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(CN) — Do video streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu have to pay municipalities in Arkansas a franchise fee for beaming their signals along fiber optic cables placed in public rights of way? The small city of Ashdown near the Texas and Oklahoma borders believes so, according to its interpretation of the state’s 2013 Video Service Act.
In a class action complaint filed against the two streaming platforms in late 2020, Ashdown claims that because the defendants are defined as “video service providers” under the statute — just like cable TV providers — they owe the city 5% of gross quarterly revenue derived from the community.
The law requires providers to file an application with the secretary of state for a “certificate of franchise authority,” unless providers negotiate alternative franchise agreements with local political subdivisions. Providers who possess a certificate may install or construct video facilities – namely cables – in public rights of way, provided they pay a fee of not more than 5% of their gross revenue to local municipalities.
The statute does not distinguish between providers who install infrastructure themselves and those that use existing infrastructure, but the defendants didn’t comply regardless, according to the complaint.
“Defendants have failed to comply with the Arkansas Video Service Act, because they have failed to pay plaintiff and the other class members the required franchise fee of 5% of gross revenues,” the lawsuit said. “Defendants cannot escape liability by arguing that they simply were not SICFA holders; they were required to apply for and obtain a SICFA, then pay the franchise fee of 5% of gross revenues derived from providing video service in Ashdown in the manner in which they did.”
But crucially, according to an order granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss in September 2021, the state law “specifically exempts from the statutory scheme video programming . . . [p]rovided as part of and via a service that enables end users to access content, information, electronic mail, or other services offered over the public internet.”
The city argued the exemption should not apply because video streaming represents the entirety of Netflix and Hulu's "service," and because the service is only accessible to subscribers, it is not offered over the “public” internet.
But Chief U.S. District Judge Susan O. Hickey, a Barack Obama appointee, determined “this interpretation reads too much into the statute."
“A plain and sensible reading of the statute reveals that the exclusion applies to any video programming provided as part of a service,” Hickey wrote. “Video programming is a part of a service that both defendants provide, regardless of whether defendants provide multiple services or just one service.”
Similarly, Hickey accepted an analogy by Hulu that their subscription-based service, offered over public internet, is no different than driving a private vehicle on a public road.
“Whether a driver locks the car doors while driving does not affect whether the road taken is a public road," the judge wrote.
Ashdown appealed the ruling and met the streaming giants again in St. Louis on Tuesday for oral arguments before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Representing the city, attorney Justin J. Hawal said the district court erred with respect to standing and in its so-called plain language reading of the public internet exception. Hawal said the city has a right under the Video Service Act to clarify its rights and obligations with video service providers, including conducting financial audits and inspections.
With respect to a suggestion from Netflix and Hulu that the remedy was the exclusive jurisdiction of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, Hawal said under that construct, municipalities would have no remedy at all.
“What would happen is it would incentivize video service providers to simply not comply with the act because there is no penalty for past noncompliance,” he told the three-judge panel.
According to Hawal, the law specifically targets streaming services and not internet service providers because the latter, which typically installs and maintains internet infrastructure, do not create or benefit from the sale of the video content Netflix and Hulu provide.
“Netflix and Hulu do not provide access to email as a part of their service, they don’t provide access to information or other services other than video programming … it’s the entirety of their service,” he said.
The judges inquired whether other services provided by Netflix — show production and film curation, title suggestions, marketing emails — make the company more than a simple video service provider. Hawal said they “directly compete” with traditional television providers, including broadcast networks.
On behalf of Netflix, attorney Gregory G. Garre said Ashdown's interpretation of the law would result in “arming hundreds of municipalities across the state with ad hoc enforcement” powers, “directly disrupting the legislature’s intent.” As written, the law ensures uniform enforcement by the Public Service Commission, and municipalities retain the right to audit those providers whose facilities are in the public right of way. Both Garre and Victor Jih, representing Hulu, argued their clients possess no facilities in the right of way.
“The notion that the city of Ashdown is trying to completely upend the franchising system in the state of Arkansas is a bit of a hyperbole,” Hawal said in rebuttal.
He added, “Ashdown is not attempting to create a system where every single municipality has a right to bring their own action against providers, rather, require a declaration to require Netflix and Hulu to receive authorization from the secretary of state … so they have to pay required fees and give cities the right to audit and take other actions the statute gives them to ensure they are receiving those fees.”
The argument was heard by U.S. Circuit Judges Steven M. Colloton, Roger L. Wollman and David R. Stras, appointed by George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, respectively.
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| 2022-09-21T00:20:35Z
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GATES, Ore. (CN) — If you see dead fish in the rivers of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, don’t panic. Throughout September, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is intentionally throwing dead hatchery salmon back into rivers and streams as part of its stream enrichment program — a process typically provided by historic salmon runs.
According to Fish and Wildlife, thousands of adult salmon once spawned and died in Oregon waterways, supplying essential nutrients such as nitrogen acquired from the ocean. But besides supplementing water health, the dead fish also help feed bears and other wild animals while fertilizing trees and vegetation along stream banks.
The run is particularly good this year, according to the department, as the region’s historically wet winter provided much needed water levels to keep fish healthy for their journeys to and from the Pacific Ocean.
