzewski braced for the inevitable smack talk from the best player in the game, one who happened to have played at North Carolina. Instead, Jordan asked if the coach could work with him on some of his offensive moves.
In his speech, Krzyzewski said he realized something after that workout.
“It’s like a totem pole,” the coach said. “Michael Jordan was at the top of the totem pole. And I was near the bottom.”
But, Coach K said, ”Michael Jordan had a horizontal totem pole, where everybody was important.”
Though there certainly is a pecking order on this year’s version of the Blue Devils — freshmen Paolo Banchero and AJ Griffin look like NBA lottery picks — at least four players have scored double figures in each of Duke’s four NCAA victories. Five players average in double figures for the Blue Devils this season.
In his news conference Thursday, the coach spoke about the players taking ownership in their fate as the season wore on.
“When you go into competition, if you haven’t worked, you have a hard time trusting yourself,” he said. “But if you’ve worked, you can trust, but you also own it. You own it more.”
In his keynote address, Krzyzewski said his first two building blocks lead to the third, which is adaptability. In 2022, it played out after the losses to North Carolina, then one week later to Virginia Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, forced Krzyzewski to take a long look in the mirror.
“I just had a good meeting with myself. I said that I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to help in some way, and part of it was my approach with them,” Krzyzewski said before Duke’s win over Arkansas in the Elite Eight.
Coach K described using the first five minutes of halftime during the Michigan State game to do something different by “just pull(ing) out a chair, and I sit with them for about five minutes and just, ‘OK, here’s where we’re at, and just talk to them.’”
Duke overcame a late, five-point deficit in that one, and now, Krzyzewski has led his team across his proverbial bridge that only a few lucky teams cross. They made it to college basketball’s biggest stage.
In his motivational speech, Krzyzewski said one method of getting a room full of superstars to “feel” the mission they were on at the Barcelona Olympics each night was to play the soulful version of the national anthem sung by Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles.
The promise, the U.S. coaches told the Dream Team, was that they would hear that song twice on the day of the title game — once beforehand, then again while they were standing on the podium receiving their gold medals.
The song that closes out March Madness is “One Shining Moment.” Whether Duke will bask in confetti when that song plays at the end of the title game is a big part of the drama that will unfold between now and Monday night.
Whether or not it happens, everyone at Duke is feeling it at this point — even if the coach insists he’s been focusing on basketball.
“I didn’t do this season to have a storybook,” Krzyzewski said. “I did it because I wanted to coach one more year and I wanted to have a good succession plan for our program. And we’ve won 32 games, and my guys have been terrific.”
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More AP college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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CHICAGO (AP) — DeMar DeRozan did everything he could to carry the Chicago Bulls to a much-needed victory.
The only glitch came in the closing seconds of regulation. That’s when he missed the potential go-ahead free throw after making his first two to tie it.
In the end, it didn’t matter much.
DeRozan scored a season-high 50 points and Chicago rallied to beat the Los Angeles Clippers 135-130 in overtime Thursday night.
DeRozan finished two points shy of his career high. The five-time All-Star scored 17 in the fourth quarter and made up for his missed foul shot by scoring 10 more in overtime.
“It felt like a bomb went off inside my head,” he said. “Just frustrated with myself.”
DeRozan shrugged off the missed free throw and helped the Bulls come away with a win after falling behind by 16 in the third period.
Chicago, which led the Eastern Conference for a large portion of the season, moved a half-game ahead of sixth-place Toronto with five remaining. The Bulls are trying to stay in the top six in order to avoid the play-in round in the postseason.
Nikola Vucevic added 22 points and 14 rebounds. Zach LaVine scored 21 as the Bulls won for the third time in four games.
Reggie Jackson led Los Angeles with 34 points.
Paul George scored 22 in his second game back after missing three months because of a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. He played 32 minutes and sat out overtime.
Marcus Morris Sr. added 20 points and Nicolas Batum scored 17. But the Clippers — eighth in the West — lost for the sixth time in seven games.
Clippers coach Tyronn Lue noticed a difference in the Bulls’ defense as Chicago rallied.
