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https://www.wjhl.com/news/regional/tennessee/firefighters-video-shows-intensity-of-sevier-county-wildfires-amid-flame-swirling-embers/
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A firefighter helping in Wears Valley on Wednesday captured intense video showing how strong winds affected efforts to contain the wildfire on Hatcher Mountain.
Tom Lucas is a firefighter with Sevierville Fire Department who volunteers with Walden’s Creek Volunteer Fire Department.
“There were many moments of extreme intensity due to high levels of changing wind speeds and conditions.” said Lucas, “One minute, things were pretty calm and out of nowhere, wind driven fire would make you seek shelter.”
The wildfire spread quickly. As of Thursday, 3,700 acres have burned and more than 100 structures have been damaged. The blaze is about 30% contained, fire officials said. An evacuation was ordered for parts of Wears Valley, Walden’s Creek and near Pigeon Forge.
The video shows strong wind pushing the fire across a roadway as sparks and flames spiral in the air.
“All of the firefighters had to be very vigilant of their surroundings and keep their head on a swivel. Things would change in a moment’s notice,” he said.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/regional/tennessee/rainbow-brings-comfort-to-evacuated-wears-valley-family/
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A Wears Valley family found a glimmer of hope through the chaos Thursday morning. As a wildfire threatened their home Wednesday night in Wears Valley, Tara Grissom and her family had to evacuate.
They found shelter for the night at a hotel in Townsend. When she opened the door Thursday morning she was met with a rainbow stretched across the sky.
“As scary and stressful as these fires are, God, put his love and promises in the sky,” Grissom said of the moment.
Wildfires have burned more than 3,700 acres and at least 100 structures have been damaged or destroyed as of Thursday afternoon.
Perrin Anderson, Sevier County assistant mayor for governmental affairs, said the Wears Valley wildfire is 30% contained as of Thursday afternoon. Mayor Larry Waters said no fatalities or missing persons have been reported.
More than 200 fire personnel are working in the area to combat the wildfire.
To help the victims of the wildfire, Sevier County leaders have relaunched Mountain Tough, which was created in the aftermath of the Gatlinburg wildfires.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/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.wjhl.com/sports/high-school-sports/greeneville-highs-delana-debusk-signs-with-tusculum-basketball/
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Greeneville, Tenn. (WJHL) — Greeneville High School multi-sport athlete Delana Debusk signed with Tusculum University on Thursday to continue her basketball career.
After leading her team to the Tennessee state tournament, Debusk was named first-team All-District in the Twin Lakes Conference earlier this year.
The 5-foot-4 point guard will join nine other Tusculum guards on the Pioneers’ hardware next winter.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/a-closer-look-meth-makes-devastating-comeback-as-opioid-epidemic-subsides/
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TRI-CITIES, Tn/Va. (WJHL) – Law enforcement nationwide and here in the Tri-Cities region are at war with methamphetamine.
The powerful drug has made a devastating and alarming comeback in the past few years.
WATCH Part One – A Rise in Meth:
“It’s overwhelming. It’s every single day we are signing search warrants,” said Judge Stacy Street of the First Judicial District criminal courts.
Data from the 2021 Tennessee Annual Overdose Report shows more Tennesseans are dying from an overdose involving illicit drugs than prescription opioids.
Deaths due to stimulants, including meth, saw a sharp rise in 2019.
Why has meth seen this rapid resurgence in our region? It’s as simple as supply and demand.
After the federal government cracked down on access to prescription medications nationwide, effectively cooling off the opioid epidemic in the past decade, dealers saw a new opportunity for illicit drugs.
Washington County, Tennessee Sheriff Keith Sexton says our region is a target.
“When questioning them, the drug dealer would say, ‘we can get twice the money here than we can get in other cities,'” said Sheriff Sexton.
Sexton reports of 30 drug arrests the Washington County Sheriff’s Office has made since December – 19 were for methamphetamine.
“There is so much money involved and they have an almost endless market for it,” said Judge Street.
Street says meth, affordable and cheap, quickly became the drug of choice in our region once opioids became harder to get.
“This is a whole different game and a whole lot more users. I think it’s because the opioid epidemic got so many people that would not otherwise use drugs addicted. These drug dealers are trying to fill that void,” said Judge Street.
“When an addict can’t get one drug, they are gonna go to the next drug that is readily available. Drug cartels, they know this,” said Sexton.
The Tennessee Department of Health reports from 2016 to 2020 there was a nearly 600 percent increase statewide in overdose deaths related to meth alone.
In Northeast Tennessee, TDH data shows Sullivan and Washington Counties ranked highest for overdose deaths in 2020.
U.S. Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger of Kingsport, Tenn. says the problem is only getting worse.
“We’re gonna lose a whole generation to this overdose effect. That not only affects families, it tears them apart,” said Rep. Harshbarger.
The meth epidemic of today has evolved. Now, it’s not common to see meth labs that cops can go bust. It has become more complicated to track down the source.
“This is a different meth than you saw made in mobile homes, cars and hotel rooms. This is 100 percent, pure methamphetamine coming from Mexico,” said Judge Street.
Street reports last week they intercepted five pounds of pure crystal meth in one case in Johnson City – worth about 50 thousand dollars.
“Now, you don’t have those meth labs because it is synthesized, it’s being brought in from California and from Mexico. And there is nothing to stop them right now,” said Rep. Harshbarger.
Harshbarger believes the solution starts at the Southern border.
“All this stems from having a wide open border. The roads that were created to build the wall are now being used to traffic illicit substances by the cartels,” said Harshbarger. “Every state is a border state because the border between Mexico and the U.S. is wide open.”
Overdose deaths can also be linked to meth laced with fentanyl – another substance coming across the border.
Street says this makes the meth epidemic even of today even more lethal as dealers will cut meth with fentanyl to generate more quantity and more profit.
“The problem is, the users think they are getting methamphetamine but they are getting methamphetamine laced with fentanyl,” said Street. “In its purest form, fentanyl is an elephant tranquillizer. Just a few grains can kill someone.”
Solving the problem? “It’s addiction we have to address.”
Local law enforcement agencies are hoping for more than just locking up those addicted.
“I would like to see more emphasis on addiction, helping these people as they leave the detention center so they don’t repeat offend,” said Sheriff Sexton.
Judge Street agrees.
“When they come out, if they don’t have the tools to deal with that addiction, then that cycle is going to repeat itself,” said Street.
WATCH Part Two – Addressing addiction:
They say treating the root cause of addiction and helping our region heal one person at a time from this drug crisis is how we start to solve it.
“You have to address the emerging threat that it is all over the country,” said Rep. Harshbarger.
The Congresswoman took those words to Washington D.C. where President Joe Biden signed into law her bipartisan legislation, the “Methamphetamine Response Act of 2021.”
“The policemen and the law enforcement agencies are begging us to do something. Now, Congress has stepped up in this way on one drug, we need to get tough on everything else,” said the Congresswoman.
The bill acknowledges meth as an emerging threat and requires the Office of National Drug Control Policy to develop a national response plan to combat the rising use of meth within 90 days.
“We need to go after the source, go after the cartels, be tough,” said Harshbarger.
“One step behind”
“The trend is, we are always one step behind whatever the drug of choice is at the time,” said Judge Street.
Law enforcement agencies agree – solutions should be focused on the root problem of addiction and mental health, not any one drug in particular.
“If we stop the meth trade, there’s gonna be something else come through,” said Sheriff Sexton. “The answer to the drug problem is not to just throw every drug dealer and person addicted to drugs in jail. They do their time, get out and it’s a vicious cycle.”
WCSO has three officers assigned to narcotics – Sexton says it will never be enough to “police” away this problem.
“We can’t jail everybody unless we want to build jails as big as city blocks,” said Judge Street. “What else can we do? It’s things like recovery court.”
The drug recovery courts of Northeast Tennessee’s First Judicial District take inmates who qualify out of jail – putting them instead on an intensive path to recovery.
Judge Street touts a recovery rate of around 50 to 70 percent for those who graduate the program, which even received national honors for its success in March.
“It’s a spit in the ocean. But that one person you save has children, a momma, a daddy, a circle of people that it affects,” said Street.
Frontier Health is on the frontlines of the addiction epidemic, offering a wide array of programs for those battling all kinds of substances.
“We really as a community have to work on the why they are doing it, not how, not what they are doing,” said Chad Duncan, who covers intensive outpatient programming for Frontier Health.
Duncan says they have noticed the boom in meth and more people are seeking treatment for addiction now than ever.
It’s a crisis he says is a community problem – one that requires more access to affordable housing and transportation, common barriers to those addicted or people being released from jail.
“We’re not gonna treat our way out of it. Frontier Health isn’t going to fix this. We’ll help the community fix it and help those who need help, but the community has got to own it. It’s gonna be done through a lot of different programs, a lot of different community organizations,” said Duncan.
“The best shot we’ve got at breaking the cycle.”
In Northeast Tennessee, the creation of a regional addiction treatment facility could be a ‘game changer.’ Multiple localities are pledging millions of dollars in settlement money from an opioid lawsuit totaling 21 million dollars to build it. The proposed location for the facility is in Roan Mountain, Tenn.
“This may be able to get us ahead of the curve a little bit. It’s not focusing on just opioids or meth, it is addiction that we have to address. That’s the best shot we’ve got at breaking the cycle,” said Judge Street.
The recovery facility would have 185 to 200 beds with treatment for both addiction and mental health crises.
“We’re not gonna win the war. But man, we can win some battles. We can do it if everybody gets behind this,” said Street.
“This could be a model for the rest of the country,” said Rep. Harshbarger.
Similar to the recovery courts, the regional treatment center would focus on those incarcerated – giving them the tools needed to break the cycle of addiction.
This would include recovery programming, access to education and even the opportunity to receive certification for a trade.
“We have to let these people know they can do anything. This is not what you are sentenced to, a life of addiction. Let’s give them hope,” said Harshbarger.
Duncan agrees, he tells people who are addicted to simply start the process – and keep going.
“All you’ve got to do is take one step. Then another step and another step. It’s lots of little things. If you take those little steps, eventually you turn around and you’ve come a long way,” said Duncan.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/1-milligan-athlete-dead-2-injured-after-accident-involving-vehicle-in-virginia/
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MILLIGAN, Tenn. (WJHL) – Milligan University says a member of the university’s men’s cross country/track and field team was killed and two more injured in an accident involving a vehicle Thursday evening in Virginia.
According to the university, sophomore Eli Cramer of Murfreesboro succumbed to his injuries.
Seniors Alex Mortimer from Lexington, Kentucky and Eli Baldy from Knoxville were injured.
The university says Mortimer is currently undergoing treatment and Baldy has been treated and released.
According to Milligan, the accident happened while the three were running near Williamsburg, Virginia.
This is a developing story. Look for updates on WJHL.com.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/former-etsu-softball-player-hires-law-firm-over-coaching-concerns/
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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — One of the former ETSU softball players who has accused the current coaching staff of mistreating student-athletes has hired a law firm in an effort to prompt changes within the university’s softball program.
According to a release, former player Saxon Radcliffe has turned to The Bosch Law Firm of Knoxville in hopes of resolving the issues.
Saxon is one of at least two former ETSU players who have made allegations on social media against ETSU’s athletics department and first-year softball head coach Belinda Hendrix and her husband, assistant coach Jimmy Hendrix.
On Twitter, Saxon said Belinda and Jimmy Hendrix mentally and verbally abused players and accused the athletics department of not keeping her complaints confidential, which led to her being retaliated against by the coaches. She also said the athletics department had continuously chosen to ignore issues raised.
“Ms. Radcliffe was, until very recently, a promising student-athlete on the softball team at East Tennessee State University,” The Bosch Law Firm said in a release. “After enduring repeated emotional and verbal abuse by her coaches, Ms. Radcliffe took the brave step of reporting this unacceptable conduct to appropriate members of the ETSU Athletics Department. Shortly thereafter, she was dismissed from the team by her coaches in November 2021, without explanation.”
In a statement to News Channel 11, ETSU Director of Athletics Scott Carter said the law firm contacted the university several months ago.
“We have been responding to requests for information from the Bosch Law Firm regarding allegations against the softball team since the firm first reached out to us in December 2021,” Carter said. “As we outlined in earlier statements this week, an investigation into the issues they have mentioned is underway.”
The law firm said it interviewed other former and current ETSU softball team members, players and staff members from the college where the current ETSU coaches previously coached, and “other knowledgeable people within the regional softball community.”
“The emotional and verbal abuse uncovered is inappropriate by any professional standards,” the release states. “Further, the circumstances of at least one of the ETSU softball coaches’ departure, readily known to many, raises the question of whether there was a lack of due diligence in the decision to hire these coaches by the Athletics Department at ETSU.”
Jimmy Hendrix resigned from his role at Chipola College in March 2021 citing “personal reasons,” according to News Channel 11’s sister station in Panama City Beach, Florida. Belinda Hendrix left Chipola in July of that year after 18 seasons to head the ETSU program.
Carter said the university adequately evaluated Jimmy Hendrix before hiring him.
“I can confirm that — as with any employee we hire — we thoroughly vetted Mr. Hendrix completing both background checks and character and employment references,” Carter said.
The Bosch Law Firm said it hopes to discuss the matter with ETSU representatives “in an effort to find an appropriate resolution in order to provide a safe, educational and enriching environment for all members of the ETSU’s softball community. It is Saxon’s hope that her and her family’s efforts will bring a positive change to the toxic culture permeating the ETSU softball program.”