However, Fish and Wildlife is not needlessly killing salmon for the sake of returning nutrients. The process on the Santiam River, in particular, actually begins and ends with the Minto Fish Collection Facility outside of Gates, Oregon, where thousands of spring Chinook salmon are returning home to the hatchery waters to spawn. Once spawning takes place, whether it be natural or through the hatchery, all adult salmon inevitably die.
Born to be wild
Upon entering the gated government facility, you’ll find large white plastic bins filled with large spring Chinook salmon — all sliced down the abdomen with their tails sliced partway off. However, the ominous bin of dead broodstock is actually the product of rebirth, as staff at the facility are catching hatchery-born adults to collect their roe and milt for future runs.
Identified by a clipped adipose fin, each female spring Chinook salmon carries around 4,500 eggs ready for harvest, ensuring hatchery stock for the upcoming year. This year, however, the hatchery expects to harvest around 2.5 million eggs, as the run of North Santiam stock has reached 7,200 so far. According to Fish and Wildlife Hatchery Manager Greg Grenbemer, it’s the largest run yet since 1951, or since the installment of the Big Cliff and Detroit dams upstream.
But even before that point, there’s a special process to euthanize the salmon. First, the hatchery funnels fish into a water tank treated with a natural anesthetic that puts fish to sleep within a few minutes. Thereafter, a hatchery employee places each fish into a “thumper” — a device that delivers a lethal blow to the head, which Grenbemer describes as the most humane method of euthanizing fish. Once fish are ready for harvest, hatchery employees slice the fish’s tail to drain out blood.
After collecting eggs and milt — semen of male fish — hatchery employees send each salmon to its on-site pathology lab to test for illnesses that may affect eggs. The testing process only takes about 30 seconds, and it’s just as easy for the hatchery to create genetic profiles of individual fish to track them as they journey back from the ocean. Upon approval, the hatchery inseminates viable eggs with milt, beginning a 14-month journey of incubation at Marion Forks Hatchery and eventual release into the wild.
According to Grenbemer, the Minto Fish Facility does not harvest every spring Chinook salmon that passes through, and all wild salmon are released or transported upstream of the dams to spawn. The practice is necessary, explained Fish and Wildlife Assistant District Fish Biologist Alex Farrand, as the two dams do not have fish ladders. Otherwise, the only way salmon can pass by is through dam turbines or spillways when the reservoirs empty in the winter.
As for harvested fish, their bodies are either donated to food banks, local tribes or, most often, returned to streams with the help of Fish and Wildlife biologists like Farrand and Elise Kelley, who drive the bins of fish carcasses to remote areas up and downstream from the Minto Fish Facility.
This month, Farrand and Kelley drove a batch of salmon carcasses up to Whitewater Creek, about 10 minutes east of Gates. Through two separate stops, one near the entrance of a private road by the creek and another about three miles downstream, the biologists took turns tossing fish bodies out into the creek, with most drifting down as though they were alive.
The reason Farrand and Kelley take care to drive to remote, private land is to avoid potential interactions with recreational areas or pets. For dogs, especially, salmon are known to carry pathogens that are toxic and even lethal if left untreated. Additionally, Farrand explained that tossing salmon carcasses upstream encourages spawning ground expansion, as the scent of dead fish signals potential mating grounds for returning fish.
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| 2022-09-21T00:20:43Z
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National
Trump had ‘unfettered’ right to declassify docs, his attorneys say
Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys appeared in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, preparing to push back against the government’s investigation into whether Trump kept potentially privileged documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
AG Garland meets with top Ukrainian prosecutor to ensure ‘deconfliction’ of war crime cases
Attorney General Merrick Garland met with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin on Tuesday and signed a memorandum of understanding to ensure each country’s Russo-Ukrainian war crime prosecutions do not conflict as the war entered its 204th day.
Regional
Detroit accuses census officials of undercounting its residents
The city of Detroit filed suit against the federal government Tuesday morning, claiming the 2020 census failed to count over 20,000 of its citizens, most of them Black and Hispanic, and that the U.S. Census Bureau refused to fix the error.
Cannabis advocates, experts say California legalization efforts fall to local leaders next
With a package of cannabis regulation bills signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, advocates and experts say it's now up to local voters and leaders to decide how their communities will handle the drug.
Eighth Circuit hears latest dispute in decades-old St. Louis desegregation saga
The St. Louis public school district told an appellate panel Missouri's practice of diverting local sales tax revenue to charter schools violates a 1996 settlement agreement.
Panel hears Arkansas city’s demand for 5% of revenue from streaming services
The Eighth Circuit heard oral arguments in a case brought by the city of Ashdown, Arkansas, which interprets a state law to treat video streaming services like cable providers.
International
EU court adviser says antitrust watchdog can investigate Meta privacy violations
In the latest blow to Facebook’s parent company Meta, an adviser to the European Union’s top court said Tuesday national competition regulators can investigate data protection complaints.
Parents of missing British girl lose libel case against detective
The parents of a 3-year-old British girl who disappeared in 2007 have lost a case before Europe’s top rights court against a Portuguese police detective who wrote a book alleging the family was involved.
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| 2022-09-21T00:20:50Z
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Mike Pence keeps mum about 2024 presidential run during Utah visit
Former Vice President Mike Pence wouldn't say Tuesday whether he was seeking to run against Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Driving the news: After a speech at Utah Valley University in Orem, a student asked Pence during a Q&A if he was running in the next presidential election.
- "I'll keep you posted," he quipped in front of a roughly 700-member audience.