“They picked their defensive intensity up,” he said. “I thought they did a good job with that. We took some bad shots, I thought, during that stretch instead of just continuing to keep playing the way we were playing.”
IN OT
Chicago led by four in overtime when Luke Kennard hit a 3 for Los Angeles with 1:12 left. Patrick Williams answered with one of his own to make it 129-125 with just under a minute remaining.
Jackson then hit two foul shots for the Clippers before DeRozan converted two to make it 131-127.
Williams rebounded a missed drive by Jackson, leading to two more free throws by DeRozan that made it a six-point game. Jackson nailed a 3 to cut it to 133-130 with five seconds left.
DeRozan caught the inbounds pass following a timeout by the Bulls and drove for a dunk, sealing a wild win for Chicago.
BULLS RALLY
The Clippers saw their lead shrink to four early in the fourth and got it back up to 11 with about five minutes remaining before the Bulls made another push.
Los Angeles was leading 118-115 with seven seconds left in regulation when Terance Mann got called for a foul away from the ball on an inbounds play following a timeout. That led to a free throw for DeRozan that cut it to two and possession for Chicago.
DeRozan then got fouled by George on a 3-point attempt with 3.5 seconds remaining. He hit the first two foul shots to tie it at 118 and missed the third, sending the game to overtime.
TIP-INS
Clippers: Batum (sore left ankle) and Morris (sore left knee) played well after being listed as questionable.
Bulls: DeRozan has 2,019 points, the second time he’s scored 2,000 in a season. He is the first Bulls player to do it since Derrick Rose had 2,026 points in his 2010-11 MVP season. … G Lonzo Ball (left knee) will start building up to sprinting at full speed and resume cutting after a 10-day pause because of discomfort, coach Billy Donovan said. How Ball responds will determine when — or if — he returns this season. Ball had surgery in January to repair a torn meniscus. “I have not gotten anything from the doctors that said to me like, ‘Listen, there’s just not enough time. We can’t get him back.’ They’re gonna do everything they can to try to get him back,” Donovan said. Chicago closes the regular season at Minnesota on April 10. … Williams said he was late for the morning shootaround and got fined by the team. He then played by far a season-high 36:49 in his seventh game back after being sidelined since late October because of torn ligaments in his left wrist.
UP NEXT
Clippers: Visit Milwaukee on Friday.
Bulls: Host Miami on Saturday.
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More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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https://www.cenlanow.com/sports/geaux-nation/20-lsu-softball-set-for-showdown-vs-8-kentucky/
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BATON ROUGE, La. – Another top 10 opponent is on the horizon as No. 20/21 LSU (22-12, 3-3 SEC) challenges No. 8/12 Kentucky (22-8, 3-3 SEC) in a three-game series April 1-3 at Tiger Park.
Friday and Sunday’s games will begin at 6 and noon CT and will be streamed on SECN+ with Lyn Rollins and Yvette Girouard on the call. Saturday’s 5 p.m. game will air on ESPN with Courtney Lyle and Danielle Lawrie calling the action. Patrick Wright will call each game on the LSU Sports Radio Network on 107.3 FM in the Baton Rouge area.
Saturday, April 2 is the annual Strikeout Ovarian Cancer Game. The SEC softball community will be united on Saturday when all 13 teams participate in the “All for Alex” campaign to honor the legacy of Mississippi State’s Alex Wilcox. Teams will wear teal or teal accents on Saturday as the entire league recognizes her impact on the softball community nationwide and in the fight against ovarian cancer.
Prior to the game Saturday will be the Geaux Teal Walk beginning at 9:30 a.m. CT starting from Tiger Park. After the walk, food, music, and fun will be provided at Tiger Park. Fans can register to participate in the walk and make donations at www.geauxteal.com.
LSU is coming off a 2-1 series loss at Arkansas last weekend. The Tigers are hitting .299 this season (No. 9 in SEC) behind 260 hits, 204 runs and 191 RBIs. In SEC play, LSU is batting .296 (No. 2 in SEC) with 48 hits, 35 runs, and 34 RBIs. Defensively this season the Tigers have a 2.43 ERA (No. 4 in SEC) and hold their opponents’ batting average to .219 behind 187 strikeouts in 224.2 innings pitched.
