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Soldiers from the 554th and 139th Military Police Companies were selected by their respective platoons to participate in the annual "Clifton Challenge," Aug. 10 on Panzer Kaserne. The challenge is dedicated to a fellow fallen comrade, Cpl. Karen Clifton who was killed in action in Iraq. Building 2914 on Panzer Kaserne was later renamed Clifton Hall in her honor.
This work, Clifton Challenge B-Roll, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright. | https://www.dvidshub.net/video/855193/clifton-challenge-b-roll | 2022-08-24T16:38:16Z | dvidshub.net | control | https://www.dvidshub.net/video/855193/clifton-challenge-b-roll | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
A 25-year-old driver from Sevenoaks rear-ended by a BMW said his Volvo's sturdiness may have saved his life. Zac Calvert was driving home about 50mph in lane one on the M25 at around 2.25am on Saturday (August 20) when there was a "massive bang" as the black BMW 1 series hit the back of his car.
The crash was between junctions 4 and 5 and miraculously neither drivers suffered visible injuries. But Zac's "pride and joy", his rare factory manual 850 R Volvo, was a write-off. He told KentLive: "It's lucky I was in that car. If it was a small hatchback it could have been a lot different.
"Volvos are built like tanks. The car is a seven seater. If there had been children in the back, I don't think they would have survived. The boot was totally crashed in. He hit the back right hand corner. We both span and hit the grass verge and I ended up on the left hard shoulder. I was driving home alone in the early hours in lane one. It was quiet. I had no passenger, luckily. The next thing was a massive bang and a massive impact."
Read more: I tried the new checkout-less Amazon Fresh in Sevenoaks and was left in a sci-fi daze
A Kent Police spokesman confirmed a 29-year-old man from Ashford was arrested on suspicion of drink driving, aggravated vehicle taking and for driving without insurance or a valid driving licence in connection with the incident. "He was taken into custody and later bailed, pending further enquiries, to return to a police station on September 13," the spokesman added.
Zac's DJ equipment worth £1,000 was destroyed in the crash. He has had a sore shoulder, a head ache and has been "really stressed out" by the crash. He has yet to return to work as a partner in a property management firm, and has been forced to cancel his DJ jobs too.
"I'm just really upset about the car," he said. "It was a really rare car. I will never be able to find another one. It is a classic car. It's hard to value because there are so few of them. There's a lot of history. There must only be 10-20 factory manual Volvo 850R left in the country, if that, which makes it rather rare and desirable. It's probably worth about £10,000, which might not seem a lot, but it was special to me."
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I went to Tonbridge's brand new Wimpy but couldn't tell it apart from any McDonald's | https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/sevenoaks-drivers-rare-car-destroyed-7503433 | 2022-08-24T16:38:16Z | kentlive.news | control | https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/sevenoaks-drivers-rare-car-destroyed-7503433 | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Members of the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity (USAMMDA) and U.S. Army Soldiers with the 551st Medical Logistics Company, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and 51st MLC, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, test the Portable Oxygen Generating System at Fort Detrick, Maryland, Aug. 17, 2022. The POGS is a portable, expeditionary oxygen generating system capable of producing 90% or better purified oxygen at up to 120 liters a minute. The medical logistics and biomedical equipment specialists’ job during testing is to ensure the oxygen generators meet the Army’s standards for performance in field-like conditions. Staff Sgt. Lorrence Wilder, a native of Brooklyn, New York, is a Medical Logistics Specialist with the 551st Medical Logistics Company (MLC), based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. Spc. Heidi Cardona-Tejera is a Biomedical Equipment Technician with the 51st MLC at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. USAMMDA is a subordinate command of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, under the Army Futures Command. As the premier developer of world-class military medical capabilities, USAMMDA is responsible for developing and delivering critical products designed to protect and preserve the lives of Warfighters across the globe. These products include drugs, vaccines, biologics, devices and medical support equipment intended to maximize survival of casualties on the battlefield. (U.S. Army Video by T. T. Parish/Released)
This work, USAMMDA, Army Medical Logistic Team Tests Oxygen Generation Systems, by T. T. Parish, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright. | https://www.dvidshub.net/video/855197/usammda-army-medical-logistic-team-tests-oxygen-generation-systems | 2022-08-24T16:38:35Z | dvidshub.net | control | https://www.dvidshub.net/video/855197/usammda-army-medical-logistic-team-tests-oxygen-generation-systems | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
WASHINGTON (AP/WBOC) - President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced his long-awaited plan to deliver on a campaign promise to provide $10,000 in student debt cancellation for millions of Americans - and up to $10,000 more for those with the greatest financial need - along with new measures to lower the burden of repayment for their remaining federal student debt.
Borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year, or families earning less than $250,000, would be eligible for the $10,000 loan forgiveness, Biden announced in a tweet. For recipients of Pell Grants, which are reserved for undergraduates with the most significant financial need, the federal government would cancel up to an additional $10,000 in federal loan debt.
Biden is also extending a pause on federal student loan payments for what he called the “final time” through the end of 2022. He was set to deliver remarks Wednesday afternoon at the White House to unveil his proposal to the public.
If his plan survives legal challenges that are almost certain to come, it could offer a windfall to a swath of the nation in the run-up to this fall's midterm elections. More than 43 million people have federal student debt, with an average balance of $37,667, according to federal data. Nearly a third of borrowers owe less than $10,000, and about half owe less than $20,000. The White House estimates that Biden's announcement would erase the federal student debt of about 20 million people.
Proponents say cancellation will narrow the racial wealth gap - Black students are more likely to borrow federal student loans and at higher amounts than others. Four years after earning bachelor's degrees, Black borrowers owe an average of nearly $25,000 more than their white peers, according to a Brookings Institution study.
Still, the action is unlikely to thrill any of the factions that have been jostling for influence as Biden weighs how much to cancel and for whom.
Biden has faced pressure from liberals to provide broader relief to hard-hit borrowers, and from moderates and Republicans questioning the fairness of any widespread forgiveness. The delay in Biden’s decision only heightened the anticipation for what his own aides acknowledge represents a political no-win situation. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden's intended announcement ahead of time.
The White House emphasized that no one in the top 5% of incomes would see any loan relief.
The continuation of the coronavirus pandemic-era payment freeze comes just days before millions of Americans were set to find out when their next student loan bills will be due. This is the closest the administration has come to hitting the end of the payment freeze extension, with the current pause set to end Aug. 31.
Details of the plan have been kept closely guarded as Biden weighed his options. The administration said Wednesday the Education Department will release information in the coming weeks for eligible borrowers to sign up for debt relief. Cancellation for some would be automatic, if the department has access to to their income information, but others would need to fill out a form.
Current students would only be eligible for relief if their loans were originated before July 1, 2022. Biden is also proposing capping the amount that borrowers must pay monthly on undergraduate loans at 5% of their earnings. The Education Department is to post a proposed rule to that effect, which would also cover the unpaid monthly interest for borrowers who remain current with their monthly payments - even when the payments are $0 because their incomes are low.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden was initially skeptical of student loan debt cancellation as he faced off against more progressive candidates for the Democratic nomination. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had proposed cancellations of $50,000 or more.
As he tried to shore up support among younger voters and prepare for a general election battle against President Donald Trump, Biden unveiled his initial proposal for debt cancellation of $10,000 per borrower, with no mention of an income cap.
Biden narrowed his campaign promise in recent months by embracing the income limit as soaring inflation took a political toll and as he aimed to head off political attacks that the cancellation would benefit those with higher take-home pay. But Democrats, from members of congressional leadership to those facing tough reelection bids this November, have pushed the administration to go as broad as possible on debt relief, seeing it in part as a galvanizing issue, particularly for Black and young voters this fall.
“The positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities, and is the single most effective action that the President can take on his own to help working families and the economy," said Warren on Wednesday in a joint statement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“For too long many Americans struggling to get ahead have been burdened by the heavy weight of student debt – holding them back from financial stability and economic opportunity," said U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). "But now, thanks to these executive actions by President Biden, millions of Americans from a wide array of backgrounds will receive badly needed relief. I applaud these actions and will keep working to pass long-term solutions to fix the student loan crisis, make college more affordable, and ensure all Americans can secure a better economic future.”
Although Biden’s plan is changed from he initially proposed during the campaign, “he’ll get a lot of credit for following through on something that he was committed to,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked with Biden during the 2020 election.
A survey of 18- to 29-year-olds conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics in March found that 59% of those polled favored debt cancellation of some sort - whether for all borrowers or those most in need - although student loans did not rank high among issues that most concerned people in that age group.
Some advocates say Biden's plan still falls short.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, which has aggressively lobbied Biden to take bolder action, said Tuesday.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people - especially Black women - behind,” he said. “This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020.”
Republicans, meanwhile, see a political upside if Biden pursues a large-scale cancellation of student debt ahead of the November midterms, anticipating backlash for Democrats - particularly in states where there are large numbers of working-class voters without college degrees. Critics of broad student debt forgiveness also believe it will open the White House to lawsuits, on the grounds that Congress has never given the president the explicit authority to cancel debt on his own.
The Republican National Committee on Tuesday blasted Biden’s expected announcement as a “handout to the rich,” claiming it would unfairly burden lower-income taxpayers and those who have already paid off their student loans with covering the costs of higher education for the wealthy.
Biden’s long deliberations have led to grumbling among federal loan servicers, who had been instructed to hold back billing statements while Biden weighed a decision.
Industry groups had complained that the delayed decision left them with just days to notify borrowers, retrain customer service workers and update websites and digital payment systems, said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance.
It increases the risk that some borrowers will inadvertently be told they need to make payments, he said.
“At this late stage I think that’s the risk we’re running,” he said. “You can’t just turn on a dime with 35 million borrowers who all have different loan types and statuses.” | https://www.wboc.com/news/biden-announces-long-awaited-student-debt-forgiveness-plan/article_3cfa3610-23c5-11ed-98a5-77f0e41a7943.html | 2022-08-24T16:39:50Z | wboc.com | control | https://www.wboc.com/news/biden-announces-long-awaited-student-debt-forgiveness-plan/article_3cfa3610-23c5-11ed-98a5-77f0e41a7943.html | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
BALTIMORE- Boys & Girls Clubs of Maryland on Wednesday announced a 47% increase in youth served following the first year of funding from Project Bounce Back – an investment in youth development made by the dtate of Maryland under Gov. Larry Hogan.
Since receiving the funding, BGCMD has been able to reach and serve 16,168 youth at more than 70 Boys & Girls Club program locations across Maryland. Additionally, the organization has added eight new clubs in communities that previously did not have clubs.
Project Bounce Back was announced in May of 2021 and provided funding to help Maryland youth recover from the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic over three years. Through the initiative, BGCMD received funds to expand youth development and positive mentorship programs, with a goal of reaching 45,000 youth every county by the end of year three.
“We are excited to see the progress that is being made through Project Bounce Back,” said Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services Kunle Adeyemo. “Governor Hogan has directed more than $15 million in funding to Boys and Girls Clubs and will continue to support young Marylanders however he can, ensuring they have all the tools they need to be successful in life.”
In 2022, individual clubs worked to broaden their reach and expand into more communities, reaching more youth and creating programming that meets the unique need of families in those communities. Eight new Club sites have been opened throughout the state, including new Clubs in Dorchester, Wicomico, Worcester, Washington, Allegany, and Kent counties.
Jeffrey Breslin, president & CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Baltimore and member of Boys & Girls Clubs of Maryland, explained “At Boys & Girls Clubs, we provide evidenced informed programming in a safe environment for youth, where they can learn and grow. We are more focused than ever on fostering relationships to help youth become their best selves through our signature educational programs, and unique experiences. Our Clubs are accessible to all kids, regardless of their personal or financial circumstances.”
BGCMD has also utilized new forms of outreach including the “Club on the Go” mobile units and “Clubhouse at Your House” virtual programming, allowing access for youth who previously had no access to programs.
The BGCMD service to the community includes providing direct resources to enhance outcome and family stability to referrals to external community-based support services, and training for families relating to Adverse Childhood Experiences. Over 70% of youth in BGCMD programs come from families who live at or below poverty level. During the first year of Project Bounce Back funding:
- 2,104 Youth were referred to external community-based supports and services (academic/social/ vocational)
- 11,688 Youth were provided resources (meals, laptops, supplies) to enhance their outcomes and family stability
- 2,526 Youth showed improved school performance
- Law enforcement personnel provided 1,388 hours for youth engagement in the community through Boys & Girls Clubs
During year two of Project Bounce Back, BGCMD plan to continue opening new Clubs and after school programs, with a focus on expanding programming into Title 1 school districts and rural communities. BGCMD provide positive mentorship and evidenced based programs built using a proven model that provides protective factors and stability for youth and communities. | https://www.wboc.com/news/boys-girls-clubs-of-maryland-report-47-increase-in-number-of-youth-served/article_13cf1aea-23ba-11ed-9f86-2bc70c22fae0.html | 2022-08-24T16:39:56Z | wboc.com | control | https://www.wboc.com/news/boys-girls-clubs-of-maryland-report-47-increase-in-number-of-youth-served/article_13cf1aea-23ba-11ed-9f86-2bc70c22fae0.html | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
NEW CASTLE, Del. – The Delaware Division of Social Services announced Wednesday that it will issue emergency benefits for August to eligible households as part of the state’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Benefits will be issued as part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and two cash assistance programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and General Assistance (GA). The SNAP emergency food benefit will be available on recipients’ Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards Thursday, Aug. 25. Eligible TANF and GA households will receive an emergency cash benefit check on or after Thursday, Aug. 25.
All households with open SNAP cases will receive at least $95 in emergency food benefits, to be issued as follows:
SNAP households receiving the maximum food benefit amount for their household size or a prorated initial benefit will receive $95 in emergency food benefits.
- SNAP households with a calculated emergency food benefit amount less than $95 will have their emergency benefit increased to $95.
- SNAP households with a calculated emergency benefit amount of $95 or more will continue to receive the calculated emergency benefit amount to increase the household’s monthly benefit up to the maximum benefit amount for their household size.
The emergency assistance for TANF and GA families will increase a household’s monthly benefit for each program up to the maximum benefit amount for their household size. Households that already receive the maximum TANF or GA benefit amount or that have a prorated benefit in the month of August are not eligible for the August emergency cash funds.
The Delaware Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) has issued emergency benefits each month to eligible households since March 2020.
“We continue to experience community spread of COVID-19, which is affecting individuals and families across our state, but is having a particularly negative impact on those who are vulnerable and must miss work to isolate,” said DHSS Secretary Molly Magarik. “During the pandemic, being able to offer these enhanced benefits has been crucial in ensuring that all Delawareans can continue to put food on their tables. Again this month, we are grateful to the federal government and Delaware’s congressional delegation for providing these critical benefits.”
How the monthly emergency benefit is calculated: A household’s monthly emergency benefit equals the current maximum benefit amount for the household size minus the household’s current monthly benefit amount. For example, based on current USDA limits for SNAP benefits, if a household of one gets $100 in regular monthly benefits, that household will receive $150 in emergency benefits ($250 maximum benefit minus $100 monthly benefit).
Here are the current maximum monthly benefit amounts per household size for SNAP, TANF, and General Assistance:
Emergency SNAP Benefits
An estimated 59,225 Delaware households will receive the emergency SNAP allotment in August, totaling about $11.9 million in emergency food benefits for the month.
Emergency Cash Benefits
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
General Assistance (GA)
An estimated 190 households will be eligible to receive emergency cash assistance benefits in August, totaling about $25,000 in emergency benefits for the month.
In addition to the emergency benefits, households will receive their regular benefits for August on the usual issuance dates.
For more information about DSS’s benefit programs in response to the pandemic, go to the division’s webpage. To screen for and apply for benefits, go to DHSS’ online application portal Delaware ASSIST or call 1-866-843-7212. | https://www.wboc.com/news/delaware-to-issue-emergency-benefits-on-aug-25-to-all-snap-and-other-eligible-households/article_2e746824-23b4-11ed-bd47-67e2e6481a66.html | 2022-08-24T16:40:02Z | wboc.com | control | https://www.wboc.com/news/delaware-to-issue-emergency-benefits-on-aug-25-to-all-snap-and-other-eligible-households/article_2e746824-23b4-11ed-bd47-67e2e6481a66.html | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is forecasting that this year’s budget deficit will be nearly $400 billion lower than it estimated back in March, due in part to stronger than expected revenues, reduced spending, and an economy that has recovered all of the jobs lost during the multi-year pandemic.
In full, this year’s deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, representing the single largest decline in the federal deficit in American history, the Office of Management and Budget says.
Despite the gains, the administration said Tuesday that it is forecasting a deficit of $1.03 trillion for the budget year that ends Sept. 30. That number signifies a movement away from the record deficit in 2020, which reached $3.13 trillion.
The administration’s Mid-Session Review said much of the improvement in the deficit forecast for this year stemmed from the economy “transitioning from a historic and rapid recovery to stable and steady growth.”
The administration sees inflation pressures remaining into 2023, however.
“The President’s top economic priority continues to be tackling the challenge of inflation, without giving up the historic economic gains we’ve made over the past 18 months,” said Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget in a statement.
“While costs are still too high for too many families, the President’s economic plan is working and we’re on the right track,” she said.
Because the projections of the Mid-Session Review were finalized in June, it does not include the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act and estimated $740 billion climate, healthcare and tax measure.
And while the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in July said, that fast economic growth and higher tax revenues have caused the federal debt this year to be lower than forecast, the organization warns in its 30-year outlook that debt will soon spiral upward to new highs that could ultimately imperil the U.S. economy. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/biden-administration-forecasts-1-03t-deficit-down-400b/ | 2022-08-24T16:44:51Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/biden-administration-forecasts-1-03t-deficit-down-400b/ | 0 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | 34 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is forecasting that this year’s budget deficit will be nearly $400 billion lower than it estimated back in March, due in part to stronger than expected revenues, reduced spending, and an economy that has recovered all of the jobs lost during the multi-year pandemic.
In full, this year’s deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, representing the single largest decline in the federal deficit in American history, the Office of Management and Budget says.
Despite the gains, the administration said Tuesday that it is forecasting a deficit of $1.03 trillion for the budget year that ends Sept. 30. That number signifies a movement away from the record deficit in 2020, which reached $3.13 trillion.
The administration’s Mid-Session Review said much of the improvement in the deficit forecast for this year stemmed from the economy “transitioning from a historic and rapid recovery to stable and steady growth.”
The administration sees inflation pressures remaining into 2023, however.
“The President’s top economic priority continues to be tackling the challenge of inflation, without giving up the historic economic gains we’ve made over the past 18 months,” said Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget in a statement.
“While costs are still too high for too many families, the President’s economic plan is working and we’re on the right track,” she said.
Because the projections of the Mid-Session Review were finalized in June, it does not include the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act and estimated $740 billion climate, healthcare and tax measure.
And while the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in July said, that fast economic growth and higher tax revenues have caused the federal debt this year to be lower than forecast, the organization warns in its 30-year outlook that debt will soon spiral upward to new highs that could ultimately imperil the U.S. economy. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/biden-administration-forecasts-1-03t-deficit-down-400b/ | 2022-08-24T16:44:51Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/biden-administration-forecasts-1-03t-deficit-down-400b/ | 1 | 0 | green-iguana-35 | 34 |
STEPHENVILLE, Newfoundland (AP) — The leaders of Germany and Canada said Tuesday a new hydrogen pact will kick-start a transatlantic hydrogen supply chain, with the first deliveries expected in just three years.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed the deal in the port town of Stephenville, Newfoundland. A Canadian company has plans to build a zero-emission plant that will use wind energy to produce hydrogen and ammonia for export.
Hydrogen is seen as a component of Europe’s plan to reduce its reliance on Russian fossil fuels, particularly in light of the war in Ukraine and recent reductions in the supply of Russian natural gas to Germany and other countries.
“The market case and the need to scale up was coming and wasn’t quite here yet. Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine has meant that everything gets accelerated,” Trudeau said.
Scholz said Canada is Germany’s partner of choice as the country moves away from relying on Russia to supply energy.
“Our need might be even higher under the new circumstances,” Scholz said.
Natural gas prices have surged as Russia has reduced or cut off natural gas flows to a dozen European Union countries, fueling inflation and raising the risk that Europe could plunge into recession. Germans have been urged to cut gas use now so the country will have enough for the winter ahead.
The Canadian government earlier Tuesday signed separate agreements with Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz that will see the two German auto manufacturers secure access to Canadian raw materials for batteries in electric vehicles. The agreements include Canadian cobalt, graphite, nickel and lithium. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/canada-germany-aim-to-start-hydrogen-shipments-in-2025/ | 2022-08-24T16:45:06Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/canada-germany-aim-to-start-hydrogen-shipments-in-2025/ | 0 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | 36 |
STEPHENVILLE, Newfoundland (AP) — The leaders of Germany and Canada said Tuesday a new hydrogen pact will kick-start a transatlantic hydrogen supply chain, with the first deliveries expected in just three years.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed the deal in the port town of Stephenville, Newfoundland. A Canadian company has plans to build a zero-emission plant that will use wind energy to produce hydrogen and ammonia for export.
Hydrogen is seen as a component of Europe’s plan to reduce its reliance on Russian fossil fuels, particularly in light of the war in Ukraine and recent reductions in the supply of Russian natural gas to Germany and other countries.
“The market case and the need to scale up was coming and wasn’t quite here yet. Russia’s illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine has meant that everything gets accelerated,” Trudeau said.
Scholz said Canada is Germany’s partner of choice as the country moves away from relying on Russia to supply energy.
“Our need might be even higher under the new circumstances,” Scholz said.
Natural gas prices have surged as Russia has reduced or cut off natural gas flows to a dozen European Union countries, fueling inflation and raising the risk that Europe could plunge into recession. Germans have been urged to cut gas use now so the country will have enough for the winter ahead.
The Canadian government earlier Tuesday signed separate agreements with Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz that will see the two German auto manufacturers secure access to Canadian raw materials for batteries in electric vehicles. The agreements include Canadian cobalt, graphite, nickel and lithium. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/canada-germany-aim-to-start-hydrogen-shipments-in-2025/ | 2022-08-24T16:45:06Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/canada-germany-aim-to-start-hydrogen-shipments-in-2025/ | 1 | 0 | green-iguana-35 | 36 |
(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden is canceling some student debt for millions of Americans, delivering at least partially on a campaign promise and hoping to energize younger, college-educated voters ahead of the November midterm elections.
Biden’s plan calls for thousands of dollars in loan cancellations for those who earn less than $125,000 a year. For those who went to college on Pell Grants, $20,000 will be forgiven. Those who did not receive that grant will see $10,000 in debt forgiveness.
People with undergraduate loans can cap their repayment at 5% of their monthly income.
The move will be the largest forgiveness for individual student debt ever.
In addition, the student loan payment pause is being extended one final time, Biden said on Twitter, to Dec. 31, 2022.
The nation’s outstanding federal student debt now tops $1.6 trillion after ballooning for years, according to the Education Data Initiative. More than 43 million Americans have federal student debt, with almost a third owing less than $10,000 and more than half owing less than $20,000, according to the latest federal data.
The decision to provide debt relief comes after pressure from Democrats and activists to forgive even more in loans. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both proposed debt cancellations of $50,000 or more during the 2020 presidential campaign.
While Biden was initially skeptical, he came to support debt relief during his campaign for presidency, though his initial proposal had no mention of the income caps. He’s since narrowed that campaign promise as record-high inflation continues to be a drag on his approval ratings.
Republicans have criticized loan cancellations as unfair and likely to lead to more inflation. A group of lawmakers this month proposed legislation that would overhaul the federal student loan system, calling their plan an alternative to Biden’s “blanket loan scheme.”
“It will make rising costs worse, rather than address the costs of colleges,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas.
The administration has already canceled $32 billion in loans for more than 1.6 million borrowers. Previous cancellations were given to students who were defrauded by private colleges like ITT Technical Institute and DeVry University.
Student loan payments have also been on pause since March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The moratorium has been extended several times and was set to expire on Aug. 31.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | https://www.siouxlandproud.com/news/national-news/biden-announces-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/ | 2022-08-24T16:45:09Z | siouxlandproud.com | control | https://www.siouxlandproud.com/news/national-news/biden-announces-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
(NEXSTAR) – The downtown districts of many larger U.S. cities are struggling to recover to pre-pandemic levels, according to the results of a new study from UC Berkeley.
Using data obtained from mobile phone usage and GPS location services, the study compared the effects of the “initial shock of the pandemic” — i.e., the migration of workers to non-downtown areas or the suburbs — to the rate at which those downtown areas were being visited as of May 2022.
Of the 62 North American cities included in the study, only a handful had shown increased activity in their downtown areas when compared to March 2019. The rest were demonstrating slower recovery trajectories — with some recovering much more slowly than others.
“Early studies suggest that downtowns will struggle to recover from the pandemic, due to their disproportionate share of business closures, the lessening demand for downtown real estate due to remote work, and challenges associated with the loss of business travel and rise of ecommerce,” the study’s authors wrote in a research brief released by UC Berkley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
San Francisco’s downtown area, for instance, fared the worst of all downtowns with a “recovery quotient” of only 31% — meaning the district was only seeing 31% of the activity observed in March 2019. Cleveland (36%), Portland, Oregon (41%), Detroit (42%) and Chicago (43%) rounded out the bottom five on the list.
On the other end, Salt Lake City’s downtown area exceeded its pre-pandemic activity levels, at 155%. SLC was joined by Bakersfield, California (117%); Columbus, Ohio (112%); and Fresno, California (108%) as the only other cities that managed an increase in downtown-district activity between 2019 and 2022.
The top ten U.S. cities with the highest and lowest recovery quotients, as determined by researchers with UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, are as follows:
Highest Recovery Quotients
- Salt Lake City: 155%
- Bakersfield, California: 117%
- Columbus, Ohio: 112%
- Fresno, California: 108%
- Omaha, Nebraska: 92%
- Baltimore: 91%
- El Paso, Texas: 91%
- San Diego: 89%
- Tampa, Florida: 85%
- Honolulu: 84%
Lowest Recovery Quotients
- San Francisco: 31%
- Cleveland: 36%
- Portland, Oregon: 41%
- Detroit: 42%
- Chicago: 43%
- Indianapolis: 44%
- Minneapolis: 44%
- Raleigh, North Carolina: 45%
- New Orleans: 46%
- Oakland, California: 46%
On the whole, however, the study’s authors found that downtowns in southern U.S. cities generally rebounded better than those in the north. They also found that cities with certain variables — low downtown housing stock, higher education levels, a larger percentage of workers in the tech, information, hospitality and finance industries — were more likely to have slower recovery rates.
The same researchers also analyzed city-wide activity in each of the areas studied — and not just the downtown areas — and found the recovery rate of the entire city was “often higher” than that of just the downtown, “indicating that downtown areas have been consistently lagging behind in activity recovery as remote working and the digitization of services continues.”
The study’s authors cited surveys which predicted that many of the country’s larger downtowns will never fully recover, and that it might be “time to reinvent” these districts with less office space, more residential buildings, and more focus on culture and recreation.
“Most importantly, downtowns should look to diversify their economies to focus on resilient sectors such as education, health, and government,” the researchers suggest.
More information from this study, including the authors’ definition of a downtown area and the methodologies used, can be found at DowntownRecovery.com. | https://www.siouxlandproud.com/news/national-news/downtown-districts-across-the-us-are-struggling-after-the-pandemic-study-finds-is-your-city-recovering-faster-than-others/ | 2022-08-24T16:45:15Z | siouxlandproud.com | control | https://www.siouxlandproud.com/news/national-news/downtown-districts-across-the-us-are-struggling-after-the-pandemic-study-finds-is-your-city-recovering-faster-than-others/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — The Spirit Lake Community School Board has approved arming selected staff to carry a firearm on school grounds to protect the staff and students.
According to the special agenda notes from the Spirit Lake Community School Board of Directors’ special meeting, the board of directors unanimously approved arming staff with the school district.
The special meeting was held on Monday at 5:30 p.m. and all board members, Superintendent David Smith, two co-board secretaries, the Administration Department, 13 staff members, and six visitors attended.
The notes indicated that the resolution allows the Superintendent to select 10 or fewer individuals to be armed with a gun on school grounds with the intent of protecting staff and students.
The notes cited the law Iowa Code 724.4B (2) (a), which states that a person who has been specifically authorized by the school to be armed on school grounds is not subject to criminal charges.
A second item updated the board policy that lets the superintendent select the staff members. The last item voted on during the meeting included the motion to update the plan for other emergency drills.
An email from Spirit Lake schools to parents specified that the trained staff will be non-teachers. It also states that the policy is being fully supported by Dickinson County Sheriff Gregory Baloun and Spirit Lake Chief of Police Shane Brevik.
“As a school district, we have an obligation to protect our students and staff from a possible active shooter situation,” said Dr. Smith in a statement included with the email. “We know that when these events occur, most of the victims fall within the first few minutes. We have determined the right action to take is to give train staff members the opportunity to stop a killer as soon as possible. In addition, having this policy in place serves as a deterrent for anyone who might consider entering our schools with the intent to do harm.’
According to the email, the safety policy will supplement the other safety features the district has in place such as locked doors, security cameras, mental health supports, and a district resource officer. The district also said that it will continue to utilize its safety plan, provide staff and students with age-appropriate training, and review other safety measures that add additional layers of security to its facilities.