- Pence told The New York Times in May he's open to running against Trump.
What they're saying: "There's almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose which votes to count for the American president," Pence said, seemingly referring to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
- Officer holders in the U.S. make oaths to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, he said.
- "You'll keep your oath even when it hurts," said Pence, who has defended his role in certifying the 2020 election results.
Between the lines: Pence's remarks ranged from protecting unborn children, securing the nation's borders and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
- Pence also said he's "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order."
Context: Pence was in Utah as a speaker for UVU's new Gary. R Herbert Institute for Public Policy Forum, named after the state's 17th governor.
- He and Herbert developed a friendship while he served as the governor of Indiana between 2013-2017.
- "I can tell you from personal experience that these are great people. They're people of integrity. They're people who have great faith," Herbert said of Pence and his wife Karen, the former second lady.
The other side: A group of students protested Pence's visit outside the school, holding signs that read "Mike Pence UVU is Not For You" and "Complicit."
- "We don't think Mike Pence represents UVU values," said student Simone Anderson, 22, a member of the left-leaning Progressive Student Alliance. "Inviting Mike Pence shows marginalized communities, such as the queer community and BIPOC community, that they are not necessarily welcome here."
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| 2022-09-21T00:21:16Z
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President Biden, in a speech at the Detroit Auto Show Wednesday, confirmed that the federal government is releasing a first round of funding to 35 states to start installing EV charging hardware on the way to a 500,000-charger U.S. network.
As Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pointed out in a release, the 35 states given the green light are represented by a mix of Republican and Democratic governors.
Surprisingly, all 50 states turned in their homework on time. By August 1, states had to submit plans for their spending on the project to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy. The DOT confirmed on August 2 that every state had submitted plans.
The $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program essentially has two facets: the deployment of EV charging infrastructure, and the formation of “an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability” of charging.
NEVI is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in November 2021, and it’s one of the two big funding buckets that adds up to the initial $7.5 billion for the project. The other $2.5 billion is a discretionary grant program aiming to tackle rural charging and underserved/disadvantaged communities.
As the federal government laid out in June for the $5 billion program, states needed to draw out their initial routes primarily along highway routes designated Alternative Fuel Corridors. Built-out networks specify an interoperable charging station with four 150-kw connectors, every 50 miles.
Initially, some states had some preliminary homework to do in designating more Alternative Fuel Corridors. That led to plans with widely varied levels of detail.
The program funnels $1.46 billion in funding over five calendar years—2022 through 2026. Each state gets allocated a different amount toward the EV infrastructure under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, based around a federal funding formula. Due to that, state amounts range up to California’s nearly $384 million total and Texas’ $407 million over the five years. Under the program, Puerto Rico gets nearly $13.7 million total.
It requires some level of state commitment, too, as the federal funds are intended to cover 80% of EV charger costs, with either private or state funds making up the balance.
The only states that haven’t yet been approved are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Officials noted that the approval of these state charging plans is being made quickly and ahead of schedule. After this first large batch, states will get approved “on a rolling basis,” according to the Department of Energy.
“We are reviewing the remaining plans and on track to finish the process by our target date of September 30, if not sooner,” said Acting Federal Highway Administrator Stephanie Pollack, in a release. “Our shared work to bring President Biden’s vision for a national electric vehicle network to communities across America is too important to wait.”
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- Communities of color affected by air pollution lag in EV adoption; study looks at how to fix this
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| 2022-09-21T00:28:39Z
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Michigan-based startup Our Next Energy (ONE) this week unveiled a prismatic anode-free battery cell it claims will lay the foundation for 600-mile EVs.
The prototype cell will be integrated into a BMW iX prototype later this year as part of a dual-chemistry battery pack. ONE said in a press release that it’s aiming for a volume-produced version of the dual-chemistry setup, called Gemini, in 2026 that will enable 600 miles of range “in a wide range of vehicle platforms” including trucks and SUVs.
ONE revealed its 600-mile test iX earlier this year but hadn’t yet detailed the chemistries. The startup now says it will pair the anode-free chemistry with lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) similar to the kind popularized by Chinese automakers, and now used by Tesla in certain vehicles.
The 1007-wh/l anode-free cells eliminate the need for graphite and manufacturing equipment associated with anodes, enabling cell costs of $50 per kwh at scale, or about half the cost of current lithium-ion cells, ONE claims.
Anode-free cells typically have a lower life cycle than conventional lithium-ion cells, which would normally make them unsuitable for automotive use. But ONE claims its Gemini dual-chemistry packs solve that problem with a 90% reduction in cycle and peak power requirements, adding that a proprietary DC-DC converter allows the anode-free and LFP chemistries to be integrated into one pack.
Each chemistry is used for a specific function—LFP for daily driving, and anode-free for long-distance trips. With this arrangement, ONE anticipates a 250,000-mile service life.
LFP cells allow consistent charging and reduced demand for difficult-to-source ingredients, but they’re a bit heavier and need a boost in cold weather—likely all remedied with this dual-chemistry approach.
ONE appears to be the only entity trying to take dual-chemistry battery packs mainstream, although it’s certainly not the only company thinking about it. For instance, Nissan has been working on its own solid-state cells, and within that project it hasn’t ruled out combining chemistries within packs.