News Channel 11 has reached out to Saxon regarding her complaints but attempts to contact her have been unsuccessful. In its release, the law firm said Saxon “will make no further comment at this time.”
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/loud-boom-caught-on-camera-in-indiana-believed-to-be-meteor-explosion/
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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.wjhl.com/wjhl-weather/cloudy-and-breezy-overnight-with-scattered-showers/
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The Storm Team 11 Forecast calls for cloudy skies overnight with a 50% chance of scattered showers. The low will be near 39 degrees.
We start Friday with cloudy skies and a slight chance of morning rain followed by afternoon sunshine. It will be chilly with a high of 57 degrees.
Partly cloudy skies are forecast for Friday night with a low near 32 degrees Frost will be possible across the area.
Saturday will give way to a mix of sun and clouds with a 30% chance of rain late. The high will be 63 degrees. We could see some passing clouds and a few scattered showers late Saturday night into Sunday morning. Partly cloudy skies are forecast for Sunday afternoon. The low Saturday night will dip to 39 degrees with a high on Sunday near 63 degrees.
Partly cloudy skies are forecast for Sunday night into Monday. The low Sunday night will be near 37 with a high on Monday near 70 degrees.
Tuesday will be cloudy and warmer with a 60% chance of rain. The high will be near 72 degrees.
Showers and possible thunderstorms are forecast for Tuesday night into Wednesday. The low temperature Tuesday night will be 52 with a high on Wednesday near 74 degrees. The chance of rain on Wednesday is 60%.
Scattered showers will be possible Wednesday night with a low near 50 degrees.
Look for a mix of sun and clouds Thursday with a 40% chance of rain. The high will be 68 degrees.
Have a great night!
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/local-red-cross-responds-to-sevier-county-wildfire/
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PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. (WJHL) — Members of the local American Red Cross are among those who have responded to the Wears Valley wildfire.
Behind the scenes, the American Red Cross of Northeast Tennessee is making sure the goods coming in go to where they are needed.
“I’ve been coordinating with a lot of the different agencies, TEMA, the local agencies,” said Larry Nelson with the Red Cross. “We don’t want to overwhelm with too much of one thing. We want to spread it out so there’s enough for everyone.”
Nelson said 120 people have taken refuge at the Red Cross shelter at the Pigeon Forge Community Center.
With over 100 structures impacted, Nelson says the Red Cross will be staying in town.
Community support has been so overwhelming, the Sevier County Rescue Squad said firefighters have enough and they will now be sending supplies to victims.
“We’re going to shut down incoming, and divert everything down there that way it can start getting to the victims,” said Dustin Sutton of the rescue squad.
For those in the Tri-Cities wanting to help, a donation center at the Sevier County Fairgrounds will open on Friday. But Nelson says the best way to help is by donating online.
“That way they can get what is needed versus trying to sort through what is brought in and donated,” Nelson said.
Those looking to support the firefighters and those displaced can go to MountainTough.org.
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https://www.wjhl.com/sports/college-sports-2/etsu-womens-head-coach-simon-harris-searching-high-and-low-for-talent/
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Johnson City, TN — Spring and this upcoming summer will be a busy one for second-year ETSU women’s head coach Simon Harris because he has 8-9 positions to fill on the 2022-23 basketball team.
Coach Harris like everyone else has been searching high and low for new talent (ok maybe not that low).
The women’s basketball team got hit hard by the transfer portal, ETSU lost Amaya Adams, Mykia Dowdell, Carly Hooks, Jamir Hutson, and Jalia Roberts.
That was on top of Jasmine Sanders and Kaia Upton being dismissed from the team earlier in the year…The Lady Bucs finished 6-22 on the season and 5-9 in the conference. Head coach Harris says recruiting is going very very well and we’ll enjoy the people he’s bringing in.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/jcpd-one-rider-dead-after-motorcycle-crash/
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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) – The Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) was called to a crash involving two motorcycles and a pickup truck on Thursday.
The crash occurred around 5:00 p.m. at the intersection of East Fairview Avenue and Roosevelt Street.
Both motorcycle drivers were taken to the Johnson City Medical Center for treatment. One of the motorcycle drivers was pronounced dead upon arriving at the hospital.
According to the release from the JCPD, another driver was released from the scene with non-threatening injuries. The occupants of the pickup were also cleared on the scene.
The identity of the driver who died is being withheld pending the notification of next-of-kin and an investigation is underway.
Johnson City’s Traffic Crash Reconstruction Team was called to the scene of the crash to investigate, according to the release.
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https://www.wjhl.com/sports/college-sports-2/new-etsu-football-coach-george-quarles-discusses-quarterback-race/
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Johnson City, TN — The ETSU Buccaneers wrapped up its fifth of 15 sessions for spring practice Wednesday night and the new man in charge Head Coach George Quarles had a moment to reflect on the first five practices as a head coach and what he is looking forward to the rest of the spring.
The Bucs have participated in five total practices so far at William B. Greene, Jr. Stadium, with the last three being fully-padded practices which gives the coach a chance to see each position in full padding and full speed.
Competition at each position is something that Coach Quarles is excited about, specifically the competition for the man behind the center.
“We want there to be an open competition and we would love for the best one to step up and earn it and not just because you played last year Tyler has done great Brock has done great and Cade has down great so those 3 guys have gotten the bulk of the reps and those will probably be the ones we probably decide on so that will be a huge key for the Bucs next year.”
The Bucs will have 10 more spring practices, culminating with the Ballad Health Blue-Gold Spring Game on Thursday, April 21.
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https://www.wjhl.com/sports/high-school-sports/abingdon-spots-lebanon-5-runs-and-comes-back-to-win/
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Abingdon, VA — Good night for baseball as a great crowd turned out for this game and the Pioneers who won the 2-A state championship last year led 5-0. That’s when the Falcons bats came alive Cole Lambert hits a dribble up the middle that would allow Ethan Gibson to slide in safely.
Then Beckett Dotson rips this shot into rightfield that would bring home a limping Ethan Gibson for another score and the Falcons were not finished Landon Greer rips this pitch to the wall in right-centerfield…Elijah Parks and Jett Humphreys come home to score it was 5-4…
Abingdon score 11 unanswered and won 11-5
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https://www.wjhl.com/sports/high-school-sports/greeneville-rolls-over-unicoi-co-in-the-eastman-softball-classic/
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Kingsport, TN — In the Eastman Classic in Kingsport Unicoi Co. was facing Greeneville, Blue Devils have won this thing 7 times. However, the Greene Devils had reason to smile leading 2-0 they would tack on one more when this pitch gets away from the catcher to make it 3-0.
In the same inning, Kaley Bradley hits a hard grounder to 3rd where it was not fielded and that brings home, Kyla Jobe, it was 4-0. The big shot came from the bat of Ashlyn Rachon with bases loaded, she hits this triple that just gets under the glove of the left fielder, 3 runs would come home to score
Greeneville wins 12-0
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https://www.wjhl.com/wjhl-weather/forecast/storm-team-11-a-wet-and-cool-start-to-april/
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Cooler Friday
Light showers will move through the area this morning followed by clearing conditions midday into mid-afternoon.
Temperatures will remain on the cool side with highs only in the mid 50s in the Tri-Cities, 40s in the mountains.
Freeze Warning in effect tonight as temperatures drop into the low 30s in the Tri-Cities, upper 20s in the higher elevations.
Seasonal Weekend
Saturday starts off sunny and dry while clouds roll in during the afternoon along with a slight chance for evening showers.
Sunday looks brighter during the afternoon with highs in the low 60s.
Next Weather Maker
Widespread rain returns next Tuesday along with a better chance of seeing higher amounts of rain. Given the recent fires around the region, the potential rainfall should have a more significant impact on the effort to contain and put out the wildfires.
DOWNLOAD WJHL WEATHER APP
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https://www.wjhl.com/abctricities/pledge-of-allegiance/daily-pledge-hunter-elementary-sro-clyde-garland-faculty-staff-2/
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The Pledge of Allegiance is an expression of patriotism and commitment to our country. The Bachman Bernard Family is proud to present the Daily Pledge from our local schools.
*This video was shot prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The Pledge of Allegiance is an expression of patriotism and commitment to our country. The Bachman Bernard Family is proud to present the Daily Pledge from our local schools.
*This video was shot prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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https://www.wjhl.com/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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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian troops left the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site early Friday after returning control to the Ukrainians, authorities said, as residents in parts of eastern Ukraine braced for renewed attacks and awaited blocked supplies of food and other humanitarian relief.
Ukraine’s state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it could not independently confirm the exposure claim.
In what would be the first attack of its kind, if confirmed, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region accused Ukraine of flying helicopter gunships across the border on Friday morning and striking an oil depot.
The depot run by Russian energy giant Rosneft is located about 35 kilometers (21 miles) north of the Ukraine-Russia border. The helicopter attack set the facility ablaze, and two people were injured, according to a Telegram post by Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
“The fire at the oil depot occurred as a result of an airstrike from two helicopters of the armed forces of Ukraine, which entered the territory of Russia at a low altitude,” the governor wrote on the messaging app.
It was not immediately possible to verify the claim or images that were circulating on social media of the alleged attack. Russia has reported shelling from Ukraine before, including an incident last week that killed a military chaplain, but not an incursion of its airspace.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces have retaken the villages of Sloboda and Lukashivka, which are south of the besieged northern city of Chernihiv and located along one of the main supply routes between the city and Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, according to Britain’s Defense Ministry.
Ukraine has also continued to make successful but limited counterattacks to the east and northeast of Kyiv, the ministry said.
Russian forces have subjected both Chernihiv and Kyiv to continued air and ground-launched missile strikes despite Moscow officials saying Tuesday they planned to reduce military activity in those areas.
Western officials said there were growing indications Russia was using its talk of de-escalation in Ukraine as cover to regroup, resupply its forces and redeploy them for a stepped-up offensive in the eastern part of the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russian withdrawals from the north and center of the country were just a military tactic to build up strength for new attacks in the southeast.
“We know their intentions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation. “We know that they are moving away from those areas where we hit them in order to focus on other, very important ones where it may be difficult for us.”
“There will be battles ahead,” he added.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators planned to resume talks via video on Friday, five weeks into a conflict that has left thousands dead and driven more than 4 million refugees from Ukraine. There seemed little faith that the two sides would find agreement on their respective demands any time soon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said conditions weren’t yet “ripe” for a cease-fire and he wasn’t ready for a meeting with Zelenskyy until the negotiators do more work, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said after a Thursday telephone conversation with the Russian leader.
Following a plea from Zelenskyy when he addressed Australian Parliament on Thursday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that his country would send mine-resistant armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.
He said Friday the four-wheel drive Bushmaster vehicles, specifically requested by Zelenskyy, would be flown to Europe but did not say how many would be delivered 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.
In the encircled strategic port city of Mariupol, Russian forces on Thursday blocked a convoy of 45 buses attempting to evacuate people after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area. Only 631 people were able to get out of the city in private cars, according to the Ukrainian government.
Russian forces also seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies in a dozen buses that were trying to make it to Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war. Tens of thousands of residents managed to get out in the past few weeks by way of humanitarian corridors, reducing the population from a prewar 430,000 to an estimated 100,000 by last week. But continued Russian attacks have repeatedly thwarted aid and evacuation convoys.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been informed by Ukraine that the Russians forces at Chernobyl had transferred control of the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster to the Ukrainians in writing. The last Russian troops left Chernobyl early Friday, the Ukrainian government agency responsible for the exclusion zone said.
Energoatom gave no details on the condition of the soldiers it said were exposed to radiation and did not say how many were affected. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin, and the IAEA said it was seeking more information.
Russian forces seized the Chernobyl site in the opening stages of the Feb. 24 invasion, raising fears that they would cause damage or disruption that could spread radiation. The workforce at the site oversees the safe storage of spent fuel rods and the concrete-entombed ruins of the reactor that exploded in 1986.
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert with the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said it “seems unlikely” a large number of troops would develop severe radiation illness, but it was impossible to know for sure without more details.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi was in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on Friday for talks with senior officials there about nuclear issues in Ukraine.
In addition to concerns about Chernobyl, nine of Ukraine’s 15 operational reactors are currently in use, including two at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya facility, the IAEA said.
Early this week, the Russians said they would significantly scale back military operations in areas around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to increase trust between the two sides and help negotiations along.
But in the Kyiv suburbs, regional governor Oleksandr Palviuk said on social media Thursday that Russian forces shelled Irpin and Makariv and that there were battles around Hostomel. Pavliuk said there were Ukrainian counterattacks and some Russian withdrawals around the suburb of Brovary to the east.
At a Ukrainian military checkpoint outside Kyiv, soldiers and officers said they don’t believe Russian forces have given up on the capital.
“What does it mean, significantly scaling down combat actions in the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas?” asked Brig. Gen. Valeriy Embakov. “Does it mean there will be 100 missiles instead of 200 missiles launched on Kyiv or something else?”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said intelligence indicates Russia is not scaling back its military operations in Ukraine but is instead trying to regroup, resupply its forces and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas.
“Russia has repeatedly lied about its intentions,” Stoltenberg said. At the same time, he said, pressure is being kept up on Kyiv and other cities, and “we can expect additional offensive actions bringing even more suffering.”