This is a developing story and will be updated as we learn more information.
Gage Teunissen contributed to this story. | https://www.siouxlandproud.com/news/local-news/spirit-lake-community-school-board-unanimously-approves-motion-to-arm-selected-staff-members/ | 2022-08-24T16:45:41Z | siouxlandproud.com | control | https://www.siouxlandproud.com/news/local-news/spirit-lake-community-school-board-unanimously-approves-motion-to-arm-selected-staff-members/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
NEW YORK (AP) — Unlike its cars, Tesla shares are about to get less expensive.
Tesla is splitting its stock 3 for 1, so after the close of trading Tuesday, investors will receive two additional Tesla shares for every one they owned as of Aug. 17. In theory, that should drop Tesla’s share price by about two-thirds before trading starts on Wednesday.
Stock splits don’t make a company more valuable or more profitable. Tesla joins stock market heavyweights Amazon and Google parent Alphabet in splitting their high-priced shares this year. Even meme-stock darling GameStop has done a stock split.
WHY DO A STOCK SPLIT?
Stock splits are used by companies when their stock price gets too high for retail investors to buy individual shares, or when a company wants more shares in the marketplace to make them easier to trade.
Employees who hold a company’s stock can benefit as well if new investors push the price higher. The lower prices also should make the shares easier to sell.
Tesla shares traded for more than $1,000 when the company announced its intention to split the stock in March. That’s a bit steep for most retail investors. Some brokerages let investors buy fractions of a share, but not all.
Companies that split their stock tend to outperform the broader market in the three-, six- and 12-month periods following the announcement of a split, according to a BofA Global Research report issued in March. Since 1980, the 12-month performance of companies that split their stock has more than doubled the S&P 500’s.
HOW HAS TESLA’S STOCK BEEN DOING?
Tesla shares closed at $889.36 Tuesday and are down about 16% for the year. A price around $296, while still not exactly cheap, could entice more investors to buy the stock.
Any investor in Tesla is in part making a bet on the company’s mercurial CEO, Elon Musk, who has succeeded in making Tesla the world’s most valuable automaker and himself the world’s richest man, according to Forbes.
But the ride can get bumpy with Musk at the wheel. In April, Musk struck a deal to buy the social media platform Twitter. Some Tesla investors sold their shares, worried that Musk would be distracted from running Tesla if the deal went through. The shares fell as low as $620 in late May.
Musk has since done an about-face and wants out of the deal. The dispute heads to court in October. Tesla’s stock began to recover in July, boosted by better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and an overall upward trend in the stock market.
HAVE OTHER NOTABLE COMPANIES SPLIT THEIR STOCK?
Amazon and Alphabet, the parent of Google, each split their stock 20-for-1 in the past few months. Both companies got swept up in a broad rally for big tech stocks after the initial shock of the pandemic and their shares soared north of $2,000.
Alphabet shares have risen 2% since its stock split went into effect on July 18 but are still down about 20% for the year. Google had its slowest revenue growth in two years in the second quarter, a sign that the tailwinds propelling big technology companies during the pandemic have shifted into a challenging new direction.
Amazon shares have gained almost 9% since the split took effect on June 6, but like Alphabet the company has faced challenges and its stock is down nearly 20% year to date. Consumers have shifted their behavior and are spending more on services and less on goods. Like many companies, Amazon has seen its own costs rise significantly.
Even GameStop, the so-called meme stock that rocketed to ridiculous heights last year before falling back to earth somewhat, decided to do a stock split. Although in GameStop’s case it had been retail investors who drove the stock higher in the first place.
GameStop shares closed Tuesday at $33.56 and are down about 6% since the split took effect, partially reflecting the drop in the market the past few days. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/tesla-hopes-new-investors-go-for-the-ride-after-stock-split/ | 2022-08-24T16:46:03Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/tesla-hopes-new-investors-go-for-the-ride-after-stock-split/ | 0 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | 37 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Unlike its cars, Tesla shares are about to get less expensive.
Tesla is splitting its stock 3 for 1, so after the close of trading Tuesday, investors will receive two additional Tesla shares for every one they owned as of Aug. 17. In theory, that should drop Tesla’s share price by about two-thirds before trading starts on Wednesday.
Stock splits don’t make a company more valuable or more profitable. Tesla joins stock market heavyweights Amazon and Google parent Alphabet in splitting their high-priced shares this year. Even meme-stock darling GameStop has done a stock split.
WHY DO A STOCK SPLIT?
Stock splits are used by companies when their stock price gets too high for retail investors to buy individual shares, or when a company wants more shares in the marketplace to make them easier to trade.
Employees who hold a company’s stock can benefit as well if new investors push the price higher. The lower prices also should make the shares easier to sell.
Tesla shares traded for more than $1,000 when the company announced its intention to split the stock in March. That’s a bit steep for most retail investors. Some brokerages let investors buy fractions of a share, but not all.
Companies that split their stock tend to outperform the broader market in the three-, six- and 12-month periods following the announcement of a split, according to a BofA Global Research report issued in March. Since 1980, the 12-month performance of companies that split their stock has more than doubled the S&P 500’s.
HOW HAS TESLA’S STOCK BEEN DOING?
Tesla shares closed at $889.36 Tuesday and are down about 16% for the year. A price around $296, while still not exactly cheap, could entice more investors to buy the stock.
Any investor in Tesla is in part making a bet on the company’s mercurial CEO, Elon Musk, who has succeeded in making Tesla the world’s most valuable automaker and himself the world’s richest man, according to Forbes.
But the ride can get bumpy with Musk at the wheel. In April, Musk struck a deal to buy the social media platform Twitter. Some Tesla investors sold their shares, worried that Musk would be distracted from running Tesla if the deal went through. The shares fell as low as $620 in late May.
Musk has since done an about-face and wants out of the deal. The dispute heads to court in October. Tesla’s stock began to recover in July, boosted by better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and an overall upward trend in the stock market.
HAVE OTHER NOTABLE COMPANIES SPLIT THEIR STOCK?
Amazon and Alphabet, the parent of Google, each split their stock 20-for-1 in the past few months. Both companies got swept up in a broad rally for big tech stocks after the initial shock of the pandemic and their shares soared north of $2,000.
Alphabet shares have risen 2% since its stock split went into effect on July 18 but are still down about 20% for the year. Google had its slowest revenue growth in two years in the second quarter, a sign that the tailwinds propelling big technology companies during the pandemic have shifted into a challenging new direction.
Amazon shares have gained almost 9% since the split took effect on June 6, but like Alphabet the company has faced challenges and its stock is down nearly 20% year to date. Consumers have shifted their behavior and are spending more on services and less on goods. Like many companies, Amazon has seen its own costs rise significantly.
Even GameStop, the so-called meme stock that rocketed to ridiculous heights last year before falling back to earth somewhat, decided to do a stock split. Although in GameStop’s case it had been retail investors who drove the stock higher in the first place.
GameStop shares closed Tuesday at $33.56 and are down about 6% since the split took effect, partially reflecting the drop in the market the past few days. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/tesla-hopes-new-investors-go-for-the-ride-after-stock-split/ | 2022-08-24T16:46:03Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/tesla-hopes-new-investors-go-for-the-ride-after-stock-split/ | 1 | 0 | green-iguana-35 | 37 |
Elon Musk might have just gotten a leg up in his effort to back out of buying Twitter.
The billionaire Tesla CEO has spent months alleging that the company he agreed to buy for $44 billion undercounted its fake and spam accounts — and that he shouldn’t have to consummate the deal as a result.
Now, a whistleblower complaint from Twitter’s former security chief alleging the company misled regulators about its privacy and security protections — and its ability to detect and root out fake accounts — might play into Musk’s hands in an upcoming trial scheduled for Oct. 17 in Delaware.
Musk’s legal team, in fact, has already issued a subpoena to the whistleblower, Peiter Zatko — also known by his hacker handle “Mudge” — who served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Musk in his efforts to back out of buying Twitter, said the legal team “found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”
Disclosure of the Mudge document changes the dynamic of the Twitter lawsuit from what appeared to be an easy win for Twitter, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an interview.
“For Musk, it’s almost like a kid waking up on Christmas morning and seeing this under the tree,” he said. “It gives the Musk camp a leg to stand on going into the court battle.”
The whistleblower complaint boosts Musk’s claims on the spam bot issue, and will bring more focus on it in Washington, Ives said. “For Twitter’s board, it’s their worst nightmare that this came out at such a critical juncture.”
But Ives called the timing of the complaint “extremely interesting” just weeks before the trial in Delaware.
Twitter called the complaint “a false narrative” about the company and its privacy and data security practices “that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
In an emailed statement, the company said Zatko’s “allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.”
Some experts, though, see the whistleblower disclosure as little more than good optics for Musk.
While getting a lot of headlines, it probably won’t change what’s likely to be a Twitter victory in its lawsuit demanding that Musk go through with the purchase, said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan law and business professor.
That’s because Musk knew of and complained on Twitter about the number of fake “spam bot” accounts the company had on its platform before he signed the deal, Gordon said. To void the purchase contract, Musk has to show a “material adverse change” in the company, a change so large that it would make the deal nothing like what Musk bargained for, Gordon said. “He can’t claim that he was misled. He can claim that the whistleblower said ‘Hey Elon, you were right.’ It hurts Twitter but doesn’t help Musk much.”
Gordon, who has taught merger and acquisition law, said the Delaware Court of Chancery normally doesn’t let people out of deals if the circumstances don’t go their way. It has ordered contracts to be performed in the past. The Mudge disclosure, he said, might give the Twitter board some cover to accept a settlement short of Musk buying the company. But he expects any settlement to exceed a $1 billion breakup fee in the contract. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/whistleblower-bad-news-for-twitter-good-news-for-musk/ | 2022-08-24T16:46:38Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/whistleblower-bad-news-for-twitter-good-news-for-musk/ | 0 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | 35 |
Elon Musk might have just gotten a leg up in his effort to back out of buying Twitter.
The billionaire Tesla CEO has spent months alleging that the company he agreed to buy for $44 billion undercounted its fake and spam accounts — and that he shouldn’t have to consummate the deal as a result.
Now, a whistleblower complaint from Twitter’s former security chief alleging the company misled regulators about its privacy and security protections — and its ability to detect and root out fake accounts — might play into Musk’s hands in an upcoming trial scheduled for Oct. 17 in Delaware.
Musk’s legal team, in fact, has already issued a subpoena to the whistleblower, Peiter Zatko — also known by his hacker handle “Mudge” — who served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Musk in his efforts to back out of buying Twitter, said the legal team “found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”
Disclosure of the Mudge document changes the dynamic of the Twitter lawsuit from what appeared to be an easy win for Twitter, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an interview.
“For Musk, it’s almost like a kid waking up on Christmas morning and seeing this under the tree,” he said. “It gives the Musk camp a leg to stand on going into the court battle.”
The whistleblower complaint boosts Musk’s claims on the spam bot issue, and will bring more focus on it in Washington, Ives said. “For Twitter’s board, it’s their worst nightmare that this came out at such a critical juncture.”
But Ives called the timing of the complaint “extremely interesting” just weeks before the trial in Delaware.
Twitter called the complaint “a false narrative” about the company and its privacy and data security practices “that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
In an emailed statement, the company said Zatko’s “allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.”
Some experts, though, see the whistleblower disclosure as little more than good optics for Musk.
While getting a lot of headlines, it probably won’t change what’s likely to be a Twitter victory in its lawsuit demanding that Musk go through with the purchase, said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan law and business professor.
That’s because Musk knew of and complained on Twitter about the number of fake “spam bot” accounts the company had on its platform before he signed the deal, Gordon said. To void the purchase contract, Musk has to show a “material adverse change” in the company, a change so large that it would make the deal nothing like what Musk bargained for, Gordon said. “He can’t claim that he was misled. He can claim that the whistleblower said ‘Hey Elon, you were right.’ It hurts Twitter but doesn’t help Musk much.”
Gordon, who has taught merger and acquisition law, said the Delaware Court of Chancery normally doesn’t let people out of deals if the circumstances don’t go their way. It has ordered contracts to be performed in the past. The Mudge disclosure, he said, might give the Twitter board some cover to accept a settlement short of Musk buying the company. But he expects any settlement to exceed a $1 billion breakup fee in the contract. | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/whistleblower-bad-news-for-twitter-good-news-for-musk/ | 2022-08-24T16:46:38Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/ap-business/whistleblower-bad-news-for-twitter-good-news-for-musk/ | 1 | 0 | green-iguana-35 | 35 |
F-35A Lightning IIs assigned to the 134th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Vermont Air National Guard, prepare for take off for shield and assurance missions over Europe from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, June 21, 2022. Aircraft and Airmen from Vermont's 158th Fighter Wing deployed to Germany for more than three months as part of ongoing NATO efforts in Europe. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Ryan Campbell)
This work, VTANG Completes a Historic First for Air National Guard [Image 13 of 13], by MSgt Ryan Campbell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright. | https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7386073/vtang-completes-historic-first-air-national-guard | 2022-08-24T16:46:48Z | dvidshub.net | control | https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7386073/vtang-completes-historic-first-air-national-guard | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Responding to an increasing number of threats born of conspiracy theories that agents were going to aggressively target middle income taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday that it was conducting a comprehensive review of safety at its facilities.
The climate, healthcare and tax legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden last week included $80 billion in funding for tax collection efforts. Although Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically directed the agency to not focus its attention on taxpayers with middle class incomes, misinformation spread rapidly online that agents were going to crack down on taxpayers of all earnings levels.
The baseless assertions also said the IRS would distribute firearms to employees authorized to used deadly force, prompting threats to the IRS employees.
Now agency leadership has launched an examination of agency safety.
“We are conducting a comprehensive review of existing safety and security measures,” said Chuck Rettig, IRS commissioner about the agency’s 600 office locations nationwide. “This includes conducting risk assessments,” he said, by monitoring perimeter security, designations of restricted areas, exterior lighting, security around entrances of facilities and other measures.
“For me this is personal. I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work,” Rettig said in a Tuesday letter to employees. “And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience.”
Rettig, whose term at the IRS ends in November, is tasked with developing a plan on how to spend the new infusion of funds included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Along with anonymous online forums, high-ranking Republican politicians have spread falsehoods about the IRS workforce and how the newly allocated funds would be spent.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent an August 16 open letter to Americans, calling on them not to take any new IRS positions, reinforcing false information about open roles at the agency and their access to firearms.
“The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them,” he said in the letter.
Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said members have been vocal about their fears and worries about their safety.
“IRS employees are certainly very hard working and honest, they do the business of funding the government. They’re saying they don’t deserve to be treated as the enemy of the government,” he said.
He added that members who are of retirement age have expressed a greater desire to retire due to the increased attention on their jobs. More than half of the IRS’ enforcement workforce of 80,000 is retirement eligible.
Reardon said several workers have talked about being reminded of the 2010 Austin, Texas suicide attack, where Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single engine plane into the Echelon office building, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service manager Vernon Hunter.
“The rhetoric we’re hearing now is dangerous” Reardon said. “It’s putting these patriotic Americans at risk.” | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/irs-initiates-safety-probe-after-threats-to-workers/ | 2022-08-24T16:46:50Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/irs-initiates-safety-probe-after-threats-to-workers/ | 0 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | 36 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Responding to an increasing number of threats born of conspiracy theories that agents were going to aggressively target middle income taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday that it was conducting a comprehensive review of safety at its facilities.
The climate, healthcare and tax legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden last week included $80 billion in funding for tax collection efforts. Although Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically directed the agency to not focus its attention on taxpayers with middle class incomes, misinformation spread rapidly online that agents were going to crack down on taxpayers of all earnings levels.
The baseless assertions also said the IRS would distribute firearms to employees authorized to used deadly force, prompting threats to the IRS employees.
Now agency leadership has launched an examination of agency safety.
“We are conducting a comprehensive review of existing safety and security measures,” said Chuck Rettig, IRS commissioner about the agency’s 600 office locations nationwide. “This includes conducting risk assessments,” he said, by monitoring perimeter security, designations of restricted areas, exterior lighting, security around entrances of facilities and other measures.
“For me this is personal. I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work,” Rettig said in a Tuesday letter to employees. “And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience.”
Rettig, whose term at the IRS ends in November, is tasked with developing a plan on how to spend the new infusion of funds included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Along with anonymous online forums, high-ranking Republican politicians have spread falsehoods about the IRS workforce and how the newly allocated funds would be spent.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent an August 16 open letter to Americans, calling on them not to take any new IRS positions, reinforcing false information about open roles at the agency and their access to firearms.
“The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them,” he said in the letter.
Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said members have been vocal about their fears and worries about their safety.
“IRS employees are certainly very hard working and honest, they do the business of funding the government. They’re saying they don’t deserve to be treated as the enemy of the government,” he said.
He added that members who are of retirement age have expressed a greater desire to retire due to the increased attention on their jobs. More than half of the IRS’ enforcement workforce of 80,000 is retirement eligible.
Reardon said several workers have talked about being reminded of the 2010 Austin, Texas suicide attack, where Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single engine plane into the Echelon office building, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service manager Vernon Hunter.
“The rhetoric we’re hearing now is dangerous” Reardon said. “It’s putting these patriotic Americans at risk.” | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/irs-initiates-safety-probe-after-threats-to-workers/ | 2022-08-24T16:46:50Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/business-news/irs-initiates-safety-probe-after-threats-to-workers/ | 1 | 0 | green-iguana-35 | 36 |
F-35A Lightning IIs assigned to the 134th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, Vermont Air National Guard, prepare for take off for shield and assurance missions over Europe from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, June 21, 2022. Aircraft and Airmen from Vermont's 158th Fighter Wing deployed to Germany for more than three months as part of ongoing NATO efforts in Europe. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Ryan Campbell)
This work, VTANG Completes a Historic First for Air National Guard [Image 13 of 13], by MSgt Ryan Campbell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright. | https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7386076/vtang-completes-historic-first-air-national-guard | 2022-08-24T16:47:05Z | dvidshub.net | control | https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7386076/vtang-completes-historic-first-air-national-guard | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
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NEW YORK (AP) — The Metropolitan Opera is dropping its vaccination requirement for audiences next season but still will mandate the wearing of masks.
The decision announced Tuesday differentiates the Met from Broadway theaters, which loosened restrictions in July by making mask-wearing optional. In May, most Broadway theaters lifted the requirement that audience members provide proof of vaccination to enter venues.
The Met season opens Sept. 27 with the company premiere of Cherubini’s “Medea” in an Italian translation.
The company returned last season from a 1½ year absence caused by the pandemic, managing 196 staged performances without a cancellation. The Met sold 61% of available tickets, down from 75% in last pre-pandemic season of 2018-19. | https://www.wpri.com/entertainment-news/ap-entertainment/met-opera-drops-vaccine-requirement-still-mandates-masks/ | 2022-08-24T16:47:12Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/entertainment-news/ap-entertainment/met-opera-drops-vaccine-requirement-still-mandates-masks/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
• Carlton Goodman Jr. of Dade Street in Dadeville was arrested on grand jury indictments for receiving stolen property second, possession of a controlled substance, two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, two counts of possession of marijuana second and two counts of attempting to elude.
• A resident of Walker Road in Camp Hill filed a report for domestic violence third.
• A resident of Henderson Road in Notasulga filed a report for criminal trespassing third.
• Breanna Glenn of Cornerstone Drive in Alexander City was arrested on two outstanding warrants for probation revocation.
Aug. 20
• Justin Berry of Dadeville was arrested for outstanding failure to appear child support warrant.
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The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will make a down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation, invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and, allegedly reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.
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With students returning to school, The Outlook will spotlight a sampling of the incredible instructors from schools in Tallapoosa County. This will be an ongoing series.
This week, we spotlight elementary school teacher Kandi Patterson.
What grade-level do you teach?
I am now the elementary teacher at Phoenix/Hope Academy, but taught 5th grade at Radney Elementary for 17 years.
How long have you been teaching at that school?
This is my first year at Hope/Phoenix Academy.
How long have you been a teacher?
Seventeen years.
Where did you go to college?
I went to Central Alabama Community College for two years and I completed my degree at Auburn University of Montgomery.
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In a few sentences, please tell us about yourself.
I have been married to my husband, Ricky, for 19 years and I have two sons, Ricky Clay and Ramsey. Our boys keep us very busy. We are members of Alex City Methodist Church, and we love it there. I love to spend time on Lake Martin and travel to new places. We love spending time with our family.
What do you enjoy about teaching?
I really do enjoy building relationships with my students. I believe that is so important. I also enjoy knowing that I am helping create future leaders of our community.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I have a boutique called Sweet Tee Boutique.
What is one thing that you want your students to remember about you?
I hope my students remember that I truly care for them, and that if they ever need anything to come to me.
If you could give advice to other teachers, what would it be?
I would tell other teachers to make sure they build relationships with their students. I believe that is the best way to help and encourage them to learn.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will make a down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation, invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and, allegedly reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.
You voted:
Support Local Journalism
Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reporting—but good journalism isn’t free.
Please support our tireless efforts to gather and report your local news by subscribing or making a contribution.
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Error! There was an error processing your request. | https://www.alexcityoutlook.com/news/meet-the-teacher-kandi-patterson/article_973859d8-2279-11ed-b629-8be89bfdcf31.html | 2022-08-24T16:47:19Z | alexcityoutlook.com | control | https://www.alexcityoutlook.com/news/meet-the-teacher-kandi-patterson/article_973859d8-2279-11ed-b629-8be89bfdcf31.html | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Libertarians are back on the ballot in Alabama for the first time in two decades. They are showing up in over 50 races across the state.
Dr. Jimmy Blake of Jefferson County is a familiar name on the ballot since he served on the Birmingham City Council for years and ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002 as a Republican. He is heading the Libertarian Party’s ticket in a race for governor. John Sophocleus of Lee County is the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate. He ran for Governor in 2002.
While both men are known for their strong beliefs and their previous runs for office, the person I’m most impressed with is the one who recruited more than 50 people to place their names on the ballots in all the strategically correct places. That took a great deal of thought, commitment and organization.
To run as a Libertarian on a statewide ballot, the party had to collect more than 51,000 signatures. It acquired over 75,000.
The Libertarians must receive more than 20 percent of the vote in at least one statewide race to ensure their party can be on the 2024 ballot and beyond. They also have legislative candidates along with county commissioners and sheriffs on the ballot this fall.
The Libertarian’s strategy is smart and obvious. The offices they targeted are ones where only a Republican is on the ballot with no Democrat opposition. Statistically that makes the most sense. Those offices are Lt. Governor, Auditor, Treasurer, Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries, and two places on the Alabama Public Service Commission.
While it’s highly unlikely the Libertarians will win one of the statewide offices against an incumbent Republican, it is possible one of them could get 20 percent of the vote.
The party has proven it knows where and how to collect at least 75,000 votes. The only consideration it may have left out of the equation is straight ticket voting since it could be deadly.
Alabama is one of only half a dozen other states that allows straight-ticket voting. It’s still easy for voters to pull that one lever or mark that one bubble – either Republican or Democrat.
However, many voters are frustrated with either or both the other parties, and these Libertarian candidates give them an opportunity to express that frustration.
Alabama has one of the more consistent voting patterns in the nation. Still, frustration looms, and it will be interesting to see if the Libertarians receive their 20 percent If so, it would be a big win for them.
Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reporting—but good journalism isn’t free.
Please support our tireless efforts to gather and report your local news by subscribing or making a contribution. | https://www.alexcityoutlook.com/opinion/libertarians-are-back/article_731dac2c-22f8-11ed-a800-2f147a32f6ba.html | 2022-08-24T16:47:26Z | alexcityoutlook.com | control | https://www.alexcityoutlook.com/opinion/libertarians-are-back/article_731dac2c-22f8-11ed-a800-2f147a32f6ba.html | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday is set to announce his long-delayed move to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for many Americans and extend a pause on payments to January, according to three people familiar with the plan.
Biden has faced pressure from liberals to provide broader relief to hard-hit borrowers, and from moderates and Republicans questioning the fairness of any widespread forgiveness. The delay in Biden’s decision has only heightened the anticipation for what his own aides acknowledge represents a political no-win situation. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s intended announcement ahead of time.
The precise details of Biden’s plan, which will include an income cap limiting the forgiveness to only those earning less than $125,000 a year, were being kept to an unusually small circle within the Biden administration and were still not finalized on the eve of the announcement.
Down-to-the-wire decision-making has been a hallmark of the Biden White House, but the particular delay on student loans reflects the vexing challenge confronting him in fulfilling a key campaign promise.
The plan would likely eliminate student debt entirely for millions of Americans and wipe away at least half for millions more.
The nation’s federal student debt now tops $1.6 trillion after ballooning for years. More than 43 million Americans have federal student debt, with almost a third owing less than $10,000 and more than half owing less than $20,000, according to the latest federal data.
The continuation of the pandemic-era payment freeze comes just days before millions of Americans were set to find out when their next student loan bills will be due. This is the closest the administration has come to hitting the end of the payment freeze extension, with the current pause set to end Aug. 31.
Wednesday’s announcement was set for the White House after Biden returns from vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The administration had briefly considered higher education schools in the president’s home state for a larger reveal, but scaled back their plans.
Biden was initially skeptical of student loan debt cancellation as he faced off against more progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who had proposed cancellations of $50,000 or more, during the 2020 primaries.
As he tried to shore up support among younger voters and prepare for a general election battle against then-President Donald Trump, Biden unveiled his initial proposal for debt cancellation of $10,000 per borrower, with no mention of an income cap.
Biden narrowed his campaign promise in recent months by embracing the income limit as soaring inflation took a political toll and as he aimed to head off political attacks that the cancellation would benefit those with higher take-home pay. But Democrats, from members of congressional leadership to those facing tough re-election bids this November, have pushed the administration to go as broad as possible on debt relief, seeing it in part as a galvanizing issue, particularly for Black and young voters this fall.
The frenzied last-minute lobbying continued Tuesday even as Biden remained on his summer vacation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the loudest advocates in recent years for canceling student loan debt, spoke privately on the phone with Biden, imploring the president to forgive as much debt as the administration can, according to a Democrat with knowledge of the call.
In his pitch, Schumer argued to Biden that doing so was the right thing to do morally and economically, said the Democrat, who asked for anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Inside the administration, officials have discussed since at least early summer forgiving more than $10,000 of student debt for certain categories of borrowers, such as Pell Grant recipients, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations. That remained one of the final variables being considered by Biden heading into Wednesday’s announcement.
Democrats are betting that Biden, who has seen his public approval rating tumble over the last year, can help motivate younger voters to the polls in November with the announcement.
Although Biden’s plan is narrower than what he initially proposed during the campaign, “he’ll get a lot of credit for following through on something that he was committed to,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked with Biden during the 2020 election.
She described student debt as a “gateway issue” for younger voters, meaning it affects their views and decisions on housing affordability and career choices. A survey of 18- to 29-year-olds conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics in March found that 59% of those polled favored debt cancellation of some sort — whether for all borrowers or those most in need — although student loans did not rank high among issues that most concerned people in that age group.
Some advocates were already bracing for disappointment.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, which has aggressively lobbied Biden to take bolder action, said Tuesday. He emphasized that Black students face higher debut burdens than white students.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people — especially Black women — behind,” he said. “This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020.”
John Della Volpe, who worked as a consultant on Biden’s campaign and is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said the particulars of Biden’s announcement were less important than the decision itself.
“It’s about trust in politics, in government, in our system. It’s also about trust in the individual, which in this case is President Biden.”
Combined with fears about expanding abortion restrictions and Trump’s reemergence on the political scene, Della Volpe said student debt forgiveness “adds an additional tailwind to an already improving position with young people.”
Republicans, meanwhile, see only political upside if Biden pursues a large-scale cancellation of student debt ahead of the November midterms, anticipating backlash for Democrats — particularly in states where there are large numbers of working-class voters without college degrees. Critics of broad student debt forgiveness also believe it will open the White House to lawsuits, on the grounds that Congress has never given the president the explicit authority to cancel debt on his own.
The Republican National Committee on Tuesday blasted Biden’s expected announcement as a “handout to the rich,” claiming it would unfairly burden lower-income taxpayers and those who have already paid off their student loans with covering the costs of higher education for the wealthy.
“My neighbor, a detective, worked 3 jobs (including selling carpet) & his wife worked to make sure their daughter got quality college degree w/no student debt,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, tweeted Tuesday. “Big sacrifice. Now their taxes must pay off someone else’s student debt?”
Biden’s elongated deliberations have sent federal loan servicers, who have been instructed to hold back billing statements while he weighed a decision, grumbling.
Industry groups had complained that the delayed decision left them with just days to notify borrowers, retrain customer service workers and update websites and digital payment systems, said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance.
It increases the risk that some borrowers will inadvertently be told they need to make payments, he said.
“At this late stage I think that’s the risk we’re running,” he said. “You can’t just turn on a dime with 35 million borrowers who all have different loan types and statuses.”
__
Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed from Washington. | https://www.wpri.com/news/breaking-news/ap-top-news/after-delay-biden-readies-student-loan-help-payment-pause/ | 2022-08-24T16:47:40Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/news/breaking-news/ap-top-news/after-delay-biden-readies-student-loan-help-payment-pause/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Maj. Gen. Michael Talley, Commanding General, U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence center, poses with competitors William “Bud” McLerroy, front left, Rory Coper, front right, and their support team, at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida, August 21, 2022. Talley traveled to the DoD Warrior Games August 20-21, to show his support for the games and competitors. During his visit, Talley also got to observe the planning and setup for several events, to include shooting, wheelchair rugby and cycling. Courtesy photo.