Drivers of long-range electric vehicles tend rarely to tap into the full range and battery capacity of their EV. So while many startups are betting on faster-charging cells, this approach might prove not only better for automakers but the end user as well.
Related Articles
- 35 states get the green light for $7.5 billion national EV charging network
- Ford aims to make EV markups and haggling history with dealership rules starting in 2024
- $25,000 Tesla or not, executive says EV maker will need a more affordable model
- Honda plans 10 new electric motorcycle models by 2025, including one for kids
- How Lucid leaps past Tesla with smaller motors
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| 2022-09-21T00:28:47Z
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean prosecutors have asked Interpol to issue a fugitive alert for the founder of Terraform Labs as they investigate a $40 billion crash of the firm’s cryptocurrency that devastated retail investors around the world.
The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office asked Interpol on Monday to circulate the “red notice” for Do Kwon across the agency’s 195 member nations to find and apprehend him.
A South Korean court recently issued arrest warrants for Kwon and five other people connected to Terraform Labs as prosecutors investigate allegations of fraud and financial crimes in relation to the implosion of its digital currencies in May. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it’s processing the prosecutors’ request to restrict or revoke the passports of Kwon and four other suspects who are South Korean.
Interpol had not publicized the red notice for Kwon on its website as of Tuesday morning, and South Korean prosecutors say the designation may take more than a week. Interpol describes such notices as requests to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest fugitives “pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.”
Kwon’s whereabouts are unknown.
South Korean authorities initially believed Kwon was in Singapore before the city-state’s police announced last week that he wasn’t there. Kwon, who has been accused of exaggerating the stability of his digital currencies before their collapse, insisted in a tweet Sunday that he wasn’t on the run from any “government agency that has shown interest to communicate.”
“We are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide,” Kwon said in the tweet.
The collapse of Terraform Lab’s digital currencies, TerraUSD and Luna, affected an estimated 280,000 South Korean investors while causing broader turmoil in the global cryptocurrency market.
TerraUSD was designed as a “stablecoin.” Those are pegged to stable assets like the U.S. dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices. However, around $40 billion in market value was erased for the holders of TerraUSD and its floating sister currency, Luna, after the stablecoin plunged far below its $1 peg in May.
South Korean prosecutors launched the investigation following collective complaints filed by dozens of investigators.
The Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank, said in a report published in June that the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna was a major factor in the global cryptocurrency market shrinking by more than 40% compared to late 2021, when its market value reached over $2.3 trillion.
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| 2022-09-21T00:28:51Z
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BMW M is close to revealing its first standalone model since the iconic M1 supercar launched four decades ago. This time around it will be an SUV, a model to be called the XM, and it’s due for its debut on Sept. 27.
A teaser video released on Tuesday gives a taste of the XM’s throaty exhaust note, as well as the design of its light signature. Clues have already surfaced as to how the XM will look, thanks to the reveal of a concept version a year ago. Spies have also spotted camouflaged prototypes testing in the wild for the past year, and some images alleged to be official patent drawings surfaced earlier in September.
The noise in this video comes from a newly developed twin-turbo 4.4-liter V-8 that will serve as part of a plug-in hybrid powertrain in the XM. System output will be in the vicinity of 750 hp and 737 lb-ft of torque, which will make the XM the most powerful BMW road car to date. Though it’s yet to be confirmed, a tamer version of the plug-in hybrid setup could be offered in a base XM, with the 750-hp version reserved for something like an XM Competition model.
The powertrain will then filter across to more BMW vehicles, including potentially the redesigned M5 that’s also out testing. If the engineers go with BMW’s existing plug-in hybrid design, the powertrain will consist of a single electric motor sandwiched between the V-8 and the transmission.
The reveal of the XM will serve as the culmination of this year’s 50th anniversary of the M division, which launched the M4 CSL, M3 Edition 50 Jahre BMW M, M3 Touring, and M Hybrid V8 LMDh race car this year, which previews the M division’s electric future. A redesigned M2 is also coming in October.
The XM will be built at BMW Group’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the market launch will likely take place in the first half of next year. There’s no word on pricing but as BMW M’s flagship, a base sticker in the six figures is likely.
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- Jeep celebrates 30 years of the Grand Cherokee with anniversary package for 4xe plug-in hybrid
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:01Z
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When the original Series 1 Land Rover made its world debut at an auto show in Amsterdam in 1948, few would have thought the vehicle would go on to spawn an internationally recognized brand for luxury SUVs decades later.
It’s now been 75 years since the debut and Land Rover has remembered its humble beginnings with a special Defender, the vehicle in Land Rover’s current lineup closest in spirit to the Series 1.
It’s called the 2023 Defender 75th Limited Edition, and it’s being offered for a limited period. It is available in 2-door 90 or 4-door 110 body styles and comes with an exclusive shade of green paint called Grasmere Green. The paint also extends to the standard 20-inch wheels, including the center caps.
There are also some Grasmere Green accents in the cabin, which are combined with seats in black trim. There’s also a material called Robustec, which Land Rover describes as its most robust fabric available in the Defender. It features on the center console.
The Defender 75th Limited Edition is offered exclusively in the Defender’s P400 grade, meaning a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-6 in mild-hybrid configuration. It’s good for 395 hp and 406 lb-ft of torque. An 8-speed automatic and four-wheel drive complete the package.