The Donbas is the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014. In the past few days, the Kremlin, in a seeming shift in its war aims, said that its “main goal” now is gaining control of the Donbas, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including Mariupol.
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(KTLA) – Betty Reid Soskin, the country’s oldest active ranger in the National Park Service, retired Thursday at 100 years old.
Over the past decade and a half, Soskin has shared with parkgoers her personal experiences and the efforts of women from diverse backgrounds who worked on the World War II Home Front. She has led tours and public programs, sharing her experiences and observations at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond.
Soskin, who celebrated her 100th birthday in September, spent her last day providing an interpretive program to the public and visiting with coworkers, according to a statement from the Park Service.
“To be a part of helping to mark the place where that dramatic trajectory of my own life, combined with others of my generation, will influence the future by the footprints we’ve left behind has been incredible,” the ranger said.
Soskin’s interpretive programs at the Richmond park have illuminated the histories of African Americans and other people of color, and her efforts demonstrate how her work has impacted the way the Park Service conveys such history to audiences across the U.S., the agency said.
“Betty has made a profound impact on the National Park Service and the way we carry out our mission,” Park Service Director Chuck Sams said in a written statement. “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.”
In the early 2000s, Soskin participated in scoping meetings with the City of Richmond and the National Park Service to develop the general management plan for Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park. She worked with the park service on a grant funded by Pacific Gas & Electric to uncover untold stories of African Americans on the home front during WWII, which led to a temporary position working with the service at the age of 84.
“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. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”
In 2011, Soskin became a permanent National Park Service employee and has since been leading public programs and sharing her personal remembrances and observations at the park visitor center.
Later, in 2015, she was selected by the park service to participate in a national tree-lighting ceremony in at the White House and to introduce President Barack Obama in the nationwide telecast.
Soskin suffered a stroke in 2019 and spent months in physical therapy. She returned to work in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
The century-old ranger grew up in a Cajun-Creole, African American family that settled in Oakland after a 1927 flood devastated New Orleans, according to her biography. Her family “followed the pattern set by the black railroad workers who discovered the West Coast while serving as sleeping car porters, waiters, and chefs for the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads: they settled at the western end of their run where life might be less impacted by southern hostility.”
In a 2015 interview with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Soskin said her great-grandmother was born into slavery in 1846 and lived to be 102.
During World War II, Soskin worked in a segregated union hall as a file clerk. In 1945, she and her husband, Mel Reid, founded one of the first Black-owned music stores, Reid’s Records, which closed in 2019.
Soskin has also held positions as staff to a Berkeley city council member and as a field representative serving West Contra Costa County for two members of the California State Assembly.
Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park will celebrate Betty’s retirement on April 16. Details can be found on the park’s website.
Learn more about Soskin’s story and watch her recorded programs.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/regional/tennessee/wildfires-in-sevier-county-what-to-know-about-the-hatcher-mountain-millstone-gap-fires/
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SEVIER COUNTY, Tenn. (WATE) — Efforts to contain two wildfires burning in Sevier County continued overnight into Friday morning, which is when airdrops are expected to resume, according to the Sevier County Emergency Management Agency.
While rain is forecasted for the Smokies Friday, WATE 6 Storm Team meteorologists say the showers will be light (10%) along with lighter breezes. More than 200 fire personnel are working the fires along with helicopters deployed to help shower the area with much-needed water.
Here’s what we know as of Friday morning about both the Hatcher Mountain-Indigo Lane fire, which began mid-morning Wednesday and the Millstone Gap fire, which began sometime after.
Friday morning, the Tennessee Department of Transportation reminded drivers that Wears Valley Road is still closed from Waldens Creek to Valley View. TDOT crews are in the area and assisting in fueling the response vehicles as well as traffic control.
Wears Valley wildfire: Hatcher Mountain-Indigo Lane fire
- At last update Thursday night, the wildfire in the Wears Valley community was 3,739 acres in size and was 45% contained.
- The fire has affected more than 100 structures in the area.
- At least 11,000 homes have been evacuated since the start of the fire.
- Evacuation orders remain in place for homes within an area designated by Sevier County EMA; an evacuation map has been shared by the agency.
- No other injuries – apart from two firefighters and one resident – have been reported as of late Thursday.
- Five fire engines (4 county agency; 1 state agency) were lost during fire response, according to officials during a press conference Thursday morning.
- One of six UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters deployed by the Tennessee National Guard to help bring more water to the area was forced to make an emergency landing Thursday due to engine failure; the crew was uninjured.
- Sevier County Schools are closed Friday due to the wildfires.
Sevier/Blount County line: Millstone Gap fire
- Sevier County officials initially reported a fire off of Millstone Gap Road in Seymour on Thursday.
- The location of the fire is near the Sevier-Blount County line.
- As of late Thursday, the Millstone Gap fire had grown to 650 acres in size.
Donations and how to help
Sevier County officials say the Sevier County Fairgrounds will be open to receive donations for Sevier County residents affected by the wildfires beginning Friday. Here’s the schedule for hours of operation:
- Friday, April 1 2022 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Saturday, April 2, 2022 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
- Sunday, April 3, 2022 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Starting Monday, Sevier County Fairgrounds will be open to those affected by the wildfires, who are in need of assistance. Sevier County says this is beginning on Monday, April 4, 2022 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. They will also be accepting donations during regular operating hours.
Hours of operation
- Monday – Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Saturday, 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
- Sunday, 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
For more information about helping those in need who have been affected by the fire, visit www.mountaintough.org
MountainTough.org, a website created to assist victims of the 2016 Gatlinburg wildfires, has been reactivated. Waters said the site will be updated Thursday with more information on how to assist those affected or donate to first responders. Shelters has been set up for evacuees at the Pigeon Forge Community Center, the Sevierville Convention Center, and Seymour Heights Christian Church.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/crime/vsp-arrests-driver-involved-in-crash-that-killed-milligan-runner-injured-4-more/
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Editor’s Note: VSP clarified that while five teammates were transported to the hospital, only three of the five were hit by the vehicle. The agency originally reported that the vehicle hit all five members.
(WJHL) — Virginia State Police (VSP) arrested a man in connection to a crash that killed Milligan University cross country/track runner Eli Cramer and injured two other runners.
A release from VSP stated the agency arrested Jose Efrain Hernandez Mancia, 26, of Williamsburg, Virginia, after he reportedly fled the scene of the original incident on Williamsburg Pottery Road and crashed into the median on Route 199.
According to police, Mancia was driving a Toyota Scion when he allegedly hit three of five male athletes with Milligan’s cross country/track team just after 6 p.m. on Thursday.
VSP charged Mancia for driving under the influence, DUI-involuntary manslaughter, one felony count of hit and run, reckless driving, DUI-maiming and DUI-refusal to submit a breath/blood sample.
Police transported Mancia to the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail. It is unclear whether he was given bond.
The VSP Chesapeake Division Crash Reconstruction Team, VSP Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Commonwealth’s Attorney continue to investigate the incident.
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ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. (WJHL) — Milligan University officials on Friday provided an update to an incident that killed a 20-year-old cross country/track runner and left two more injured.
At 10:30 a.m., university leaders addressed the incident, which occurred just after 6 p.m. on Thursday in York County, Virginia.
News Channel 11 has a crew at the university’s press conference.
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KINGSPORT, Tenn. (WJHL) — Bays Mountain Park and Planetarium took to Facebook on Friday to announce that although the power is out at park facilities, explorers can still visit to enjoy the nature and hiking trails.
The outage caused the closure of the Nature Center, which includes the planetarium, according to park officials.
The park’s power has been out since Thursday, March 31, and Bays Mountain leaders predict it will return by Saturday.
The circumstances surrounding the power outage remain unclear at this time.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/international/china-reopens-1-city-as-shanghai-lockdown-enters-2nd-phase/
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BEIJING (AP) — Residents of eastern Shanghai hoping to emerge from a four-day lockdown got some bad news Thursday night: Some will be confined to their homes for at least 10 more days.
It was the latest wrinkle in the lockdown of China’s largest city as it struggles to eliminate an omicron-driven coronavirus outbreak under China’s zero-COVID policy. Shanghai’s 26 million residents were initially told the eastern part of the city would be locked down for mass testing over four days, followed by a similar exercise in the west.
The city announced new restrictions nine hours before the lockdown of the east was scheduled to end at 5 a.m. Friday. It was unclear how many people would have to stay in their homes beyond that. Meanwhile, the four-day lockdown of the western part of Shanghai was set to start at 3 a.m.
There was a bit of good news elsewhere in China in the country’s largest COVID-19 outbreak since the initial one in early 2020 that devastated the city of Wuhan and other parts of Hubei province. Authorities announced the lifting of a citywide lockdown in the province that has been hardest hit.
Residents of Jilin will be able to move about freely starting Friday for the first time in more than three weeks, state broadcaster CCTV said, citing a city notice. They will be required to wear masks and, when indoors, stay 1 meter (3 feet) apart. Public gatherings in parks and squares are prohibited.
The spread of COVID-19 has been brought under control in Jilin but not in the rest of Jilin province, officials said at a news conference. Some progress has been made in Changchun, the provincial capital and an auto manufacturing hub that has been locked down since March 11.
By far, most of the cases in the ongoing outbreak have been in Jilin province, which borders North Korea in China’s industrial northeast. Smaller outbreaks have popped up across the country, including Shanghai, the country’s financial capital.
Ma Chunlei, a senior Shanghai official, acknowledged shortcomings in the city’s response. Authorities have rushed to bolster food deliveries to the city after panic buying stripped store shelves of necessities.
“We didn’t prepare sufficiently enough,” Ma said. “We sincerely accept the criticisms from the public and are making efforts to improve it.”
He spoke before the new rules for Pudong, the half of Shanghai on the east side of the Huangpu River, were announced Thursday night. People living in a building where a positive case had been found will be required to stay home for 10 more days. Residents of other buildings in the same residential compound will be confined for three more days.
People living in the surrounding neighborhood of a positive case will face less restrictive limits. They may be allowed out to shop for necessities, but only for a limited time on certain days.
The two-phase lockdown of Shanghai, being carried out over eight days, has shaken global markets worried about the possible economic impact. China’s manufacturing activity fell to a five-month low in March, a monthly survey showed Thursday, as lockdowns and other restrictions forced factories to suspend production.
German automaker BMW’s plants in Shenyang, a northeastern city in Liaoning province, have been closed for more than a week because of pandemic controls.
About 16 million people will be tested during the lockdown in Puxi on the west side of the river in Shanghai. Residents are not allowed to leave their neighborhoods or housing compounds during the four-day period, with groceries or meals delivered to their complexes.
China on Thursday reported 8,559 new cases in the previous 24-hour period, of which 6,720 had no symptoms. The proportion of asymptomatic cases has been higher than in previous outbreaks, particularly in Shanghai. About 100 of the new cases were imported ones among people who had recently arrived from abroad.
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Associated Press researchers Chen Si in Shanghai and Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.
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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Ethiopia’s Supreme Court has upheld the order to release on bail journalist Amir Aman Kiyaro, who has been imprisoned for four months without charges, rejecting a police effort to block his bail.
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the appeal by police against bail that had been granted by a lower court earlier this week for Kiyaro, an Ethiopian video journalist accredited to The Associated Press. That ruling said Kiyaro should be freed on bailwhile prosecutors determine whether or not to press charges against him.
The bail of 60,000 Ethiopian birr, about $1,170, has been paid, but Kiyaro remained in custody Thursday while police processed the bail paperwork before his expected release, according to his lawyer.
Kiyaro, 30, was detained on Nov. 28 in Addis Ababa under the country’s war-related state of emergency powers.
Kiyaro is accused of “serving the purposes” of what the government has classified as a terrorist group by interviewing its officials, according to reports by Ethiopian state media, which cited federal police. Local journalist Thomas Engida was arrested at the same time and faces similar charges. Ethiopia’s Supreme Court also ruled that Engida should be released on bail.
If the journalists are found guilty of violating Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law or the state of emergency law, they could face sentences of seven to 15 years behind bars, federal police inspector Tesfaye Olani has told state media.
Despite the granting of bail after four months of police investigation and detention, it still remains uncertain whether prosecutors will proceed to press charges against Kiyaro. The state of emergency was lifted in Februaryas the government cited changing conditions in the deadly conflict between Ethiopian forces and those of the northern Tigray region.
“We are relieved that journalist Amir Aman Kiyaro has again been granted bail,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, said. “However, Ethiopian authorities continue their investigation against him. We urge the Ethiopian authorities to drop their baseless investigation against Amir, an independent journalist targeted for his work.”
Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders urged Ethiopian authorities to immediately release Kiyaro and Engida and to not press any charges against them. “They should be freed with no further delay and the case be dropped!” said the group in a tweet.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/international/medical-charity-says-5-abducted-workers-are-freed-in-nigeria/
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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The French medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, says that five of its employees have been released in Nigeria after being kidnapped last month in neighboring Cameroon.
Armed men kidnapped the MSF employees on Feb. 24 from the group’s base in Cameroon’s Far North region in Fotokol, which is near Nigeria and Chad. Those kidnapped and subsequently released include a Senegalese, Chadian and Franco-Ivorian along with their two Cameroon security guards.
The organization said the workers were released Wednesday in Nigeria and have been “taken to a safe place.”