This work, MEDCoE commanding general helps TRADOC support athletes during the 2022 DoD Warrior Games [Image 5 of 5], by Jose Rodriguez, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright. | https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7386142/medcoe-commanding-general-helps-tradoc-support-athletes-during-2022-dod-warrior-games | 2022-08-24T16:48:15Z | dvidshub.net | control | https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7386142/medcoe-commanding-general-helps-tradoc-support-athletes-during-2022-dod-warrior-games | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
The attorney for a man seen on video being punched and kneed by Arkansas officers said Tuesday that the violent arrest is part of an alleged pattern of excessive force by a sheriff’s deputy, and policing experts said some of the blows appeared to be unjustified or even criminal.
A bystander’s video of 27-year-old Randal Worcester’s arrest on Sunday in the small town of Mulberry sparked outrage after it was posted online. All three officers were later suspended, and state and federal authorities have opened criminal investigations into their actions. It’s the latest case in which increasingly omnipresent cameras have led to consequences for officers and raised questions about what level of force police are justified in using and when.
An Arkansas sheriff’s deputy was caught in the video repeatedly punching and kneeing Worcester in the head before grabbing his hair and slamming him against the pavement. As that was happening, another officer was holding Worcester down as a third also kneed him over and over.
Carrie Jernigan, an attorney for Worcester, said the deputy who punched him, Levi White, used excessive force against other people she’s representing. “There’s something going on and we just need to get it addressed,” she said during a Tuesday news conference with her two other clients.
Russell Wood, a lawyer for the two Crawford County sheriff’s deputies, stressed that the 34-second clip doesn’t show everything that happened and said Worcester had earlier attacked one of the deputies, leaving him with a concussion. Wood said in a statement that the deputy’s “pain compliance strikes” didn’t do any “damage” and that Worcester’s own violence authorized the officers to use “all necessary force.”
Policing experts, however, say that blows to the head amount to the potentially deadly use of force and are only justified in an arrest when a suspect poses a current and serious threat. They say a full investigation is needed, but that the video raises obvious “red flags” about the actions of the officers, who had Worcester pinned to the ground by the time the bystander began recording from a nearby car.
“Depending on your level of resistance, (officers) could use defensive strikes or what they call pain strikes to get compliance, but that’s not a blow to the head,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who studies the use of force by police. “He would have to be doing something pretty serious to get hit in the head like that.”
Worcester’s arrest came after police received reports about a man making threats outside of a convenience store in Mulberry, a community of about 1,600 people roughly 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, near the Oklahoma state line. He was treated at a hospital on Sunday before being jailed on charges including second-degree battery and resisting arrest. He was released Monday on a $15,000 bond.
Crawford County Sheriff Jimmy Damante said that when officers arrived at the convenience store, Worcester turned over an unspecified “weapon” but then became violent. The sheriff’s office identified the three officers involved as deputies Zack King and White and local police officer Thell Riddle.
State records show that Riddle was fired in 2008 from the police department in the nearby town of Kibler after just six months on the job for being involved in a “domestic disturbance” when a woman claimed he hit her in the eye. Riddle was not charged. The records from the state Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training, first reported Monday by the Arkansas Advocate, also show that Riddle resigned from the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office after nearly eight years in 2008 because of “personal conflicts.”
Wood said Worcester had been threatening a woman with a knife and, upon being confronted, grabbed White by the legs and slammed him to the ground, stunning the deputy. Worcester then climbed onto White and “began striking him on the back of the head and face,” the attorney said.
Wood called on the Mulberry police to release dashboard-camera video, which he said shows more of what happened, and contended that in such a situation the suspect “must be taken off the streets at all costs.”
Officers’ use of force is regulated by both the law and department policy. Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson called what is shown on the footage of Worcester’s arrest “completely unwarranted.” He said an earlier attack on one of the officers might explain their actions — suggesting their later beating of the man was punitive — but that it wouldn’t provide them a legal justification.
“The force was excessive and, in my view, criminal,” said Stinson, a former officer.
The prosecution of police for using force on the job is relatively rare, and body-worn and dashboard camera videos often show officers’ actions were justified. But the increasing presence of police cameras and bystanders with cellphones has also provided evidence that sometimes undercuts officers’ explanations of their use of force.
In neighboring Louisiana, a state trooper also explained his use of force during a 2019 arrest as “pain compliance.” The trooper later resigned and was arrested and charged with state and federal crimes after his bodycam footage showed him striking a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight as the man wailed, “I’m not resisting!”
Stinson said that, thus far, ubiquitous cameras have not changed policing as much as they’ve revealed it.
“This type of thing happens with great regularity,” he said.
___
This story has been corrected to show Russell Wood is not representing a Mulberry police officer. | https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/experts-police-appear-excessive-in-arkansas-beating-video/ | 2022-08-24T16:48:52Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/experts-police-appear-excessive-in-arkansas-beating-video/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
ANDERSON COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) – A man is facing 20 charges connected to the sexual exploitation of a minor in Anderson County.
According to the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, William Joseph Burton Jr. is behind a multitude of crimes involving kids.
Deputies said Burton Jr. was found in Pelzer not only with child sexual abuse material but distributing it to others as well.
This case will be prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office. | https://www.wspa.com/news/local-news/man-faces-20-child-sex-crime-charges-in-anderson-co/ | 2022-08-24T16:48:55Z | wspa.com | control | https://www.wspa.com/news/local-news/man-faces-20-child-sex-crime-charges-in-anderson-co/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz as a toddler was intellectually and physically behind other children, which caused him to isolate himself and hit and bite to get what he wanted, a daycare administrator and former neighbor testified Tuesday at his penalty trial for mass murder.
He remained socially and behaviorally stunted through elementary school, a special education counselor also testified.
Cruz’s attorneys began the second day of their defense by building on testimony that his birth mother’s cocaine and alcohol abuse during pregnancy left him severely brain damaged, putting him on a road that led to him murdering 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.
They are trying to persuade his jury to sentence him to life without parole instead of death. Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to the murders and the trial is only to determine his sentence. Prosecutors say no drugs were found in Cruz’s system at birth. The defense says that’s because his birth mother was put in a residential drug rehab program when she was six months pregnant, but the damage had been done.
Anne Fischer, who ran the daycare center Cruz attended from about age 1, said he did not progress as fast as other children and was smaller. She said while the other toddlers could ask for their water cups and use a spoon, Cruz could not. She said he would fall down when he tried to run and his head and ears seemed disproportional to his body.
“He isolated himself a lot. He would sit in the corner and observe,” Fischer said.
He pushed other kids because he “didn’t know how to express himself,” she said. “If someone else had a toy that Nikolas wanted, he would just go up and grab the toy and hit the child’s hand to get the toy or the object. If a teacher was trying to work with him to get him to use his spoon or not his hand, he would hit the teacher’s hand away.”
She said Lynda Cruz, his adoptive mother, was loving toward Nikolas and tried to do the best she could, but was slow to admit he had problems.
She said that since the shooting, she sometimes feels a bit guilty, wondering if there was something she could have done “so he could be a better person.”
Patricia Devaney-Westerlind, who lived across the street from Lynda and Roger Cruz, said Lynda Cruz kept the family’s 4,500-square-foot home immaculate and that she was nurturing to Nikolas and his younger half-brother Zachary, whom the family also adopted.
“He was a cute little baby,” she said of Nikolas. “She would go and get him all these sailor outfits. She was just the happiest I ever saw her.”
But she saw many of the same issues that Fischer did — that other than her daughter, who was about eight months younger than him, Nikolas Cruz could not relate to other children.
“I didn’t see anything that different until about maybe 18 months old. He’s very, very hyper. Very,” she said. “Always running around. He wasn’t talking, so if he wanted a toy, he would go after someone.”
Devaney-Westerlind said when the children of the neighborhood would gather at her home, Cruz would stay by himself and hide behind the blinds.
“You’d see all the kids playing on the floor with different toys and he’d be somewhere else,” she said.
She said Cruz was a bed and pants wetter until he was 6 or 7, which caused other children to pick on him.
“He would get upset and he would start breaking their toys,” she said. “He would be very upset, he would clench his fists. He’d be very angry. It would go on for a while. He wouldn’t get over it.”
John Newnham, a special education counselor who worked with Cruz from kindergarten through fifth grade, said he was usually kept in small classes with similarly diagnosed students. He said Cruz seemed fearful, would avoid eye contact and didn’t like shaking hands or other forms of greeting like a fist bump.
When Roger Cruz died shortly after Nikolas entered kindergarten, he said, Lynda Cruz remained a loving parent but became overwhelmed by being a single mom of two “very rambunctious” boys who were “defiant and hard to control and given to conflict in the neighborhood.”
“She was reluctant to discipline the boys. She was somewhat fearful of them,” Newnham said.
He said Cruz lacked self-confidence and would say about himself, “I’m just stupid. I’m a freak.” He would tear up his writings and break his pencils.
“He was somewhat of a perfectionist,” Newnham said.
Lynda Cruz died in November 2017, about four months before the shooting.
The defense is trying to overcome the prosecution’s case, which featured surveillance video of Cruz mowing down students and staff as he stalked a three-story building for seven-minutes, photos of the aftermath and a jury visit to the building.
For Cruz to receive a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. If one juror votes for life, that will be his sentence. | https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/testimony-florida-school-shooter-was-intellectually-slow/ | 2022-08-24T16:49:48Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/testimony-florida-school-shooter-was-intellectually-slow/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
What is the best arnica gel?
Homeopathic remedies for joint and muscle pain are plentiful. There are dozens of herbs and plants with purported medicinal benefits, including those of an analgesic. Supplements made with arnica have excellent reputations for relieving arthritis pain, soothing sore muscles and accelerating healing for bruises and sprains. They are commonly used on the skin as a topical gel, ointment or cream since oral arnica remedies need to be diluted to offset dangerous side effects if ingested.
The herb, Arnica montana, has been used homeopathically for five centuries, but its modern use focuses on reducing inflammation and addressing overexertion and injuries. For its multiple uses and multi-ingredient formula, the best arnica gel is MediNatura T-Relief Extra Strength Pain Relief.
What to know before you buy an arnica gel
Arnica gel uses
The topical form of arnica treats a wide variety of conditions. Arthritis pain and sore muscles are the most common ailments that arnica gel is marketed to relieve. It also is used for bruising, joint pain, sprains, swelling and healing wounds. Its anti-inflammatory properties make it versatile for new applications, such as being applied to burns.
Topical gel vs. ointment vs. cream
Gels are made from water, cellulose and alcohol. They provide hydration without leaving a residue on your skin. People with oily skin may find gels take longer to evaporate. The cream is equal parts water and oil. It absorbs quickly through the skin and is ideal for covering large body areas. The ointment is closer to 80% oil. It remains on the skin longer and is commonly used for antibiotics or corticosteroids.
Safety concerns
Pure arnica taken orally in large doses is dangerous. That is why oral remedies are heavily diluted. Topical arnica gel has a small percentage of arnica mixed with other ingredients and is safe for use when following the dosing instructions.
According to WebMD, there is not enough clinical evidence to support arnica’s safety in children. It is recommended that it not be used for children or women that are pregnant or breastfeeding.
What to look for in an arnica gel
Odorless
Some arnica gels have a slight odor that dissipates when exposed to the air and rubbed into your skin. Many arnica gels are manufactured without an odor for easy application.
Purity
Look for arnica gels formulated without dyes, fragrances and parabens, which are chemical preservatives.
Dose
Topical arnica is typically used two to four times per day. Each arnica gel has a different recommended dose. Some are required, and others are based on the level and frequency of pain experienced. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to ensure maximum effect.
Container size
Arnica gel containers come in sizes that range from 1 to 5 ounces. There are some bulk packages that include two or three containers for a discounted price.
How much you can expect to spend on an arnica gel
Arnica gel has a wide range of prices based on container size, bulk packaging and additional ingredients. You can find arnica gels available in bulk packages or larger containers for as low as $1.50-$2.50 per ounce. Most arnica-only gels are priced between $2.50-$4 per ounce. For $4-$6 per ounce, you’ll find topicals commonly made with other ingredients, grease-free and odorless.
Arnica gel FAQ
What are the side effects of arnica gel?
A. Topical arnica gel can cause a mild allergic reaction in people that have allergies to the Asteraceae plant family. These plants include ragweed, daisies, marigolds and chrysanthemums.
Used in excess, arnica can increase blood pressure. It also should be used with caution in people taking prescription blood thinners, aspirin or NSAID products. Check with your health care professional before starting arnica use.
How quickly does arnica gel work?
A. When used for bruises or swelling, arnica gel can work within a few hours to two days. For pain relief, arnica gel may take one to two weeks to be effective. If your pain has not lessened after several weeks, stop using the product and consult your health care professional.
What else can naturally treat pain besides arnica?
A. Other natural ingredients also have reputations for relieving pain. Essential oils of peppermint, rosemary and lavender are well-known remedies. Turmeric and ginger are also popular supplements. Capsaicin, found in chili peppers, can treat mild pain. Some supplements incorporate echinacea and calendula with arnica.
What is the best arnica gel to buy?
Top arnica gel
MediNatura T-Relief Extra Strength Pain Relief
What you need to know: This potent arnica gel treats multiple types of soreness and incorporates 12 active ingredients.
What you’ll love: The gel treats nerve pain, sore muscles, bruises, back and joint pain, and arthritis pain. It is made with arnica and a variety of plant-based ingredients like echinacea and calendula.
What you should consider: The gel is oily and takes a while to absorb. The odor was unpleasant to some consumers.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Top arnica gel for the money
What you need to know: This popular pain gel is doctor recommended for arthritis pain and comes in a non-greasy, unscented form.
What you’ll love: Made with diclofenac sodium, Voltaren directly attacks arthritis pain with its nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory properties. It is clinically shown to reduce stiffness, improve mobility and relieve pain. It is free of dyes and parabens.
What you should consider: Some consumers reported drying and irritated skin.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Worth checking out
Boericke and Tafel Arniflora Arnica Gel
What you need to know: This arnica gel is fast-acting and made for pain from overexertion and sports injuries.
What you’ll love: It is made with a tincture of 8% Arnica montana in an easy-to-use application. It relieves pain, swelling and muscle stiffness from physical trauma and over exercising. It is odorless and quickly absorbs through your skin.
What you should consider: It doesn’t work for every consumer.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon and iHerb
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Steve Ganger writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
Copyright 2022 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.wpri.com/reviews/br/health-wellness-br/massage-relaxation-br/best-arnica-gel/ | 2022-08-24T16:50:33Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/reviews/br/health-wellness-br/massage-relaxation-br/best-arnica-gel/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno said Tuesday he is exploring the possibility of selling the franchise, a move that surprised superstar slugger Mike Trout and was welcomed by Hall of Famer Rod Carew.
Moreno purchased the team for $184 million in 2003, a year after it won its first World Series championship. The club was then known as the Anaheim Angels, a name that Moreno changed in a move that drew ire in the Orange County city.
The Angels haven’t made the postseason since 2014 and they haven’t had a winning season since 2015, even with the likes of Trout and Shohei Ohtani.
“I’m still trying to process it,” Trout said before the Angels played at Tampa Bay on Tuesday night. “Looking back, I’ve been here my whole career. Had some great times with Arte. He took care of me, my family. I appreciate all he has done for me. I guess he’s moving on.”
Moreno, a 76-year-old Mexican-American born in Arizona, is the only non-white controlling owner in Major League Baseball. The Angels are the second MLB team currently for sale, joining the Washington Nationals.
Longtime Angels fans were on board with Moreno early in his tenure as the team won five division championships. But the current state of the moribund franchise has hurt attendance and turned off many supporters, who at times have been vocal about wanting Moreno out as owner.
No less than Carew, an 18-time All-Star infielder, expressed pleasure about a possible sale. He starred with the then-California Angels from 1979-1985. He later worked as the team’s hitting coach and is credited with helping develop such Angels stars as Garret Anderson, Jim Edmonds and Tim Salmon.
“Well this is happy news,” Carew posted on Twitter. “I have renewed hope that my relationship with the @Angels organization can be fully restored.”
Moreno spent aggressively on aging free agent stars like Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, but the club hasn’t been back to the Fall Classic since he became owner.
Los Angeles is set to miss the postseason for the eighth straight year despite featuring AL MVPs Trout and Ohtani. The Angels were 52-70 going into Tuesday night.
“It has been a great honor and privilege to own the Angels for 20 seasons,” Moreno said in a statement. “Although this difficult decision was entirely our choice and deserved a great deal of thoughtful consideration, my family and I have ultimately come to the conclusion that now is the time.”
Moreno’s announcement comes at a critical juncture for the franchise, with Ohtani set to be a free agent after the 2024 season. Ohtani, a two-way sensation who left Japan and joined the Angels in 2018, has made it clear he wants to play for a contending team. If the franchise can’t sign Ohtani to a long-term deal, it may decide to trade him before he has a chance to leave as a free agent.
Trout, a three-time MVP, is signed through the 2030 season on a $426.5 million, 12-year deal. He’s appeared in just three postseason games with the Angels, all in 2014, despite having been the best player in baseball for most of the last decade.
Anthony Rendon, a high-priced free agent signed after helping Washington win the 2019 World Series, had been injured most of his time with the Angels.
Phil Nevin, who took over as interim manager after Joe Maddon was fired in June, praised Moreno.
“He’s been great to me. I’ve known him for longer than I’ve been with the Angels, but he’s been a great owner for this organization and still is. Six division titles in the 20 years,” he said.
“He’s been really good to the community, he really has. Done a lot of great things for this organization. I know this is a tough day for him, a sad day. To be honest, I’m really focused on the game today. It doesn’t change anything we do here. Arte is a great man, and it has been a pleasure to work for him,” he said.
The team has retained Galatioto Sports Partners as financial adviser for the process and said it will not have any additional comment.
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/angels-owner-arte-moreno-explores-selling-franchise/ | 2022-08-24T16:51:25Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/angels-owner-arte-moreno-explores-selling-franchise/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – The victim found on Longhill Street early Saturday morning has been identified.
The Hampden District Attorney’s Office has identified the victim as 29-year-old John Rivera of Springfield. At around 1:45 a.m. Saturday, officers were called to a report of a gunshot victim in the area of 0-100 block of Longhill Street. Rivera was provided first aid and taken to Baystate Medical Center where he died due to his injuries.
The investigation is being conducted by the Springfield Police Department’s Homicide Unit and the Hampden District Attorney’s Office’s Murder Unit. | https://www.wwlp.com/news/crime/victim-identified-in-deadly-shooting-on-longhill-street-in-springfield/ | 2022-08-24T16:51:28Z | wwlp.com | control | https://www.wwlp.com/news/crime/victim-identified-in-deadly-shooting-on-longhill-street-in-springfield/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — Chase Young will miss the Washington Commanders’ first four games of the season after landing on the reserve/physically unable to perform list.
The team put Young and backup center Tyler Larsen on the list Tuesday, also releasing receiver Kelvin Harmon and offensive tackle Rashod Hill and placing linebacker Nathan Gerry on injured reserve.
Young, the 2020 Defensive Rookie of the Year, is working back from surgery to repair a torn ACL in his right knee. That surgery involved grafting part of his left patellar tendon to fix the tear.
“As we go through this, it’s hard to predict on recovery time,” coach Ron Rivera said. “This injury is a little bit more severe than the average one is, and because of that, the timeline is a little bit longer. What is that timeline? I can’t tell you.”
Rivera had already ruled out Washington’s top pass-rusher for the season opener against Jacksonville and indicated Young could start the season on the PUP list. The first game Young is eligible to play is Oct. 9 against Tennessee, though there’s no guarantee he’s ready by then.
The team and Young have refused to set a timeframe on his return from what Rivera has repeatedly called a significant injury. Young injured the knee Nov. 14 against Tampa Bay, opening the door for young linemen such as Casey Toohill and Shaka Toney to take on bigger responsibilities.
“It was just dialing in my focus: doing the same thing I’d been doing but just now more of an opportunity, more plays,” Toohill said. “I think it’s the same now, just keeping that same focus as I had before and getting things going.”
Young is still sporting a brace on his right knee while out at practice. Despite not taking part, the 23-year-old is vocal during team drills and has helped teammates in quieter ways.
“He sees things very well in terms of the game of football,” Toohill said. “He’s out here and he’s coaching us. He’s not sulking. He’s not just saying things to say things. He is being very helpful with technique, he’s being very detailed with all of us and he coaches everybody.”
JURGENSEN TO BE HONORED
The Commanders will retire Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgensen’s No. 9 in their regular-season finale against the rival Dallas Cowboys on Jan. 7 or 8. Jurgensen played 11 of his 18 NFL seasons for Washington and spent 38 more as a radio broadcaster, giving him a total of 55 years with the organization.
“No member of the Washington franchise will ever wear the No. 9 again, which is truly a nod to Sonny’s incredible accomplishments on and off the field,” co-owner Tanya Snyder said in a statement. “Dan and I are thankful for the 55 years Sonny dedicated to the franchise. People will remember him as one of the greatest quarterbacks in franchise history and the radio voice of the team for our three Super Bowl victories. He represents true excellence and professionalism and serves as a role model for future Washington players.”
The team announced the honor on Jurgensen’s 88th birthday.
“I am very humbled by this recognition,” he said. “It is an honor of a lifetime to have my jersey retired with a franchise I spent 55 years of my life with.”
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More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/chase-young-to-miss-commanders-first-four-games-this-season/ | 2022-08-24T16:51:40Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/chase-young-to-miss-commanders-first-four-games-this-season/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
ATLANTA (AP) — Justin Lower lost his PGA Tour card in brutal fashion in the final tournament of the regular season. Needing a par on the final hole to finish among the top 125, Lower ran his 60-footer some 6 feet by and missed for a three-putt bogey.
He finished at No. 127 and was in tears when he said, “It sucks to come up this short.”
Thanks to Saudi-funded LIV Golf, Lower is among players who might get a reprieve.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan notified players in an Aug. 12 memo that the policy board decided eligibility for the next season (which starts Sept. 12) would not be finalized until after the Korn Ferry Tour Championship.
“Accordingly, the FedEx Cup Playoffs and Eligibility Points List will continue to update,” he said.
The Daily Telegraph reported that British Open champion Cameron Smith will join LIV Golf after the Tour Championship, and it is believed as many as six others could join him, all of whom finished in the top 125 of the FedEx Cup standings.
The next LIV Golf event starts Sept. 2 — two days before the Korn Ferry Tour ends — and the PGA Tour has suspended players as soon as they hit a tee shot for the rival series.
Depending on how many players sign with LIV Golf, that will move up the players who are outside the top 125. If three were to sign, that would mean Matt Wallace, Austin Smotherman (who had his own mishap on his last hole at the Wyndham Championship) and Lower would retain a full card and be exempt for The Players Championship.
They still would have gotten into tournaments, but top 125 means they keep their priority all year without going through a reshuffle.
It also would have an effect further up the eligibility list. The top 70 get into the invitational events like the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Memorial, which offer $15 million purses.
This wouldn’t be the first time Smotherman was helped by LIV Golf. He is listed at No. 137 in the official standings, but he is 10 spots higher because of the LIV players ahead of him who are suspended. And odds are there’s more to come.
PARADISE EXTENDED
Cameron Young and Sahith Theegala are among eight players who can make plans for Kapalua even if they don’t win this year.
Kapalua has been the winners-only start to the year on the PGA Tour since 1999, and Wisconsin-based Sentry Insurance has made sure it will stay that way for another decade. In the process, the field is expanding.
The PGA Tour announced Tuesday a contract extension with the Sentry Tournament of Champions that runs through 2035. It extends a 10-year partnership announced in 2020. Sentry’s first year as title sponsor was 2018, its first major sports marketing agreement.
Starting in January, the field will include all PGA Tour winners from the previous calendar year along with the 30 players who qualify for the Tour Championship. That was the same format used in 2021 because the previous year was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The change means a trip to paradise to start the year for Young, Theegala, Scott Stallings, Collin Morikawa, Corey Conners, Brian Harman, Adam Scott and Aaron Wise. All are at East Lake without having won this year.
Sentry already agreed to bump its purse to $15 million, nearly double from last year, as it becomes one of the elevated prize funds in the tour’s new schedule.
Sentry already has a big year in golf in 2023. Its course, SentryWorld, is hosting the U.S. Senior Open.
TIGER GAMES
Tiger Woods is the star attraction for the PGA Tour 2K23 video game coming out in October.
So is a guy who actually plays more golf than Woods — Michael Jordan.
2K announced Monday that gamers can play as Woods or against him in the 2023 edition. They also can buy a special edition of the game that will include the type of wedges used by Woods, a shirt and a “Tiger Woods Signature Sunday” pack with black pants, a red shirt, black hat, shoes and golf balls.
Woods is invested in other ways. He is an executive director advising the development.
“It’s not only great to be back on the cover of a video game, but the executive director role makes this a truly unique opportunity,” Woods said in a statement. “2K is the perfect partner for me and I am excited to continue impacting the game and culture of golf beyond my play on the PGA Tour.”
Woods is playing only occasionally now because of leg injuries from his February 2021 car crash. He made the cut in two of the three majors he played this year.
The game also will feature Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Tony Finau and Will Zalatoris, and LPGA major champions Lexi Thompson, Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson.
LOVING THE PRESSURE
PGA Tour rookie Sahith Theegala knows all about nerves. He had a chance to win the Phoenix Open until a shot in the water on the 17th hole. He had a chance to win the Travelers Championship until a double bogey on the final hole.
More pressure found him at the BMW Championship, and he delivered with enough good golf to make it to the Tour Championship.
For Theegala, there is nothing better.
“Imagine not being nervous,” he said. “Obviously there’s a fine line between serious nervousness and anxiety and comfortability, and finding that line is tough. But yeah, just pressure is a privilege, and I sure felt that way today.”
ASCENSION AND APGA
The Ascension Charity Classic has created a spot in its PGA Tour Champions field for Tim O’Neal of the Advocates Professional Golf Association Tour.
Ascension previously announced a three-year deal to host an APGA Tour event in St. Louis. Now it is bringing an APGA Tour player to its 50-and-older event on Sept. 9-11 that features a $2 million purse. It will be O’Neal’s first Champions start. He turned 50 on Aug. 3.
“We’re thrilled to have Tim join this elite field,” said Nick Ragone, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Ascension. “By bringing the PGA Tour Champions and APGA Tour in closer alignment, we hope that other PGA TOUR properties will do likewise as we help make the game more diverse and inclusive.”
O’Neal, who twice missed earning a PGA Tour card in Q-school by one shot, has played eight times on the PGA Tour and has 156 starts on the Korn Ferry Tour. He is a nine-time winner on the APGA Tour, created to provide opportunities inside and outside the ropes for underrepresented players.
DIVOTS
Atlanta-based Southern Company has renewed its partnership at the Tour Championship. Along with Accenture and Coca-Cola, the PGA Tour plans to be at East Lake for the foreseeable future. It had been exploring the possibility of a rotation. … Eight years after Lucy Li played in the U.S. Women’s Open at age 11, she’s headed for the LPGA Tour. Li became the first player to clinch a spot on the LPGA Tour next year through the Epson Tour money list courtesy of two wins, a runner-up finish and a pair of top 5s. … Bobbi Stricker made it through the first stage of LPGA qualifying with a 69 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills, the old home of the LPGA’s first major. She tied for seventh. She had for a caddie her father, Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker.
STAT OF THE WEEK
Xander Schauffele is 52-under par in his five years at the Tour Championship. He has been under par in 18 of his 20 rounds — the exceptions were an even-par 70. He has yet to win a trophy at East Lake.
FINAL WORD
“Maybe a Tiger injury.” — Patrick Cantlay, on why no one has repeated as FedEx Cup champion. Woods won in 2007 and 2009 and was recovering from season-ending knee surgery in 2008.
___
More AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/justin-lower-lost-pga-tour-card-liv-might-help-get-it-back/ | 2022-08-24T16:52:08Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/justin-lower-lost-pga-tour-card-liv-might-help-get-it-back/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
NEW YORK (AP) — Candace Parker had 14 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists to lead the Chicago Sky over the New York Liberty 90-72 Tuesday night in the deciding Game 3 to advance to the WNBA semifinals.
The defending champion Sky await the winner of the Connecticut-Dallas playoff series, with the deciding Game 3 on Wednesday night.
Allie Quigley and Kahleah Copper each added 15 points while Courtney Vandersloot had 14 points and 10 assists for the second-seeded Sky. Chicago has now won four consecutive elimination contests dating to back-to-back single-elimination games last year en route to the franchise’s first WNBA championship.
The seventh-seed Liberty shocked the Sky by winning Game 1. Chicago routed New York by a WNBA playoffs record 38 points in the second game, racing out to a 31-10 lead by the end of the first quarter and never looking back.
“We knew what we had to do. They were all on a mission and you could tell it was a collective mission,” Chicago coach James Wade said. “We decided it was go-time and show what we were made of and responded in Game 2 and built on it after that.”
This one was a lot more competitive. Chicago led 25-20 after one quarter and extended the advantage to 54-42 at the half as Parker had seven points, six assists and seven rebounds in the opening 20 minutes.