All Defender 75th Limited Editions also come equipped with a folding fabric roof, 14-way driver and front passenger seats with heating and memory function, a heated steering wheel, 3-zone climate control, a surround-view camera system, Meridian premium audio, a head-up display, a wireless charger for mobile devices, and an 11.4-inch infotainment screen.
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- Preview: 2024 Subaru Crosstrek treads evolutionary path
- BMW XM super SUV teased ahead of Sept. 27 debut
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:08Z
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Ford’s Mustang in recent generations has been making the transition from boulevard cruiser to bona fide sports car, and the seventh-generation ‘Stang revealed on Wednesday at the 2022 Detroit auto show looks set to finally cement this with an extensive racing program that will include a return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The new Mustang is set to compete across a wide spectrum of racing series, including NASCAR, IMSA SportsCar Championship, and Australia’s Supercars series, as well as in various GT3 and GT4 competitions around the globe. With confirmation the Mustang will race at Le Mans, the World Endurance Championship can be added to that list. Le Mans is the premier event on the WEC calendar, similar to the 24 Hours of Daytona on the SportsCar Championship calendar, and has seen a Mustang compete in 1967 and 1997.
A new Mustang GT3 is being developed and will be eligible to compete in the WEC’s GT classes as soon as 2024, so the Mustang won’t be chasing outright victory in the Hypercar class. The Mustang GT3 will also be the basis for the race cars competing in the GT classes of the SportsCar Championship. This means it will compete against race cars based on the likes of the Aston Martin Vantage, Chevrolet Corvette, Mercedes-Benz AMG GT, and Porsche 911.
Ford hasn’t said whether it plans to field cars directly at Le Mans, or whether it will partner with a race team, similar to its partnership with Chip Ganassi Racing for the GT supercar’s successful run at Le Mans in recent years. It will run a factory team fielding two of the Mustang GT3s in the SportsCar Championship’s GTD Pro class.
Ford also plans to offer the Mustang GT3 to customer teams, meaning it could compete in other GT3 competitions around the globe.
The race car is being developed in partnership with Multimatic, the Canadian motorsports and engineering company that builds the GT for Ford, as well as the more recent Bronco DR racer. It will run a unique version of the familiar 5.0-liter V-8. The engine is being developed by Ford Performance and will be supplied by M-Sport, the British motorsport and engineering company responsible for recent Ford rally cars, including the Ford Puma-based car competing in the 2022 World Rally Championship.
The Mustang GT3 will also feature an unequal-length double-wishbone suspension front and rear, a rear-mounted transaxle gearbox, carbon-fiber body panels, and of course an aero package developed to meet GT3 rules.
Joey Hand, one of the class-winning drivers in Ford’s 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans campaign, will serve as a test and development driver for the program, alongside his current NASCAR duties.
The Mustang GT3 isn’t the only new Mustang racer in the works. Ford has also announced a Mustang Dark Horse R that could potentially compete in a new one-make series.
Related Articles
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- Track-focused 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse targets a 500-hp Coyote V-8
- BMW Dune Taxi electric off-roader teased with 536 hp
- 1,972-hp Ford Pro Electric Supervan hits the ‘Ring
- Hennessey Velociraptor 6×6 pickup returns with 558 hp
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:16Z
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Subaru’s Crosstrek has been redesigned, and the version destined for sale in Japan has been shown.
The popular compact crossover, now in its third generation, will launch in the U.S. next year as a 2024 model. Subaru will release specifications for this market closer to that date.
In Japan, the new Crosstrek will hit the ground running with a 2.0-liter flat-4 engine in combination with a mild-hybrid setup. Subaru hasn’t released any specs for the powertrain but the same setup in other models sees the engine deliver approximately 143 hp and the mild-hybrid an additional 13 hp.
Completing the drivetrain is a continuously variable transmission (CVT) and all-wheel-drive system. Subaru said improvements were made to reduce vibrations and noise of the engine and transmission compared to the current Crosstrek.
Underpinning the vehicle is the latest version of the Subaru Global modular platform. Key changes made include a more rigid construction method where the full inner frame is constructed first before the outer body panels are welded on. Previously, the body was made by constructing the upper and lower sections separately and then joining them.
The more rigid design, which was introduced in the latest WRX and related Levorg, is said to improve handling as well as absorption of vibrations. Extra soundproofing material was also added to further refine cabin ambience.
Measuring 176 inches long, the new Crosstrek is roughly the same length as its predecessor. This means similar cabin space, and the latest model also preserves its predecessor’s 60:40 folding rear seats. Depending on the specification, the vehicle weighs anywhere between 3,395 and 3,571 lb..
For the exterior design, Subaru toughened up the look with new grille bars, expanded cladding on the front and rear fascias, and available 18-inch wheels. The interior design mimics other recent Subarus and includes a conventional instrument cluster in combination with a large 11.6-inch touchscreen in the center stack serving as the infotainment hub.
The Crosstrek remains one of Subaru’s top-selling vehicles in the U.S., with sales here last year registering at 127,466 units. The improvements made to the redesigned model should help maintain that success.
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- 2023 Honda Pilot coming soon with rugged Trailsport grade
- 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe RST gains power boost with Performance Edition pack
- 2023 Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid brings price cut with new Willys grade
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:30Z
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Ford revealed its redesigned 2024 Mustang on Wednesday at the 2022 Detroit auto show, but the new design wasn’t the only surprise. Included in the range this time is a new track-focused Mustang Dark Horse model which boasts a version of the familiar Coyote 5.0-liter V-8 with a targeted output of 500 hp.