“We are happy to find our colleagues safe and sound,” said the director general of the organization, Stephen Cornish. “We share the deep relief of their parents and loved ones, who were impatiently awaiting this news.”
The organization did not give details on the condition of the release.
Cheikh Ndiaye, the uncle of the Senegalese humanitarian who was taking hostages expressed his family’s relief.
”They are free. We were told they are in Nigeria. We rejoice and look forward with great relief to his return among us,” he said.
Islamic extremist groups Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province are known to carry out attacks in this region.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/international/migrants-hopeful-suspicious-at-us-reopening-to-asylum/
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — More than a dozen migrants excitedly ran out of their dormitory at the Good Samaritan shelter here at the mere mention that the Biden administration may lift a rule that expels people at the border before they can request a chance at humanitarian protection in the United States.
They quizzed a reporter they’d overheard speak of the expected change in a rule that for the past two years has forced asylum seekers to wait at shelters in in Mexican border cities terrorized by organized crime.
At times the wait has seemed interminable. They struggle to find work, worry about debts accumulated to just reach the border and live in fear that they or their children could be snatched by drug cartels preying on the most vulnerable.
Migrants have been expelled more than 1.7 million times from the U.S. under public health powers invoked in March 2020 that are designed to prevent spread of Covid-19. The Biden administration plans to lift Title 42 authority – named for a 1944 public health law – by May 23, according to people familiar with the matter, with an official announcement expected as early as Friday. Near the height of the omicron variant in late January, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had extended the order to this week.
Reaction at migrant shelters in Ciudad Juarez shows the determination of many migrants to settle in the United States as soon as possible.
Most of the 63 people staying at Good Samaritan, across the border from El Paso, Texas, were women and their children from Mexico and Central America. The Rev. Juan Fierro, the shelter’s director, said the vast majority had either been expelled under Title 42 authority or were still waiting to try for asylum.
A group of women said that if Title 42 ended they would run to the bridge at the border to request asylum, because returning to their homes was not an option.
Melida Castro, a 32-year-old from Honduras, has been at the shelter for four months with her children, ages 3 and 8. “There’s nothing more for us to do but wait,” she said, explaining she had fled Honduras after a gang killed her uncle.
“I saw him die in my arms,” she said. Her family crossed the border once and turned themselves over to Border Patrol agents, but they were flown to El Paso and pushed back to Mexico. She said the agents mentioned Title 42, but didn’t explain what it meant.
While word of lifting the asylum limits provided a glimmer of hope, the possibility was also met with suspicion.
Delaying the lifting until late May, when the Biden administration has had more than a year in office to prepare, struck some as a way to buy time until the U.S. government can come up with another obstacle.
“Suddenly they’re going to say, ‘We’re not going to lift it,’” said Victor Sanchez, who fled Honduras with his wife and her three younger siblings. They have been staying at another shelter in Ciudad Juarez for a month.
The nine-bedroom concrete Oscar Romero House shelter clusters around a small courtyard with a pomegranate tree where children play after returning from school. The parents sit on the second floor terrace, fearful to go outside, sharing care of the youngest children and looking across the dusty desert cityscape to the mountains of El Paso less than 10 miles away.
Katherine, Sanchez’s wife, had a baby while in Mexico. “If we have to wait, we wait,” she said. “Now that there are organizations that can help us, we’ll wait for a legal way.”
There have been signs that the Biden administration has been preparing for an expected surge of asylum seekers trying to make their way to the border.
Two weeks ago, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited Mexico and Costa Rica to discuss managing migration flows. Without providing details, Mayorkas said he had reached a “migration arrangement” with Costa Rica.
In his State of the Union Address this month, President Joe Biden had said, “We’re securing commitments and supporting partners in South and Central America to host more refugees and secure their own borders.”
Both Mexico and Costa Rica are taking in substantial numbers of asylum seekers that in many cases would otherwise try to enter the United States. They could also be critical in trying to control the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.
Last month, Costa Rica started requiring visas for Venezuelans and Cubans, a step toward slowing their migration north. Mexico already required visas of Cubans and added Venezuelans in January.
Still, large numbers of migrants have been reaching the border. The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that about 7,100 migrants were coming daily, compared with an average of about 5,900 a day in February and on pace to match or exceed highs from last year, 2019 and other peak periods.
Camilo Cruz, a spokesman with the United Nations International Organization for Migration, said this week that every U.S. move on immigration affects migration flows in the region.
“It moves people, generates hope or some kind of speculation by the traffickers,” Cruz said. “That motivates people to come to try to cross the border.” He said the IOM supports a network of shelters along the border and has worked in recent years to build their capacity.
Immigration advocacy groups applauded the decision, which they universally viewed as long overdue. Like the migrants, some questioned the delay until late May when the Biden administration has had months to prepare.
“A phased wind-down strategy just further proves this was never about public health,” Erin Mazursky, interim director of Families Belong Together, a coalition of groups opposed to Trump-era immigration policies, said in a statement. “This policy was in place for two years too long and the reported decision to extend Title 42 until May 23rd is simply another excuse to expel more people. If the intent is to stop upending people’s lives and hold true to America’s commitment to asylum and due process, the expulsions must end now.”
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, told reporters in a conference call Thursday that administration officials visited congressional offices this week to brief lawmakers and their staffs on plans for accommodating larger numbers of migrants — up to about three times the current flow under one scenario.
The administration is “working very hard at finding a way to process migrants lawfully, humanely and efficiently,” she said.
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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
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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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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to endorse the African Union’s new transitional mission in Somalia and authorized it to take action against al-Qaida and Islamic State extremist groups and conduct a phased handover of security responsibilities to Somalia’s government.
The African Union Transitional Mission in Somalia, known as ATMIS, replaces the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, which has been in the Horn of Africa nation for 15 years trying to build lasting peace and security.
While the resolution adopted by the council recognizes significant changes in the security situation since it authorized AMISOM in February 2007 and improvements in Somalia’s capability to respond to security challenges, it also reaffirms “the need to combat terrorist threats by all means.”
Only in the past few years has Somalia begun to find its footing after three decades of chaos from warlords to the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group and the emergence of Islamic State-linked extremist groups. Last year, a political crisis further postponed long-delayed elections and lower house elections which were to be completed on March 15 are still not complete, further delaying the vote for a new president.
The British-drafted resolution authorizes the new ATMIS mission to support the Somali forces “in providing security for the political process at all levels.”
The Security Council underscored that completing the electoral process without further delay and achieving “a peaceful transition of power” will help Somalia move ahead with its national priorities and support its 2021 transition plan which outlines steps toward the gradual handover of responsibilities for security from international forces to the government.
The council reiterated its objective “of enabling Somalia to take full responsibility for its own security, including through assuming the leading role in countering and addressing the threat posed by al-Shabab.”
The resolution authorizes ATMIS to conduct jointly planned operations with Somali security forces “to degrade al-Shabab and affiliates linked to ISIL,” an acronym for the Islamic State group.
The council authorized AU member nations to deploy up to 19,626 uniformed personnel, including a minimum of 1.040 police, until Dec. 31, and endorsed the AU Peace and Security Council’s decision to reduce the peacekeeping force by 2,000 by that date. It authorized a reduced force of 17,626 between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2023, and noted that a joint proposal including the AU and Somalia envisions further cuts to 14,626 in September 2023, 10,626 in June 2024 and “zero personnel” by the end of December 2024.
The resolution welcomes the Somali government’s intention to generate 3,850 new security forces by December 2022, 8,525 new forces by September 2023 and 10,450 new forces by June 2024.
AMISOM was funded by voluntary contributions, especially from the European Union, with logistical support from the United Nations. The Security Council urged U.N. member nations, including new donors, “to consider providing predictable, sustainable and multi-year support for ATMIS.”
After the vote, Britain’s deputy U.N. ambassador James Kariuki thanked council members for their support “in the adoption of this landmark resolution.”
U.S. deputy ambassador Richard Mills said the resolution “provides a vital opportunity to build on AMISOM’s efforts and take the next steps to roll back al-Shabaab, enabling Somalia to provide the security and stability required for the Somali people to achieve their aspirations.”
“Al-Shabab is a formidable and adaptable threat to Somalia, and to East Africa more broadly,” he said. “As al-Qaeda’s largest and best financed affiliate, al-Shabab represents a threat that requires a vigorous and broad-based response. The ATMIS mandate provides the opportunity to adapt and reinvigorate the African-led, international effort against al-Shabab.”
Albania’s political coordinator Arian Spasse noted al-Shabab’s increased attacks on security forces and civilians in recent months and called on the government again to complete elections.
“It is crucial the newly elected government turn its focus to the deteriorating security situation, to the undertaking of reforms, and to the humanitarian crisis caused by the unprecedented droughts, which is plunging the population into another famine,” he said. “Further delays will give al-Shabaab more time to overshadow the government’s effort to provide peace and prosperity, and will fuel al-Shabab propaganda as an alternative to a democratically elected government.”
Somalia’s U.N. Ambassador Abukar Osman expressed disappointment that the council’s resolution didn’t provide more funding for its security forces, address the need for a unified and centralized command for ATMIS, and greater logistical support
Addressing these issues will ensure that the resolution is aligned with Somalia’s strategic document on security, he said.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Marjorie Miller, vice president and global enterprise editor at The Associated Press, has been named as the new administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
Miller spent 27 years at the Los Angeles Times as a correspondent in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. She was the newspaper’s foreign editor when it won a Pulitzer Prize for Russia coverage and was a finalist for Iraq War coverage.
She joined AP in 2010 as the regional editor for Latin America, where her team produced award-winning coverage of cartel violence. In 2015, she moved to New York to help lead daily news coverage and enterprise. Two years later she became the founding leader of AP’s Global Enterprise Team, overseeing reporting projects in all formats, including work from Yemen that won the 2019 Pulitzer for International Reporting.
Her appointment was announced Thursday by the Pulitzer Prize Board and by Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, which hosts the prestigious journalism awards.
“I cannot think of a better steward for the Pulitzer Prizes, which celebrate excellence in journalism, arts, and letters and recognize the powerful, public service role they play in promoting tolerance, advancing the search for truth, and protecting the free exchange of information and ideas,” Bollinger said.
Miller succeeds acting administrator Edward Kliment, who will stay on as Miller’s deputy. She begins her new role on April 11.
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DETROIT (AP) — In the long debate over whether Black Americans should be granted reparations for the atrocity and injustices of slavery and racism, California took a big step this week toward becoming the first U.S. state to make some form of restitution a reality.
The state’s reparations task force tackled the divisive issue of which Black residents should be eligible — it narrowly decided in favor of limiting compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century.
Whether Tuesday’s vote by the task force spurs other states and cities to advance their own proposals, and whether they adopt California’s still controversial standard for who would benefit, remains to be seen. Some veteran reparations advocates disagree strongly with proposals to limiting eligibility to only Black people who can prove they have enslaved ancestors, while excluding those who cannot and leaving out victims of other historic injustices, such as redlining and mass incarceration.
Still, one advocate noted California’s move is a step that could lend momentum to stalled reparation proposals elsewhere in the U.S.
“It’s precipitated a debate and it will influence communities,” said Ron Daniels, president of The Institute of the Black World 21st Century and administrator of the National African American Reparations Commission, an advocacy group of scholars and activists.
As to whether others will adopt the same approach to eligibility, Daniels said: “That’s to be decided. … We think that ultimately a more expansive definition will prevail.”
The commission headed by Daniels has taken a position that limiting reparations to slave descendants, or to Americans whose ancestors were free Blacks living during the time of slavery, ignores the effects of racism that persisted for more than a century after emancipation.
“There are always going to be criteria” for reparations, Daniels said. “The problem is the harms have been so gross that almost no Black person is not eligible in some form or another.”
Although there is still debate among historians about when exactly the practice began, chattel slavery in what would become the U.S. dates back to 1619 when about 20 enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia — then a British colony. Over the next two centuries, more than 300,000 men, women and children were forcibly taken from Africa to work on plantations in southern colonies and later the Southern states, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and maintained by Rice University.
Slavery in the U.S. officially ended in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Union Army General William Sherman promised compensation to freed slaves in the form of land and mules to farm it — hence the phrase “40 acres and a mule” — after the North’s victory over the South in the Civil War. But President Andrew Johnson took away the offer.
More than 120 years later, then-Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat, first introduced H.R. 40, a bill that would create a federal commission to study reparations and make proposals. Conyers reintroduced it in every congressional session until he resigned in 2017. As a candidate, President Joe Biden said he supported creating the commission, but has yet to formally back it as commander-in-chief. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, is currently the lead sponsor of the House bill.
Getting governmental leaders to openly consider slavery reparations has been daunting and taken decades. But progress has been made at both the state and local levels, particularly since the national reckoning on racial injustice that was sparked after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
In Michigan, legislative proposals submitted earlier this year in the House of Representatives call for $1.5 billion in federal dollars to be placed in a racial equity and reparations fund within the state’s treasury. The funds would be issued to various state departments and agencies to provide grants, loans and other economic assistance for businesses and economic developments that promote the Black community.
The bills have yet to receive a hearing in the House.
Last year, Evanston, Illinois, — the first U.S. city to find a source of funding for reparations — began giving eligible Black residents $25,000 housing grants for down payments, repairs or existing mortgages. The program is meant to atone for the history of racial redlining and housing discrimination. Recipients were selected randomly from among the applicants, Black residents who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969.