Sophomore Ciara Briggs leads LSU with a .417 batting average and ranks No. 3 in the league with45 hits and 35 runs scored. Sophomore Danieca Coffey has a .411 batting average and ranks No. 5 in the NCAA with 46 hits this season. Junior Georgia Clark has a .301 batting average and leads the SEC with 44 RBIs, a mark that stands at No. 3 in the NCAA. Clark’s 11 home runs pace the Tigers offense and is the third most in the conference. Sophomore Taylor Pleasants continues to trend upwards and is batting .412 in SEC games only with seven hits and three home runs. In the last 10 games, Pleasants is hitting .444 and has a .852 slugging percentage.
Junior Ali Kilponen is 11-4 in the circle this season and has a 2.06 ERA with 82 strikeouts (No. 7 in SEC) in 91.2 innings pitched. Kilponen has four shutouts, on no-hitter, nine complete games, and one save this season. Senior utility player Shelbi Sunseri has a 5-4 record on the rubber with a 2.38 ERA and 44 strikeouts. She also has one save and one shutout, while hitting .260 with 20 hits, nine home runs, and 24 RBIs. Sunseri ranks No. 3 all-time with 42 career home runs as an LSU Tiger. True freshman Raelin Chaffin is 4-1 this season and has logged 32 strikeouts, walked nine batters, and has two complete games and one shutout in eight appearances this season. Chaffin has a 3.15 ERA over 33.1 innings pitched.
THE LINEUP
LSU leads Kentucky in the all-time series 44-16. The Tigers have won four of the last five meetings and are currently on a two-game winning streak in the series.
The Wildcats are coming off a 3-0 loss to Ohio State after taking the three-game series, 2-1 against then-ranked No. 18 Auburn in Lexington, Ky. Kentucky opened its SEC slate on the road at then No. 3 Alabama where they lost the series 2-1 but one the final game of the series, 9-4. UK ranks third in the SEC with a .347 batting average and 281 hits, and fourth with 197 RBIs. The Wildcats have a 3.01 ERA (No. 9 in SEC) and has 127 strikeouts this season.
Senior Kayla Kowalik leads the Wildcats’ bats with a .455 average and 45 hits and has a team-high 11 steals. Kowalik also contributes 18 RBIs with two home runs. Sophomore Erin Coffel follows with a .429 batting average and leads the team with 33 RBIs and matches senior Renee Abernathy with a team-high eight home runs. Freshman Alexia Lacatena is 6-2 in the circle with a team-low 2.83 ERA and has 23 strikeouts in 34.2 innings pitched. Junior Miranda Stoddard is 5-3 on the year and in 50.1 innings pitched she has a 3.62 ERA, with 26 strikeouts and just seven walks. Sophomore Stephanie Schoono (3-2) has a team-high 28 strikeouts and two shutouts in 27.2 innings pitched. Schoono has a 4.30 ERA and has allowed 21 hits, 20 runs, and 24 walks this season.
ON DECK
LSU continues SEC play with a three-game series at Texas A&M April 8-10 at Dell Diamond in College Station, Texas.
(Preview via LSU Athletics)
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Auburn Tigers (17-8, 3-3 SEC) at No. 12 LSU Tigers (18-7, 3-3 SEC)
DATES/TIMES
Thursday, March 31 @ 6 p.m. CT
Friday, April 1 @ 6:30 p.m. CT
Saturday, April 2 @ 1 p.m. CT
STADIUM
Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field (10,326)
RANKINGS
• LSU – No. 12 USA Today; No. 13 D1 Baseball; No. 15 Perfect Game; No. 17 Collegiate Baseball
• AU – unranked
RADIO
• LSU Sports Radio Network affiliates
• Live audio at www.LSUsports.net/live; Live stats at www.LSUstats.com
TV/ONLINE
• Thursday’s game will be televised live on the SEC Network
• All three games may be viewed live on SEC Network +
LSU SERIES RECORD VS. AUBURN
LSU has a 108-76 advantage over Auburn in a series that began in 1907 … LSU has won 20 of its last 26 games versus Auburn, including five wins in the past seven meetings … last season, LSU captured two of three games at Auburn’s Plainsman Park … LSU has won seven of the last eight and 15 of the last 22 SEC regular-season series between the clubs, dating back to 1999 … Auburn’s lone series win in the past eight series came in 2018, when it won two of three games at Auburn.