The Dark Horse, a trademark for which was discovered in June, isn’t actually a single model but a new performance series. In addition to the track-focused but street-legal regular Dark Horse, there will also be a track-only Dark Horse S and race-ready Dark Horse R. But more on those models later.
The track-focused Dark Horse is the model most buyers will be keen on. The car is comparable to the outgoing Mustang’s Mach 1 grade, in that it boasts extra power, more aggressive aerodynamics, and a chassis honed on the track. However, it doesn’t go all the way on the performance dial like the previous Shelby Mustangs.
The extra power is courtesy of a unique configuration for the 5.0-liter V-8, which relies on connecting rods from the previous Shelby GT500, as well as a new dual throttle-body intake design said to improve air flow into the engine. Paired to the engine is a standard 6-speed manual with a titanium shifter ball and transmission oil cooler, but the Mustang’s 10-speed automatic can be swapped in as an alternative. And crucial for long track days, the car is also fitted with an auxiliary engine oil cooler, a rear axle cooler, more powerful cooling fans, and a unique radiator that’s lighter than stock but better at cooling.
When it comes to the chassis, Ford engineers made some unique calibrations and added larger rear sway bars, a strut tower brace, a K-brace, and uprated front dampers. Magnetic ride dampers are standard at all four corners. There’s also a Torsen rear differential and powerful Brembo brakes that include 6-piston calipers biting down on 13.9-inch rotors up front.
The standard wheels are a staggered 19-inch set of alloys that come wrapped in Pirelli P Zero tires, but lighter carbon-fiber wheels will be made available after launch.
Also available will be a Handling Package that adds stiffer springs, larger front and rear sway bars, a revised rear wing with an integrated Gurney flap, and wider wheels measuring 19×10.5 inches up front and 19×11 at the rear, or an inch wider front and rear than the standard wheels.
You’ll easily spot the Dark Horse thanks to unique styling treatments like the darkened surrounds for the LED headlights, darkened exhaust tips, gloss black grille with trapezoidal nostrils, and unique front fascia. Aerodynamics elements include the front splitter, side skirts, and fixed rear wing. The Dark Horse has a unique badge with a forward-facing horse, and the model comes with an exclusive shade of metallic paint called Blue Ember. Various graphics and blue paint for the brake calipers will be available.
There are treatments for the interior, too. The list includes a thicker steering wheel wrapped in suede and featuring blue accent stitching. The blue stitching extends to the door panels and seats, gear shift surround, and center console, and the seats are also blue and feature their own perforation pattern. Models equipped with the automatic also receive silver-colored shifter paddles.
The hardcore Dark Horse S and Dark Horse R models won’t be street legal and will come stripped of any features not required for track use. In place of these will be an FIA-certified roll cage, safety nets, a race seat with safety belts (front passenger seat available), and a steering wheel with quick disconnect. There will also be electrical disconnects and a fire suppression system.
Most of the standard controls will also be replaced by dedicated switches and knobs located on a new central panel. There will also be new controls for features like a pit speed limiter and a performance data recorder.
Performance upgrades over the regular Dark Horse will include upgraded brakes, Multimatic DSSV dampers, an adjustable rear wing, high-flow exhaust, hood pins, and tow hooks.
The Dark Horse R will be similar to the S but feature serialization that approves it for racing, including potentially in a new one-make series. Some of the additional upgrades will be strategic seam welding, a larger fuel cell, and unique wheels.
The 2024 Ford Mustang reaches dealerships next summer. Specific timing and pricing for the Dark Horse models will be announced closer to that date.
Related Articles
- Preview: 2024 Ford Mustang injects modern tech into the traditional pony car
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- 1,972-hp Ford Pro Electric Supervan hits the ‘Ring
- 2023 Dodge Charger King Daytona arrives with 807 hp as fifth Last Call model
- 2023 Chrysler 300C brings back big V-8 power before production ends
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:37Z
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Ford unveiled the 2024 Mustang on Wednesday night during the media preview of the Detroit Auto Show, but the biggest news for its legendary pony car might be what hasn’t changed. The coupe and convertible will not be electrified and will instead carry over updated versions of Ford’s 2.3-liter turbo-4 and classic 5.0-liter V-8.
That V-8 could be alone in the atrophying muscle car world. Production of the Dodge Challenger and Dodge Charger will end at the end of 2023, and with it the many V-8 variants wrenched out of Dodge SRT’s mechanical wizardry. Dodge plans to ditch combustion engines altogether in favor of a new take on the electric car. The production-leaning Charger Daytona Concept flexes muscle car traits with a roaring exhaust sound and multi-speed transmission packaged in a drop-dead gorgeous design.
While we know the plans for Ford and Dodge muscle cars, Chevy remains inscrutable. Updates to the Camaro have been sparse the past couple of years, and rumors suggest production of the current sixth-generation Camaro will end in 2024 and it will be replaced by an electric performance sedan. With Chevy planning on selling full battery electric versions of the 2024 Chevy Equinox EV and 2024 Chevy Blazer EV alongside internal-combustion-engine versions of those popular crossovers, could Chevy carry two Camaros with different propulsion systems?
That seems unlikely. But it also seems unlikely that Chevy will leave Ford alone as the only builder and seller of a bona fide American icon, the V-8 muscle car. Which one is more unlikely?