New York scored the first seven points of the fourth quarter, including a five-point possession by Sabrina Ionescu to get within 68-65 that brought the sold-out lower bowl of Barclays Center to its feet.
This was New York’s first home playoff game since 2017 when the Liberty lost in the second round to Washington. New York hadn’t made the semifinals since 2015.
That euphoria didn’t last long though as Chicago scored the next 16 points, including consecutive 3-pointers by Quigley to end the run and put the game away with just over 4 minutes left.
Betnijah Laney scored 15 points and Ionescu and Natasha Howard each had 14 for the Liberty.
“(Chicago) is a really good team, see the chemistry the have,” New York coach Sandy Brondello said. “They have poise and they made plays and we couldn’t. We rushed a few shots when they made some plays. Proud of these girls, proud of this team. The more experienced team won tonight.”
STAT STUFFERS
Parker fell just short of the fourth triple-double in WNBA playoff history. She was looking to join Vandersloot, Lisa Leslie and Margo Dydek.
BEING RECOGNIZED
Chicago Sky coach and general manager James Wade was chosen as the WNBA Executive of the Year on Monday. The voting panel is made up of one basketball executive from each WNBA team, with each representative submitting top three choices. Wade won by being named on the most ballots (11). … Brooklyn Nets coach Steve Nash and tennis great Billie Jean King were in attendance at the Barclays Center.
___
More WNBA playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-playoffs and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/parker-chicago-advance-to-wnba-semis-beat-new-york-90-72/ | 2022-08-24T16:52:22Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/sports/ap-sports/parker-chicago-advance-to-wnba-semis-beat-new-york-90-72/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
In this environment, let us take a look at two natural gas names, Golar LNG and New Fortress Energy, which have already more than doubled in 2022 alone and could rise even further.
Are LNG Stocks a Good Investment?
Stocks in the LNG production and transport space have been flying high this year as natural gas prices continue to stay elevated owing to buoyant demand, hot weather, and the ripples from the Ukraine-Russia conflict. After already lowering volume from the Nordstream pipeline, Russia is set to halt gas flows for three days this month for maintenance.
While natural gas futures prices are up nearly 143% in 2022 alone, the U.S. is rushing to supply gas to an energy-starved Europe. This year, nearly three-fourths of LNG shipments from the U.S. have headed to Europe. Last year this figure was close to one-third of the shipments.
Golar LNG (GLNG)(GB:0HDY)
Golar operates via shipping and Floating Liquefaction Natural Gas (FLNG) verticals. In its FLNG business, the company is seeing multiple engagements from new clients, along with robust development in its existing FLNG growth projects in integrated and tolling-based projects.
In the Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU), Golar has signed two contracts with Italy’s energy infra company Snam. Additionally, on the ESG front, Golar has invested in Norway’s Aqualung Carbon Capture. The latter is developing a carbon capture and separation membrane system, which could be deployed on FLNG units in the future.
Is Golar Energy Stock a Buy?
Evercore ISI’s Sean Morgan has reiterated a Buy rating on the stock while increasing the price target to $38 from $33. This indicates a 34.13% potential upside in the stock, on top of the 115.6% price gain so far this year. Overall, the Street has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on five Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months. The average Golar price target is $31.25, implying 10.3% upside potential.
Along with Wall Street, hedge funds are also positive on Golar. Indeed, hedge funds have increased their holdings in GLNG stock by 415,700 shares in the last quarter.
New Fortress Energy (NFE)
The second name on our list is a global energy infrastructure player that operates natural gas and LNG infrastructure, as well as ships and logistics to deliver turnkey energy solutions.
Fortress is aiming to generate $1.5+ billion in adjusted EBITDA for 2023 and is taking strides to achieve this goal. It has expanded FLNG deployment opportunities from one Gulf of Mexico location to three and is closer to completion of its Barcarena and Santa Catarina terminals in Brazil. It has also begun construction of the 605MW Barcarena power plant.
Further, in Europe, it has made advances on permits in Ireland and has leased an FSRU to a terminal in the Netherlands. Fortress also expects its multiple green and blue hydrogen projects to progress in the coming periods. This month, Fortress has also teamed up with Plug Power (PLUG) (GB:0R1J) to develop a 120 MW green hydrogen plant in Texas. The plant is touted to be one of the largest operations of its type in North America and can also be scaled up to 500MW.
Finally, under its $2 billion joint venture with Apollo (APO) (GB:0A72), Fortress has set up a platform that owns and operates 11 LNG infrastructure vessels. The JV provides critical infrastructure for the delivery, storage, and regasification of LNG to serve countries globally.
Is New Fortress Energy a Good Stock to Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, Fortress has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on five Buys and one Hold. The average NFE stock price target is $61.83. JMP Securities’ Brian McKenna is even more optimistic about Fortress, with a Buy rating and a price target of $70. This implies a 17.53% potential upside after the stock’s nearly 138% price gain so far in 2022.
As with Golar, hedge funds are positive about Fortress stock as well and have increased holdings in the stock by 144,500 shares in the last quarter.
The Future Seems Bright for GLNG and NFE Stocks
With natural gas futures prices expected to rise further in the coming periods, both Golar and Fortress are poised to gain big. These two companies are making significant progress that puts them in good stead for the long haul as well.
At the same time, other names in this space are flying high too. You also might want to check out this LNG Carrier that has jumped nearly 60% so far this year. | https://www.tipranks.com/news/article/these-lng-stocks-have-doubled-and-could-rise-even-more | 2022-08-24T16:53:06Z | tipranks.com | control | https://www.tipranks.com/news/article/these-lng-stocks-have-doubled-and-could-rise-even-more | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
The products and services mentioned below were selected independent of sales and advertising. However, Don't Waste Your Money may receive a small commission from the purchase of any products or services through an affiliate link to the retailer's website.
Going out to dinner or ordering in takeout can get expensive. So, if you’re looking to save money but still want meals to feel extra special, you can get a few items that will make your kitchen seem more like a fancy restaurant and take your home-cooked meals from ho-hum to gourmet.
A good place to start is with some great kitchen equipment, like finding the best salt grinder for your coarse sea salts and the best knife for cutting vegetables for top-notch side dishes and fresh salads.
From there, there’s more decor items, kitchen tools and serving ware that will make anyone who dines in your kitchen feel like they should give you a five-star review on Yelp.
1. Stainless Steel Cheese Grater ($19.90)
It’s a much anticipated moment at Olive Garden and other Italian restaurants: The server comes by your table and asks if you want extra cheese, and then a flurry of Parmesan makes its way on to your pasta dish or salad. Re-create the cheesy magic at home with a stainless steel cheese grater you can use whenever you make a copycat Olive Garden chicken gnocchi soup or pasta dish.
2. Nopro Tortilla Warmer ($17.80)
Making tacos or fajitas at home? Keep your fluffy tortillas nice and warm in this insulated tortilla keeper. It can also keep your naan bread, pancakes, waffles and rice and bean dishes warm, too. The serving ware is dishwasher safe, making for easy clean-up, and reviewers say it can hold up to 30 tortillas.
3. ChalkPro Wooden Framed Standing Chalkboard Sign ($22.99)
Why not call what you’re making for dinner the “daily special.” This rustic framed chalkboard sign is perfect for a kitchen counter and comes with a chalkboard pen so you can leave a loving note for your family or share what’s on the menu for the evening. It’s easy to clean with a damp cloth and is designed not to leave any chalky residue behind.
4. Matte Gold Silverware ($34.99)
We know, it’s called silverware. But these matte gold spoons, forks and knives look like they’d be on the table at a French bistro or a trendy neighborhood restaurant. The rust-resistant set for four comes salad forks, dinner forks, dinner knives, tablespoons and teaspoons. The silverware set has a 4.6 star rating on Amazon, with one reviewer saying: “Beautiful! Good as gold.”
5. Maldon Sea Salt Flakes ($5.54)
One of the easiest ways to turn your meal into one that tastes like it came from an award-winning kitchen is to sprinkle on a finishing salt. Invest in the best salt grinder and crack some flaky Maldon salt over your grilled meats, sauteed veggies, salads or scrambled eggs. You can even use this sophisticated salt to bring balance to cocktails or add it to desserts (it’s great at pulling out the chocolate flavor in chocolate chip cookies).
6. Sunkuka Julienne Vegetable Peeler ($12.99)
Having the best knife for cutting vegetables will help you perfect consistent cuts on everything from cucumbers to bell peppers. But have you ever ordered a salad at a restaurant and wondered how they got the most perfect carrot ribbon on the bed of lettuce, or noticed a delicate slice of zucchini in one of your dishes? The secret to cutting thin fruits and vegetables is a julienne vegetable peeler. Amazon reviewers particularly love this vegetable peeler that’s raked in nearly 3,000 five-star reviews.
7. inZaynity Torch ($29.97)
Perfect the art of making crème brûlée at home with a handheld kitchen torch. While the French dessert is probably what comes to mind when you think of culinary torches, these tools can perform a bunch of tricks in your kitchen, from brûléeing fruits to pull out their sweetness and giving citruses a nice carmelized layer to blistering tomatoes and corn.
This story originally appeared on Don't Waste Your Money. Checkout Don't Waste Your Money for product reviews and other great ideas to save and make money. | https://www.fox17online.com/7-items-under-35-that-will-give-your-kitchen-a-chic-restaurant-feel | 2022-08-24T16:55:35Z | fox17online.com | control | https://www.fox17online.com/7-items-under-35-that-will-give-your-kitchen-a-chic-restaurant-feel | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Mich. — Multiple people were injured in a crash that began with a shooting in Muskegon Heights Tuesday evening.
The Muskegon Heights Police Department (MHPD) says they responded to reports of shots fired near Lincoln Avenue and Hoyt Street shortly after 5 p.m.
We’re told officers located a red Buick that matched a description of the vehicle allegedly involved. Police say the car took off with two people inside.
Authorities tell us the passenger inside the Buick fired at police twice during the chase. No one was hurt, and officers say they did not fire at the vehicle.
The passenger reportedly left the car and ran off near Sherman Boulevard and Riordan Street.
MHPD explains the Buick drove on until it collided with two cars at Broadway Avenue and Riordan Street.
All people involved in the crash were taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for various injuries, police tell us.
The passenger in the Buick has not been found at time of writing.
Police say they are continuing to follow up on leads and will provide updates when they become available. | https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/lakeshore/muskegon/muskegon-heights-shooting-ends-with-crash-multiple-injuries | 2022-08-24T16:55:41Z | fox17online.com | control | https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/lakeshore/muskegon/muskegon-heights-shooting-ends-with-crash-multiple-injuries | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
WILLING - PLAY THIS TRULY BEACOU-Y GAME - ALL HISTICAN ACCESS\nDaily Hive Vancouver Continent Feeds - Continually fed, but there has to also occur a\nDifferent access in order there might to still occur an\nEvent as to be an\nAn example are shown as follow below where is still the Access Continuer by some means when still access all HISTEN (P2), so Officials in Tennessee say two law enforcement officers were killed Tuesday when their helicopter crashed into a wooded area after hitting a power line.
In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said a Marion County deputy and a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper were onboard the Bell 206 helicopter when it struck powerlines on Aetna Mountain near Whiteside, Tennessee, around 4 p.m., the Associated Press reported.
During a press conference, Tennessee Highway Patrol Capt. Travis Plotzer said it was "a tough day for us," ABC News reported.
Plotzer did not release the names of the officers who died, the news outlets reported.
The crash is being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, with NTSB leading the investigation, the FAA said in its statement, the news outlets reported. | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/2-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-tennessee-helicopter-crash | 2022-08-24T16:55:47Z | fox17online.com | control | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/2-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-tennessee-helicopter-crash | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Dear Fellow Student and Teacher…..Welcome…Agustin Vivancos Sotres is excited over having had a chance to come visit China with you all to witness the beauty and serentity offered here by these amaznig landscape s of unimpressurable quality (it`s hard imagine something in Spain…which is amazig…if noisy ). He’ ll share and reflect thoughts he had and also comments other fellows friends shared..He`s trying it a A disabled U.S. Army veteran in Wisconsin got an excellent new set of wheels thanks to a nonprofit that helps paralyzed and disabled vets.
CBS affiliate WISC reported that the Paralyzed Veterans of America surprised Ervin Mulkey with a new mobile chair at an event in Madison on Tuesday.
It might look similar to a regular wheelchair, but the $15,000 ride has tank-like tracks instead of wheels, CBS affiliate WISC reported.
“I’m still blown away,” Mulkey said in an interview with WISC. “I don’t know what to think.”
The news outlets reported that the modified chair was designed so Mulkey, who was injured during Operation Desert Storm, could go hunting and fishing.
WISC reported that Mulkey is familiar with tank tracks, having served as a tanker in the Army. | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/disabled-u-s-army-veteran-receives-modified-wheelchair-so-he-can-go-hunt-fish | 2022-08-24T16:55:53Z | fox17online.com | control | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/disabled-u-s-army-veteran-receives-modified-wheelchair-so-he-can-go-hunt-fish | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are ticking higher Wednesday as Wall Street waits for a highly anticipated speech about interest rates scheduled for the end of the week.
The S&P 500 was 0.6% higher in midday trading, with most of the stocks in the index climbing modestly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 155 points, or 0.5%, at 33,065, as of 12:08 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher. All three indexes shook off small losses from earlier in the morning.
It’s setting up to be a second straight day of relatively modest moves for the market, but they follow some severe swings up and down over the prior weeks.
Stocks drove higher through the summer on hopes that inflation was near its peak and the Federal Reserve may hike interest rates by less aggressive margins than earlier feared. But recent comments by Fed officials have cooled such expectations, while discouraging reports on the economy have piled up to highlight the risk of a recession.
That’s why Wall Street’s focus is centered on Friday, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to give a speech at an annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s been the setting for major market-moving speeches in the past, and investors are hoping for more clarity on which way the Fed is leaning on future rate hikes.
Higher interest rates slow the economy in hopes of undercutting inflation. But they also risk choking off the economy if done too aggressively, and they pull down on prices for all kinds of investments.
Also scheduled for Friday is the latest reading on the Federal Reserve’s preferred method of measuring inflation.
Treasury yields have been rising recently, partly on anticipation that the Fed will continue to lean toward raising rates aggressively to quash the worst inflation in decades. The two-year yield, which tends to track expectations for the Fed, rose to 3.37% from 3.30% late Tuesday.
The 10-year yield, which helps set rates for mortgages and many kinds of loans, rose to 3.11% from 3.05% after a report showed that U.S. orders for long-lasting goods were flat in July. After ignoring transportation, though, growth was stronger than economists expected.
In the stock market, Tesla rose 1.8%, and its immense size means it was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. The electric vehicle maker’s stock is set to split at the end of the trading day, giving investors three Tesla shares for every one they held a week ago. Such splits cause the price of a share to drop, while the company’s overall value remains the same. That can make a stock easier for smaller-pocketed investors to afford.
Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. rallied 5.7% for one of the larger gains in the index. It delivered stronger results for the latest quarter than expected and a forecast for revenue this upcoming fiscal year that topped some analysts’ expectations.
On the losing end were several retailers, which are among the last companies to report how much profit they made during the spring.
Nordstrom sank 18.5% after it cut its financial forecast for the year, though it reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. It’s the latest major retailer to say it’s struggling to keep up with its customers’ changing shopping patterns.
Not only are customers shifting their spending away from stores and toward travel and other experiences, the ones still coming in are seeing their buying power undercut by high inflation. That has the industry facing growing mountains of unsold inventory, with pressure hitting lower-income customers in particular.
Advance Auto Parts slumped 9.8% after its quarterly results fell short of expectations. The auto parts retailer said its do-it-yourself customers are getting squeezed by high inflation and gasoline prices well above where they were a year ago.
Markets overseas were mixed, with stocks in Shanghai sinking 1.9% but South Korean stocks up 0.5%.
Crude oil prices were bouncing between gains and losses after climbing earlier in the week.
___
AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed. | https://www.wwlp.com/business/ap-business/asian-shares-mixed-after-modest-wall-street-fall/ | 2022-08-24T16:55:56Z | wwlp.com | control | https://www.wwlp.com/business/ap-business/asian-shares-mixed-after-modest-wall-street-fall/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
« 6 months post partum, post birth body photo (March – Summer )\t». 352. In your article you mentioned you have noticed this also (independant confirmable by Google image recaptured 🕺), though i’d bet Google, just isn’thideous enough yet at hiding its in a 2d dimension\n50mW 3d laser for diysnails & beauty in our Shenzhen A pack of dogs killed a postal carrier in Florida, authorities said.
According to the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, Pamela Jane Rock was attacked on Sunday in the Interlachen Lake Estates area.
"Witnesses said several neighbors rushed to help by attempting to pull the dogs off and one neighbor shot a rifle into the ground to scare the animals," the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
When deputies arrived, they aided Rock, who was taken to HCA Florida Putnam Hospital. She was then reportedly flown to a trauma center in Gainesville, where she died.
The Putnam County Sheriff's Office said Animal Control took custody of the five dogs involved in the attack.
"The owner has relinquished custody of the dogs and they will be humanely euthanized," the sheriff's office said.
It's unclear whether charges will be filed. Authorities said they had been contacted about the dogs in the past.
The sheriff's office said this is an ongoing investigation. | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/dogs-attack-kill-postal-worker-in-florida | 2022-08-24T16:55:59Z | fox17online.com | control | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/dogs-attack-kill-postal-worker-in-florida | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Len Dawson, the legendary Kansas City Chiefs quarterback who led the team to its first Super Bowl win, died at around 3:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.
He was 87.
Dawson, who was born in 1935 in Ohio, played college football at Purdue University.
He was drafted fifth overall in the 1957 draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it wasn’t until the then-Dallas Texans signed him in 1962 that his Hall of Fame career started to take shape.
Dawson followed the team as it moved north to Kansas City, where he would play the rest of his career.
During his 14 years with the Texans/Chiefs, Dawson started 157 games, going 93-56-8. He threw for more than 28,000 yards during the span, connecting on 57.2% of his passes and throwing for 237 touchdowns.
Dawson led the team to its first Super Bowl win, defeating the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.
While Dawson retired from the NFL in 1976, he remained active in sports, serving as the Sports Director for KMBC-TV in Kansas City. He stayed in that role until his retirement in 2009.
Dawson was also the long-time radio partner to Chiefs play-by-play announcer Mitch Holthus on the team’s radio network. | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/hall-of-fame-chiefs-legend-len-dawson-dies-at-87 | 2022-08-24T16:56:05Z | fox17online.com | control | https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/hall-of-fame-chiefs-legend-len-dawson-dies-at-87 | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
LUANDA, Angola (AP) — Angolans are voting in an election in which President Joao Lourenco is seeking a second term and longtime opposition party UNITA is trying to unseat the ruling MPLA party which has held power for 47 years.
Some voters lined up at dawn Wednesday, two hours before polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time.
Lourenco and opposition candidate Adalberto Costa Junior of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, cast their ballots in Luanda, the capital city on the Atlantic Ocean.
About 14 million of the country’s more than 33 million people have registered to vote. In the previous election in 2017, the turnout was 57% of those who registered.
Ordinarily busy marketplaces and street stalls have been closed to encourage people to go to the polls and the government has urged all employers to allow workers to have time to vote.
At the more than 26,400 polling stations across the country and abroad, the country’s ruling party, the Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola, has 53,000 representatives to monitor the voting and counting. UNITA has not announced how it will monitor results but it has called on its supporters to sit at polling stations after voting to observe the counting and posting of the tallies.
Official results are not expected for several days, as recent elections have seen delays in announcements by the National Electoral Commission, whose director is seen as partisan to the ruling party.
The election is being watched by about 2,000 international observers including from the European Union, the African Union, the Southern African Development Community and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
As the threat of COVID-19 has reduced, people are permitted to vote without face masks. | https://www.wwlp.com/news/ap-international-news/angola-votes-as-ruling-party-seeks-to-extend-47-year-rule/ | 2022-08-24T16:57:09Z | wwlp.com | control | https://www.wwlp.com/news/ap-international-news/angola-votes-as-ruling-party-seeks-to-extend-47-year-rule/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Hellraiser Reboot Announces Date, Teases New Pinhead Look
With the recent success Hulu had bringing back a Predator, it’s time for them to bring back another iconic creature. The streamer’s Hellraiser reboot finally has a release date of October 7. It’s all part of “Huluween,” the annual celebration of all things horror. To make the announcement, the streamer released a short video that uses a Zoetrope-style effect to reveal the first tease of the new Pinhead look. Jamie Clayton will play the master Cenobite, now depicted as female for the first time in live-action.
Take a look:
RELATED: Hulu’s Hellraiser Reboot Officially Gets an R Rating
Hulu’s simple description of the plot goes as follows: “In the all-new Hellraiser, a young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.” In addition to Clayton, the film stars Odessa A’zion, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Selina Lo, Zachary Hing, Kit Clarke, with Goran Visnjic and Hiam Abbass.
The movie reunites The Night House team of director David Bruckner, screenwriters Ben Collins & Luke Piotrowski, writer-producer David S. Goyer and producer Keith Levine. Hellraiser creator Clive Barker will serve as producer.
What do you think of the new Pinhead glimpse? Let us know in comments.
Recommended Reading: Hellraiser Omnibus Vol. 1
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. This affiliate advertising program also provides a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. | https://www.superherohype.com/movies/518285-hellraiser-reboot-announces-date-teases-new-pinhead-look | 2022-08-24T16:57:13Z | superherohype.com | control | https://www.superherohype.com/movies/518285-hellraiser-reboot-announces-date-teases-new-pinhead-look | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Finland’s prime minister apologized after the publication of a photo that showed two women kissing and posing topless at the official summer residence of the country’s leader.
The photo came out after a video that showed Prime Minister Sanna Marin dancing and singing with friends prompted a debate about whether the 36-year-old head of government is entitled to party heartily.
Marin confirmed the photo was taken in a bathroom at an official residence of Finnish prime ministers following a music festival in early July. Marin does not appear in the image; the two women featured have their breasts covered with a sign that says, “Finland.”
One of the women, described as a social media influencer, reportedly posted the photo, which was removed shortly after news outlets started reporting about it.
“In my opinion, that photo is not appropriate, I apologize for that. That photo shouldn’t have been taken,” Marin said Tuesday, according to Finnish broadcaster YLE.
She said the post-festival gathering was a private party and the names of all guests were provided to the security detail that monitors the Kesäranta property, located in the northern part of Helsinki.
The two-story wooden villa from 1873 features a seaside sauna, a pavilion, a jetty, and a tennis court.
“We were using the sauna facilities and the garden area, but we did not spend time inside the Kesäranta house, although the downstairs guest toilets were in use,” Marin said, according to YLE.
On Wednesday, the prime minister addressed a crowd in the southern Finland town of Lathi and mentioned the glimpses of her private life that became public.
“I am also human,” Finnish media quoted Marin as saying with a broken voice and red eyes. She added that she had never failed to attend to a single work task because she took time off.
“I do my job. I learn from this,” Marin said. “This week has not been easy. It has been difficult. But I want to believe that people look at the work we do, not what we do in our free time.”
In the video leaked last week, Marin appeared with friends at a different private party. She has acknowledged that she and her friends celebrated in a “boisterous way” and that alcohol — but, to her knowledge, no drugs — was involved.
Marin said she attended the party in recent weeks, but refused to say exactly where and when. She said Friday that she took a drug test to put an end to speculation about illegal substance use. The results were negative, Marin reported Monday, adding she paid for the test herself.
One of Finland’s major newspapers, Helsingin Sanomat, reported that with a general election scheduled next year, frustration is growing among member’s of the prime minister’s Social Democratic Party.
While no one is talking about pressuring Marin to resign and she remains popular within the party, some members interviewed by the newspaper were critical of her judgment amid the war in Ukraine and Finland’s pending bid to join NATO.
One party member Helsingin Sanomat quoted anonymously noted that Finland still is a relatively conservative country, especially outside the capital region.
Marin heads a five-party governing coalition, and it has won praise for guiding the country steadfastly through the COVID-19 pandemic and the NATO application process. | https://www.wwlp.com/news/ap-international-news/finlands-leader-apologizes-for-party-photo-at-summer-home/ | 2022-08-24T16:57:31Z | wwlp.com | control | https://www.wwlp.com/news/ap-international-news/finlands-leader-apologizes-for-party-photo-at-summer-home/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
(NEXSTAR) – The downtown districts of many larger U.S. cities are struggling to recover to pre-pandemic levels, according to the results of a new study from UC Berkeley.
Using data obtained from mobile phone usage and GPS location services, the study compared the effects of the “initial shock of the pandemic” — i.e., the migration of workers to non-downtown areas or the suburbs — to the rate at which those downtown areas were being visited as of May 2022.
Of the 62 North American cities included in the study, only a handful had shown increased activity in their downtown areas when compared to March 2019. The rest were demonstrating slower recovery trajectories — with some recovering much more slowly than others.
“Early studies suggest that downtowns will struggle to recover from the pandemic, due to their disproportionate share of business closures, the lessening demand for downtown real estate due to remote work, and challenges associated with the loss of business travel and rise of ecommerce,” the study’s authors wrote in a research brief released by UC Berkley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
San Francisco’s downtown area, for instance, fared the worst of all downtowns with a “recovery quotient” of only 31% — meaning the district was only seeing 31% of the activity observed in March 2019. Cleveland (36%), Portland, Oregon (41%), Detroit (42%) and Chicago (43%) rounded out the bottom five on the list.
On the other end, Salt Lake City’s downtown area exceeded its pre-pandemic activity levels, at 155%. SLC was joined by Bakersfield, California (117%); Columbus, Ohio (112%); and Fresno, California (108%) as the only other cities that managed an increase in downtown-district activity between 2019 and 2022.
The top ten U.S. cities with the highest and lowest recovery quotients, as determined by researchers with UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, are as follows:
Highest Recovery Quotients
- Salt Lake City: 155%
- Bakersfield, California: 117%
- Columbus, Ohio: 112%
- Fresno, California: 108%
- Omaha, Nebraska: 92%
- Baltimore: 91%
- El Paso, Texas: 91%
- San Diego: 89%
- Tampa, Florida: 85%
- Honolulu: 84%
Lowest Recovery Quotients
- San Francisco: 31%
- Cleveland: 36%
- Portland, Oregon: 41%
- Detroit: 42%
- Chicago: 43%
- Indianapolis: 44%
- Minneapolis: 44%
- Raleigh, North Carolina: 45%
- New Orleans: 46%
- Oakland, California: 46%
On the whole, however, the study’s authors found that downtowns in southern U.S. cities generally rebounded better than those in the north. They also found that cities with certain variables — low downtown housing stock, higher education levels, a larger percentage of workers in the tech, information, hospitality and finance industries — were more likely to have slower recovery rates.
The same researchers also analyzed city-wide activity in each of the areas studied — and not just the downtown areas — and found the recovery rate of the entire city was “often higher” than that of just the downtown, “indicating that downtown areas have been consistently lagging behind in activity recovery as remote working and the digitization of services continues.”
The study’s authors cited surveys which predicted that many of the country’s larger downtowns will never fully recover, and that it might be “time to reinvent” these districts with less office space, more residential buildings, and more focus on culture and recreation.
“Most importantly, downtowns should look to diversify their economies to focus on resilient sectors such as education, health, and government,” the researchers suggest.
More information from this study, including the authors’ definition of a downtown area and the methodologies used, can be found at DowntownRecovery.com. | https://www.wspa.com/news/national/nexstar-media-wire/downtown-districts-across-the-us-are-struggling-after-the-pandemic-study-finds-is-your-city-recovering-faster-than-others/ | 2022-08-24T16:57:39Z | wspa.com | control | https://www.wspa.com/news/national/nexstar-media-wire/downtown-districts-across-the-us-are-struggling-after-the-pandemic-study-finds-is-your-city-recovering-faster-than-others/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Susan C. Andreucci
Susan C. Andreucci, 59, of Roseto, formerly of Bath, passed away on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022 at St. Luke’s Hospital – Anderson Campus, Easton, Pa. Born on Oct. 11, 1962, in Abington, Pa., she was the daughter of Keith W. and Jane C. (Richards) Brown, of Moore Township. Susan was the wife of the late Richard Andreucci, who passed away in 1999. She worked as the Vice President of Quality Control for BB&T Bank in Allentown, for many years until retiring. One of Susan’s greatest adventures in her lifetime was living a full year in New Zealand as a Rotary Exchange student. Susan loved spending time with her family, but most of all, she enjoyed her grandchildren. She enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles, playing cards, playing games and doing crafts with her grandson. She liked to volunteer and she loved to relax with her daughter at the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey.
Survivors: In addition to her loving parents, Keith W. and Jane C., she will be missed by her daughter, Caitlynn M. Andreucci; two brothers, Bruce Brown and his wife, Kathy, Timothy Brown; grandchildren, Johnathan and Jayden; and nieces and nephews.
Services: Graveside services will be held at 10:30 a.m., Friday, Aug. 26, 2022 in Sacred Heart Cemetery, Penn Street, Bath, Pa. There will be no calling hours. Arrangements have been entrusted to the Bartholomew Funeral Home, Bath, Pa.
Memorials: In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions, in Susan’s memory, may be made to Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, 210 E. Northampton St., Bath, PA 18014 or the National Kidney Foundation, 30 East 33rd Street, New York, New York 10016.