QUOTING COACH JAY JOHNSON
“Auburn is hitting home runs and hitting with power; they have a balanced lineup and a very good roster. They have a good, balanced pitching staff, so we’ll have to be sharp in terms of taking quality at-bats and taking care of the baseball, and our pitchers will have to execute. We’re excited for this challenge; our guys want to continue to work and improve on what they’ve accomplished so far, and this weekend provides an opportunity to do that.”
ABOUT THE LSU TIGERS
• LSU posted an SEC series victory over seventh-ranked Florida last weekend, marking the Tigers’ first series win in Gainesville since 2012 … LSU handed Florida its first SEC series loss at home since May 2019 … the Tigers defeated UL Monroe, 15-4, on Tuesday night for their third straight win … LSU, which is 3-3 in the SEC, is in a four-way tie for second place in the Western Division, two games behind Arkansas (5-1) … LSU has scored 42 runs on 33 hits in its past three games with eight doubles and 10 home runs … the Tigers’ pitching staff has limited opponents to 17 hits and a .175 cumulative batting average over the past three contests.
• Designated hitter Brayden Jobert is hitting .500 (7-for-14) in the Tigers’ last three games with a remarkable five homers and 16 RBI … he collected seven RBI in Tuesday’s win over UL Monroe, becoming the first LSU player to reach the 7-RBI mark since March 17, 2017, when Antoine Duplantis recorded seven RBI versus Georgia.
• Jobert led LSU to a series win last weekend at No. 7 Florida by batting .444 (4-for-9) in two games against the Gators with three homers, five runs scored and nine RBI … Jobert’s two-run homer in the fourth inning on Sunday broke a scoreless tie and ignited a four-run LSU outburst … Jobert later highlighted a seven-run sixth inning with a three-run dinger that gave LSU a 10-0 lead in the Tigers’ 11-2 win, as he collected a career-best five RBI in the game … his first homer of the weekend came on Saturday, when his three-run blast was the signature blow of a six-run third inning … Jobert also added an RBI single on Saturday in the ninth inning of the Tigers’ 16-4 win.
• Leftfielder Gavin Dugas is hitting .444 (4-for-9) during the Tigers’ three-game win streak with two doubles, two homers, four RBI and seven runs scored.
• Freshman right-hander Grant Taylor pitched LSU to a series-clinching win on Sunday over seventh-ranked Florida in Gainesville with the longest outing of his career … Taylor entered the game in the fourth inning in relief of fellow true freshman Samuel Dutton and pitched the rest of the game, limiting the Gators to two run on four hits in 5.1 innings with two walks and a career-best six strikeouts … beginning with the final out of the seventh inning, Taylor retired seven of the eight Florida hitters he faced to end the game … Taylor’s effort helped LSU hand Florida its first SEC series loss at home since May 2019.
• LSU’s 16-4 win over Florida on Saturday marked the Tigers’ second-largest margin of victory in a game played at Gainesville … the largest margin of victory for LSU in Gainesville was 14 runs when the Tigers defeated the Gators, 18-4, on March 1, 1986 … LSU outscored the Gators, 29-13, an outhit Florida, 29-17, in last weekend’s series … the Tigers pounded out 14 extra-base hits in three games, including six doubles and eight home runs.
• Infielder Jordan Thompson batted .417 (5-for-12) in the Florida series with two doubles, four runs and one RBI … Thompson started Games 2 and 3 at second base, switching positions with Cade Doughty, the former second baseman who started at shortstop on Saturday and Sunday … catcher Hayden Travinski hit his first two homers of the season during the series, and centerfielder Dylan Crews homered and collected four RBI … first baseman Tre’ Morgan launched his first homer of the year on Sunday, and he drove in three runs.