And in Providence, Rhode Island, the mayor announced a city commission on reparations in February that will look to atone for the city’s role in slavery and systemic racism, as well as the mistreatment of Native Americans.
For Anita Belle, a grassroots activist in Detroit, where residents in the mostly Black city voted in November to create a city reparations commission, getting to this point in the pursuit of reparations is cause for celebration. But what happens next is worrisome, especially when it comes to who gets what and how much, she said.
“I am happy for all of us who have been doing the groundwork for all these years,” said Belle, founder of the Reparations Labor Union. “We are somewhat afraid that these people who have jumped on the bandwagon are actually there to sabotage it and make reparations $12.62, if that. There will be those saboteurs — people who look like us, but have hidden agendas.”
“You have some of that fear in California where the scope for reparations was narrowed to the people who can prove they were enslaved,” she added. “The people of California will be like ‘why am I paying reparations for someone who was enslaved in Mississippi?’”
In California, the task force is taking the next step with economists to determine the cost of compensating more than 2 million Black residents, although all of them would not be eligible. Following slavery abolition, Black migration to California happened primarily in the immediate decades after World War II, with newly arrived African Americans settling in cities like Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Black population there rose from just under a half-million residents, or 4.4% of the population, in 1950 to 1.4 million residents, or 7% of the population, by 1970. Decades later, the 2020 census recorded 2.1 million Black residents in California, or about 5.3% of the state’s population.
While proposals and who would be eligible appear to vary, they still are types of reparations, according to Rashawn Ray, senior fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.
“California chose to focus on enslavement of Black people,” Ray said. “In Evanston, it’s redlining and housing segregation. Both are issues that need restitution to them based on what the wrong is.”
But, Ray added, “Federal reparations — without a doubt and hands-down — that’s what we need. What is happening in California should be happening in Congress.”
As a former alderman for the city of Evanston, Illinois, and a longtime reparations advocate, Robin Rue Simmons said reaching consensus on eligibility can be tough because policymakers should be as expansive and inclusive as possible, while also identifying specific harms that they’re seeking to address.
The big step taken by California could help spur action on reparations proposals in other cities and states, Simmons said, and perhaps add pressure for the federal government to act, which she sees as critical.
She doesn’t expect California’s lineage-based eligibility standard to become the norm.
“I don’t think any community should think that another has figured it out for them,” Simmons said, “because every community is going to have their own priorities and their specific history.”
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Bynum reported from Savannah, Ga. AP writers Janie Har in San Francisco and Michael Schneider in Orlando contributed to this story.
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PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. (AP) — Firefighters from across Tennessee continued working Thursday morning to contain a wildfire near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that spread overnight despite rain from storms that passed through the area, officials said.
The blaze, which began as a brush fire Wednesday morning in the Hatcher Mountain area of Wears Valley, had spread to more than 3,700 acres (1,497 hectares) and had impacted more than 100 structures, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters said during a press conference. Around 11,000 homes in the area had been evacuated. Three injuries were reported during the blaze, but Waters said no fatalities or missing people had been reported.
He said a coordinated response from emergency personnel, firefighters, forestry officials and others helped mitigate damage in the area.
“This fire could have been much more devastating had we not had this team in place. They were able to, even with the winds and the low humidity, they were able to stay ahead of it as much as possible,” he said.
Officials had warned early Wednesday that warm temperatures, low humidity and strong winds increased the risk of fire danger. Waters said the conditions were similar to those in 2016 when wildfires ravaged the tourism town of Gatlinburg, killing 14 people and damaging or destroying about 2,500 buildings.
Firefighters from more than 70 agencies helped respond to the blaze and many worked through the night in an effort to keep it from spreading. It was only 5% contained, but fire lines drawn overnight helped keep the blaze from spreading into the city of Pigeon Forge, Waters said.
Rain early Thursday from storms passing through did not put the fire out, but officials said it helped the situation and the current weather conditions were more favorable for containing the fire.
Evacuation orders remain in effect until the fire is under control. Schools in the area were closed Thursday as a precaution, officials said.
The fire was in what the state Agriculture Department described as steep and difficult terrain. The cause is still undetermined.
At least three shelters were established for those evacuated, authorities said. More than 100 people stayed overnight at the Pigeon Forge Community Center, Sharon Hudson, executive director of the Eastern Tennessee chapter of the American Red Cross. told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
A line of severe storms packing isolated tornadoes and high winds ripped across the Deep South overnight, killing at least two in the Florida Panhandle, toppling trees and power lines and leaving homes and businesses damaged as the vast weather front raced across several states.
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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 3-2 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.
Fairfield 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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NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon workers in Alabama appear to have rejected a union bid in a tight race, according to early results on Thursday. But outstanding challenged votes could change the outcome.
In New York, union supporters have the edge in a count that will continue Friday morning.
Warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, voted 993 to 875 against forming a union. The National Labor Relations Board, which oversees the election, said that 416 challenged votes could potentially overturn that result. A hearing to go through the challenged ballots will occur in the next few days.
Meanwhile, in a separate union election in Staten Island, New York, the nascent Amazon Labor Union is leading by more than 350 votes out of about 2,670 tallied.
The close election in Bessemer marks a sharp contrast to last year, when Amazon workers overwhelmingly rejected the union.
“This is just the beginning and we will continue to fight,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is organizing the union drive in Bessemer, at a Thursday press conference. “Regardless of the final outcome, workers have shown what is possible. They have helped ignite a movement.”
Appelbaum said RWDSU will be filing objections to how Amazon handled the election but declined to be specific. He also took the opportunity to lash out at current labor laws, which he believes are rigged against unions and favor corporations.
“It should not be so difficult to organize a union in the United States,” he said.
If a majority of Amazon workers votes yes in either Bessemer or Staten Island, it would mark the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the company’s history. Organizers have faced an uphill battle against the nation’s second-largest private employer, which is making every effort to keep unions out.
In New York, the ALU has led the charge to form a union along with Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon employee who now heads the fledging group. Turnout for the in-person election was unclear but Smalls was hopeful of victory.
“To be leading in Day One and be up a couple hundred against a trillion dollar company, this is the best feeling in the world,” Smalls said after the conclusion of Thursday’s counting.
While Smalls’ attention has been focused on securing victory in New York, similar efforts in Alabama also weighed heavily.
“I’m not too sure what’s going in Alabama right now, but I know that the sky’s the limit if you can organize any warehouse,” he said, noting that the vote in Alabama could well end up differently. “I hope that they’re successful. I don’t know what’s going on yet, but we know we show our support and solidarity with them.”
The warehouse in Staten Island employs more than 8,300 workers, who pack and ship supplies to customers based mostly in the Northeast. A labor win there was considered difficult, but organizers believe their grassroots approach is more relatable to workers and could help them overcome where established unions have failed in the past.
John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, said the early vote counts in New York has been “shocking.” ALU has no backing from an established union and is powered by former and current warehouse workers. The group had also filed for a union election after getting support from about 30% of the facility’s workforce, a much lower percentage than what unions usually seek.
“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.”
Though RWDSU is currently lagging behind with challenged ballots outstanding, Logan said that election was also remarkable because the union has made a good effort narrowing its margin from last year’s election.
After a crushing defeat last year, when a majority of workers voted against forming a union, RWDSU is hoping for a different outcome in the Bessemer election, in which mail-in ballots were sent to 6,100 workers in early February. Federal labor officials scrapped the results of the first election there and ordered a re-do after ruling Amazon tainted the election process.
The RWDSU said election there had a turnout rate of about 39% this year, much smaller than last year. Appelbaum blamed the low numbers on high turnover — he believes thousands of people who worked for Amazon in January and were on the official list to be eligible to vote either quit or were fired. He also believes that an in-person election, which the RWDSU had asked for, would have made a difference
Amazon has pushed back hard in 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 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 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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Associated Press staff writers Tali Arbel and Bobby Caina Calvan in New York contributed to this report.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose was clear in the months after the 2020 presidential election.
“Elections are run better and more honestly than really I think they ever have been,” he said in response to conspiracy theories being floated about the election. Months later, he said in an interview what has proved true in state after state – that voter fraud is rare.
Fast forward to 2022, when Republican secretaries of state face a delicate test with voters: Touting their work running clean elections while somehow not alienating GOP voters who believe the false claims of fraud fueled by former President Donald Trump and his allies.
LaRose has shifted his tone on Twitter, recently saying the “mainstream media is trying to minimize voter fraud to suit their narrative” and “President Donald Trump is right to say that voter fraud is a serious problem.”
That tweet came a day after LaRose learned he had drawn not one but two primary challengers, both of whom have said they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
All but one of the eight incumbent Republican secretaries of state seeking to continue as their state’s elections chief have drawn at least one GOP challenger who either outright denies Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency or makes unsubstantiated claims that elections are not secure.
That raises the prospect that the nation’s voting process will become further politicized if candidates who embrace conspiracy theories or promote without evidence the false narrative of widespread fraud win races for offices such as secretary of state, which play critical roles in managing elections and are intended to be neutral.
Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state from Kentucky who has been outspoken against the efforts to delegitimize the 2020 presidential results, said some of the incumbent GOP secretaries need room to maneuver politically so they can defeat opponents within their own party who might seek to undermine fair elections if they win.
“These are guardians of democracy,” he said. “Their opponents are people who don’t show respect for the law or evidence or the vote-counting process. They are willing to ignore counts, willing to ignore safeguards we have in the system. In some cases, they are just making stuff up.”
Trump’sfalse claims have led to restrictive voting laws in Republican-controlled states, partisan election reviews, voting system security breaches and now a wave of candidates seeking to take over election administrationat the state and local levels.
In addition to Ohio, Republican secretaries of state in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota are seeking to remain in office. Only Iowa’s Paul Pate is running unopposed.
In Alabama, Idaho, Nevada and North Dakota, the GOP incumbents have opted against seeking reelection or are term-limited, leaving open contests. Wyoming Secretary of State Edward Buchanan has yet to announce his plans.
Democratic secretaries are running to keep their seats in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Washington. So far, only one has drawn a Democratic challenger.
The job of secretary of state has tended to attract candidates focused more on process than politics. The races are typically low-key contests overshadowed by campaigns for governor and state attorney general.
That changed after Trump disputed his loss and decided to target election officials in political battleground states, sometimes pressuring them to reverse his loss. In one instance, Trump made a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win.
Raffensperger didn’t cede to Trump’s demands and has defended Georgia’s election in a re-election bid this year where he faces three primary challengers. He has sought to counter them by touting his conservative credentials, downplaying differences with Trump and wooing primary voters with a call to ban non-citizen voting. He also has pointed to his efforts to include a photo ID requirement for mail ballots as part of a sweeping election bill passed by lawmakers last year.
At a recent rally in Georgia, Trump blasted Raffensperger as a “lousy secretary of state.” In an interview, Raffensperger said he has been working to counter the continuing misinformation and disinformation campaigns.
“We checked every allegation; I made sure we did,” Raffensperger said. “I stand on the truth, and no one has been stronger on election integrity than me.”
Trump has endorsed one of Raffensperger’s opponents, U.S. Rep. Jody Hice. Hice objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for Biden, despite a lack of any evidence of widespread fraud or tampering. Georgia’s 5 million votes cast for president were counted three times, including once by hand.
Hice has been leading all candidates in fundraising and is part of a new group called the “America First Secretary of State Coalition,” organized by Jim Marchant, a former state lawmaker who is running for the open secretary of state seat in Nevada.
The group, which also includes Trump-endorsed candidates in Arizona and Michigan, has among other things advocated for limits on mail voting.
Trump won Kansas with 56% of the vote, and the state had no significant problems with its 2020 elections. Even so, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab is facing a Republican primary opponent.
Schwab has pushed back on conspiracy theories and potentially angered many GOP voters in doing so. After a recent hearing in which lawmakers heard from Trump allies making false claims about the 2020 election, he wrote the committee to say the testimony “sought to undermine confidence in our county election officers, election results, and the longstanding systems used to securely conduct elections in Kansas.”
Despite any evidence of problems with Kansas’ elections, Schwab’s Republican opponent, Mike Brown, has called for tougher rules on drop boxes and mail ballots, supports partisan ballot reviews and wants ballots printed on special paper. He said Schwab hasn’t been vigilant when it comes to protecting elections.
Schwab downplayed the criticism and said he has an open line to Trump.
“If he’s got concerns, you know, the president’s team can call our office and say, ‘Hey, we want to talk to you about the 2020 election,’ but they don’t because they know there’s no concerns,” Schwab said.
He and some other incumbents have tried a delicate balance in messaging as they seek to retain their seats — touting election performance in their own state while hinting vaguely at election problems elsewhere.
In South Dakota, Secretary of State Steve Barnett defended the work of his office and blamed “disinformation, misinformation, mal-information” for lowering voter confidence nationwide.
“I can only speak to what went on in South Dakota,” he said. “I can’t speak to what happened in these other states.”
Barnett’s challenger, Monae Johnson, said she was “answering the call of concerned citizens” to run and criticized Barnett for sending absentee ballot applications during the pandemic and supporting online voter registration.
In Ohio, LaRose’s pro-Trump statements haven’t stopped his GOP challenger, former state lawmaker John Adams, from claiming that he hasn’t taken election integrity seriously; a second primary challenger was disqualified for paperwork errors.