Stanley F. Flamisch
Stanley Franklin Flamisch, 84, of Bath, entered into the arms of Jesus on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, surrounded by his family. Born in Moore Township, Stanley was a son of the late Frank R. Flamisch and Ruth L. (Muffley) Flamisch Kennedy. He attended Nazareth Schools, and he was employed by Eisenhard’s Flooring in Emmaus for over 45 years. He was a lifelong member and deacon at El Shaddai Assembly of God Church in Nazareth. An avid outdoorsman, Stanley was a skilled hunter and fisherman, and he enjoyed collectables of all kinds. He remained active throughout by spending countless hours preparing scrap metal to sell at local recycling centers.
Survivors: Stanley is survived by his wife of 61 years, Lucille E. (Guth) Flamisch; four children, Marie Halbfoerster and husband, Rev. Timothy, of Enola, Stephen A. Flamisch and wife, Joyce, of Upper Nazareth Township, Sherry Fox of Nazareth, and Suzanne Fox and husband, Scott, of Moore Township; nine grandchildren, Heather, Ashley, Amber, Elizabeth, Zachary, Katelyn, Victoria, Kelsey, and EmmaLee; 13 great-grandchildren; four brothers, Dennis Flamisch and wife, Diane, and Clifford Flamisch, Sr., both of Moore Township, Frank Flamisch and wife, Donna, and Dale Flamisch and wife, Brenda Burns, both of Nazareth; three sisters, MaryAnn Gaston of Enola, Bonnie Flamisch of New York, and Rose Kromer and husband, Brian, of Belfast; a brother-in-law, Dollard Guth of Walnutport; many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by four grandchildren, Gregory Flamisch, Angelica, Kayla and Christopher Fox; two brothers, Thomas and John Flamisch; and a sister, Gladys Flamisch.
Services: A funeral service will be held on Friday, Aug. 26, 2022, at 11 a.m. in El Shaddai Assembly of God Church, 585 Rose Inn Avenue, Nazareth, PA 18064. Friends and relatives are invited to call on Friday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. in the church. Interment will follow in Cedar Hill Memorial Park Cemetery, Allentown. Arrangements are under the care and direction of the George G. Bensing Funeral Home, LLC, in the Village of Moorestown – Bath.
Contributions: In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be offered to El Shaddai Assembly of God Church, Nazareth.
Robert C. Kromer, Sr.
Robert C. Kromer, Sr., 79, of Bath, passed away on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, at ProMedica Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation in Bethlehem Township. He was the husband of the late Carol Ann (Kern) Kromer, with whom he shared 38 years of marriage prior to her passing in 2001. Born in Moore Township, he was a son of the late Dalbert L. and Erma A. (Snyder) Kromer. Robert was a machine operator at Martin Sprocket & Gear, Inc. in Danielsville, before retiring. Known as the “unofficial” Mayor of Bath, he could be seen spending time on the front porch of his home, which he so enjoyed.
Survivors: Robert will be dearly missed and lovingly remembered by his children, Kimberly S. Altemose and husband, Dave, of Moore Township, David L. Kromer and wife, Kimberley, of Lehigh Township, Robert C. “Butch” Kromer, Jr. and wife, Susan, of Slatington, and John J. Kromer and wife, Christine, of Northampton; nine grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; a brother, Larry E. Kromer and wife, Vera, of Bushkill Township; nieces and nephews; and his special friend, Sheila Hawk, with whom he resided for the past 18 years. In addition to his wife, Carol Ann, he was predeceased by a brother, Delbert “Sonny” Kromer; and a sister, Shirley S. Schlegel.
Services: A graveside service will be held privately with the family at Mountain View Cemetery in Emanuelsville. Arrangements have been entrusted to the George G. Bensing Funeral Home, LLC, in the Village of Moorestown – Bath.
Contributions: In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be offered to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105.
Ronald E. Markulics
Ronald E. Markulics, 81 of Allentown, Pa., passed away peacefully on Friday, Aug. 19, 2022, at ProMedica -ManorCare Health Services- Allentown, PA. Born Jan. 10, 1941 in Bath, Pa., he was the son of the late Frank Markulics and the late Dora (Hescox) Markulics. He was the husband of the late Ida Elaine (Jenkins) Markulics who passed away in September 2019.
Ronald was last employed by the former Bethlehem Steel Corp., Bethlehem, Pa. as a machine operator for over 30 years before retiring in 1992. He served his country as a Hospitalman E-3 in the U.S. Navy from 1960 until 1964.
Ronald is survived by his two sons, Craig A. Markulics and wife Connie of Northampton, Pa. and Randall S. Markulics of Allentown, Pa., brother, Michael Markulics and wife Cheryl of Gallatin, TN, sisters, Mrs. Jean Farkas of Slatington, Pa. and Jacqueline, wife of Joseph Kiss of Walnutport, Pa.; two grandchildren; Christopher and Erin. He was predeceased by brother, Rodney Markulics and sister, Cheryl Compton.
Graveside services and committal will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022 at Cedar Hill Memorial Park, 1700 Airport Road Allentown, PA, 18109 with the Fr. Edward W. Patch officiating. Schisler Funeral Home, Northampton, Pa., has been entrusted with his care and services.
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KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — They fan out along the tense frontier with Israel in the pre-dawn darkness, setting traps and training their eyes on the other side of the separation fence — where the parakeets are.
Dozens of Palestinian men and boys have taken up bird trapping in recent years. It's a rare if meager source of income in Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the militant Hamas group seized power 15 years ago.
Their quarry is ring-necked parakeets, an invasive species of tropical bird that has proliferated in Israel and the Palestinian territories in recent years, most likely after being brought there as pets. In Gaza, the bright green birds with red beaks are sought-after as caged songbirds.
“It’s a beautiful bird, and everyone loves it,” said Khaled al-Najjar, a trapper and father of two. “I catch them to make a living and feed my children.”
The birds nest on Israeli farms on the other side of the fence but fly into Gaza when workers head into the fields to tend crops. The Palestinian bird catchers on the other side lure them with chirping played on portable speakers and catch them in nets and other traps.
It can be a dangerous occupation.
Israel has imposed a 300-meter buffer zone along the fence and forces closely monitor the border, looking for any Palestinians suspected of trying to sneak into Israel, plant explosives or dig attack tunnels. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several smaller battles over the years, and earlier this month Gaza saw three days of heavy fighting between Israel and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group.
A bird-catcher was shot dead by Israeli forces last year, and Palestinian rights groups say several trappers have been shot at.
Once they've netted their quarry, the trappers return to Gaza's crowded cities, where they sell the parakeets to pet shops. Al-Najjar says he gets 30 shekels (around $10) for a pair of parakeets. At some pet stores in Gaza, a pair is resold for twice as much.
There's little if any regulation of the bird trade in Gaza, where unemployment hovers around 50%. The trapping of migrant birds like swallows and quail, as well as native species like goldfinches, has severely depleted the local population.
But by trapping the parakeets, they might be doing the region a favor. The population of invasive parakeets and myrnas — a bird of the starling family — has exploded over the past 15 years, driving a decline in the populations of local species like the house sparrow and the white-spectacled bulbul.
A 2019 study by Israeli researchers found that 75% of the most common bird species in Israel have declined over the last 15 years, while the population of invasive species has grown at rates between 250% and more than 800%.
Abdel Fattah Abd Rabou, an environmental science professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, said the parakeets threaten native birds like hoopoes because they occupy their nesting areas. They can also be a pest to farmers by feeding on grapes and figs, he said.
For the trappers, and a smaller group of recreational bird-catchers in Gaza, it's a way to pass the time.
The blockade severely limits movement into and out of the narrow coastal strip, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Israel says the closures are needed to contain Hamas, while the Palestinians and human rights groups view it as a form of collective punishment.
"There is no work and there is nothing to fill my time other than hunting,” al-Najjar said as he inspected a parakeet tied to dry branches that he planned to use as bait.
“In the morning, my children ask me ‘where are you going?’ I tell them to hunt. Pray for me and thank God, who responds to their prayers and provides a living for me.”
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By FARES AKRAM Associated Press
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BEIJING (AP) — Hainan island in the South China Sea says it will become China's first region to ban sales of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars to curb climate-changing carbon emissions.
Sales of fossil fuel-powered cars will be banned by 2030 and electric vehicles promoted with tax breaks and by expanding a charging network, the Hainan provincial government said in a “Carbon Peak Implementation Plan.”
The announcement comes as China struggles through its hottest, driest summer in decades, which has wilted crops and shrunk rivers and reservoirs used for generating hydropower.
“By 2030, the whole province will ban sales of fueled vehicles,” according to the plan, which was released Monday.
A deputy Chinese industry minister said in September 2017 that Beijing was working on a plan to stop making and selling gasoline- and diesel-powered cars, but the government has yet to release details.
Hainan aims to have electric vehicles account for 45% of its vehicles by 2030, the plan said. It said cities would develop “zero-emissions zones” where fossil fuel-powered vehicles would be banned.
The ruling Communist Party is promoting electric cars to help clean up China’s smog-choked cities and gain an early lead in a growing industry. China accounted for more than half of last year’s global electric car sales.
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(AP) — An illegal dirt road ripping through protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region, according to satellite images and accounts from people familiar with the area. If the road is completed it will turn a large area of remaining forest into an island, under pressure from human activity on all sides.
Environmentalists have been warning about just this kind of development in the rainforest for decades. Roads are significant because most deforestation occurs alongside them, where access is easier and land value higher.
On the east side of the new road is a massively deforested area where Brazil's largest cattle herd, 2.4 million head, now grazes. This municipality of Sao Felix do Xingu is the country’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, thanks to deforestation, according to Climate Observatory, a network of environmental groups. It is roughly the size of Maine and has a population of 136,000.
To the west is an area where three years ago ranchers coordinated the burning of several swaths of virgin forest in an episode famously known as the Day of Fire. This municipality, larger than Maryland, is Brazil’s eighth-largest greenhouse gas emitter.
Wedged in between is the Xingu basin. The Xingu River that runs through it is one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River. It begins in the drier Cerrado biome, surrounded by tens of thousands of square miles of protected areas.
The Xingu River is home to several Indigenous peoples, who are now pressed on both sides by an onslaught of settlers who have built a large network of dirt roads and illegal airstrips. Experts said the stakes could not be higher.
The opportunities for new deforestation "in the center of the corridor of protected areas of the Xingu brings the risk of an irreversible breaking of the Amazon rainforest, dividing it into islands of degraded forest, which does not have the strength to resist climate change. We need to protect and maintain large forest corridors to sustain the resilience of the threatened biome,” Biviany Rojas, the program coordinator of Socio-Environmental Institute, a Brazilian non-profit, told the Associated Press.
Almost half of Brazil’s climate pollution comes from deforestation, according to Climate Observatory. The destruction is so vast now that the eastern Amazon, just east of Xingu basin, has ceased to be a carbon sink, or absorber, for the Earth and has converted into a carbon source, according to a study published in 2021 in the journal Nature.
“They come to deforest, to extract timber and to dig for gold,” Indigenous leader Mydjere Kayapo told the AP in a phone interview. His people, the Kayapo, have suffered invasions from loggers and gold miners, who contaminate rivers with mud and mercury, co-opt leaders and provoke internal division.
The new road was detected earlier this year. According to satellite images analyzed by a network of nonprofits called Xingu+ and reviewed by the AP, it is 27 miles long.
The road cuts through two ostensibly protected areas: Terra do Meio (Middle Earth) Ecological Station, a federal unit, and Iriri State Forest, managed by the state of Pará, famous for its deforestation rates.
From January to August, Terra do Meio alone lost 9 square miles of forest, and Iriri lost 2 square miles of rainforest along the illegal road. In July, Xingu+ reported the illegal road-building to Brazil’s attorney general.
The city of Novo Progresso is also west of the new road. In recent days, the city has been covered by thick smoke from wildfires, deliberately set. On Monday alone, satellite sensors picked up 331 outbreaks of fire in the municipality, according to monitoring from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. August, which falls in the dry season, is typically the second worst month for both deforestation and fire.
Brazil's federal agency ICMBio, which manages protected areas, and Pará's secretary of environment, didn’t respond to AP emails seeking comment about the illegal road. These are the agencies responsible for protecting the areas flanking the road.
Under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, the area deforested in Brazil’s Amazon has reached a 15-year high, according to official data. Prodes at the space agency said the national monitoring systems showed the Brazilian Amazon lost more than 5,000 square miles of rainforest in the 12 months from Aug. 2020 to July 2021. New data is expected out by the end of the year.
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By FABIANO MAISONNAVE RIO DE JANEIRO
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday instructed his government to consider developing safer, smaller nuclear reactors, signaling a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy years after many of the country's plants were shut down.
Kishida made the comment at a “green transformation” conference on bolstering the country’s efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. Japan has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
Anti-nuclear sentiment and safety concerns rose sharply in Japan after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, but the government has been pushing for a return to nuclear energy amid worries of power shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a global push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The government, however, previously insisted it was not considering building new plants or replacing aged reactors, apparently to avoid stoking criticisms from a wary public. Kishida's comment on Wednesday represents a sharp change from that stance.
Kishida said the panel presented proposals for the development and construction of “new innovative reactors designed with new safety mechanisms." He called on his government to speed up its examination of “every possible measure” and reach a decision by the end of the year.
“In order to overcome our imminent crisis of a power supply crunch, we must take our utmost steps to mobilize all possible policies in the coming years and prepare for any emergency,” Kishida said.
“It is extremely important to secure all options to redesign a stable energy supply for our country," Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters. “From that perspective, we will also consider all options regarding nuclear power."
Most of Japan's nuclear power plants were taken off line following the Fukushima accident for safety checks under tightened standards.
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami destroyed key cooling functions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011, causing its three reactors to melt and contaminating the region with massive radiation fallouts that still keep some areas uninhabitable.
Japanese utilities have since set more than 20 reactors for decommissioning largely because of the high cost of safety measures. Of the 33 workable reactors, 25 have been screened for safety checks by the Nuclear Safety Authority. Seventeen have been approved so far, but only 10 have restarted after gaining consent from local communities, including three currently off line for regular safety inspections.
The government has already announced plans to speed up restarts and have up to nine reactors restarted by winter to cope with the energy crunch. It aims to restart seven other reactors by next summer and further prolong the operational life of aging reactors to beyond 60 years from the initial 40 years.
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By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press
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KINGSTON, Mass. (AP) — Asa Peters marched into a thicket of Japanese knotweed in the woods of coastal Massachusetts this month and began steadily hacking the towering, dense vegetation down to size.
The 24-year-old member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe was among a cadre of volunteers rooting out invasive species and tending to recently planted native vegetation on a wide swath of forest acquired on behalf of his federally recognized tribe and other Wampanoag communities.
“It’s hard. You got to keep pulling and pulling. Starting to really sweat, but it’s cool,” he said as he took a quick break in the sweltering August heat. “We’re in the early stages, putting in the work to create a special place where we can do all kinds of great things.”
The Wampanoag Common Lands, as the project is called, seeks to restore a 32-acre former Catholic summer camp on the banks of the Muddy Pond in Kingston to something closer to what it might have looked like before European colonization transformed it.
The Native Land Conservancy, the local Native group that received the donated land this year, envisions a natural environment filled with indigenous plants and animals where Wampanoags can practice cultural ceremonies and educate new generations in traditional ways.
Ramona Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag who founded the conservancy, said the effort is all the more meaningful because the land is some 5 miles from where Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower established the English colony of Plymouth, near the remnants of a Wampanoag community wiped out by European disease.
“This is basically where the first impact of colonization of this country happened,” she said. “It’s very significant that it’s been returned to us.”
The Wampanoag Common Lands is part of a growing movement of Indigenous-led conservation efforts helping to preserve and reinvigorate Native culture and identity, said Beth Rose-Middleton, a professor at the University of California, Davis, focused on Native American environmental policy and conservation.
The efforts are also critical in the face of climate change, which has acutely harmed Native communities, she said. Alaska tribes facing increased erosion, flooding and thawing permafrost have weighed relocating from their coastal and riverside lands. Louisiana bayou tribes still reeling from Hurricane Ida last year are bracing for ever-powerful storms, while across the American West, tribes are contending with a historic drought that has upended their way of life.
“Many of our land and waterscapes have been pressed into extreme uses and depleted,” Rose-Middletown said. “Land stewardship and care work are necessary for creating resilient landscapes.”
In northern California, the Wiyot Tribe has spent more than two decades restoring a badly polluted island that was the site of an 1860 massacre that nearly wiped out the tribe and, more recently, was home to a ship repair facility.
Michelle Vassel, the tribe’s administrator, said the years of environmental work on Tuluwat have contributed to better water quality and marine habitats across Humboldt Bay.
“For us, it’s a responsibility. Indigenous people are tied to a place,” she said. “This work is also healing. The history of the massacre has always been a scar on the broader community. This was a way to change that history.”
Tribes in Wyoming and other Great Plains states, meanwhile, have been reintroducing bison herds brought to near-extinction by European settlers. Those in Washington state and other parts of the Pacific Northwest are focused on protecting glacial rivers vital for migrating salmon from warming waters and the effects of dams and industrial pollution.
And on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, the Native-run Sassafras Earth Education has been teaching youths and families traditional Wampanoag cultivation practices for decades.
The organization’s Land Culture Project seeks to transform roughly 20 acres of forested land and fields into a “highly productive food forest” of native trees and shrubs beneficial to both people and wildlife.
“It’s not just about restoring the physical land,” said Saskia Vanderhoop, who founded the organization with her husband, David Vanderhoop, an Aquinnah Wampanoag elder. “It’s also about restoring the culture.”
At the nearby Wampanoag Common Lands, old summer camp buildings were torn down and pavement, athletic courts and other hard surfaces scraped away this year.
Even large, nonnative Norwegian spruce trees were uprooted by the prior owners at the conservancy’s request, leaving mostly a bare clearing near the water’s edge.
In their place, conservancy staff and volunteers this summer planted dozens of native species significant to Wampanoag culture, such as white oak trees, blueberry bushes, witch hazel, goldenrod and hay-scented ferns.
Wildlife cameras have been set up to survey and monitor otters, deer and other local fauna. The conservancy is also building bat houses and considering reintroducing threatened and rare native animal species, such as northern red-bellied turtles, said Diana Ruiz, the Native Land Conservancy’s director.
The organization is also exploring other uses, such as traditional Wampanoag lodges for hosting guests or other community functions.
“We’re not looking at it as just this closed system that humans sometimes visit,” she said. “We’re looking at it as a space where the Wampanoag community can reconnect with their ancestral homeland in an active and deep way.”
For Asa Peters, that potential for spiritual revitalization is what he finds most compelling about the land project.
He looks forward to returning years and decades from now not just to see how the plants he helped nourish take hold, but also how Wampanoags use the restored land.
“My hope for it is to be a beautiful, comfortable space,” Peters said. “A place where people can come and it helps fill them back up.”
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By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press
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GALVESTON, Texas (CN) — A bid by a Texas firearm parts dealer to block the Biden administration’s new regulations cracking down on ghost guns was rejected late Tuesday by a federal judge.
Starting Wednesday, companies that sell firearm frames, known in the industry as “receiver blanks” and “lower receivers,” that can be readily converted to shoot bullets must comply with a new rule put in place by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The rule requires such companies to obtain a federal firearm license, to put serial numbers on their partially complete gun frames and to run background checks on their clients.
It is aimed at so-called ghost guns, untraceable weapons that lack serial numbers and can be made at home with parts kits or 3D printers and sold without background checks, so they can fall into the hands of convicted felons who are barred from owning firearms.
Online sales of gun parts kits have proliferated in recent years, with technology advances making it very easy for regulation-averse hobbyists to assemble their own weapons.
Police are recovering these weapons more and more as gun violence and homicides have spiked in cities across the country since 2020.
U.S. law enforcement officers recovered 1,600 self-made guns in 2016 and more than 19,000 in 2021, according to the ATF. And of the 45,240 ghost guns police recovered during this five-year period, including 692 used in homicides or attempted homicides, only 445, less than 1%, could be traced to a buyer.
With President Joe Biden unable to convince Congress to pass regulations on ghost guns, he announced in April 2021 he had instructed the Justice Department to identify “immediate, concrete actions” he could take through rulemaking.
A month later, ATF, part of the Justice Department, published the proposed rule to expand the definition of firearm under the Gun Control Act of 1968 to encompass receivers or frames that come with tools and instructions to quickly convert them into working firearms.
Despite the cloud the proposed rule had cast on the industry, Brendon Padilla opened his gun kit company Division 80 LLC in November 2021 in Galveston County, Texas.
The company, which has sold more than $220,000 in firearm parts by mail, sued the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the ATF’s then-acting director in May 2021 after the period in which the public could comment on the proposed rule had passed.
Division 80 claimed its business would be wiped out if the rule went into effect because its products are geared toward consumers who do not want to submit to background checks.
“There’s a thriving market of people who want to make their own guns and don’t want to go through licensed dealers,” the company's attorney, Cory Liu of the Ashcroft Law Firm in Austin, said during an Aug. 9 hearing. “Padilla’s entire product line would be wiped out; consumer demand wouldn’t be there.”
“It’s not just about a license,” the attorney added. “It’s about the ability to build a firearm, a right that’s existed since the nation’s founding.”
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled Tuesday that Division 80’s predictions of its demise were mere speculation, not enough for him to grant the company’s request to block the rule with a nationwide injunction.
“Division 80 merely speculates that its business would be forced to close unless the court grants immediate relief. It likewise offers no evidence that its suppliers ‘will cease operations.’ These predictions are just Padilla’s conjecture; the court has heard from not even one of Division 80’s customers or suppliers,” Brown wrote in an 18-page order.
The Donald Trump appointee also noted Division 80 can stay open by obtaining a federal firearm license, which would only cost it $408 initially and then $194 every three years.
“Padilla suggests that even if Division 80 were to get licensed, ‘the regulatory costs, bureaucratic red tape, and extensive recordkeeping requirements’ would destroy consumer demand for its products. … But Division 80 neither presents Padilla as an expert in the market dynamics of gun-component sales nor offers any other evidence to support such a conclusion,” Brown added.
On the other hand, Brown found, the government had presented strong arguments that the new rule will help law enforcement by decreasing the number of untraceable weapons in circulation, keeping them out of the hands of criminals.
Proponents and detractors of the rule fall along familiar party lines. Nineteen Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief in Division 80’s case in support of the government's rule.
Meanwhile, the Republican attorneys general of 17 states – Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming – joined a lawsuit challenging the rule filed in early June by Gun Owners of America Inc. and Bridge City Ordnance, owner of a gun shop in Barnes County, North Dakota, in North Dakota federal court.
Like Brown in Division 80’s case, U.S. District Judge Pete Welte, another Trump appointee, issued an order Tuesday denying the challengers a preliminary injunction against the ATF’s new rule.
Neither the Justice Department nor Liu responded Wednesday to a requests for comment on Brown’s order.
Besides the new federal rule, eight states and territories currently restrict ghost guns, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
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(CN) — A war-battered but defiant Ukraine on Wednesday marked both the 31st anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union and six months of war since it was attacked by Russia.
Independence Day provided leaders in Kyiv a chance to celebrate the bravery of Ukrainians in resisting Russia's onslaught and reaffirm their determination to carry on fighting until Moscow is defeated and its troops are completely pushed out of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, which is now a Russian fortress.
Ukraine's resistance was hailed by Western leaders who pledged new support for Kyiv. U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled a new $3 billion arms package for Ukraine, the largest yet. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv unexpectedly and announced $64 million more in military support.
The celebrations, though, were muted as Ukrainians were told to avoid large gatherings out of fear of Russian attacks. Air raid alarms were heard in many parts of Ukraine, but as of Wednesday evening there were no reports of Russia major attacks on civilian infrastructure.
On the front lines, the war continued to grind on with new reports of shelling and combat. Russian forces have continued to make small advances, including potentially critical breakthroughs in the south where Ukraine has been vowing to launch a counteroffensive.
But after six months of fighting, the Russo-Ukrainian war is turning into a protracted conflict with no end in sight despite heavy losses on both sides and massive economic damage in Russia, Ukraine and Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24 has shattered world politics and brought the world to the precipice of a major war between superpowers.
On the battlefields of Ukraine, the war has turned into what many military experts call a stalemate. Both sides can claim successes but have also suffered strategic defeats.
This is a developing story …
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
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BEIJING (AP) — Twin giant pandas have been born at a breeding center in southwestern China, a sign of progress for the country’s unofficial national mascot as it struggles for survival amid climate change and loss of habitat.
The male and female cubs, born Tuesday at the Qinling Panda Research Center in Shaanxi province, are the second pair of twins born to their mother, Qin Qin. Another panda, Yong Yong, gave birth to twins at the center earlier this month.
Qin Qin was also born at the center and previously gave birth to twin females in 2020.
State media gave no word on the father, but Chinese veterinarians for years have been using artificial insemination to boost the population of the animals, which reproduce rarely in the wild and rely on a diet of bamboo in the mountains of western China.
The efforts have paid off, with some captive-bread pandas being released into the wild. The population of wild pandas has ticked up gradually, reaching an estimated 1,800. About 500 others live in captivity in zoos and reserves, the majority in the mountainous, heavily forested province of Sichuan.
Encroachment on their land by farmers and industry has reduced the pandas' space while cutting them off from other populations with which to breed.
Like much of central and western China, Sichuan has been hit by soaring summer temperatures and drought this year that have sparked forest fires and the withering of crops and forests, generally attributed to global climate change.
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BEIRUT (AP) — The U.S. military said early Wednesday it carried out airstrikes in eastern Syria that targeted areas used by militias backed by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and activist collective Deir Ezzor 24 said the airstrikes targeted the Ayash Camp run by the Fatimiyoun group made up of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan. The war monitor reported that at least six Syrian and foreign militants were killed in the airstrikes, while Deir Ezzor 24 reported 10 deaths.
Deir Ez-Zor is a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields. Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area and have often been the target of Israeli war planes in previous strikes.
In Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani issued a statement later Wednesday condemning the American strike “against the people and infrastructure of Syria.” He also denied that Iran had any link to those targeted. Iran routinely denies arming militia groups targeting U.S. forces in the region, despite weaponry linking back to them.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said the strikes “took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties.” It did not identify the targets, nor offer any casualty figures from the strikes, which the military said came at the orders of President Joe Biden.
“Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” Central Command spokesman Col. Joe Buccino said in a statement.
The U.S. Treasury said the the Fatimiyoun has fought numerous battles in Syria, and is led by Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard.
“The Ayash warehouse is a very important one for Iran’s militias,” Deir Ezzor 24 CEO Omar Abu Layla told The Associated Press. “We expect that Iran will respond, either in al-Tanf or possibly in Iraq.”
Buccino added the attack was in response to an Aug. 15 attack targeting U.S. forces. That attack saw drones allegedly launched by Iranian-backed militias target the al-Tanf Garrison used by American forces. U.S. Central Command described the assault as causing “zero casualties and no damage” at the time.
There was no immediate acknowledgment by Syria’s state-run media of the strikes hitting Deir Ez-Zor.
U.S. forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against the Islamic State group.
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President announces largest student loan forgiveness extension to date
Not everyone is happy, with critics saying the measures unfairly benefit certain Americans.
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - President Joe Biden announcing an extension on student loan forgiveness and the help will also be the largest borrowers have received to date. However, critics are torn over if the money is enough and if the program should exist at all.
The student loan debt forgiveness program started at the height of the pandemic and was set to expire on August 31st. Under the President’s new extension, people who make less than $125,000 are eligible for $20,000 in forgiveness if they went to college with Pell grants. If they did not go to college with Pell grants, borrowers at that income level can receive $10,000 in student loan forgiveness.
The program also freezes payments through December 31st. The Department of Education is also set to propose a new program to allow people with undergraduate loans can cap repayment at 5% of their monthly income.
Read more details of the student loan forgiveness extension here from the White House
Read more on how to claim the relief here from the U.S. Dept of Education
The U.S. Department of Education is calling the announcement a final extension. They are warning everyone to be prepared to start payments again in January 2023. They’ll be announcing more details on how to claim relief in the weeks ahead.
The president’s program is also receiving criticism for not going far enough. In an opinion piece written prior to the announcement for CNN, top NAACP leaders Derrick Johnson and Wisdom Cole wrote “We are fed up. The NAACP has been calling for a minimum of $50,000 in student loan debt cancellation because our research indicates it is what is necessary to make a meaningful difference.”
The White House acknowledged in a statement “the student debt burden also falls disproportionately on Black borrowers. Twenty years after first enrolling in school, the typical Black borrower who started college in the 1995-96 school year still owed 95% of their original student debt.”
It said, however, it is working to advance racial equality by targeting relief to borrowers with the highest need and that “the Administration’s actions are likely to help narrow the racial wealth gap. Black students are more likely to have to borrow for school and more likely to take out larger loans. Black borrowers are twice as likely to have received Pell Grants compared to their white peers. Other borrowers of color are also more likely than their peers to receive Pell Grants. That is why an Urban Institute study found that debt forgiveness programs targeting those who received Pell Grants while in college will advance racial equity.”
Meanwhile, several Republicans also criticized the extension.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the help a “slap in the face.”