Chevy has been playing follow the leader as it ramps up its Ultium battery propulsion system strategy. The Chevy Silverado EV followed the Ford F-150 Lightning to market, and the Blazer EV followed the Ford Mustang Mach-E to market in the booming electric crossover segment.
Does the market still support multiple ICE muscle cars? In 2021, Ford ceded its muscle car crown to the aging Dodge Challenger, which outsold the Mustang by about 1,900 units. Dodge sold roughly 54,300 Challengers to the Mustang’s 52,400. Camaro sales have been running at less than half of that. GM sold fewer than 22,000 Camaros in 2021 compared to around 50,000 in 2018 and 2019. When the sixth-gen Camaro launched for 2016, sales were above 70,000, as they had been for nearly the decade prior.
There’s no denying the Camaro slide, but would an automaker abandoned a segment it helped create that still accounted for 120,000 vehicles annually?
What is known for sure is the continuation of the Ford Mustang. Expected in dealerships early next summer, the 2024 Ford Mustang sports a more wind-swept style and hosts many technological upgrades. The seventh-generation pony car wears new body panels, according to Ford, and will have more downforce and a lower coefficient of drag from its predecessors. The low beltline, long nose, and short deck remain, but the rear haunches flex out in a more Camaro-like way, and Ford has updated its tri-bar lighting theme front and back.
Inside, every Mustang comes with a 12.4-inch digital instrument cluster configurable with five different themes. The most interesting theme is Fox Body that projects an analog look in homage to the third-generation Mustang that spanned the ’80s and courted a new generation of Mustang fans. It will be complemented by a 13.2-inch infotainment touchscreen, and on top models the screens will be housed under a single piece of glass.
A flat-bottomed steering wheel will be mixed with higher grade cabin materials with more soft-touch surfaces, contrast stitching, and a red upholstery option. An electronic drift brake presents a new take on an endangered feature, with a handle that turns 90 degrees instead of a pull-up hand brake. The key fob enables remote start and remote engine revving.
Underneath the whizz buzz bang, the Mustang remains mostly the same, riding on the same platform since the sixth-gen version launched for 2015. The lower control arms, rear suspension links, and other suspension components have been updated, and the steering system has been revised for a quicker steering ratio, Ford said.
Ford didn’t disclose specs, but the engines receive updates that should boost power and increase fuel efficiency on the turbo-4. The 2022 Ford Mustang has a 310-hp 2.3-liter turbo-4 that can be upgraded to 330 hp with a Performance Pack.
The 5.0-liter V-8 channels more air with the latest update, and Ford suggests the upgrades should improve output beyond the current 450-hp rating for the GT and 470-hp rating in the Mach 1. A 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse aims for an output of 500 hp, and spawns a series of track-ready Dark Horse variants. A 6-speed manual or 10-speed automatic transmission carry over for the turbo-4 and V-8, and the rear wheels and only the rear wheels get all the torque.
An optional Performance Pack can be added to both the GT and turbo-4 for greater handling and stability with a front strut tower brace and a limited-slip rear differential. Available add-ons with the Performance Pack include a magnetic suspension, wider rear wheels and tires, larger brakes, Recaro bucket seats, and an active exhaust.
Expect more news and specs, and perhaps an announcement from Chevy, in the months preceding the arrival of the 2024 Ford Mustang next summer.
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- Nissan discontinues Rogue Sport small crossover
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:45Z
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Sponsored Content
Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer are getting a lot of attention, as they are having great success and are in demand. It all starts with an elegant yet robust exterior design. Hollywood meets Nashville, and they are also jeep capable. The first thing you see is upfront, a beautiful seven-slat grille that shimmers in the daylight. Framed by two headlights with LED daytime running lights.
The Wagoneer has a commanding presence. It’s more than two hundred and fifty inches in length, and for the adventure-minded enthusiast, you have up to ten inches of ground clearance.
It doesn’t matter how big or small you are. The power retracting side steps can be a savior of the day in any weather to get in and out.
Both models have V8 power performance, the Wagoneer has a 5.7L engine, and the Grand Wagoneer comes with a standard 6.4L engine. Both have best-in-class towing capacity.
The back is big and bold with Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer in beautiful, big letters and those rims coming in at a large twenty-two inches.
Inspired by their predecessor. The Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer have both a timeless and elegant look. But for me, the modern sophistication is what truly sets them apart.
The Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer give you five electronically controlled driving modes, starting with rock mode. Followed by sand, mud, snow, and my favorite sport mode. When in sport mode, not only does it give you better handling performance, but it drops the vehicle to the ground, giving it an aggressive stance.
Although the Wagoneer is a part of the jeep family. There’s only one place on the vehicle that actually says Jeep. See if you can find it when you test drive one.
If you like the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer as much as we do, you can find out more by going to Wagoneer.com. You’ll learn everything you need about New York’s new favorite three-row luxury SUV.
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| 2022-09-21T00:29:52Z
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HOUSTON (CW39) — As the seasons change, so does the flavor of ice cream and Blue Bell is doing just that. Salted Caramel Brownie is coming to store shelves near you. It’s a creamy vanilla ice cream combined with luscious chocolate brownies and a salted caramel swirl.