• Senior right-hander Ma’Khail Hilliard defeated Florida on Saturday, blanking the Gators through the first five innings of his outing … Hilliard worked 5.2 innings, limiting Florida to four runs on five hits with no walks and seven strikeouts … freshman right-hander Samuel Dutton made his first career collegiate start on Sunday and shut out Florida in a 3.2-inning outing, allowing just one hit with three walks and one strikeout … the LSU pitching staff limited Florida to a .183 team batting average over the weekend, allowing just 17 hits in 93 at-bats.
ABOUT THE AUBURN TIGERS
• Auburn is 3-3 in the SEC, tied with LSU, Texas A&M and Mississippi State for second place in the SEC West … Auburn won two of three games at Texas A&M last weekend.
• Auburn is No. 3 in the SEC with a .309 team batting average, and it is No. 5 in the league in team ERA (3.77) … Auburn is led at the plate by first baseman Sonny DiChiara, who is batting .455 with 10 doubles, seven homers and 21 RBI … DiChiara leads the SEC in batting average, on-base percentage (.608) and slugging percentage (.924).
• Infielder Blake Rambusch is hitting .394 with six doubles, one triple, two homers and 21 RBI, and outfielder Kason Howell is batting .337 with 10 doubles, one triple, two homers, and 22 RBI … as a team, Auburn has 26 homers on the year and has recorded 17 steals in 24 attempts.
(Preview via LSU Athletics)
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NEW YORK (AP) — Giannis Antetokounmpo loved the fact that he became Milwaukee’s career scoring leader on a 3-pointer, so nobody can say he’s just a dunker anymore.
Otherwise, there was no reason for celebrating after passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
“When I’m done we can talk about it, but now there’s no time,” Antetokoumpo said, looking ahead to Friday’s game against the Clippers. “There’s things that have to be done.”
Antetokounmpo’s record-setting 3-pointer forced overtime, and he made two free throws in the final seconds to give the Bucks a 120-119 victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday night.
The defending NBA champions clinched a return to the postseason with the win, in which Antetokounmpo had 44 points, 14 rebounds and six assists. Jrue Holiday added 19 points and Khris Middleton had 16 before being ejected for a flagrant foul midway through the third quarter.
Kevin Durant had 26 points, 11 assists and seven rebounds for the Nets, but missed a 3-pointer that would have won it. Kyrie Irving scored 25 points and Bruce Brown had 23.
Just as in the memorable end to their second-round series last summer, when the Bucks overcame 48 points from Durant — most ever in a Game 7 — overtime was needed to determine a winner. Milwaukee took that one 115-111 and pulled it out Thursday behind a second straight 40-point game from Antetokounmpo.
The Greek Freak has been dismissed, famously by James Harden, as a great athlete but not necessarily a skilled basketball player. But the NBA Finals MVP has become a confident shooter and his teammates are confident in him.
“We just fight, compete, compete and know that obviously it helps to have that big fellow on your team that can literally break a game open for you and make plays,” Bucks swingman Wesley Matthews said.
Antetokounmpo came into the game 39 points behind Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA’s career scoring leader who had 14,211 points after beginning his career in Milwaukee. Antetokounmpo passed him with 18 seconds left to knot the game at 110.
The Bucks and Nets could be headed for a first-round matchup this year. The Bucks are a half-game behind Miami for the top spot in the Eastern Conference, while the Nets are tied for eighth and can likely hope for nothing better than the No. 7 or 8 seed by coming out of the play-in tournament.
The Bucks led by four in overtime but the Nets rallied to take a 119-118 lead when Durant was fouled on a 3-point attempt and made all three shots with 8.7 seconds left. Antetokounmpo quickly rushed into the lane and was fouled by Nic Claxton. He made both free throws and finished 15 of 19 from the line.
The Nets led 99-96 with 5 1/2 minutes left in regulation when Antetokounmpo re-entered the game but threw a bad pass that Brown grabbed and appeared to be on his way to an uncontested layup. But Middleton raced back and grabbed Brown’s upper arm as he was in the air, sending him to a hard landing. Referees reviewed the replay and informed a stunned Middleton that he received the harsher Flagrant 2 and was ejected.
Crew chief John Goble said the play was ruled a Flagrant 2 because a “high potential for injury.”