He said in part in a statement, “Washington Democrats have found yet another way to make inflation even worse, reward far-left activists, and achieve nothing for millions of working American families who can barely tread water. President Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt. This policy is astonishingly unfair. The median American with student loans already has a significantly higher income than the median American overall. Experts who studied similar past proposals found that the overwhelming benefit of student loan socialism flows to higher-earning Americans. Democrats specifically wrote this policy to make sure that people earning six figures would benefit.”
The White House said the forgiveness will help 20 million people and 90% of the help will go t those earning less than $75,000. It said no one in top 5% will earn relief. The President also claims the announcement will offset inflation, or could have a neutral impact.
Copyright 2022 Gray DC. All rights reserved. | https://www.wave3.com/2022/08/24/president-announces-largest-student-loan-forgiveness-extension-date/ | 2022-08-24T17:01:00Z | wave3.com | control | https://www.wave3.com/2022/08/24/president-announces-largest-student-loan-forgiveness-extension-date/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
SEC regulators question Twitter on method of calculating fake accounts
DETROIT (AP) — U.S. securities regulators are questioning Twitter about how it calculates the number of fake accounts on its platform.
The Securities and Exchange Commission in June asked the company about the methodology for calculating the false or spam accounts and “the underlying judgments and assumptions used by management.”
The agency’s Division of Corporation Finance made the request in a June 15 letter, shortly before Tesla CEO Elon Musk raised the issue as grounds to back out of a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
Such questions can be routine, and it wasn’t clear whether the SEC has opened a formal investigation into Twitter’s fake accounts. Messages were left Wednesday seeking comment from the agency and Twitter.
The law firm Wilson Sonsini of Palo Alto, California, replied in a June 22 letter saying the company believes it adequately disclosed the methodology in its annual report filed for 2021.
The letter says that Twitter makes its estimates of false accounts with an internal review of sample accounts. The number of fake accounts “represent the average false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during a quarter,” the letter said.
It added that fewer than 5% of Twitter’s “Monetizable Daily Active Usage or Users,” or mDAU, were fake accounts in the fourth quarter of last year, the period that the SEC had questioned.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wave3.com/2022/08/24/sec-regulators-question-twitter-method-calculating-fake-accounts/ | 2022-08-24T17:01:06Z | wave3.com | control | https://www.wave3.com/2022/08/24/sec-regulators-question-twitter-method-calculating-fake-accounts/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Uvalde’s embattled school police chief on Wednesday could become the first officer to lose his job over the hesitant response by hundreds of heavily armed law enforcement personnel during the May massacre at Robb Elementary School.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District was set to make a decision on Pete Arredondo’s future, three months to the day after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in one of the deadliest classroom attacks in U.S. history.
The meeting comes less than two weeks before the new school year begins in Uvalde.
Arredondo, who has been on administrative leave since June, has come under the most scrutiny for his actions during the May 24 tragedy. State police and a damning investigative report in July have criticized the police chief of the roughly 4,000-student school district for failing to take charge of the scene, not breaching the classroom sooner and wasting time by looking for a key to a likely unlocked door.
Ninety days after the massacre, the absence of any firings have frustrated many Uvalde residents and amplified demands for accountability. Investigations and body camera footage have laid bare how police rushed to the scene with bulletproof shields and high-powered rifles within minutes — but waited more than an hour before finally confronting the gunman in a classroom of fourth-graders.
An attorney for Arredondo did not respond to an email Tuesday.
Uvalde school officials have been under mounting pressure from victims’ families and members of the community, many of whom have called for Arredondo’s termination. Superintendent Hal Harrell had first moved to fire Arredondo in July but postponed the decision at the request of the police chief’s attorney.
Only one other police official at the scene, Uvalde police Lt. Mariano Pargas, is known to have been placed on leave since the shooting. Pargas was the city’s acting police chief during the massacre.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, has also launched an internal investigation into the response by state police.
School officials have said the campus at Robb Elementary will no longer be used. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for elementary school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in-person following the shooting.
School officials say a virtual academy will be offered for students. The district has not said how many students will attend virtually, but a new state law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving remote instruction to “10% of all enrolled students within a given school system.”
Schools can seek a waiver to exceed the limit but Uvalde has not done so, according to Melissa Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.
New measures to improve school safety in Uvalde include “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing” at elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, enhanced training for district staff and improving communication.
However, according to the district’s own progress reports, as of Tuesday no fencing had been erected at six of the eight campuses where it was planned, and cameras had only been installed at the high school. Some progress had been made on locks at three of eight campuses, and communication improvement was marked as half complete for each campus.
Uvalde CISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | https://www.wwlp.com/news/top-stories/ap-top-headlines/uvalde-school-board-to-consider-firing-district-police-chief/ | 2022-08-24T17:01:37Z | wwlp.com | control | https://www.wwlp.com/news/top-stories/ap-top-headlines/uvalde-school-board-to-consider-firing-district-police-chief/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
The best school supplies deals to start the new school year
Students need so many different items for going back to school that shopping can be overwhelming. When you factor in trying to save money, the search for affordable items makes the effort even more challenging. Fortunately, top retailers are offering many school essentials at budget-friendly prices. With these deals and shopping tips, you can simplify your search for clothes and supplies.
How to shop and save for going back to school
The best way to stock up on back-to-school clothes and supplies is to have a plan. Following a few strategic steps will save you time and money.
Make a checklist
Putting together a list of the items your kids need for going back to school will keep you focused when you shop. In addition to ensuring you purchase the necessary clothes and supplies, it will help you avoid wasting money on items you don’t need. While you and your kids can work together to come up with clothing to buy, finding the right supplies can be more difficult. Fortunately, many schools provide a list of items students will need for the new school year.
Look for sales
It’s common for popular retailers that sell kids’ clothing and school supplies to have sales this time of year. Shopping these sales will save you lots of money on these things.
Assess your kids’ sizes
Every parent knows how quickly kids grow. Even if your kids already have a large wardrobe, summer growth spurts might have occurred that will make some items unwearable. Before you shop for school clothes, it’s a good idea to check clothing and shoe sizes for a perfect fit.
Consider the on-trend styles
Thanks in part to social media, many kids have specific styles in mind that they want to wear to school. Your kids can guide you in choosing the looks they love when it’s time to shop. Some items that are in style this year include stylish backpacks, casual athletic looks known as “athleisure,” denim, casual tees and wide-leg pants.
Stock up on the basics
There are many school supplies that almost every student across different grades will need for the school year. Notebooks, binders, pencils, measuring tools, crayons and glue are just some of the essentials. Because these items are used throughout the year, you’ll save money by buying multiple packs when you find them on sale.
Best back-to-school deals for school supplies and clothing
A well-made backpack with useful features will keep items needed for school safe and organized. This pack has ample pockets including a laptop compartment and side water bottle slots. It has a stylish design that’s available in several colors. Sold by Macy’s
SO Junior’s High-Rise Flare Jeans
Denim is trendy this season, and so are flared-leg pants. These jeans combine the best of both trends and have a high-waist button closure and hem slits for added style. They are made with a cotton-spandex blend for flexible comfort. Sold by Kohl’s
Enday Back-to-School Supply Kit
This value-priced package of supplies will take some of the guesswork out of choosing items for the classroom. It’s packed with items that are suitable for kids in grades kindergarten through fifth, such as pencils, notebooks, scissors, crayons, a ruler and more. They come nicely packaged and ready for class. Sold by Amazon
Nike Kids’ Grade School Star Runner 3 Shoes
From gym class to practice sessions, Star Runner 3 shoes are built to deliver. Reliable traction and flexible materials provide stability and comfort for all of your kid’s activities. They are made with recycled materials, making them an earth-friendly pair. Sold by Dick’s Sporting Goods and Kohl’s
Five Star Back-to-School Bundle
With six four-pocket folders and six spiral notebooks, this bundle is enough to meet the needs of most busy students’ classes for the 2022-2023 school year. The folders come with three holes to fit most binders, and the notebooks have 100 sheets each. Sold by Amazon
Adidas Defender IV Medium Duffel Bag
A duffel bag like the Defender IV is a must-have for toting gym and sports equipment to and from school. The durable waterproof material will stand up to rough conditions and years of use. Sold by Kohl’s
Under Armor Boys’ Outdoor Hoodie
The soft fleece lining and casual design of this hoodie are likely to make it your student’s go-to favorite when the fall weather turns chilly. It’s available in a large selection of sizes and colors. Sold by Amazon
Champion Women’s Boyfriend Sweatpants
Sweatpants are essential for this year’s popular athleisure style. This pair has a relaxed, roomy fit that’s both comfortable and fashionable. They look great paired with an oversized sweatshirt. Sold by Macy’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods
A trim design, speedy processor and plenty of onboard storage make the Aspire 5 an excellent laptop for students. The reasonable price is appealing to parents who are watching their back-to-school budgets. Sold by Amazon
Classic T-shirts never go out of style, so it’s a good idea to stock up when you find them on sale. This one is available in a choice of colorful graphics and works well with jeans and other casual pants. Sold by Dick’s Sporting Goods
Paper Mate EverStrong #2 Pencils
Most students need classic #2 pencils for many assignments. This pack includes 144 pencils — enough to last throughout the current school year and beyond. Sold by Amazon
ID Ideology Big Girls’ Core Polo Shirt
A polo shirt is a wardrobe staple that’s perfect for school days, as it’s casual, comfortable and looks great with numerous types of pants. This one is made of a soft polyester-spandex blend and features a stylish zippered front. Sold by Macy’s
Want to shop the best products at the best prices? Check out Daily Deals from BestReviews.
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Jennifer Manfrin writes for BestReviews. BestReviews has helped millions of consumers simplify their purchasing decisions, saving them time and money.
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The Special "BROS Presents Your Favorite ComRoms" Screenings Will
Include Exclusive Pre-Show Commentary from BROS Director
Nicholas Stoller and Stars Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane
September 19, 20 and 21
DENVER, Aug. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The guys behind Universal Pictures' new, groundbreaking, R-rated romantic comedy BROS (in theaters September 30) are here to save date night! BROS director Nicholas Stoller, along with star and co-screenwriter Billy Eichner and star Luke Macfarlane are bringing some of their favorite, hilarious movies back to theaters—"Forgetting Sarah Marshall," "Trainwreck" and "Knocked Up"—each for ONE NIGHT ONLY events on September 19, 20 and 21.
Join them for a "thruple" of exclusive screenings on three consecutive nights in select theaters nationwide, with each screening preceded by a unique introduction from Stoller, Eichner or Macfarlane that highlights why the film is one of his favorite romantic comedies.
Tickets for "BROS Presents Your Favorite ComRoms" can be purchased at www.FathomEvents.com or at participating theater box offices. Fans throughout the U.S. will be able to enjoy the event in select movie theaters; for a complete list of theater locations visit the Fathom Events website (theaters and participants are subject to change).
VIEW TRAILER HERE:
Event Overview:
Monday, September 19 at 7:00 pm local time
BROS PRESENTS – FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL
- General Event Description: Peter (Jason Segel) is a struggling musician who finds his world turned upside down when his TV celebrity girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), dumps him for a tragically hip rock star (Russell Brand). Directed by Nicholas Stoller from a screenplay by Jason Segel.
Tuesday, September 20 at 7:00 pm local time
BROS PRESENTS – TRAINWRECK
- General Event Description: Since she was a little girl, Amy (Amy Schumer) has been taught that monogamy isn't realistic. Now a magazine writer, Amy lives by that credo, but when she finds herself starting to fall for the subject of an article she's writing (Bill Hader), Amy starts to wonder if other grown-ups might be onto something. Directed by Judd Apatow from a screenplay by Amy Schumer.
Wednesday, September 21 at 7:00 pm local time
BROS PRESENTS – KNOCKED UP
- General Event Description: They say that opposites attract. Well, for slacker Ben (Seth Rogen) and career girl Alison (Katherine Heigl), that's certainly the case—at least for one intoxicated evening. Two months and several pregnancy tests later, Ben and Alison go through a hysterically funny, anxious and heartwarming journey to parenthood. Written and directed by Judd Apatow.
About BROS
This fall, Universal Pictures proudly presents the first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love. Maybe. They're both very busy.
From the ferocious comic mind of Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street, 2019's The Lion King, Difficult People, Impeachment: American Crime Story) and the hitmaking brilliance of filmmakers Nicholas Stoller (the Neighbors films, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Judd Apatow (The King of Staten Island, Trainwreck, The Big Sick), comes Bros, a smart, swoony and heartfelt comedy about how hard it is to find another tolerable human being to go through life with.
Starring Billy Eichner, the first openly gay man to co-write and star in his own major studio film—and featuring an entirely LGBTQ+ principal cast, including Luke Macfarlane (Killjoys), Ts Madison (The Ts Madison Experience), Monica Raymund (Chicago Fire), Guillermo Díaz (Scandal), Guy Branum (The Other Two) and Amanda Bearse (Married …with Children)—Bros is directed by Nicholas Stoller from his screenplay with Eichner. The film is produced by Judd Apatow, Stoller and Josh Church (co-producer Trainwreck, Step Brothers) and is executive produced by Eichner and Karl Frankenfield.
About Fathom Events
Fathom is a recognized leader in the entertainment industry as one of the top distributors of content to movie theaters in North America. Owned by AMC Entertainment Inc. (NYSE: AMC); Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CNK); and Regal, a subsidiary of the Cineworld Group (LSE: CINE.L), Fathom operates the largest cinema distribution network, delivering a wide variety of programming and experiences to cinema audiences in all of the top U.S. markets and to more than 45 countries. For more information, visit www.FathomEvents.com.
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE Fathom Events | https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/fathom-events-universal-pictures-announce-special-three-night-block-classic-com-roms-celebrate-release-new-romantic-comedy-bros/ | 2022-08-24T17:01:59Z | wave3.com | control | https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/fathom-events-universal-pictures-announce-special-three-night-block-classic-com-roms-celebrate-release-new-romantic-comedy-bros/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Chicago FBI seeks Bridgeview bank robbery suspect
BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. - The Chicago FBI is searching for a man who robbed a bank in Bridgeview Tuesday afternoon.
The FBI responded to the Marquette Bank on Harlem Avenue around 1 p.m. for reports of a robbery.
The suspect is believed to be a thin, Black or Hispanic man wearing a dark baseball cap, gray neck gator, gray shirt with "Live United" printed on front, blue jeans, and a bandage around his right hand, according to the FBI.
Investigators say the suspect presented a note without showing any weapons. There were no injuries reported.
The suspect fled on foot and remains at large.
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There is no further information being released at this time. The public can report tips (even anonymously) at 312-421-6700 and tips.fbi.gov. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicago-fbi-seeks-bridgeview-bank-robery-suspect | 2022-08-24T17:04:05Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicago-fbi-seeks-bridgeview-bank-robery-suspect | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Chicagoan beats odds, swims from Alcatraz Island to shore 19 years after becoming a quadriplegic
CHICAGO - Rob Heitz was told 19 years ago that he would never walk again after taking a dive into unfamiliar Lake Michigan waters.
When Heitz was 22 years old, he was invited by his boss to go out on his business partner's boat.
It was about dusk when they took the boat out, and he thought the water was deep enough.
Heitz was always a swimmer growing up, and said he always felt comfortable in the water.
Without thinking twice, Heitz said he dove into the water, and unfortunately, it was only two to three feet deep.
He ended up shattering vertebrae in his neck, and becoming a quadriplegic.
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After nearly two decades, Heitz beat all odds and swam from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco shoreline last Friday.
Heitz is still considered a quadriplegic, and says he still can't feel the left half of his body, walks with a limp and has some issues with his hands.
Four years ago, Heitz started a charity called Paralysis Recovery Foundation to financially assist individuals experiencing paralysis.
"I'm trying to make the best I can out of this second chance at life and pay it forward," said Heitz.
For more information on the foundation, click here. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicagoan-beats-odds-swims-from-alcatraz-island-to-shore-19-years-after-becoming-a-quadriplegic | 2022-08-24T17:04:07Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicagoan-beats-odds-swims-from-alcatraz-island-to-shore-19-years-after-becoming-a-quadriplegic | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Country Club Hills man charged after bringing guns on CTA
CHICAGO - A Country Club Hills man was arrested Tuesday in Princeton Park for carrying a weapon without a license.
Keyante Gavin Cooper, 21, was charged with two counts of unlawful use of a weapon.
Cooper was allegedly seen on a CTA train with a handgun while the train was heading towards 95th Street.
Officers were able to detain him and found two handguns. Cooper did not have a valid Firearm Owner's Identification (FOID) card and/or a Carry Conceal License.
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He was placed into custody and charged accordingly. No additional information is available at this time. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/county-club-hills-man-charged-after-bringing-guns-on-cta | 2022-08-24T17:04:09Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/county-club-hills-man-charged-after-bringing-guns-on-cta | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
CTA launches modernized Bus Tracker website Wednesday
CHICAGO - The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) announced the launch of its new Bus Tracker website Wednesday.
The CTA’s Bus Tracker website is now mobile responsive, which allows customers to view bus arrival information and buses on route from their mobile devices.
The updates are expected to provide customers with easier access to bus arrival information and a more modern design, while also laying the foundation for CTA to make future upgrades over the next several months and into 2023, that will further improve the accuracy and reliability of bus arrival information.
Wednesday’s upgrade to the CTA Bus Tracker website is the latest in a series of initiatives announced by the CTA since it unveiled its "Meeting the Moment: Transforming CTA’s Post-Pandemic Future" Action Plan two weeks ago and supports the Plan’s guiding pillar of upgrading digital tools to improve customer communication.
"In this tech-centered world, CTA continues to invest in its technology and digital communication tools to ensure our customers are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information on our service," said CTA President Dorval R. Carter, Jr. "This upgrade is a critical first step in improving our rider communication tools, and a key component of our commitment to our customers to quickly address our most pressing challenges."
The updated Bus Tracker website provides estimated bus arrival times for 129 bus routes, and now provides customers with the following improvements:
- A new, responsive website design allows the website to adapt to whatever device being used – from smartphones to desktop monitors.
- New navigation gestures. Pinch to zoom in and zoom out on the map display for more detailed views and information.
- Find stops near you using your phone's GPS; the site will remember what stops you've looked up previously, and also allow you to set favorites without requiring you to create an account.
- Modernized mapping features for improved viewing of live buses across the city.
- Behind the scenes, the modern codebase will help the CTA and their vendors iterate more quickly to improve tracking and prediction accuracy.
The CTA is also working to hire and train new bus operators, and it is temporarily adjusting scheduled service to better reflect current manpower.
The CTA hopes to provide more consistent and reliable service and give customers more confidence that the service they are seeing in the CTA Bus Tracker will be delivered. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/cta-launches-modernized-bus-tracker-website-wednesday | 2022-08-24T17:04:11Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/cta-launches-modernized-bus-tracker-website-wednesday | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Marjorie Taylor Greene was victim of 'swatting' at Rome residence, police confirm
FLOYD COUNTY, Ga. - The Rome Police Department said Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a victim of a swatting attack early Wednesday morning in Floyd County.
Police said officers responded her home at around 1 a.m. after someone reported someone being shot multiple times, but determined that the call was a prank when they arrived. It's not clear how many officers responded.
Swatting is the act of making a hoax call to 911 to try and draw responses from law enforcement. Suspects can use technology to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim's phone and the situations it can be deadly.
Police said a second caller using a digitally-altered voice said they were upset about Greene's views on transgender youth rights. About a month after taking office, Greene put an anti-transgender rights placard outside her Washington D.C. office across from a transgender flag raised by her neighbor, Illinois Rep. Marie Newman. The sign said, "There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE" and "Trust The Science."
In a tweet sent shortly before 9 a.m. Wednesday, the Georgia lawmaker says that she was swatted just after 1 a.m. and promised "more details to come."
"I can’t express enough gratitude to my local law enforcement here in Rome, Floyd County," Greene tweeted.
JUDGE UPHOLDS MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE ELECTION ELILGIBILITY
Greene is not the only Republican lawmaker in Georgia to say they've been a victim of swatting. In July, former gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor said she and her family were victims of a swatting call.
Calling the incident "traumatizing," Taylor said someone had called police and falsely claimed that someone had been murdered at her home.
"I don't care what political party you are - this is evil. This is not OK. And I will find out who swatted my house. And I will do everything in my power to bring them to justice," she said.
The Rome Police Department Criminal Investigation Division and Capital Police are investigating. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-swatting-attack-georgia | 2022-08-24T17:04:31Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-swatting-attack-georgia | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Minor arrested in West Garfield Park for alleged armed robbery
CHICAGO - A 17-year-old male was arrested on Tuesday in West Garfield Park for an alleged armed robbery.
The suspect was arrested in the 4400 block of West Jackson Boulevard.
Police say he was positively identified as one of the offenders who, moments earlier, in the 1000 block of West Jackson Boulevard entered a retail store and took merchandise while armed with a gun.
The offender was placed into custody and charged accordingly.
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No additional information is available at this time. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/minor-arrested-in-west-garfield-park-for-alleged-armed-robery | 2022-08-24T17:04:37Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/minor-arrested-in-west-garfield-park-for-alleged-armed-robery | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Sex offender breaks into Riverside elementary school campus, tries to assault girl in bathroom: PD
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - A registered sex offender was arrested Friday after jumping a 6-foot fence, breaking into an elementary school campus in Riverside and attempting to assault a young girl inside the school's bathroom, according to the Riverside Police Department.
Thirty-two-year-old Logan Nighswonger of Riverside was arrested Friday and is currently being held without bail.
Officers say that just after noon Friday, officials received reports that a man had jumped the fence and entered a girls' bathroom at McAuliffe Elementary School. An employee saw Nighswonger leave the bathroom and heard a girl crying inside. The employee then followed Nighswonger out of the school, as officers say he jumped multiple fences before getting in a car and driving away.
Fences surrounding McAuliffe Elementary School.
SUGGESTED: Louisiana mother and daughter charged with animal cruelty after dog training video surfaces online
That employee provided officers with a detailed description of Nighswonger's car, and using that information, officers were able to track the car down to a business in Placentia in Orange County, where Nighswonger was taken into custody. Nighswonger's been booked to the Robert Presley Detention Center for attempted sex acts with a child under the age of 10 as well as being a registered sex offender on school grounds.
Officials told FOX 11 that they don’t believe Nighswonger sexually assaulted the girl, but there was an attempt to do that.
The Alvord Unified School District says it wants to know how he got in undetected, especially when in this age of mass shootings. The school has a fortified entrance, locked gates, six-foot fences and four campus supervisors on the lookout.
The district issued a statement in response to the incident, saying a support team of counselors and specialists will be on campus to help students and staff impacted and that the school is working with parents to assemble a "school-based family and community engagement ‘watch’ program to increase supervision."
Riverside officials are still investigating this case. Anyone with information is asked to call detectives with Riverside Police's Sexual Assaul - Child Abuse Unit at 951-353-7121. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/riverside-sex-offender-elementary-school-bathroom-assault | 2022-08-24T17:04:43Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/riverside-sex-offender-elementary-school-bathroom-assault | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Len Dawson, the legendary Kansas City Chiefs quarterback who led the team to its first Super Bowl win, died at around 3:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.
He was 87.
Dawson, who was born in 1935 in Ohio, played college football at Purdue University.
He was drafted fifth overall in the 1957 draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it wasn’t until the then-Dallas Texans signed him in 1962 that his Hall of Fame career started to take shape.
Dawson followed the team as it moved north to Kansas City, where he would play the rest of his career.
During his 14 years with the Texans/Chiefs, Dawson started 157 games, going 93-56-8. He threw for more than 28,000 yards during the span, connecting on 57.2% of his passes and throwing for 237 touchdowns.
Dawson led the team to its first Super Bowl win, defeating the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.
While Dawson retired from the NFL in 1976, he remained active in sports, serving as the Sports Director for KMBC-TV in Kansas City. He stayed in that role until his retirement in 2009.
Dawson was also the long-time radio partner to Chiefs play-by-play announcer Mitch Holthus on the team’s radio network. | https://www.katc.com/news/national/hall-of-fame-chiefs-legend-len-dawson-dies-at-87 | 2022-08-24T17:04:49Z | katc.com | control | https://www.katc.com/news/national/hall-of-fame-chiefs-legend-len-dawson-dies-at-87 | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Taylor Swift course to be offered at University of Texas
AUSTIN, Texas - University of Texas at Austin students will have the opportunity to take a course studying Taylor Swift’s written lyrics.
The brand-new course for Fall 2022, "Literary Contests and Contexts — The Taylor Swift Songbook," will be taught by Dr. Elizabeth Scala.
According to a post from the UT Department of English, the course will provide an "introduction to literary studies and research methods that use the songwriting of Taylor Swift as the basis for teaching a wide range of skills."
Just up the road at Texas State University, students will soon have a chance to take a course on Harry Styles in Spring 2023. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/taylor-swift-course-university-of-texas | 2022-08-24T17:04:49Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/taylor-swift-course-university-of-texas | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
MENOMONIE, Wisc. (WGBA) — Emmitt Bailey of Wisconsin won the USA Mullet Championship in the kid's division.
"I wanted cool hockey hair,” said Emmitt.
The 8-year-old boy has been rocking business in the front and a party in the back for the past couple of years.
Emmit and his father said they weren't expecting to win.
"Friday night at the football game— they were handing out flyers with QR codes to vote for Emmitt. It was a fun experience just how many people were backing this little guy,” said Eric Bailey.
Emmitt said he plans to buy a go-kart with his $2,500 prize.
Since being crowned the USA Mullet champion, Emmitt said he's been getting a lot of attention including being asked to throw the first pitch at a Milwaukee Brewers game in September.
He hopes to rock his iconic hairdo for years to come.
This story was originally reported by Valerie Juarez on nbc26.com. | https://www.katc.com/news/national/i-wanted-cool-hockey-hair-wisconsin-boy-is-crowned-the-usa-mullet-champion | 2022-08-24T17:04:55Z | katc.com | control | https://www.katc.com/news/national/i-wanted-cool-hockey-hair-wisconsin-boy-is-crowned-the-usa-mullet-champion | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Ukrainian flags line State Street for Ukrainian Independence Day
CHICAGO - There are 152 flags lining a popular street in downtown Chicago to commemorate Ukraine’s continuing fight for independence.
The mile long installation on State Street is made possible by the Auditorium Theatre, the Chicago Loop Alliance and the Kyiv City Ballet.
The dance company has been out of Ukraine since the Russian invasion. They were on the road performing and never returned.
The flags also symbolize Chicago’s welcome to the Kyiv City Ballet when they perform at the Auditorium Theatre Sept. 24 and 25. Tickets are on sale now.
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The dancers have become Ukraine’s ambassadors to the world. Rich Regan, CEO of the Auditorium Theatre reached out to the ballet company, urging them to tour the United States.
"They left the country the day before flights were stopped from leaving Ukraine and have been without a home since then," Regan said. "They are dancing their hearts out, representing their county."
Supporters want to remind Chicago and visitors that Ukraine is still fighting for its independence.
Michael Edwards, CEO of Chicago Loop Alliance, said "State Street is an iconic American street and so when people visit, they can see the flags and enjoy being part of the energy for the next month."
Chicago has shown loyal support to Ukrainian people. The conflict is now six months old on this Ukrainian Independence Day. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/ukrainian-flags-line-state-street-for-ukrainian-independence-day | 2022-08-24T17:04:56Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/ukrainian-flags-line-state-street-for-ukrainian-independence-day | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
What student loans are eligible for forgiveness? Here’s a breakdown
With news of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, in which up to $20,000 of student federal loan debt may be forgiven, many likely have questions about eligibility.
The president announced Wednesday that $10,000 in federal student loans would be forgiven for borrowers, and those who had a greater financial need and received assistance through Pell Grants could have up to $20,000 forgiven.
For those who have undergraduate loans, repayments can also now be capped at 5% of their monthly income. Biden also extended the pause on student loan interest for another four months, through Dec. 31, 2022.
More than 43 million Americans owe a combined $1.6 trillion in student debt held by the federal government, according to data from the Education Department. That includes more than 7 million borrowers who have defaulted on student loans, meaning they are at least 270 days late on payments.
As of now, the only eligibility detail that the Biden administration released under the new plan is that the borrower must be earning less than $125,000.
In addition to his wide-sweeping loan forgiveness plan, there are existing U.S. programs for borrowers already in place to have some or all of their student debt erased.
As a refresher, the U.S. Department of Education’s federal student loan program is called the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program — commonly referred to as "Direct Loans." There are four different types of Direct Loans.
- Direct Subsidized Loans are those issued to eligible undergraduate students with financial needs to help cover the costs of higher education at a college or career school.
- Direct Unsubsidized Loans are loans made to eligible undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, but eligibility is not based on financial need.
- Direct PLUS Loans are loans made to graduate or professional students and parents of dependent undergraduate students to help pay for education expenses not covered by other financial aid. Eligibility is not based on financial need, but a credit check is required. Borrowers with a bad credit history must meet additional requirements to qualify.
- Direct Consolidation Loans allow borrowers to combine all of their eligible federal student loans into a single loan with a single loan servicer.
"Forgiveness," "cancellation," or "discharge" of a student loan all mean that the borrower is no longer required to repay some or all of their debt.