Adams told a group of Republicans gathered recently at a sports bar in suburban Columbus that “there’s no way that Trump lost,” likening LaRose to Georgia Democrat Stacy Abrams for his positions in favor of ballot access. LaRose says Adams is basing his campaign on “conspiracy theories and nonsense,” but brushed aside questions about whether his own rhetoric had shifted.
All this has left many GOP primary voters conflicted. Lyle Adcock, 72, a semi-retired computer sales representative who listened to Adams at the sports bar, said he has always trusted Ohio elections but now isn’t sure what to think.
“It’s not like I feel my vote doesn’t count, but I wonder if there is any of this fraud,” he said.
Asked who he was supporting in the secretary of state’s race, Adcock said he hadn’t yet decided.
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Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta; Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/ex-minor-leaguer-ran-major-league-sports-betting-operation/
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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.wjhl.com/news/national/gold-mine-of-census-records-being-released-from-1950/
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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.
Therecords 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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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/grammy-awards-set-sights-on-las-vegas-for-first-time/
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Grammysmight be missing stars like Drake, The Weeknd and Kanye West as a performer, but the biggest night in music could still shine bright on the Las Vegas Strip.
The ceremony relocated to Las Vegas for the first-time ever with several artists who could have epic nights including Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Jon Batiste. The awards shifted from Los Angeles because of the rising COVID-19 cases and omicron variant in January. Sunday’s show will air live beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and the Paramount+ streaming service.
Host Trevor Noah calls Las Vegas a “perfect place to have a celebration” with fans at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Last year, the Grammys had a music festival vibe with parts of the show held outdoors in an intimate in-person setting with music artists mixed with pre-taped performances.
Noah expects an entertaining show with several performers set to hit the stage including Rodrigo, Eilish, Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow, Brandi Carlile, Batiste, Silk Sonic, H.E.R., Chris Stapleton, Leslie Odom Jr. and Brothers Osborne. He said the awards will be a celebration of the music industry coming back to life.
“There’s an element of this (show) that’s like a music camp,” Noah said. “I think it’s going to bring a different energy, and I’m excited to be a part of it.”
It’s still unclear whether the Foo Fighters will take the stage following the recent death of its drummer Taylor Hawkins. The rock band – nominated for three Grammys – is scheduled to perform during the ceremony, but they recently canceled all upcoming concert dates.
The Grammys will continue to move forward without West, known as Ye, after news surfaced earlier this month that he wouldn’t perform at the show because of his “concerning online behavior.” The Weeknd is still boycotting the awards and Drake said he wanted no part in competing for a Grammy, withdrawing his two nominations.
The three popular performers will be missed, but the show will certainly go on.
The multitalented Jon Batiste enters the Grammys as the leading nominee with 11in a variety of genres including R&B, jazz, American roots music, classical and music video. Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and H.E.R. are tied for the second-most nominations with eight apiece.
The awards will introduce its expanded 10 nominees in three major genres — record, album and song of the year. The growing categories will make the competition stronger but could make choosing a winner a lot tougher.
For album of the year, the Recording Academy expanded the category’s eligibility for any featured artists, producers, songwriters and engineers — even if the music creator co-wrote one song on the project. That means there could be a large amount of winners on stage, depending on who wins.
For example, if Bieber’s “Justice” wins at the show, more than 50 creators could pack the stage. The same could be said for Ye, Doja Cat and H.E.R., who have a plethora of contributors.
But Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” features songs written by the young star and her brother Finneas, who produced all of her tracks. Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga and Rodrigo are sitting in the same boat.
Harvey Mason jr., the academy’s CEO, said the number of creators in a category won’t dictate the winner.
Either way, Noah said he doesn’t mind.
“It’ll be great to see that moment,” he said. “You get to be on stage and celebrated for your work. I’m excited for that. I want to see 25 people on stage celebrating and sharing the love and joy for something they’ve done.”
Before the awards, the academy will hold a couple events including a tribute to Joni Mitchell at the MusiCares Person of the Yearon Friday night. Chaka Khan, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Porter and Beck are among those expected to perform.
On Saturday, Grammy winner John Legend will be honored during the academy’s Black Music Collective. The singer will receive his first-ever Recording Academy Global Impact Award for his personal and professional achievements in the music industry.
Legend will be celebrated with a performance by Summer Walker, D-Nice and MC Lyte as the voice for the evening. Jimmy Jam will be making remarks.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/historian-sues-ny-prisons-over-ban-of-attica-uprising-book/
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NEW YORK (AP) — The author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the revolt at the Attica Correctional Facility in 1971 sued New York state prison authorities on Thursday, saying they’ve unconstitutionally banned her book behind bars.
Author Heather Ann Thompson, a University of Michigan professor, brought the lawsuit in Manhattan federal court over the treatment by New York State Department of Corrections officials of her book: “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971,” published in 2016.
Named as defendants were the department’s acting commissioner and a second official with decision-making authority regarding censorship determinations.
The lawsuit contends that the ban is unconstitutional, particularly because the state has blocked inmates from accessing her book, prevented her from sharing it with inmates and denied her an opportunity to contest the ban.
“People have a right to read, and people have a right to history,” Thompson said in a release. “We also have a right to have our books read. It’s a shame we live in a country where we censor people and ideas.”
In a document issued in late January, the New York State Department of Corrections division of Corrections and Community Supervision said it was department policy to “encourage incarcerated individuals to read publications from varied sources if such material does not encourage them to engage in behavior that might be disruptive to orderly facility operations.”
The document said any materials also “should not incite disobedience towards law enforcement officers or prison personnel.” It added that “incite disobedience” means “to advocate, expressly or by clear implication, acts of disobedience.”
Contacted about the lawsuit Thursday, a corrections spokesperson said the department cannot comment on pending litigation.
The Attica uprising began in September 1971 when inmates angry over living conditions seized control of part of the prison and took some of its staff hostage. Four days later, the disturbance ended when state troopers and guards shot tear gas into a prison yard before firing hundreds of rounds into the smoke.
The gunfire killed 29 inmates and 10 hostages. In all, 11 staff members and 32 inmates were killed in the riot and siege. No law enforcement officers were put on trial for their roles in the massacre.
The lawsuit was brought on Thompson’s behalf by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Civil Rights Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said the state “cannot censor an important historical text like ‘Blood in the Water’ just because it doesn’t like the content.”
Cardozo’s Civil Rights Clinic Director Betsy Ginsberg said: “It is, simply put, a history book, and its denial to incarcerated people runs counter to this country’s core values.”
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Associated Press Writer Michael Hill in Albany contributed to this report.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/long-term-mortgage-rates-rise-again-30-year-breaches-4-5/
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose again this week as the key 30-year loan rate vaulted over 4.5% and attained its highest level since the end of 2018.
Against a backdrop of inflation at a four-decade high, the increases in home loan rates come a few weeks after the Federal Reserve raised by a quarter point its benchmark short-term interest rate — which it had kept near zero since the pandemic recession struck two years ago — to cool the economy. The central bank has signaled potentially up to seven additional rate hikes this year.
The developments mean that mortgage rates likely will continue to rise over the year.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year loan this week rose to 4.67% from 4.42% last week. That’s a sharp contrast from last year’s record-low mortgage rates of around 3%. A year ago, the 30-year rate stood at 3.18%.
The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, popular among those refinancing their homes, jumped to 3.83% from 3.63% last week.
Home prices are up about 15% over the past year and as much as 30% in some cities. Homes available for sale have been in short supply even before the pandemic started two years ago. Now higher prices and rising loan rates will make it even harder for would-be buyers as the spring homebuying season gets underway.
The government reported Thursday that an inflation gauge closely monitored by the Fed jumped 6.4% in February compared with a year earlier, with sharply higher prices for food, gasoline and other necessities squeezing Americans’ finances. That figure was the largest year-over-year rise in 40 years — since January 1982. Excluding volatile prices for food and energy, so-called core inflation increased 5.4% in February from 12 months earlier.
Robust consumer demand has combined with shortages of many goods to fuel the sharpest price jumps in four decades. Measures of inflation will likely worsen in the coming months because Thursday’s report doesn’t reflect the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24. The war has disrupted global oil markets and accelerated prices for wheat, nickel and other key commodities.
Squeezed by inflation, U.S. consumers increased their spending by just 0.2% in February, down from a much larger 2.7% gain in January.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/nsa-employee-charged-with-mishandling-classified-material/
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A National Security Agency employee has been charged with emailing classified national security information to somebody who wasn’t authorized to receive it, according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday.
Mark Robert Unkenholz, 60, of Hanover, Maryland, was arrested Thursday but ordered released after his initial court appearance in Baltimore.
Unkenholz held “top secret” security clearance, giving him access to the information, according to a 26-count indictment. He worked for an NSA office responsible for the agency’s engagement with private industry.
The indictment accuses Unkenholz of using his personal email address to send information classified as “secret” and “top secret” to somebody else’s private company email addresses on several occasions between February 2018 and June 2020.
The recipient held “top secret” clearance from April 2016 until approximately June 2019, while employed at a company that isn’t named in the indictment. However, from July 2019 until approximately January 2021, the person worked for a different company and wasn’t authorized to access or receive classified information, the indictment says.
A grand jury indicted Unkenholz on Tuesday on 13 counts of willfully transmitting national defense information and 13 counts of willfully retaining national defense informaton. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. Federal sentencing guidelines typically recommend sentences far below the maximum.
Unkenholz pleaded not guilty to all 26 counts at his initial court appearance. U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth Gesner ordered him released after the hearing, court records show.
Gesner appointed the federal public defender’s office to represent Unkenholz. Federal Public Defender James Wyda declined to comment.
The FBI is investigating.
The case against Unkenholz is the latest prosecution from federal authorities in Maryland, home to some of the most secretive government agencies, alleging mishandling or improper storage of classified materials.
One of the more prominent federal cases involved Harold Martin, a former NSA contractor who was charged in 2016 with storing reams of classified records in his Maryland home, car and shed. The information spanned from the mid-1990s to the present and included personal details of government employees and “top secret” email chains, handwritten notes describing the NSA’s classified computer infrastructure, and descriptions of classified technical operations. He was sentenced in 2019 to nine years in prison.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed from Washington, D.C.
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https://www.wjhl.com/news/national/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.wjhl.com/news/national/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,” Parker 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.”
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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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NEW YORK (AP) — More than 4 in 10 U.S. high school students said they felt persistently sad or hopeless during the pandemic, according to government findings released Thursday.
Several medical groups have warned that pandemic isolation from school closures and lack of social gatherings has taken a toll on young people’s mental health.
“This really gives us the evidence to say with certainty that the pandemic was incredibly disruptive for young people and their families,” said Kathleen Ethier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The reports are based on anonymous online surveys of about 7,700 public and private high school students from 128 schools during the first six months of 2021. It is based on a similar survey the CDC conducts every other year in schools,
Among the findings:
—44% reported feeling persistently sad of hopeless during the past year. A similar survey before COVID-19 hit put the figure at 37%.
—66% said they found it more difficult to complete their schoolwork.
—29% said a parent or other adult in their home lost a job and 11% said they experienced physical abuse by a parent or other adult at home.
—24% said they went hungry during the pandemic because there was not enough food at home.
There likely was some underreporting, especially for certain questions about emotional or physical abuse in the home. Teens might be afraid that an abusive parent or other adult might see their responses, said Ilan Cerna-Turoff, a Columbia University researcher who studies children’s mental health.
CDC officials said that the pandemic did not affect teens equally. LGBT youth reported poorer mental health and more suicide attempts than others. About 75% said they suffered emotional abuse in the home and 20% reported physical abuse. By comparison, half of heterosexual students reported emotional abuse and 10% reported physical abuse, the CDC said.
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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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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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — An external review of Minnesota’s response to days of civil unrest following theMay 2020 killing of George Floyd found several weaknesses, including a lack of clear leadership early on as businesses were being destroyed and set ablaze, and a failure to discern peaceful from unlawful protesters.
The report by Wilder Research, commissioned by the Department of Public Safety and made public Thursday, says Minnesota can do more to address tensions between law enforcement and communities, and must incorporate a deeper sense of humanity in the way it responds to civil unrest in the future.
“Further research and evaluation are needed to understand the role of racism and other forms of bias in law enforcement responses to civil unrest and determine additional steps to address community distrust in law enforcement and state government,” the report also found.
The report, which examined the state’s actions from May 26 through June 7, 2020, listed 20 recommendations to improve the state’s response and find ways to prevent such civil unrest from happening again.
Three “critical recommendations” include: strengthening coordination between multiple agencies; improving coordination and relationships with local jurisdictions and the media; and addressing tension between law enforcement and communities through trust-building efforts, police accountability and transformation, and education.
Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said in a letter to Gov. Tim Walz that his agency has already made changes to improve communication and police accountability, including implementing some of the report’s recommendations.
Floyd, who was Black, was killed May 25, 2020, when former Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for about nine and a half minutes as Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down on the pavement. Bystander video showed Floyd said multiple times that he couldn’t breathe, before he eventually went silent and stopped moving.
The killing sparked protests in Minneapolis and around the globe as part of a reckoning over racial injustice. In Minneapolis, some of the protests became violentas businesses, and even a police station, were ransacked and burned.
The report said that unrest was unprecedented, and left local and state agencies overextended.
Local police and emergency responders couldn’t respond to many calls for help. Several state agencies, as well as the National Guard, were called in — but the report noted they were not experienced in handling large-scale civil disturbances over such an extended period.