Brown made the free throws, Irving scored and the Nets built a 108-99 lead when Durant threw down Irving’s lob pass with 3:52 left. But they managed only two more points in regulation.
“It was just one of those games that got funky at the end, but we’ve just got to finish it out in regulation,” Irving said.
TIP-INS
Bucks: Coach Mike Budenholzer coached in Brooklyn for the first time this season, having missed the Bucks’ 121-109 victory on Jan. 7 while in the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
Nets: Coach Steve Nash said he isn’t closely watching the results of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have tumbled all the way to seventh in the East. If they remain behind Toronto, the removes the possibility of having to play a play-in game in Canada, where the unvaccinated Irving is unable to travel.
“I’m not averse to seeing how they’re doing and where they’re at, but it’s not something that I’m, like I said the other day, refreshing my feed daily,” Nash said.
THE GREEK’S KNEE
Though Antetokounmpo appeared on the injury report with right knee soreness, Budenholzer said it’s nothing beyond what the two-time NBA MVP has been dealing with for years.
“I think it’s in a good place,” Budenholzer said. “I don’t think it’s anything that we’re concerned about, but there’s a daily attention and effort that it takes from the sports performance team and him and what he does to be his best. It’s impressive.”
UP NEXT
Bucks: Host the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday.
Nets: Visit Atlanta on Saturday.
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More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) — Jennifer Kupcho shared the lead Thursday in The Chevron Championship in her second — and last — start at Mission Hills, the tree-lined layout she has quickly fallen in love with.
“Honestly, I think it’s just being comfortable on this golf course,” Kupcho said. “I get here and I just, I feel comfortable. I love this place.”
Kupcho shot a 6-under 66 in sunny and calm morning conditions to join fellow early starter Minjee Lee atop the leaderboard after the first round of the final edition of the major championship at Mission Hills.
“I really like the layout of this golf course, the beautiful shape that it’s in every year,” Kupcho said. “It always is so fun to be here, so just taking advantage of how much I like the course and the atmosphere.”
Unable to find a sponsor willing to remain at Mission Hills, the tournament that started in 1972 as the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle and became a major in 1983 is shifting to Houston next year under a deal with Chevron.
“Definitely sad,” Carolina Masson said after a 68. “I understand why we’re doing it, but I’m just trying to soak in every second being out here. The golf course is playing as good as ever.”
Defending champion Patty Tavatanakit was a stroke back, finishing late in the afternoon in gusting wind.
“Really proud,” Tavatanakit said. “I feel like I really got my momentum going, was really present today.”
Kupcho birdied Nos. 11-14 to get to 8 under, then bogeyed the next two holes. She birdied four of the first five and finished with nine birdies and three bogeys.
“You really need to hit fairways on a major golf course, so that was like my biggest thing today, to hit a bunch of fairways,” Kupcho said. “That really set me up for all my birdies.”
Winless on the LPGA Tour, Kupcho won the 2018 NCAA individual title for Wake Forest and took the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur the following year after passing up a spot that week at Mission Hills.
The 24-year-old from Colorado arrived early in the desert after missing the cut Friday in Carlsbad. “I just used the two days that I did have on the weekend to come here and practice,” she said.
Lee birdied all four par 5s in a bogey-free round on the mountain-framed course.
“It was perfect,” Lee said. “Not like a breath of wind when we played. Maybe just a tiny bit. But conditions are great. Putting greens are rolling real nice. I don’t think you can get better than that.”
The 25-year-old Australian, ranked fourth in the world, won the Evian Championship last summer for her first major title and sixth LPGA Tour victory.
“I know I have one under my belt, but I do want a little bit more,” Lee said. “I just think I have a little bit more belief in myself and my game, so I can be a little bit more comfortable just hitting the shots.”
Third-ranked Lydia Ko, the 2015 champion, was at 68 with Masson, Anna Nordqvist, Georgia Hall, Gabriela Ruffels and Pajaree Anannarukarn. Lexi Thompson, the 2014 winner, was another stroke back with Sarah Schmelzel, Annie Park, Lauren Stephenson, Pauline Roussin-Bouchard and Hinako Shibuno.