Here’s a look at some of the current programs in which borrowers of federal student loans may also be able eligible to get relief:
Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which was launched in 2007 as a reward for college students who go into public service, cancels debt after 10 years of qualifying monthly payments on federal Direct Loans.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Education unveiled major changes to the program after having been criticized for its complex requirements. The changes helped more than 113,000 people get student debt relief, totaling around $6.8 billion in forgiveness, the government said in May.
This includes many teachers, nurses, social workers, military members, and other public servants.
Borrowers who have worked 10 years in a qualifying job are eligible for loan relief no matter what kind of federal loan or repayment plan they have through Oct. 31, 2022. Past loan payments that were previously ineligible now count, moving some borrowers closer to the finish line.
Click here to read more about who qualifies.
Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Program
The U.S. Department of Education in April also made changes to its Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) program, which was expected to bring immediate debt cancellation for at least 40,000 borrowers and help millions of others lower their debt.
The program was created in 1994 as a way to provide a safety net for people who struggle to repay student loans. The program now offers five repayment options that provide reduced monthly payments based on income and family size. The borrower’s remaining balance is supposed to be automatically forgiven after 20 or 25 years, depending on the plan.
Out of the more than $1 trillion in student debt held by the federal government, about half is being repaid through those plans.
Click here to read more information about the various plans and who qualifies.
Teacher Loan Forgiveness
FILE PHOTO (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Those who teach full-time for five complete and consecutive years in a low-income school or educational service agency, and meet other qualifications, may be eligible for forgiveness of up to $17,500 on federal loans, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Eligibility for the program includes special education teachers and anyone who provides direct classroom teaching, "or classroom-type teaching in a nonclassroom setting."
Borrowers must not have had an outstanding balance on Direct Loans or Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans as of Oct. 1, 1998, or on the date that they obtained the loan after Oct. 1, 1998.
"The loan(s) for which you are seeking forgiveness must have been made before the end of your five academic years of qualifying teaching service," the department states on its website.
Military Service
FILE PHOTO - Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division walk to board a plane from Pope Army Airfield in Fort Bragg, North Carolina on February 14, 2021 as they are deployed to Europe. (Photo by Allison Joyce / AFP) (Photo by ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty
In acknowledgment of service to the country, The U.S. Department of Education and Department of Defense offer special benefits and repayment options for federal student loans. Benefits include interest rate caps under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and Department of Defense student loan repayment programs.
Military members can also qualify for forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Closed School Discharge
If a school closes while the borrower is enrolled or soon after they withdraw, the individual may be eligible for discharge of federal student loans — or "the removal of your obligation to repay your loan under certain circumstances," the Education Department says.
Some may be eligible for 100% discharge of Direct Loans, Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans, or Federal Perkins Loans if they were unable to complete the program because the school closed.
Click here to learn about eligibility requirements for closed school loan discharge and how to apply.
AmeriCorps
FILE PHOT - Two members of AmeriCorps, a national body that engages hundreds of thousands of Americans in community service each year, install a door frame in a storm Sandy-damaged house in Brooklyn, New York City, on October 27, 2017. (Photo: Jewel
Participants who complete a term of national service in an approved AmeriCorps program are eligible to receive the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award, which can be used to repay qualified student loans — as well as current educational expenses at eligible institutions and training programs.
The value of the award is "equivalent to the maximum value of the Pell Grant," which is a form of need-based federal financial aid, and the amount changes yearly. The maximum Federal Pell Grant award for 2022 to 2023 fiscal year is $6,895.
The AmeriCorps Education Award also varies based on the term of service completed.
This story was reported from Cincinnati. | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/what-student-loans-are-eligible-for-forgiveness-heres-a-breakdown | 2022-08-24T17:05:02Z | fox32chicago.com | control | https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/what-student-loans-are-eligible-for-forgiveness-heres-a-breakdown | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
The Internal Revenue Service says it's reviewing its safety protocols out of an abundance of caution after they said employees had received threats.
In a staff memo, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said Tuesday that safety measures at all 600 IRS locations would be reviewed including new risk assessments, monitoring perimeter security at facilities, designating restricted areas, and reassessing exterior lighting and entrance security, the Washington Post reported.
“For me, this is personal. I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work,” Rettig said in the memo. “And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience.”
News of the agency receiving threats comes after President Joe Biden signed into law last week the $700 billion climate, healthcare and tax bill that included $80 billion over 10 years to help fund tax collection efforts, the Associated Press reported.
The Washington Post reported that the agency would increase enforcement on those who earn a high income and major corporations.
But misinformation spread rapidly online after Congress GOP members falsely claimed that the IRS would distribute firearms to employees, the news outlets reported.
In an Aug. 16 open letter, Florida Republica Sen. Rick Scott called on Americans not to work at the IRS, the Associated Press reported.
“The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing to kill them,” he said, the AP reported. | https://www.katc.com/news/national/irs-launches-safety-probe-after-threats-to-employees | 2022-08-24T17:05:01Z | katc.com | control | https://www.katc.com/news/national/irs-launches-safety-probe-after-threats-to-employees | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Heading directly into powerful Northwest winds off the coast of New England, Chris Zadra does his best to navigate choppy seas as this researcher and his team make their way to Stellwagen Bank in search of whales.
But Zadra is not braving these rough conditions just to take pictures of whales; he's hoping to be able to collect DNA samples from the world's largest mammal while using a drone.
"We’ll approach the animal from behind to minimize the chance of reacting," Zadra explained.
Once he has the boat in position, Zadra gets behind the controls of SnotBot®. Aptly named, SnotBot the drone hovers over the blowhole of a whale coming up for air and waits for it to exhale.
"We’re flying with a first-person view from the drone," Zadra said.
Covered in mucus SnotBot® then flies back to researcher Alicia Pensarosa who is waiting on the stern of this nonprofit's boat. Pensarosa catches the drone in midair and carefully removes the four Petri dishes attached to the drone.
"Well put all the samples in a cooler with ice until we process it," she explained.
The DNA samples collected by SnotBot® are then brought back to a lab and study these whales' lung microbiome.
"We really want to study the health of whales," she added.
The entire operation is being done by Ocean Alliance, a nonprofit based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that has spent decades researching whales, their habitats and habits.
"We’re learning how important whales are not only to ocean survival but humanity's survival," said Iain Kerr, who serves as the group's chief executive officer.
Scientists estimate up to 80% of the oxygen on Earth is produced by the ocean, meaning two out of every three breaths humans take is from the sea. A majority of that oxygen originates from drifting plants and algae. They, in large part, get their nutrients from whale poop, so understanding the health and well-being of whales takes on new importance.
"Whales are clearly far more important to ocean health than we thought," Kerr added.
Researchers have been studying whales for decades, but using a drone is the least invasive way of looking at them and allows scientists the chance to observe these mammals without disturbing them.
"You don’t put the animal in danger and you don’t affect its behavior," Kerr noted.
There are broader implications for SnotBot® beyond the sea. This kind of non-invasive technology can study other endangered species on land.
"I don’t think traditional methods are going to save the wild world, thinking outside the box, bringing in new tools," Kerr said.
The hope is to take this technology and sample as many whales as possible. Giving scientists better insight into population numbers and health, of one of the most beloved creatures on the planet. | https://www.katc.com/news/national/these-researchers-are-using-drones-to-collect-whale-snot | 2022-08-24T17:05:08Z | katc.com | control | https://www.katc.com/news/national/these-researchers-are-using-drones-to-collect-whale-snot | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Susan G. Komen®, the world's leading breast cancer organization, will hold an in-person MORE THAN PINK Walk to raise critical funds that support breast cancer patients and advance research that brings us closer to the cures. The Walk will be held on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022, at Freedom Plaza.
"We look forward to creating a community for anyone impacted by breast cancer as we gather, in person, for this year's Walk. Funds raised from the MORE THAN PINK Walk will further our ability to meet the needs of people in treatment through trained patient navigators and financial assistance, as well as fund research aimed at improving outcomes for all," said Adrienne Johnson, State Executive Director, DMV, at Susan G. Komen.
Komen is pleased to welcome returning sponsors this year: Embassy of the United Arab Emirates,
Brown's Automotive Group, WTOP News Radio, WASH-FM and Meadows Farms. Additionally, Sam Ford, veteran reporter for WJLA-ABC7, and Toby Knapp, morning host at WASH-FM, will serve as Emcees of the event.
Participants can expect to enjoy the following at the Walk:
- Water, bananas and granola bars from Giant Food Stores
- Hope Village, a place for survivors and those living with metastatic breast cancer to gather
- Free henna tattoos provided by the Embassy of United Arab Emirates
- On-site food truck serving breakfast for purchase
- Recognition of Survivor and Co-Survivor of the Year during Opening Ceremony
Komen MORE THAN PINK Walk
DMV Tri-State
Washington, DC
Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022
7 AM EVENT OPENS
8:30 AM OPENING CEREMONY
9 AM WALK
Register Online
https://www.komen.org/DCwalk
Susan G. Komen® is the world's leading nonprofit breast cancer organization, working to save lives and end breast cancer forever. Komen has an unmatched, comprehensive 360-degree approach to fighting this disease across all fronts and supporting millions of people in the U.S. and in countries worldwide. We advocate for patients, drive research breakthroughs, improve access to high-quality care, offer direct patient support and empower people with trustworthy information. Founded by Nancy G. Brinker, who promised her sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would end the disease that claimed Suzy's life, Komen remains committed to supporting those affected by breast cancer today, while tirelessly searching for tomorrow's cures. Visit komen.org or call 1-877 GO KOMEN. Connect with us on social at www.komen.org/contact-us/follow-us/.
CONTACT: Amanda DeBard
Susan G. Komen (972) 701-2131
adebard@komen.org
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SOURCE Susan G. Komen for the Cure | https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/susan-g-komen-more-than-pink-walk-raises-money-cutting-edge-breast-cancer-research/ | 2022-08-24T17:05:58Z | wave3.com | control | https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/susan-g-komen-more-than-pink-walk-raises-money-cutting-edge-breast-cancer-research/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
CHICAGO, Aug. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Tagore Technology Inc., a pioneer of high-power, low-current GaN-based RF switches, today announced the introduction of the TSL8329M, a dual-channel Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) with an integrated RF switch, and multichip module. Designed for demanding applications, the module operates from 3.3 GHz to 4.2GHz. This dual channel module is architected with cascading, two-stage LNA and a high-power GaN-based fail-safe RF switch. The TSL8329M is well-suited for 5G infrastructure and TDD massive MIMO system.
"With integrated dual-channel RF front end, the high performance TSL8329M is well suited for the most demanding 5G infrastructure radios, small cells and massive MIMO system. The footprint and pinouts allow easy adaption in complex MIMO configurations", said Klaus Buehring, Tagore Technology's Chief Marketing Officer.
The TSL8329M has NF of 1 dB with 32 dB of gain at 3.6 GHz with an output third-order intercept point (OIP3) of 35 dBm. In bypass mode, the LNA provides 13 dB of gain. In power-down mode, the device draws 5 mA. In transmit operation, when RF inputs are connected to a termination pin (TERM-CHA or TERM-CHB), the switch provides a low insertion loss of 0.45 dB at 3.6GHz and handles LTE average power (9 dB peak to average ratio (PAR)) of 43 dBm for full lifetime operation. The device comes in a RoHS compliant, compact, 6 mm × 6 mm, 40-lead LFCSP.
Specifications
For full datasheets and samples contact Tagore Technology's Sales representative at rfgan@tagoretech.com
About Tagore Technology
Tagore Technology was founded in January 2011 to pioneer Gallium Nitride-on-Silicon (GaN-on-Si) semiconductor technology for Radio Frequency (RF) and power management applications. We are a fabless semiconductor company with design centers in Arlington Heights, Illinois, USA and Kolkata, India. Our R&D team is dedicated to developing disruptive solutions leveraging wide bandgap technologies that help address RF and power design challenges for our customers and accelerate time-to-market for a wide range of applications. For more information visit www.tagoretech.com
For further information please contact:
Name: Anindita Ray
Email: ray0521@tagoretech.com
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SOURCE Tagore Technology | https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/tagore-introduces-advanced-dual-channel-ultra-low-noise-amplifier-with-integrated-fail-safe-rf-switch-5g-infrastructure-tdd-mmimo-application/ | 2022-08-24T17:06:04Z | wave3.com | control | https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/tagore-introduces-advanced-dual-channel-ultra-low-noise-amplifier-with-integrated-fail-safe-rf-switch-5g-infrastructure-tdd-mmimo-application/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Yesterday the two year auction was met with very tepid demand. Both domestic and international investors shun the issue resulting in a tail of 1.4 basis points higher than average bid to cover, and the dealer's saddled with a greater position than the recent results.
What are the 6 month averages for the major auction components:
- Bid to cover 2.44X
- Dealers 19.0%
- Indirects, 63.0%
- Directs, 19.0%
- Tail, 0.4 basis points | https://www.forexlive.com/news/us-treasury-to-auction-off-45-billion-of-five-year-notes-at-the-top-of-the-hour-20220824/ | 2022-08-24T17:06:18Z | forexlive.com | control | https://www.forexlive.com/news/us-treasury-to-auction-off-45-billion-of-five-year-notes-at-the-top-of-the-hour-20220824/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Southern California Rep. Katie Porter wants to make it illegal for Big Oil, and all other companies, to get tax credits for any marketing that promotes the use of oil or gas.
Calling credits for such ads “taxpayer-funded climate misinformation campaigns,” Porter, D-Irvine, says oil companies are pitching their products as “green” even when those products contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
“Big Oil has been lying to the American people for decades about the damage they’re causing our environment,” said Porter, who chairs the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. “It’s bad enough these corporations poison the planet; they shouldn’t get taxpayer dollars to cover it up.”
The proposal is part of a larger push that’s drawn attention from the likes of the Securities and Exchange Commission to rein in so-called “greenwashing,” where companies capitalize on customers’ desire for more environmentally friendly products and services with little accountability for what’s behind those claims. Porter says, for example, that Chevron regularly markets its products as “green” but only spent 0.2% on renewable resources from 2010-2018.
Chevron and other Big Oil companies so far aren’t commenting on the End Subsidies for Fossil Fuel Advertising Act, which Porter introduced Friday with Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Here are five things to know about the proposed legislation:
How exactly do taxpayers “subsidize” oil companies?
Big U.S. oil companies pay billions in taxes each year. But they also pay an effective federal tax rate that’s roughly half what the average American pays thanks to a list of credits, deductions, deferment options and loopholes.
Critics call these “taxpayer subsidies” and have fought to get such benefits removed for the five major oil companies: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Those same oil companies and their defenders argue that such tax incentives are standard and encourage investment in a high-cost industry.
One of the most controversial oil-related tax credits dates back to 1913. The idea was to give companies an incentive to drill for new wells by allowing them to recover “intangible” related costs whether those wells produced oil or not. But a century later, with new technology, only about 15% of oil wells end up being unproductive. So critics say there’s no good reason for taxpayers to continue to subsidize drilling — particularly given what we now know about the harms of fossil fuels.
Along with a number of tax breaks specific to the oil and gas industries, these companies also get to deduct expenses the same way most other companies do. That’s where marketing costs come into play.
So what exactly would Porter’s bill do?
Advertising is a traditional business expense and most companies are allowed a tax deduction for a portion of what they spend on it. But the tax code has a long list of expenses that can’t be deducted, from golden parachute payments to profits from “the illegal sale of drugs.” (That last clause is why cannabis businesses can’t deduct expenses even if they have state licenses, since cannabis remains illegal at the federal level.)
Porter’s End Subsidies for Fossil Fuel Advertising Act would add marketing that encourages the “extraction, distribution, and consumption of oil and gas and their derivatives” to the list of business expenses that can’t be deducted.
Other than Big Oil, what other companies might be affected by this bill?
Public relations firms and consulting firms that offer “climate disinformation services on behalf of fossil fuel companies” are just one example, Porter’s office said.
A 2021 story from the New York Times, for example, laid out how a consulting firm had been hired by oil and gas companies to launch supposed grassroots marketing campaigns across the country that promoted fossil fuels and downplayed their impact on climate change. Porter’s team says the cost of advertisements that “deny climate science, deflect responsibility to individuals, and falsely champion oil and gas derivatives like methane as ‘clean’ solutions” should not be tax deductible for any business.
How much money are we talking about here?
There’s no official estimate for how much oil and gas companies deduct for such marketing efforts each year. But Porter’s team believes the deductions are worth “at least in the range of hundreds of millions,” judging by a 2012 story on election year ad spending alone. If the government got to keep that money, her office says it could go anywhere Congress chooses, including to offset new spending in other areas.
The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, estimates that repealing nine key tax breaks for oil and gas companies would, at minimum, save the U.S. Treasury $37.7 billion over 10 years. And that’s without factoring in advertising write-offs.
What does Big Oil have to say?
Chevron and Shell didn’t respond to a request for comment on Porter’s bill or her concerns about potential greenwashing, while ExxonMobil declined to comment.
When Democrats have pushed in the past to remove tax credits for oil and gas companies, oil executives and industry supporters have argued these are common business deductions that help keep domestic oil production flowing and that it’s not fair to single them out. And they’ve threatened to pull capital out of the United States if such incentives were wiped out.
But Porter and Grijalva say they aren’t buying it.
“It is disturbing to know that we have been supporting disinformation campaigns designed to let the oil and gas industry keep heating the planet,” Grijalva said. “Allowing it to continue would be unconscionable.”
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Political handicappers almost universally expect that Democrats will lose their paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives this year.
However, if it’s closer than expected, what happens in a handful of California congressional districts could make the difference.
On paper, Democrats should make gains in California this year, perhaps as many as five seats, thanks largely to how an independent redistricting commission changed the state’s 52 congressional districts after the 2020 census.
Demographic changes, particularly increases in the state’s Latino population, and continued erosion of Republican voter registration meant that most of the 11 Republican-held districts wound up with smaller GOP voter shares.
That was bad news for Republicans who had barely won election or re-election in 2020, a year in which the GOP regained four of the seven seats it had lost in 2018.
Democrats’ most serious GOP targets are Michelle Steel and Young Kim in Orange County, Ken Calvert in Riverside County, Mike Garcia in the suburbs of northern Los Angeles County and David Valadao in Fresno and Tulare counties.
The district represented by Garcia, who won his seat in a 2020 election and then a full term later that year, has the most obvious effect of redistricting. To win and retain his seat, Garcia defeated Democrat Christy Smith twice, but only by 333 votes the second time.
The redistricting commission sliced some of the most Republican-leaning territory off Garcia’s district and as he faces Smith for a third time she enjoys an 11-percentage point Democratic voter registration advantage.
Former President Donald Trump’s polarizing effect is a factor in two of the targeted districts.
Calvert, a congressman for two decades, has been one of the former president’s most outspoken supporters in Congress and Democratic challenger Will Robbins is using that connection as a potentially decisive weapon in a district where voter registration is virtually tied.
Valadao, on the other hand, is one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and one of only two on the ballot this fall. However, Valadao must defeat Democratic challenger Rudy Salas, a state Assembly member, in a district that now has 17-percentage-point Democratic registration margin.
Kim and Steel also faces tough re-election battles, but their Asian ethnicities are thought to be advantages and handicappers give both better than 50-50 chances of surviving.
Going into the final two months of the campaigns, there are two factors that could overcome the Democrats’ paper advantages in California — Biden’s popularity and voter turnout.
The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, which produces highly rated Crystal Ball reports on political campaigns, cites Biden’s standing as the most significant factor in the likelihood that the Democrats will lose the House.
“Given the consistent downward trend in the president’s numbers, Democrats probably shouldn’t count on rapid positive movement, at least not in time for November,” it said in its most recent report. “With that, in order to salvage their prospects in the midterms, Democrats will have to run markedly ahead of Biden’s approval rating.”
California is an overwhelmingly Democratic state but Biden doesn’t fare well among its voters. A new poll by UC-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, released last week, found that 61% of California voters don’t want Biden to seek a second term and that includes 46% of Democrats.
Meanwhile, the dynamics of this year’s election aren’t encouraging about voter turnout. There are no real statewide races to generate voter enthusiasm nor any ballot measures with visceral appeal. What happens in California this year could, at least in theory, save the Democratic House majority, but it’s not likely.
CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.
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The EURUSD tested a higher low area of support, then shot through the swing low from July 2022. That led to buyers into the London fixing that pushed the pair to the 100 hour MA and parity level. Sellers leaned. The price came back down. Technical levels are controlling the flows in choppy price action.
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ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW | https://www.forexlive.com/technical-analysis/the-eurusd-is-reacting-the-technical-levels-as-traders-lean-on-the-downside-and-upside-20220824/ | 2022-08-24T17:06:31Z | forexlive.com | control | https://www.forexlive.com/technical-analysis/the-eurusd-is-reacting-the-technical-levels-as-traders-lean-on-the-downside-and-upside-20220824/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Yikes, this is it. Shortly, I’ll be getting on a plane to go up to Santa Rosa and start fasting.
People have been asking me, “Are you excited to go to your fasting clinic?”
Gee, let’s evaluate this emotion. Am I excited to go somewhere where I won’t be allowed to have any food for a week, and drink nothing but water? I know I’m a little dense, but it occurred to me last night as I was making my coffee for this morning that water fasting means … no coffee. Double yikes.
How am I going to make it a week without coffee? Those of you who are addicts like me know what it’s like to get that fabulous coffee headache. I hope I’m allowed to take Tylenol.
I told some of my friends that I’d call them, and they said, “Are you allowed to have your phone?” Hello, people. I’m not going to jail. I’m just going to a place where they are going to help me get more healthy, I hope.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ve arranged to go up to a fasting and wellness center called True North in Santa Rosa, near the Bay Area.
I have cancer and I also, ahem, could stand to lose a few dozen pounds, so I figure this is going to be a win-win situation. There is some evidence that fasting can stop cancer from growing, because it gets very cranky when it doesn’t have any food. (So do I.)
The clinic itself makes absolutely no claims about being able to treat cancer, but cancer survivors themselves talk about it, which is how I learned about this place.
There’s no question that fasting can help with obesity (see above) and Type 2 diabetes, as well as lots of other food-related diseases like gout, and even some that may not be obviously food-related, like auto-immune disorders.
So, I figure I really can’t lose, except for the part where I don’t get to eat or drink coffee for a week. Yeah. I’m really excited about that. Actually, I’ve scheduled a second session to start right after Thanksgiving, when they have room for me to come for three entire weeks.
So this is just a little preview. Note that I cleverly waited to schedule it for after Thanksgiving, on the theory that then I can pig out as much as I want and pile the whipped cream on the pumpkin pie. But, who knows? Maybe I’ll become inspired while I’m there this time and decide pumpkin pie lies firmly in my past. I don’t actually think that will happen, but you never know what the future will hold.
Meanwhile, in the parallel universe in which I now live, where my atheist son is reading the Bible daily, I jumped for joy yesterday when I found out I can spend three weeks in September getting zapped by high dose radiation.
I have one pesky tumor that might start causing problems, and my oncologist wouldn’t listen to my arguments that we should just nuke the crap out of it to shrink it. (Everyone should always listen to me about everything. Thank you very much.)
So I went to get a second opinion at the City of Hope, and the doctor there agreed with me that they should zap the tumor and shrink it. Yay! As soon as her opinion became known, boom, the world opened up to me, and suddenly my doctor was on board. And now so is the radiation doctor.
So, happy days, I get to go get nuked (they don’t use this expression by the way) every day for three weeks in Anaheim Hills, and the expectation is that it will help dissolve that pesky tumor. It’s unlikely to go away entirely, but it will shrink enough to buy me lots of time to keep annoying you people for years to come.
Meanwhile, the actually important news this week is that our dog, Lil Wayne, has actually started playing with our newish cat, Cairo the Jerk. I have witnessed this personally twice. When we first got the cat in March, the animals were deeply suspicious of each other and let’s just say that there was definitely a Cold War in our house.
But, gradually, there’s been a detente and this last week, they actually started to dance around each other for fun. I have no idea where this will lead, but I’m feeling optimistic.
Cairo is still a misogynist and has no interest in me, unless I have actual treats in my hand. He loves men and only men. He won’t sit on my lap, even when I’m holding treats. He’ll sit on the arm of the chair and daintily lean over to get the treats. I’ve had long discussions with him about who’s buying his food, but he doesn’t care.
He sleeps with my son, and only ventures into my room to complain at the top of his lungs that he’s hungry or bored. Usually around 5 a.m.
I won’t miss that while I’m hungry up in Santa Rosa.
If you hear me yowling for food from Santa Rosa, just close the door and ignore me. I’ll get over it.
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You know a ballot measure is wrong when it manages to unite the California Teachers Association, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Republican Party. That is the story of Proposition 30. We join this chorus of opposition and encourage all Californians to reject Prop. 30.
The measure itself contains ideas many Californians like — funding programs to reduce air pollution and prevent wildfires — and a funding mechanism many Californians won’t find particularly offensive — a tax hike on incomes above $2 million per year.
Proponents of the measure present many practical reasons for addressing air pollution and wildfires. Even someone of a limited government bent can recognize the legitimate need to mitigate the harmful effects of air pollution on the health and well-being of millions of people. And certainly every Californians understands the need to take action to prevent wildfires. They endanger lives, destroy property and contribute significantly to pollution.
However, while the proponents of this measure identify obvious problems, their proposed solutions, as advanced in this measure, are suspect.
The measure calls for tax increases of $3.5 billion to $5 billion per year from high-income earners. This is the first problem. The state’s general fund budget in 2015-16 was $115 billion. This year, the general fund budget is over $234 billion. The notion that a tax increase is needed to address air pollution and wildfire responses is, on its face, absurd.
The point of this measure, then, is not merely to raise money. It’s how the money is used.
Most of the revenue generated by this measure, 80% of it, would go toward subsidies to help individuals, businesses and governments to purchase zero-emission vehicles and fund the installation of zero-emission vehicle charging and fueling stations. The reason for this is obvious when you realize one of the biggest sponsors of Proposition 30 is the rideshare company Lyft.
The state of California has imposed a mandate on rideshare companies requiring rideshare companies to utilize a zero-emission vehicle fleet. Lyft, then, is obviously hoping they can shift the cost burden for fulfilling this mandate to high-income Californians.
“Prop. 30 is a special interest carve-out — a cynical scheme devised by a single corporation to funnel state income tax revenue to their company,” Gov. Newsom bluntly stated in a recent statement.
Indeed, while it’s perfectly rational on the part of Lyft to support this measure, that doesn’t necessarily make this good policy. Nor does it affirm the idea that the optimal way of reducing air pollution and encouraging the transition to zero-emission vehicles is to impose a new tax hike and spend $3.5 billion to $5 billion per year on subsidies for zero-emission vehicle purchases.
California has the money to address air pollution and wildfires in more thoughtful and deliberate ways than throwing billions toward zero-emission vehicle subsidies.
Proposition 30’s proponents are clever. They hide behind legitimate issues and even tap into class envy. But this measure is a special interest money grab, pure and simple.
Vote no on Proposition 30.
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California suffers a severe shortage of nurses, currently with about 41,000 positions vacant. Part of the problem is what’s called the “grey tsunami,” the retirement of many thousands of Baby Boomer-era nurses. Schools are not graduating enough new nurses.
Another problem was brought up by Dr. Robyn Nelson, the dean of nursing at CNI College in Santa Ana and a board member of California Coalition of Colleges of Nursing. Many nursing schools are short on professors. Part of the problem is nurses on the job commonly are paid more than the nursing professors in the classroom. Another problem is the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll on the nursing profession, as it has on so many others.
“I hear from my colleagues they are losing about 20% of their staff annually,” she told us. “Every day I get emails and phone calls from headhunters.”
A new nursing bill in the Legislature has some good elements, but needs to be improved so that vast gap can be filled. It is Assembly Bill 2684, by Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park. Nelson said a good part in the bill would consolidate the accreditation of nursing schools to “get rid of duplication and redundancy in the processes.”
The bill should be amended to say the California Board of Registered Nursing cannot limit the number of graduates. This needs to be done now because the next review of this process won’t occur for five years.
Nelson also pointed out patients would be helped if there were more nurses with bachelor’s degrees, in addition to those with associate degrees. “My concern is this enrollment limit might decrease the number of baccalaureate nurses,” she warned. “It’s not just straight numbers. Safety and quality is improved with baccalaureate graduates.”
To us this doesn’t seem like brain surgery. As RealClear Health recently reported, “In 2020, California nursing schools received 54,823 qualified applications but could only accept 15,002. In other words, each year, 39,000 eligible nursing students are denied access to nursing education in California.”
An amended AB 2684 to ensure there are no nursing-school enrollment caps is what’s needed. Patients can’t wait another five years for this fix.
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Patna: The newly-formed 'Mahagathbandhan' government in Bihar on Wednesday comfortably won the motion of confidence amid a walkout staged by MLAs of the BJP -- which has been stripped of power as a result of the recent political upheaval in the state.
Deputy Speaker Maheshwar Hazari ordered a headcount upon a request by Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, the parliamentary affairs minister, who said that though a voice vote had clearly shown the support of the majority, the count would leave no room for any confusion.
Altogether 160 MLAs voted in favour of the confidence motion while no vote was cast against the same.
The lone MLA of AIMIM, Akhtarul Iman, whose party is not a part of the ruling alliance, also took part in the exercise and supported the confidence motion.
Some of the BJP MLAs, who had staged a walkout while Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was delivering his speech, stormed the House demanding that the deputy speaker not waste time on a redundant headcount but take up businesses scheduled for the day and announced a boycott of the proceedings.