The report found that the state was too late in setting up a multi-agency command center to coordinate response, and that several local agencies were following different rules of engagement. There was also a lack of communication, leading some communities and businesses totake matters into their own hands. Some of the response by state agencies was also viewed as escalating by some.
The report also noted some strengths. Among them, it found the state acknowledged that the community had legitimate concerns after Floyd’s killing. It also noted that small mobile field force units were effective in addressing unrest in multiple locations. The report said that a curfew, when enforced, was also effective.
A reportissued earlier this month on the city’s response to the Minneapolis protests was sharply critical and included several recommendations, including improving police training on crowd control tactics.
Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughterand also pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Floyd’s civil rights. Three other former officers were also convicted of federal civil rights violations and are awaiting trial on state charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter.
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Find AP’s full coverage of the killing of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
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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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Scientists say they have finally assembled the full genetic blueprint for human life, adding the missing pieces to a puzzle nearly completed two decades ago.
An international team described the first-ever sequencing of a complete human genome – the set of instructions to build and sustain a human being – in research published Thursday in the journal Science. The previous effort, celebrated across the world, was incomplete because DNA sequencing technologies of the day weren’t able to read certain parts of it. Even after updates, it was missing about 8% of the genome.
“Some of the genes that make us uniquely human were actually in this ‘dark matter of the genome’ and they were totally missed,” said Evan Eichler, a University of Washington researcher who participated in the current effort and the original Human Genome Project. “It took 20-plus years, but we finally got it done.”
Many — including Eichler’s own students — thought it had been finished already. “I was teaching them, and they said, ‘Wait a minute. Isn’t this like the sixth time you guys have declared victory? I said, ’No, this time we really, really did it!”
Scientists said this full picture of the genome will give humanity a greater understanding of our evolution and biology while also opening the door to medical discoveries in areas like aging, neurodegenerative conditions, cancer and heart disease.
“We’re just broadening our opportunities to understand human disease,” said Karen Miga, an author of one of the six studies published Thursday.
The research caps off decades of work. The first draft of the human genome was announced in a White House ceremony in 2000 by leaders of two competing entities: an international publicly funded project led by an agency of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a private company, Maryland-based Celera Genomics.
The human genome is made up of about 3.1 billion DNA subunits, pairs of chemical bases known by the letters A, C, G and T. Genes are strings of these lettered pairs that contain instructions for making proteins, the building blocks of life. Humans have about 30,000 genes, organized in 23 groups called chromosomes that are found in the nucleus of every cell.
Before now, there were “large and persistent gaps that have been in our map, and these gaps fall in pretty important regions,” Miga said.
Miga, a genomics researcher at the University of California-Santa Cruz, worked with Adam Phillippy of the National Human Genome Research Institute to organize the team of scientists to start from scratch with a new genome with the aim of sequencing all of it, including previously missing pieces. The group, named after the sections at the very ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, is known as the Telomere-to-Telomere, or T2T, consortium.
Their work adds new genetic information to the human genome, corrects previous errors and reveals long stretches of DNA known to play important roles in both evolution and disease. A version of the researchwas published last year before being reviewed by scientific peers.
“This is a major improvement, I would say, of the Human Genome Project,” doubling its impact, said geneticist Ting Wang of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who was not involved in the research.
Eichler said some scientists used to think unknown areas contained “junk.” Not him. “Some of us always believed there was gold in those hills,” he said. Eichler is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press’s health and science department.
Turns out that gold includes many important genes, he said, such as ones integral to making a person’s brain bigger than a chimp’s, with more neurons and connections.
To find such genes, scientists needed new ways to read life’s cryptic genetic language.
Reading genes requires cutting the strands of DNA into pieces hundreds to thousands of letters long. Sequencing machines read the letters in each piece and scientists try to put the pieces in the right order. That’s especially tough in areas where letters repeat.
Scientists said some areas were illegible before improvements in gene sequencing machines that now allow them to, for example, accurately read a million letters of DNA at a time. That allows scientists to see genes with repeated areas as longer strings instead of snippets that they had to later piece together.
Researchers also had to overcome another challenge: Most cells contain genomes from both mother and father, confusing attempts to assemble the pieces correctly. T2T researchers got around this by using a cell line from one “complete hydatidiform mole,” an abnormal fertilized egg containing no fetal tissue that has two copies of the father’s DNA and none of the mother’s.
The next step? Mapping more genomes, including ones that include collections of genes from both parents. This effort did not map one of the 23 chromosomes that is found in males, called the Y chromosome, because the mole contained only an X.
Wang said he’s working with the T2T group on the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, which is trying to generate “reference,” or template, genomes for 350 people representing the breadth of human diversity.
“Now we’ve gotten one genome right and we have to do many, many more,” Eichler said. “This is the beginning of something really fantastic for the field of human genetics.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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DOHA, Qatar (AP) — A dozen years of defending Qatar’s suitability to host the World Cup can leave Hassan Al-Thawadi exasperated at the enduring glare of scrutiny and the accusatory, rather than celebratory, tone.
At times, Al-Thawadi can seem to be the face — even leader — of this Persian Gulf nation given his prominence. As head of the bid, and now general secretary of the organizing committee, Al-Thawadi has rights groups, protesting football federations and fans worldwide to answer to.
The responses do not always placate those aghast at the suffering of migrant workers whose low-paid labor was relied on to build not only stadiums but also Qatar’s wider infrastructure that is beyond Al-Thawadi’s direct remit.
But it is the changes to working conditions and rights in the nation that Al-Thawadi is trying to accentuate on the eve of the World Cup draw when the finalists discover who and where they will be playing in November.
“Human suffering is a tragedy. Simple as that,” Al-Thawadi said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. “We recognized from day one from before we bid to host the World Cup, that things had to change. This is not something that dawned upon us as a result of the World Cup.”
And yet changes to labor laws were not part of the public Qatar bid. They only came in recent years rather than before construction started on the eight new stadiums required after the 2010 vote once groups, including Amnesty International, applied pressure.
“We knew that this World Cup will be an accelerant,” he said, “and will assist the government in terms of making that change.”
They include the introduction of a minimum wage and the dismantling of the “kafala” sponsorship system binding workers to their employer. Enforcement across Qatar is the challenge, especially as investigators hone in on construction sites away from the eight World Cup stadiums that are complete.
Al-Thawadi sees Qatar as setting the “benchmark” — particularly with more restrictive working practices enduring elsewhere in the Gulf — and pointing to how some of the “most ardent of critics” are now working with them.
“Nobody accepts any sort of suffering, and we are doing our bit to ensure that this doesn’t occur,” he said. “I’m working very diligently and we’re very committed that this progress that has been done over the last 12 years will continue after 2022 and will remain.”
But Al-Thawadi went from the interview to the FIFA Congress where Norwegian football federation president Lise Klaveness called out the freedoms and safety denied to workers and the lack of LGBTQ+ protections in Qatar.
Al-Thawadi was riled, claiming in response that Klaveness had not attempted to contact him. It is a sign of how vexed Al-Thawadi can be having to continue justifying Qatar as the Middle East’s first World Cup host.
“The World Cup is an opportunity for everybody to come and get to understand different people of different backgrounds with different values,” Al-Thawadi said. “We don’t necessarily always … agree on everything … but that in itself has to be respected and accepted.
“What we say is what we’re offering them, providing a safe World Cup, a welcoming World Cup for everybody. And this is the opportunity for everybody to sit down and build relations.”
Al-Thawadi is hoping people will listen, even if the answers or Qatari laws do not satisfy them.
“People are very quick to pass judgment,” he said. “Very quick and very firm in their judgment with that, whether they have the full information or not.”
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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Federico Motka’s abductors greeted him in English after he and his colleagues were kidnapped near a refugee camp on the Turkish border: “Welcome to Syria, you mutt.”
For the Italian aid worker, it was the beginning of 14 months of brutality at the hands of the Islamic State.
Motka testified about the ordeal Thursday at the terrorism trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, a British national charged with taking a leading role in an Islamic State kidnapping scheme that took more than 20 Westerners hostage between 2012 and 2015.
Four Americans — journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller — were among them. Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were decapitated. Mueller was forced into slavery and raped repeatedly by the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before she too was killed.
Motka is the first surviving hostage to testify at Elsheikh’s trial in Alexandria, Virginia.
Born in Trieste, Italy, Motka said he spent much of his childhood in the Middle East and went to boarding school in England. He was an aid worker surveying the needs of refugee camps in March 2013 when he and a colleague, Briton David Haines, were captured and taken hostage.
Motka testified that for the first month of captivity, he was only occasionally mistreated, but that mistreatment frequently came at the hands of three captors whom hostages dubbed “the Beatles” because of their British accents. They learned to speak surreptitiously about their captors, who wore masks and took pains to conceal their identity, since they never knew what would set them off. A dispute over bathroom hygiene prompted a particularly intense beating, he said.
“They said I was a posh wanker because I went to boarding school,” Motka testified. “They said I was arrogant, and they were going to take me down a peg.”
Motka’s use of the term “posh wanker” set off a brief period of uncomfortable laughter in the courtroom, when the judge interrupted and asked what the phrase means, forcing Motka to explain the term’s vulgar meaning of the British idiom.
The British accents and phraseology are an important part of the case, though, as prosecutors seek to prove that Elsheikh is indeed one of the Beatles who tortured hostages, even though the Beatles took great pains to conceal their faces. Motka testified that there were at least three Britons in the group of captors, and the hostages nicknamed them “John,” “George” and “Ringo.”
Prosecutors have said in court that Elshiekh is the one who was nicknamed Ringo.
One way Motka distinguished the three was their preferences for inflicting punishment.
“George was more into boxing,” Motka testified. “John, he kicked a lot. Ringo used to talk how he liked wrestling. He would put people in headlocks.”
He described one instance when Ringo put James Foley in a headlock so tight that he passed out.
Motka also recounted a time in the summer of 2013 when the hostages were held in a facility they nicknamed “the box.” The Beatles excitedly put Motka and his cellmate David Haines in a room with Foley and British hostage John Cantlie for what they called a “Royal Rumble.”
“They were super excited about it,” Motka said of the Beatles about the tag-team style fight they imposed on the foursome. “We were so weak and shattered we could barely lift our arms.”
The group was told that the losers would be waterboarded. Two of the four passed out during the hour-long battle, Motka said. The Beatles deemed him the loser but never waterboarded him, inflicting a beating instead.
As they were transferred to different facilities, Motka said the hostages were sometimes separated from the Beatles for weeks at a time. Those periods were welcome, relatively speaking, because the Beatles were unique in their cruelty, he said.
When they were transferred again to a place they nicknamed “the dungeon” and saw that the Beatles were there, “we crapped our pants,” Motka said. “We had just started to relax a little” as the mistreatment had eased in their absence.
“The box,” where the Beatles were a regular presence, was one of the worst stretches of captivity. Motka said he and other hostages there endured a lengthy “regime of punishment” that included regular beatings and forced stress positions. “George,” another man named Abu Mohamed and a third nicknamed “the punisher” regularly tortured them, Motka said.
“They played lots of games with us,” Motka said, maintaining composure as he clearly struggled with the emotions of describing his captivity. “They gave us dog names. We needed to come and immediately respond” to the dog name to avoid a beating.
Motka was not released until May 25, 2014. His 14 months in captivity were the longest of any hostage in the group.
Defense lawyers, though, have highlighted the difficulties that hostages have in formally identifying each of their captors, who routinely wore masks that covered all but their eyes.
In opening statements, prosecutors referenced only three British nationals — Elsheikh, his longtime friend Alexenda Kotey, and Mohammed Emwazi, who frequently carried out the role of executioner and was known as “Jihadi John.”
Emwazi was killed in a drone strike, and Kotey was captured alongside Elsheikh and also brought to Virginia to face trial. Kotey pleaded guilty last year in a plea bargain that calls for a life sentence.
Jurors also heard testimony Thursday from Danish hostage negotiator Jens Serup, who testified about prolonged efforts to secure the release of Daniel Rye Ottosen in exchange for 2 million euros.
The jury saw photos of huge bruises on Ottosen’s arm and back after he was finally released. Serup testified that the captors told Ottosen the beating was a “farewell present not to forget them.”
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LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s nuclear operator company said Thursday that Russian troops were leaving the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and were heading towards the country’s border with Belarus.
The operator, Energoatom said that the Russian military are also preparing to leave Slavutych, a nearby city where power plant workers live.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the Russian troops decided to leave Chernobyl.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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The top-ranking Ukrainian Catholic cleric in the United States warned Thursday that religious minorities in the Eastern European country stand to be “crushed” if Moscow gains control, as fighting raged on more than a month after the Russian invasion began.
Groups at risk include Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox who have broken away from the patriarch of Moscow, Archbishop Borys Gudziak said. He also cited reports that Russian forces have damaged two Holocaust memorials and Moscow’s false portrayal of Ukraine, which overwhelmingly elected a Jewish president in Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a “Nazi” state.
“What is at stake for the people of faith is their freedom to practice their faith,” Gudziak said during an online panel discussion on the war, hosted by the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.
“Ukrainian Catholics, over the last 250 years, every time there’s been a Russian occupation where they live and minister, they’ve been strangled,” he continued.