Thompson marveled at course she first played as a 14-year-old amateur.
“I’ve never seen it this good,” Thompson said. “It always surprises me every year. It’s always better. The greens are amazing. I’m one to putt and usually aim at things along the way, and there is just not an imperfection on greens to aim at. It’s a good problem.”
Schmelzel is making her fourth appearance.
“This place is really special,” Schmelzel said. “I feel like growing up watching the LPGA Tour, these are holes that I remember. These are holes that I wanted to be on one day.”
Park played as a single in the first group in the afternoon off the first tee.
“It was kind of weird the first couple holes just playing by myself,” Park said. “It was really peaceful.”
Top-ranked Jin Young Ko, the 2019 winner, shot a 74 to end her under-par streak at 34 rounds. Her run of at least one birdie ended at 53 rounds.
“I was hitting lots of great shots, but my putting wasn’t good,” she said. “I couldn’t see the break as much or speed. Everything was wrong.”
Ally Ewing and Moriya Jutanugarn had an eventful finish on the par-5 18th when the sprinklers on the green turned on at about 6 p.m. as Ewing was preparing for a 4-foot birdie putt. After a short delay, she holed out for a 70.
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More AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Todd Bowles earned his way in the NFL on the defensive side of the ball.
He’s not afraid to talk offense.
The new head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won’t be shy about sharing his ideas with offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich and quarterback Tom Brady.
“I’m the head coach. I get to do whatever I want,” Bowles said Thursday, a day after taking over because Bruce Arians moved into a front-office role. “I’m not going to call plays. I understand that. But I have input on how defenses are trying to attack them. I have input on certain situations going into the half, two-minute or third downs or going for it or not going for it and those types of things. That’s my job and I have the freedom to do that. At the same time, I understand and respect Byron and Tom a great deal and they know that. I think we’re off to a good start from a communication standpoint and we just have to keep building.”
Bowles gets a second opportunity after going 24-40 in four seasons with the New York Jets from 2015 through 2018. He also was an interim head coach in Miami for three games in 2011. He becomes only the 12th minority to get a second head coaching opportunity since 1963, according to data in the NFL’s 2022 Diversity and Inclusion Report.
“When I first started in New York, you try to do things the right way and you don’t do it your way, you end up having regret. So I’m going to do it my way,” Bowles said.
Arians joined Bowles at his introductory news conference and learned the Buccaneers will induct him into the team’s Ring of Honor this season. Brady also was in attendance.
Arians, who turns 70 this year, said his decision to step down as coach was about “succession” and making sure he turned the team over to Bowles with an opportunity to succeed. When Brady unretired on March 13, Arians realized the time was right.
“Succession is way important to me,” Arians said. “This has been my dream for a long time. Guys that know me, they knew I wanted one of my guys to take over.”
Arians dismissed reports of friction with Brady, saying it “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Bowles and Arians have a relationship that dates more than 40 years. Bowles played safety for Arians at Temple in the 1980s and was defensive coordinator on Arians’ staff in Arizona before joining him in Tampa.
“He is the most influential coaching figure and father figure that I have ever had in this league,” Bowles said, adding that it was a bittersweet feeling when he got the news from Arians.
Bowles made it clear he has a different personality than Arians.
“The only thing we have in common is our bald heads,” Bowles said. “He smokes, I don’t. He drinks, I don’t. So, we never got in each other’s way.”
Arians led the Buccaneers to their second Super Bowl title in 2020 and an NFC South title in 2021. With Brady back, Bowles takes over a team that has championship aspirations.
“Good players make good coaches so you always want to have good players,” Bowles said. “I’m not going to apologize for inheriting a talented team. I’ve had less success with a team. It’s different to the fact that I don’t think I can go into this trying to be Bruce. I would fail miserably if I tried. … I can be me.
“I understand a lot of things I’ve learned from my coaching experience, especially from him so I’m going to take that approach. The one thing I know is I know I can coach football players regardless if you’re an All-Pro or a rookie. All of your players want to be coached and help them get better. I can help people get better and I’m going to use my approach.”
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More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://apnews.com/hub/pro-32 and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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