Proceedings were, subsequently, adjourned till Friday by the deputy speaker who also informed the House that on Thursday nomination papers will be filed for the election of a new speaker, the post having fallen vacant upon the resignation of BJP's Vijay Kumar Sinha.
In his speech that lasted for about half an hour, Nitish Kumar made indirect references to rebellion by LJP's Chirag Paswan, allegedly at BJP's behest, and attempts to cause a split in JD(U) through his former protege RCP Singh.
Kumar asserted that he had "no personal ambitions", rejecting the BJP's charge that his latest volte-face was aimed at becoming the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition camp.
He, nonetheless, spoke of his interactions with leaders from across the country whom he has urged to stay united for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The JD(U) leader also recounted his old association with the BJP and underscored the contrast between the current dispensation and the era of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.
Without mentioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi by name, he said the current dispensation does little except publicity (prachar prasar)."
As BJP MLAs protested, he added, “Speak against me. Maybe this will earn you some rewards from your political bosses." | https://www.onmanorama.com/news/india/2022/08/24/nitish-kumar-wins-trust-vote-in-bihar.amp.html | 2022-08-24T17:09:12Z | onmanorama.com | control | https://www.onmanorama.com/news/india/2022/08/24/nitish-kumar-wins-trust-vote-in-bihar.amp.html | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
The Environment Agency has urged people to stay away from a section of the River Medway. The advice has been issued as a result of toxic blue-green algae being spotted in the river between Tonbridge and Yalding.
The algae has been spotted in various locations along a 12km stretch of the river. Boaters, river users, dog walkers and residents have been urged to stay away from the water to avoid coming into contact with the toxic algae, whilst signs warning of the recent discovery have also been put up along a stretch of the river.
The Environmental Agency discovered the blooms on Tuesday (August 23) and has since alerted local authorities to its presence. They will continue to monitor the situation until it has been resolved.
READ MORE: Red flags put up at Folkestone beach after families flee huge 'shark' spotted in water
Blue-green algae thrives in hotter, drier weather with the recent droughts and heatwaves allowing it to flourish and reappear in some areas. The algae, which may appear blue, blue-green or greenish-brown in colour, can produce musty, earthy or grassy odours and may leave a scum on the surface of the water.
Blue-green algae, which is actually a bacteria called cyanobacteria, poses a threat to both humans and also dogs, to whom it can be toxic. Anybody who suspects their dog may have been poisoned by the algae is urged to contact their vet immediately. Until the problem can be rectified, dog walkers should ensure their animals are kept on leads and away from the water. Blue-green algae can cause liver failure in affected animals which may kill the dog in as little as 15 minutes after consuming.
What are the symptoms?
Symptoms of blue-green algae poisoning in dogs include vomiting and diarrhoea as well as seizures and weakness. Dogs may also appear disorientated or confused, may have difficulty breathing, and may also appear to be drooling.
For humans, the bacteria may result in skin rashes and sickness, stomach pains , fever and headaches. There have previously been more serious reports of liver failure and brain damage - children are more adversely affected.
Operations manager at the Environment Agency, Ian Nunn, said: “We are working with Tonbridge & Malling and Maidstone Borough Council to ensure that everyone who enjoys this stretch of the Medway is aware of the issue and that people are kept safe. It is very hard to tell if an algal bloom is toxic just by looking at it, so it’s safest to assume it is.
"People should keep themselves, children and pets away from the affected stretch of river from Tonbridge to Yalding until further notice and avoid skin contact with the water or algae. If anyone suspects blue green algae in a watercourse near them, we urge them to report it to our 24-hour hotline on 0800 80 70 60 so that we can inform relevant landowners and ask them to take the necessary steps to warn the public of potential dangers.”
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Eurostar stations in Kent unlikely to open until at least 2025 due to COVID and Brexit | https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/river-medway-toxic-algae-warning-7506151 | 2022-08-24T17:12:43Z | kentlive.news | control | https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/river-medway-toxic-algae-warning-7506151 | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
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Higher Ed Gamma
MOOCs and beyond.
Title
Plagiarism is a Structural Problem
How our campuses can minimize plagiarism.
Twitter and the right-wing and academic press are abuzz with accusations of plagiarism directed against a Princeton professor who allegedly copied and cribbed portions of his dissertation and a 2015 book. These accusations have in turn prompted counter claims: That a flawed or a missing citation or even sloppiness is notetaking shouldn’t be confused with systematic cheating.
To this, the professor’s critics reply: Plagiarism isn’t simply a matter of copying-and-pasting. It also includes, as the economic historian Phillip W. Magness points out, rearranging words and reordering quotations. Magness goes on to cite the professional standards laid out on the American Historical Association’s website.
“Subtle forms of plagiarism encompass “’an inadequate paraphrase that makes only superficial changes to a text’ resulting in ‘a patchwork of original and plagiarized texts that echoes the original sources in recognizable ways’ such as ‘cosmetic alterations’ to the wording or order of the original text.”
I am not here to adjudicate this particular case. Instead, I want to ask why undergraduates cheat – why they copy and paste from websites or rely on term paper writing sites or pay another student to write a paper.
- Is this because these particular students are fundamentally dishonest or unmotivated academically?
- Is it because all too many students are lazy and procrastinate and lack appropriate time management skills?
- Is it because a culture of cheating runs rampant on many campuses, often abetted by fraternities?
- Is it because the cheaters are ignorant about higher education’s rules of academic honesty?
- Or is it because some students are desperate to live up to their own (or their parents’) expectations about their abilities?
Dave Tomar’s recently released The Complete Guide To Contract Cheating In Higher Education offers another, extremely explanation: That cheating, to a large extent, is motivated by structural factors:
- Students who are overwhelmed by their academic and outside-of-class workload.
- The pressure to enter high demand, highly competitive majors.
- Institutional and non-institutional scholarships that require students to maintain a minimum grade point average.
- The willingness of many colleges and universities to enroll students with subpar English language or math skills
In his gloss on the book’s arguments, former college president and Forbes contributor Michael T. Nietzel succinctly sums up some of the institutional factors that contribute to cheating: “colleges’ failure to train students how to write effectively, written assignments that are dull and repetitive, a lack of sufficient support and services for students who are struggling, overburdened graders, disengaged professors” and the pressure on institutions to raise retention and graduation rates, rigor be damned.
I couldn’t agree more. If a single student cheats, that’s the student's problem. But when many plagiarize, the problem lies less in the campus culture (though that can certainly worsen the situation) but in structural variables that we have the power to address.
Tomar is himself a former academic ghost writer who outed himself in a widely read article before publishing a 294-page account of the paper mill industry. Not surprisingly, his claim to have written made-to-order papers for everything from introductory college courses to Ph.D. dissertations caused a sensation, producing outbursts of outrage and denials that anything like what he described could occur at scale.
But his work also generated some accolades. The Wall Street Journal called Tomar’s revelations a “harrowing indictment of the modern American university's current shortcomings as a meritocratic, credentializing institution, much less a home for mental and moral growth.” Similarly, the Washington Post called his expose a “stunning tale of academic fraud…shocking and compelling.”
Wrote Washington Monthly, Tomar’s disclosures “ultimately an indictment not just of the paper mill industry but of the contemporary higher education system, which allows the industry to flourish.”
As an insider, Tomar is well placed to speak truth to power: Our institutions create conditions where plagiarism, in particular, can flourish relatively unchecked.
No one knows how common plagiarism is or whether its incidence is increasing. Our measures, like self-reporting or the number of cases handled by campus academic honesty committees are notoriously unreliable. Any statistics we have from campus reporting almost certainly pale compared to the number of cases handled by faculty “informally” or that have gone undetected.
But I can personally attest to the fact that in my large 320-400 student sections of the U.S. history survey course, plagiarism occurs with some frequency even though students know that every written assignment goes through a plagiarism detector.
So what should we do? Some steps are obvious:
1. Require frequent low-stakes writing, including in-class writing.
2. Encourage every faculty member to devote time to writing instruction.
3. Work with instructors to teach them how to design plagiarism proof-writing assignments.
4. Urge instructors to divide longer writing assignments into distinct components (e.g. a proposal, a bibliography, a draft thesis statement, an outline, a first draft, and revisions) with specific due dates to ensure students remain on track.
But if plagiarism is a structural or systemic problem, we need to do more:
- Colleges and universities need to rethink students’ academic workloads.
This will likely require institutions to recalibrate the number of credit hours assigned to particular classes and to consider introducing credit-bearing courses (like practicums, studio courses, and for-credit, supervised internships) with different work-load expectations. - Writing across the curriculum needs to become more than a catchphrase
Instead of relegating writing to a limited number of rhetoric and composition courses or to a handful of writing intensive courses, we truly need to embed writing across the curriculum. - Writing instruction needs to become a greater part of instructors’ responsibilities.
This will require campuses to do much more to prepare instructors to formulate writing assignments, instruct students in discipline-based writing conventions and provide regular, substantive feedback.
My own teaching assistants worked hard to provide their students with concise, actionable writing advice about how to:
- Distinguish between opinion and analysis.
- Recognize that much academic writing is not descriptive, but argumentative, persuasive, and analytic, and requires students to formulate a thesis that is original, provocative, and compelling.
- Focus a paper around a core theme.
- Avoid vague generalities.
- Effectively paraphrase and not simply engage in text lifting.
- Not only cite evidence, but interpret and weight those sources.
Teaching students to write effectively strikes me as higher education’s single most important task. An inability to clearly and cogently will inevitably impose a glass ceiling on our graduates. Even worse, those who can’t write lucidly can’t communicate or argue effectively.
Not only is glibness in speech no substitute for the clarity in writing, but students who can’t express their thoughts in logical, coherent, and intelligible language haven’t really mastered a particular topic.
Teaching writing is an art, but it’s an art that we’re all capable of mastering.
Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
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- Pedagogical wellness specialist: the role that connects teaching and well-being | https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/plagiarism-structural-problem | 2022-08-24T17:17:54Z | insidehighered.com | control | https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/plagiarism-structural-problem | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Biden Cancels Student Loan Debt for Millions
President forgives $10,000 for everyone whose income doesn’t exceed $125,000, and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
President Biden announced today that he will cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for Americans earning less than $125,000 per year (or $250,000 for couples filing taxes jointly) with additional relief for borrowers from low-income backgrounds who received Pell Grants. He will also extend the current pause on student loan payments, slated to end Sept. 1, for an additional four months, through Dec. 31.
“In keeping with my campaign promise, my administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle-class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” Biden said on Twitter.
Further details are expected later this afternoon.
The announcement marks an unprecedented act of executive authority and will be the first broad-based debt cancellation effort in history. It comes after months of deliberation from the administration amid cancellation’s possible implications for the upcoming midterm elections in November, and fears that it could worsen inflation. Officials from the White House said in a call with reporters today that they believe that debt relief would have a neutral impact on inflation, since borrowers have not been obligated to make payments on their loans since the Trump-era payment pause begin in March 2020.
Federal loans awarded after July 1, 2022, including graduate and Parent PLUS loans, will be eligible for forgiveness. Students included as dependents are eligible if their parents’ household income is under $250,000.
“Earning a college degree or certificate should give every person in America a leg up in securing a bright future. But for too many people, student loan debt has hindered their ability to achieve their dreams—including buying a home, starting a business, or providing for their family. Getting an education should set us free; not strap us down! That’s why, since Day One, the Biden-Harris administration has worked to fix broken federal student aid programs and deliver unprecedented relief to borrowers,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
Of the 45 million Americans with student loan debt, 90 percent of the debt relief from today’s announcement will go to individuals earning less than $75,000 a year.
Pell Grant recipients will be eligible for up to $20,000 in student debt relief. This will provide additional relief to individuals from low-income backgrounds. Pell recipients have an average of $4,500 more in student debt than other graduates, according to an analysis of data from the Education Department.
For some borrowers, the cancellation will not be automatic. The Education Department only has income information for around eight million borrowers who are enrolled in income-based repayment plans or other programs that require them to submit information on their income. Other borrowers will have to submit an application, which White House officials said the Education Department will release more information on that in the “coming days and weeks.”
Some Democrats and civil rights groups, such as the NAACP, have been pushing Biden to go further in order to address racial and economic disparities (Black borrowers hold an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than white borrowers). Just last night, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York had called Biden, asking him to cancel as much debt as possible, according to recent reporting.
Biden also announced a new income-driven repayment proposal that will cap repayment for all undergraduate loans at 5 percent of an individual’s monthly income; the current level is 10 percent. Borrowers with both undergraduate and graduate debt will pay a weighted-average rate.
The new IDR plan will also fully cover a borrower’s unpaid monthly interest and allow them to have their debts forgiven after 10 years, as opposed to 20, for borrowers with balances under $12,000.
In conjunction with the announcement on student loans, the Education Department released a legal memorandum that details the authority of the president to cancel student loan debt. Republicans have long challenged Biden’s authority to cancel student loan debt via executive action, as he did today. The memorandum states that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 grants the education secretary the legal authority to “effectuate a program of targeted loan cancellation directed at addressing the financial harms of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Trending Stories
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- Pedagogical wellness specialist: the role that connects teaching and well-being | https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/08/24/biden-wipes-out-10k-student-debt-those-earning-under-125k | 2022-08-24T17:18:04Z | insidehighered.com | control | https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/08/24/biden-wipes-out-10k-student-debt-those-earning-under-125k | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
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U of Delaware Imposes 2-Week Mask Mandate
The University of Delaware is imposing a two-week mask mandate for all classrooms, research laboratories and university transportation.
The university said its action was preventative. “COVID-19 continues to spread across the nation, now with the highly transmissible BA.5 Omicron variant. We know from campus experience over the past two and a half years that COVID-19 cases tend to surge at the beginning of each semester, largely due to the sharp increase in campus density as students arrive at UD from various locations around the United States and the world,” said a university notice.
While most colleges are not imposing mask mandates this semester, Grinnell College also imposed one for the first two weeks.
Scott Jaschik
Scott Jaschik, Editor, is one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed. With Doug Lederman, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Scott is a leading voice on higher education issues, quoted regularly in publications nationwide, and publishing articles on colleges in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere. He has been a judge or screener for the National Magazine Awards, the Online Journalism Awards, the Folio Editorial Excellence Awards, and the Education Writers Association Awards. Scott served as a mentor in the community college fellowship program of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, of Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a member of the board of the Education Writers Association. From 1999-2003, Scott was editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Scott grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and graduated from Cornell University in 1985. He lives in Washington.
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- Pedagogical wellness specialist: the role that connects teaching and well-being | https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/08/24/u-delaware-imposes-2-week-mask-mandate | 2022-08-24T17:18:14Z | insidehighered.com | control | https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2022/08/24/u-delaware-imposes-2-week-mask-mandate | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Updated August 24, 2022 at 1:04 PM ET
On Wednesday, President Biden announced a sweeping effort to forgive up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients, and up to $10,000 for other qualifying borrowers. Biden also extended the federal student loan payment pause through Dec. 31.
"In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023," Biden said in a tweet on Wednesday.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement, "Today, we're delivering targeted relief that will help ensure borrowers are not placed in a worse position financially because of the pandemic, and restore trust in a system that should be creating opportunity, not a debt trap."
To qualify for the $10,000 forgiveness, individual borrowers must earn less than $125,000 a year, or less than $250,000 a year for couples.To qualify for the $20,000 forgiveness, borrowers must meet those income requirements and must have received a Pell Grant in college. Pell Grants are designed to help low-income students pay for higher education. About a third of undergraduate federal student loan borrowers receive Pell Grants every year.
The Department of Education estimates that, among borrowers who are no longer in school, nearly 90% of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year.
About 43 million borrowers will benefit, and 20 million will have their debt completely canceled, according to a senior administration official. The White House said more than 60% of federal student loans borrowers also received Pell Grants.
In order to benefit from this announcement, most borrowers will have to submit an application to verify their income.The Education Department said nearly 8 million borrowers already have income information on file, and should qualify to have their debts canceled automatically. The department will announce further details on how borrowers can claim this relief in the weeks ahead.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kcur.org/education/2022-08-24/biden-is-canceling-up-to-10k-in-student-loans-20k-for-pell-grant-recipients | 2022-08-24T17:19:16Z | kcur.org | control | https://www.kcur.org/education/2022-08-24/biden-is-canceling-up-to-10k-in-student-loans-20k-for-pell-grant-recipients | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
The rate of uninsured Americans has been declining, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and expansion of Medicaid in many states. But a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that having health insurance doesn’t always mean the care you need will be covered, even if that care is provided in-network.
The KFF analysis examined data on claims denials and appeals reported by ACA Marketplace plans to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for the 2020 plan year. About 3 percent of Americans, or 11 million people, get their health insurance through ACA plans offered on HealthCare.gov.
The report finds in-network claims are denied about 18 percent of the time. The analysis excluded data from insurers that was incomplete.
That 1-in-5 denial rate has held fairly steady for several years, said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow and co-director of the Kaiser Family Foundation project on patient and consumer protections in health insurance.
“There's a requirement under the ACA dating all the way back to 2010 that private health plans need to report data on how their coverage works in practice,” she said.
It’s an important reform because “insurance tends to be a black box. You can sort of read the policy, you can see how it's supposed to work — what's supposed to be covered, what you're supposed to pay — but you can't tell whether claims are actually paid reliably or on time.”
There are many reasons claims can be denied for in-network services. About 16 percent of denials were because the claim was for an excluded service. Ten percent were denied due to a lack of preauthorization or referral. Only about 2 percent were denied based on medical necessity. Most denials – 72 percent – were classified as “all other reasons,” without a specific reason.
Claims denial rates vary across states. Among states that offer plans on HealthCare.gov, South Dakota has the lowest rate of in-network denials at 6 percent, and Indiana has the highest, at 29 percent. Other Midwest states with above-average rates of in-network claims denials include Missouri (23 percent), Michigan (23 percent), and Ohio (22 percent).
Drilling down to the level of individual health plans, there’s even greater variation. Nationwide, some insurers deny claims at rates of less than 1 percent, while others are as high as 80 percent.
Data is gathered, but it’s limited and not easily accessible
Part of the federal government’s motivation to implement this data requirement was to make sure health plans are living up to certain requirements, Pollitz said.
For example, plans are not allowed to discriminate based on health status, and federal laws require mental health coverage to be on par with coverage of other medical issues.
So this data is a really important “oversight tool,” she said, and could also help consumers.
“People might like to know, when they're looking at their plan choices, well, this one costs $10 a month more than that one, but this one seems to rarely deny claims, whereas this one seems to frequently deny claims,” she said.
But Pollitz said the data-reporting requirement is not living up to its fullest potential.
Part of the problem is information about claims denial rates gathered by federal regulators isn’t easily accessible and is not included among other plan information provided on HealthCare.gov.
“On average, people in [states that offer plans on HealthCare.gov] have a choice of more than 100 plans to choose from,” she said. “You can sort them by premium, and that's what people tend to do, and then apply their premium tax credit that they're eligible for, and then pick the plan that is cheapest without knowing a whole lot more about what else is different between the plans. And frankly, without being able to tell a number of important factors, that may vary across plans.”
Another issue, Pollitz said, is the federal government currently only collects data about in-network claims, and the data is limited to ACA Marketplace plans. Yet about half of all Americans get their insurance through their employer.
“Our main finding continues to be that this law has not been implemented, other than in a very limited fashion,” she said. “There's no collection of this data for employer plans. Even though that requirement dates all the way back to the fall of 2010, that's just never been implemented [by] the Department of Labor.”
Also, no data is collected on out-of-network claims, Pollitz said.
You have a right to appeal denied claims, but very few people do
Everyone has a right to appeal denied claims, regardless of where they get their health insurance. But the analysis finds the vast majority of claims – 99.9 percent – aren’t appealed.
And that doesn’t surprise Pollitz because of how confusing health insurance is for a lot of people.
“They pay for it, they go to the doctor, they lay down their card, and they just expect that that will take care of it, and often it doesn't,” she said. “And when it doesn't, I think people are often surprised.”
While some state insurance regulators have sanctioned health insurers that inappropriately deny claims, Pollitz said much more could be done.
Side Effects reached out to state and federal regulators to ask what is being done to ensure people aren’t unfairly or inappropriately having their claims denied.
In a statement, a CMS spokesperson said the agency is aware of the KFF report and is "identifying appropriate next steps to further investigate and address the concerns raised." The agency has already conducted internal analyses of the data and is considering several strategies to ensure consumers are not facing inappropriate denials, "including instituting additional claims and denials data elements for reporting, which has already been approved for future data collection via an expanded Paperwork Reduction Act package."
The spokesperson also noted that routine errors made by insurers in the process of data submission may "influence some denial rates."
Several Midwest states’ departments of insurance — including Michigan, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana — responded with statements saying they encourage people to file complaints with their agencies any time they have issues with insurers, so they can be aware and investigate when needed.
This story comes from Side Effects Public Media — a public health news initiative based at WFYI. Follow Christine on Twitter: @CTHerman
Copyright 2022 Side Effects Public Media. To see more, visit Side Effects Public Media. | https://www.kcur.org/health/2022-08-24/missouris-aca-marketplace-plans-deny-in-network-claims-more-than-you-might-think | 2022-08-24T17:19:22Z | kcur.org | control | https://www.kcur.org/health/2022-08-24/missouris-aca-marketplace-plans-deny-in-network-claims-more-than-you-might-think | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Voting-rights advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday arguing that a new law requiring Missourians to present a government-issued photo ID to vote is unconstitutional.
While lawmakers have approved voter ID laws numerous times, and voters signed off on putting it in the state constitution in 2016, the proposal has never withstood a legal challenge.
The voter ID law is set to go into effect next week. The lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, asks for a preliminary injunction to stop Missouri from enforcing it.
Unless the court intervenes, the changes will be in effect for the Nov. 8 general election.
“So-called voter ID laws have always been a part of a deceitful agenda by politicians in power to stoke fear and reduce participation of registered voters in elections without evidence of a problem,” said Luz María Henríquez, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri, who filed the lawsuit along with the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.
The lawsuit challenges provisions in the new law that limit the specific forms of photo identification to vote in person at the polls and in person absentee.
Currently, voters can present a variety of different forms of identification at the polls, including some that don’t include a photo, like a utility bill or voting card. Under the new law, registered voters would either have to get a government-issued photo ID or cast a provisional ballot on Election Day.
The provisional ballot would be counted only if the voter returns later that day with a photo ID or if election officials can verify their signature based on voter records.
In the November 2020 election, only 2,139 provisional ballots were counted out of 5,256 that were cast, according to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office. There were 2,407 ballots rejected because the individuals were not registered or eligible to vote, according to secretary of state records.
There were 920 people who arrived at their right polling place but didn’t have the correct form of ID, so they cast a provisional ballot. Of those votes, 484 were counted. Records do not specify why 375 ballots were rejected, but 40 were cast out because the signatures on the ballots didn’t match the signatures in the voter registration records.
“The ability of all Missourians to cast a ballot lies at the heart of a functioning democracy,” said Denise Lieberman, director and general counsel of the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Missouri and Missouri NAACP. On Monday, both groups announced a separate lawsuit challenging other provisions of the new elections law pertaining to absentee voting and voter registration.
About 137,700 registered voters in Missouri did not have a state-issued identification in 2017, according to an analysis from the Secretary of State’s Office. Another 140,000 voters had expired IDs, and 2,000 more voters had forfeited their driver’s licenses.
A January 2020 Missouri Supreme Court ruling blocked a key provision regarding casting provisional ballots in a previously-enacted voter ID law.
In that same ruling, the court considered the state’s request to strike the non-photo ID options altogether – which is what the new law would do – and concluded that it posed “constitutional concerns and could not have been adopted by this court.”
While the state is supposed to provide IDs to people for free if they can’t pay, there are still costs involved in getting the documents needed to obtain the ID, the Supreme Court’s ruling noted.
Also, each person only gets one free ID.
“As a result, with the exception of individuals older than 70 whose photo identifications do not expire, prospective voters, in future elections, will be required to pay a fee to obtain photo identification,” the Supreme Court ruling concluded.
St. Francis Xavier College Church in St. Louis is the only program in the state that helps a significant number of people obtain the documents they need to get a driver’s license.
The church’s ID and birth certificate program, which is the cornerstone of its social ministry, sees about 60 to 80 people every Tuesday. On average, they help 3,400 people a year, helping them obtain about 2,200 Missouri IDs and 1,700 birth certificates.
And they cover the costs to obtain these documents, which totals about $50,000 every year, Christine Dragonette, director of social ministry at the College Church, told The Independent last year.
We will do everything in our power to make sure the rights of Missouri voters are restored, and everyone can have their vote counted,” said Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP.
In 2006, Missouri became one of the first states to attempt to enact a law where only a state- or federally-issued ID would be acceptable to vote. After being approved by lawmakers, the court deemed it unconstitutional because there was no evidence of voter fraud and it infringed on people’s right to vote.
So voter-ID proponents focused on changing the constitution itself.
In 2011, lawmakers placed a voter ID amendment on the ballot, but the measure was derailed by a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Missouri and Advancement Project.
In 2016, a photo ID amendment finally made it to the ballot and was approved by voters that allowed someone to cast a ballot without a state-approved photo ID only after signing an affidavit under the penalty of perjury.
However, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the affidavit because it deemed it to be “misleading,” and therefore unconstitutional.
Critics of voter ID laws say the requirements disproportionately impact voters of color, the young and the disabled.
“This bill is a major disenfranchisement movement,” said Rep. Joe Adams, D-University City during a House debate in May. “It is to deny people who have fought and denied for this right to vote. It’s an attempt to restrict their participation in the process.”
Proponents of the idea say it’s an effort to prevent voter fraud, though instances of fraud that would be prevented by a photo ID requirement are exceedingly rare.
One study found that between 2000 and 2014, there were only 31 instances of voter impersonation fraud — in which a voter pretends to be someone else at the polls — out of more than one billion ballots cast.
“Our election system is a cornerstone of our Republic,” said state Rep. John Simmons, R-Washington and the bill’s sponsor. “Faith and confidence in the process is a solemn responsibility by voters themselves and those conducting elections. A photo ID requirement is but one common sense measure the vast majority of Missourians support.”
This story was originally published on the Missouri Independent. | https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2022-08-24/voting-rights-missouri-new-voter-id-law-unconstitutional-election-2022 | 2022-08-24T17:19:26Z | kcur.org | control | https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2022-08-24/voting-rights-missouri-new-voter-id-law-unconstitutional-election-2022 | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Compositions and Recordings
Viviane, Op.5
by Ernest Chausson
Antonio de Almeida with the New Philharmonia Orchestra
Silent Spring
by Steven Stucky
Manfred Honeck with the Pittsburgh Symphony
Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32
by Peter Tchaikovsky
Igor Markevitch with the Lamoureux Orchestra | https://www.kcur.org/show/from-the-archives-with-frank-byrne/2022-08-24/from-the-archives-tone-poems-for-orchestra | 2022-08-24T17:19:29Z | kcur.org | control | https://www.kcur.org/show/from-the-archives-with-frank-byrne/2022-08-24/from-the-archives-tone-poems-for-orchestra | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
(NewsNation) — Dramatic video shows a 130-foot yacht slowly sinking into the sea.
The footage gathered by the Italian Coast Guard captured the impressive vessel being slowly swallowed up by the Mediterranean just nine miles off the coast of Italy.
The Coast Guard scrambled to rescue nine people before the yacht, named “My Saga,” went under.
The yacht, built in 2007, was equipped with six staterooms for up to 12 guests and an additional four cabins for its crew. Designed to perfectly sail the open ocean, questions have been raised as to what exactly caused the yacht to go down this week.
There have been a number of yacht incidents in the world in 2022, according to the publication Super Yacht Times.
The publication reports that eight motor yachts caught fire, three sank, two were attacked, and a 50-meter sailing yacht was hit by a rescue vessel. | https://www.wpri.com/news/national/video-shows-130-foot-yacht-sink-into-the-sea/ | 2022-08-24T17:24:20Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/news/national/video-shows-130-foot-yacht-sink-into-the-sea/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
Today on the show, Brendan announced who the winners were in the Top Scoops ice cream contest that has been going on all summer.
Thanks to all who nominated, voted and most importantly tasted during The Rhode Show Top Scoops 2022 ballot, a chance to crown the best local ice cream shops!
The top vote-getters have been be named the winners in each county! You can see the winners, 2nd place, and runners up here: https://www.wpri.com/rhode-show-top-scoops/#/gallery/. In a surprising twist, we had a dead-tie result in Newport County and thus two winners earned the Top Scoops crown!
Congrats to all the winners and nominees. Will, Michaela, Brendan and the entire Rhode Show crew look forward to visiting as many local shops as possible to taste these Top Scoops!
Rhode Show Content Disclaimer: The information, advice, and answers displayed in The Rhode Show section of WPRI.com are those of individual sponsors and guests and not WPRI-TV/Nexstar Media Group, Inc. WPRI.com presents this content on behalf of each participating Rhode Show sponsor. Sponsored content is copyrighted to its respective sponsor unless otherwise indicated. | https://www.wpri.com/rhode-show/top-scoops-winners-are-announced/ | 2022-08-24T17:24:32Z | wpri.com | control | https://www.wpri.com/rhode-show/top-scoops-winners-are-announced/ | 1 | 1 | green-iguana-35 | null |
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