Gudziak is head of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia and president of Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. He also oversees external relations for the Kyiv-based Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The name of the church, whose members account for an estimated 10% of Ukraine’s population, refers to its loyalty to the pope and its use of Greek or Byzantine liturgy, which is similar to that of Ukraine’s majority Orthodox population.
The archbishop predicted that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine — which broke from the Moscow Patriarchate and was recognized in 2019 by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople over fierce opposition from Moscow — “will undoubtedly be crushed if there’s a Russian occupation.”
Guziak did not specifically mention the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is separate from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and has remained loyal to Moscow Patriarch Kirill, a strong supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite that historic fealty, Ukrainian Orthodox Church leaders have fiercely denounced the Russian invasion and in some cases are refusing to mention Kirill’s name in public prayers, a ritually potent snub.
Kirill has backed Putin’s justifications for the war, saying both countries are part of a “Russian world” and alleging that the U.S. and other foreign forces have sought to foster enmitybetween them.
Gudziak also cited the plight of Muslim Tatars who “have been persecuted for these last eight years” since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in southern Ukraine in 2014.
The U.S. State Department has similarly denounced intimidation and harassment of Tatars and other religious groups in Crimea and areas of eastern Ukraine under control of Russia-backed separatists. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said this month that Moscow’s “aggression toward religious freedom (in those territories) is an indicator that much worse will follow … as Russia expands into Ukraine.”
Gudziak rejected Russia’s claims that it is on a mission to denazify Ukraine, where the Jewish Zelenskyy won election with 73% of the vote. Such altruistic assertions also ring hollow, he argued, given the reported damage to the Holocaust memorials in Kyiv and near Kharkiv.
“All those who desire to live in freedom will lose a lot or everything. If there is an occupation, that is what is at stake for Ukrainians,” Gudziak said. “What is at stake for Europe, for the broader world, is will there be an advance of systems, ideologies and worldviews that crush people?”
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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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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Federal officials slated millions of dollars for rural water projects in several states, with the Biden administration looking to shore up infrastructure needs made more urgent by long-term drought conditions that have been exacerbated by climate change.
The U.S. Interior Department announced Thursday that $420 million will be spent on projects in New Mexico, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa. The work includes construction of water treatment plants, pipeline connections, pump systems and reservoirs to provide drinking water to rural and tribal communities.
The West is experiencing a more than 20-year megadrought. Scientists say the region has become much warmer and drier in recent decades and that climate change will continue to make weather more extreme, wildfires more frequent and destructive, and water supplies less reliable.
From Idaho and Montana south to New Mexico and Arizona, even soil moisture levels have hit record lows as major reservoirs along the Colorado River have plummeted. Earlier this month, Lake Powell hit a record low, spurring concerns about the ability to crank out more hydropower from the dam that holds it back.
Native American tribes that are finally seeing federal money after years of being underfunded are working to get at water they long had rights to but could not access without funds to build the infrastructure. On the Navajo Nation, tens of thousands of people still live without running water, while tribes in the upper Midwest are awaiting pipeline extensions that would tap into reliable sources.
In all, the infrastructure measure included $5 billion for Western water programs, with 20% of that dedicated to rural projects.
Federal officials said the allocations were based on project plans and significant goals that are projected to be reached with the funding.
The largest share — $160 million — will go toward a project decades in the making that will eventually provide water for about 70,000 people who live in communities along the New Mexico-Texas state line, where the Ogallala aquiferis being pumped at a faster rate than it’s being replenished.
The Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority will receive additional money from the Bureau of Reclamation and the state of New Mexico. When combined with matching money from the utility, the total for this year will be more than $228 million.
“This will take us far in the construction of this critically important project,” said Michael Morris, chairman of the water authority and mayor of Clovis, a rural community in eastern New Mexico.
Other allocations include $75.5 million for the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, which spans parts of South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. The system is designed to pipe water from the Missouri River to areas as far as 60 miles (97 kilometers) away that have less plentiful resources.
In North Dakota, $51 million will go to a section of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program.
More than $57 million will go to the Rocky Boys/North Central Montana Rural Water System, which serves the Rocky Boy’s Reservation and numerous municipalities. The Fort Peck Reservation in Montana will benefit from $7 million for the water system there.
Tanya Trujillo, assistant Interior secretary for water and science, was flanked by water managers in Albuquerque when she made the announcement.
“The department is committed to bringing clean, reliable drinking water to rural communities to help strengthen resilience to climate change,” Trujillo said.
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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials on Thursday adopted a rule aimed at reducing deaths and environmental damage from oil and gas pipeline ruptures — a long-delayed response to fatal explosionsand massive spillsthat have occurred over decades in California, Michigan, New Jersey and other states.
But safety advocates said the move by the U.S. Transportation Department would not have averted the accidents that prompted the new rule. That’s because it applies only to newly constructed or replaced pipelines — and not to hundreds of thousands of miles of lines that already crisscross the country, many of them decades old and corroding.
The rule requires companies to install emergency valves that can quickly shut off the flow of oil, natural gas or other hazardous fuels when pipelines rupture. It came in response to a massive gas explosion in San Bruno, California, that killed eight people in 2010, and to large oil spills into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River and Montana’s Yellowstone River and other spills.
The National Transportation Safety Board since the 1990s has recommended the use of automatic or remote controlled valves on large pipelines — whether they are existing or new — to reduce the severity of accidents. Following a 1994 gas pipeline explosion and fire that destroyed eight buildings in Edison, Jersey, the safety board urged the Transportation Department to expedite requirements for shut-off valves in cities and natural areas.
But pipeline companies for years resisted new valve requirements because of the expense of installing them and concerns they could close accidentally and shut off fuel supplies.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the more stringent regulations for the industry were needed because too many people have been harmed by pipeline failures.
He said installation of the valves would also protect against large releases of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas blamed for helping drive climate change.
“Today we are taking an important step to protect communities against hazardous pipeline leaks — helping to save the lives, property, and jobs of people in every part of the country while preventing super-polluting methane leaks.” Buttigieg said.
The Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based advocacy group, said the rule marked progress since Congress mandated more stringent pipeline regulations over a decade ago.
But the group said exempting pipelines that are already in the ground means it would not prevent a repeat of the accident at San Bruno, which involved a pipeline that was more than 50 years old.
“This rule falls far short of the NTSB recommendation and will offer no additional safety to communities living near existing pipelines,” said Bill Caram, executive director of the safety trust.
The government estimated it would cost a combined $5.9 million annually for companies to comply with Thursday’s rule. By comparison, industry representatives said a single valve on an existing line could cost up to $1.5 million and it would take billions of dollars to retrofit lines nationwide.
Industry representatives were closely involved in crafting the rule. Their request to allow valves to be more widely spaced along pipelines and remove the requirement for some low-risk pipes was rejected. However, transportation officials adopted some of industry recommendations that will give operators latitude to make adjustments to where valves are placed.
Association of Oil Pipe Lines Vice President John Stoody said the final rule still contains “arbitrary requirements” for pipeline operators that don’t reflect real-world operating conditions or the low risk of spills in some scenarios.
Amy Andryszak, president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said her organization and companies it represents were still reviewing the rule but were “generally supportive” of rules that encourage safety.
Experts say automatic valves can help eliminate some human-caused errors that contribute to accidents, such as a delay of more than 17 hours to confirm the 2010 Kalamazoo, Michigan, pipeline rupture because workers ignored alarms indicating a possible spill. The break released more than 800,000 gallons (3,600,000 liters) of crude oil and caused roughly $1 billion in property and environmental damage.
In San Bruno, a 30-inch (76-centimeter) gas pipeline exploded and burned like a massive blowtorch in a suburban California neighborhood for 89 minutes before a manual valve was used to shut it down. An AP investigation found that pipeline operator Pacific Gas & Electric Co. agreed as far back as 1997 that remotely operated valves did a better job of protecting public safety, but opted against using them widely because they weren’t necessary or required.
Officials with the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration did not immediately respond to questions about the new rule.
Also missing from the new rule are standards for equipment that can detect when and where leaks hit, a recurring problem in pipeline accidents, Caram said.
Instead, the rule says pipeline companies must quickly take steps to confirm a spill if they get an alarm or other notification, but the confirmation process itself remains up to the company.
Faulty leak detection systems played a role in recent accidents including a 350,000 gallon diesel oil spill in December into a wetlandsoutside New Orleans and an underwater rupture off California’s coastlast October that fouled the ocean with tens of thousands of gallons crude oil.
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Follow Matthew Brown: @matthewbrownAP
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TULALIP, Wash. (AP) — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday signed into law a bill that creates a first-in-the-nation statewide alert system for missing Indigenous people, to help address a silent crisis that has plagued Indian Country in this state and nationwide.
The law sets up a system similar to Amber Alerts and so-called silver alerts, which are used respectively for missing children and vulnerable adults in many states. It was spearheaded by Democratic Rep. Debra Lekanoff, the only Native American lawmaker currently serving in the Washington state Legislature, and championed by Indigenous leaders statewide.
“I am proud to say that the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s and People’s Alert System came from the voices of our Native American leaders,” said Lekanoff, a member of the Tlingit tribe and the bill’s chief sponsor. “It’s not just an Indian issue, it’s not just an Indian responsibility. Our sisters, our aunties, our grandmothers are going missing every day … and it’s been going on for far too long.”
Tribal leaders, many of them women, wore traditional hats woven from cedar as they gathered around Inslee for the signing on the Tulalip Reservation, north of Seattle. Afterward they gifted him with a handmade traditional ribbon shirt and several multicolored woven blankets.
The law attempts to address a crisis of missing Indigenous people — particularly women — in Washington and across the United States. While it includes missing men, women and children, a summary of public testimony on the legislation notes that “the crisis began as a women’s issue, and it remains primarily a women’s issue.”
Besides notifying law enforcement when there’s a report of a missing Indigenous person, the new alert system will place messages on highway reader boards and on the radio and social media, and provide information to the news media.
The legislation was paired with another bill Inslee, a Democrat, signed Thursday that requires county coroners or medical examiners to take steps to identify and notify family members of murdered Indigenous people and return their remains. That new law also establishes two grant funds for Indigenous survivors of human trafficking.
This piece of the crisis is important because in many cases, murdered Indigenous women are mistakenly recorded as white or Hispanic by coroners’ offices, they’re never identified, or their remains never repatriated.
A 2021 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found the true number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the U.S. is unknown due to reporting problems, distrust of law enforcement and jurisdictional conflicts. But Native American women face murder rates almost three times those of white women overall — and up to 10 times the national average in certain locations, according to a 2021 summary of the existing research by the National Congress of American Indians. More than 80% have experienced violence.
In Washington, more than four times as many Indigenous women go missing than white women, according to research conducted by the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle, but many such cases receive little or no media attention.
The bill signing began with a traditional welcome song passed down by Harriette Shelton Dover, a cherished cultural leader and storyteller. Dover recovered and shared many traditions and songs from tribes along Washington’s northern Pacific Coast and worked with linguists before her death in 1991 to preserve her language, Lushootseed, from extinction. Women performed an honor song after the event.
Tulalip Tribes of Washington Chairwoman Teri Gobin said Washington and Montana are the two states with the most missing Indigenous people in the U.S. Nearly four dozen Native people are currently missing in Seattle alone, she said.
“What’s the most important thing is bringing them home, whether they’ve been trafficked, whether they’ve been stolen or murdered,” she said. “It’s a wound that stays open, and it’s something that we pray with (for) each person, we can bring them home.”
Investigations into missing Indigenous people, particularly women, have been plagued by many issues for decades.
When a person goes missing on a reservation, there are often there are jurisdictional conflicts between tribal police and local and state law enforcement. A lack of staff and police resources, and the rural nature of many reservations, compound those problems. And many times, families of tribal members distrust non-Native law enforcement or don’t know where to report news of a missing loved one.
An alert system will help mitigate some of those problems by allowing better communication and coordination between tribal and non-tribal law enforcement and creating a way for law enforcement to flag such cases for other agencies. The law expands the definition of “missing endangered person” to include Indigenous people, as well as children and vulnerable adults with disabilities or memory or cognitive issues.
The law takes effect June 9 and some details are still being worked out. For example, it’s unclear what criteria law enforcement will use to positively identify a missing person as Native American and how the information will be disseminated in rural areas, including on some reservations, where highways lack electronic reader boards — or where there aren’t highways at all.
The measure is the latest step Washington has taken to address the issue. The Washington State Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People Task Force is working to coordinate a statewide response and had its first meeting in December. Its first report is expected in August.
Many states from Arizona to Oregon to Wisconsin have taken recent action to address the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women. Efforts include funding for better resources for tribal police to the creation of new databases specifically targeting missing tribal members. Tribal police agencies that use Amber Alerts for missing Indigenous children include the Hopi and Las Vegas Paiute.
In California, the Yurok Tribe and the Sovereign Bodies Institute, an Indigenous-run research and advocacy group, uncovered 18 cases of missing or slain Native American women in roughly the past year in their recent work — a number they consider a vast undercount. An estimated 62% of those cases are not listed in state or federal databases for missing persons.
The law is already drawing attention from other states, whose attorney generals have called to ask how to enact similar legislation, said state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who called the law “truly groundbreaking.”
“Any time you’re doing something for the first time in this country, that’s an extra heavy lift,” he said. “This most certainly will not be our last reform to make sure that we bring everybody back home. .. There is so much more work that needs to be done and must be done.”
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Flaccus reported from Portland, Oregon.
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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus
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