Carl Breed, general sales manager for Blue Bell
Ice cream is a favorite dessert throughout the year, no matter what the weather is outside. Our new Salted Caramel Brownie Ice Cream is the perfect flavor to usher in the cooler temperatures. There are big chunks of soft brownies in every bite. The caramel swirl has a hint of salt, and it complements the chocolate brownies perfectly.
Blue Bell also says it has created a delicious recipe for a Salted Caramel Brownie Ice Cream Pie made with
its new flavor. Find out how to make this treat along with many others at the company’s
official Pinterest page, pinterest.com/bluebellicecream, or on its website, bluebell.com/recipes. Salted Caramel Brownie is also available in the half gallon and pint sizes while supplies last.
Also, now in stores from Blue Bell is Strawberry Lemonade Ice Cream. The flavor is a delicious
strawberry ice cream swirled with a refreshing lemonade sherbet sprinkled with lemon flavored flakes. It
is sold in the pint and half gallon sizes. For more information about Blue Bell and for a complete list of products now available in stores
visit www.bluebell.com.
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:00Z
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MASTIC BEACH, N.Y. (WPIX) – A lost cat in New York found her way home after several days and rang her owner’s doorbell, leading to a heartwarming reunion recorded on video.
Eight-year-old Lily enjoys spending time outdoors and exploring. The cat “owned the block” in her old neighborhood, owner Stefanie Whitley said, but always made sure to come home.
Then her family moved to a new neighborhood in Mastic Beach on Long Island. “I was really nervous about bringing her to a new area, how she would react,” Whitley said.
Whitley was right to be worried. About two weeks after moving in, Lily went missing.
“Normally she comes home, but this time felt different, and I didn’t think that Lily was coming home,” Whitley said.
About four days after Lily disappeared, Whitley and her family were sitting at home when their Ring doorbell rang. Whitley said she and her family were startled, wondering who was at their door that late at night.
To their surprise, Lily’s face popped up on their TV screen and Alexa device. The cat can be seen in the Ring video pawing at the doorbell, seemingly begging to be let inside.
“Oh my God!” Whitley can be heard when she goes outside and reunites with Lily.
“We all gasped. We were laughing. We were emotional. We were crying. It was a great moment,” Whitley said.
Whitley believes Lily “clearly” knew what she was doing when she activated the Ring doorbell.
“I don’t know how she found us, but she definitely knows what the Ring camera is,” Whitley said. “Every time the notification goes off, she’ll look toward the door. She knows what she’s doing.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:08Z
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Safaricom-backed logistics startup, Sendy has fully transitioned into a B2B business after its product Sendy Transport became exclusively available to only businesses. “Sendy Transport will now be available to businesses only. Convert your account by 30th Sept,” an SMS that the company recently sent to its last remaining B2C customers reads.
Up until this move, Sendy Transport was the startup’s only product still in use by individuals. What this means is that Sendy has fully transitioned into a B2B model as all of its products: Sendy Transport, Sendy Supply and Sendy Fulfillment now solely serve businesses.
“Our mission has been, and continues to be, empowering businesses to trade with ease, and thus we built Sendy Transport for businesses and corporates. As such we will continue to develop it to address and support our business customers’ pain points,” a statement to TechCabal reads.
Sendy officially launched in 2015 as an on-demand delivery platform which linked clients to a network of transporters for goods deliveries.
The startup was established to digitally transform the logistics industry in Kenya, but it has met with multiple challenges since its inception. In 2016, for example, it closed its boda-boda or taxi-hailing business after two months amidst growing competition in the taxi industry in Kenya.
In August, the Nairobi-based startup told TechCabal that it was laying off 10% of its 300-strong workforce. According to its CEO Mesh Alloys, the decision was in response to the “current realities impacting tech companies globally”.
Some of its competitors, Kobo360 and Lori Systems, both based in Nigeria, have struggled during 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying lockdown restrictions, and have had to restrategize.
Although Sendy admitted that the pandemic brought with it new challenges in the logistics sector, it started adapting to the new changes. “This shaped a new reality and accelerated our growth in ways that made it easier for retailers to do business,” a document Sendy shared with TechCabal reads. In 2021, despite the challenges of the pandemic, the company expanded to Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
In 2021, the company expressed plans to raise $100 million in 2022 to fund its expansion plan to countries like Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria. But to date, it has only raised a total of $26.5 million from 13 investors, no thanks to the global tech downturn which has made VC less likely to flush startups with money. In addition, sources privy to the matter told TechCabal that Sendy, which currently operates in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Ivory Coast, is halting its expansion into Egypt and South Africa.
Sendy has different products that help businesses sell, move goods, and get financing. Sendy Transport allows businesses to move small packages, medium-sized goods, or large cargo. Sendy Supply allows businesses to purchase stock at competitive prices from multiple manufacturers, and provides credit financing. With Sendy Fulfillment, businesses, mostly online brands and large ecommerce brands can store and distribute their products.
As VC funding dries up, startups like Sendy are seeking the clearest path to profitability, and this might just be one of those moves.
“We are not cutting down any part of our business model. Our current model supports our long-term strategy which is to continue building easy solutions for businesses using our products. So far, all our products are aligned with this goal,” the remainder of the statement reads.
On Friday, the 23rd of September, TechCabal in partnership with Moniepoint (by TeamApt) will host the most important players in tech and business on and off the continent to discuss the future of commerce in Africa. Register now to attend.
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:12Z
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NEW YORK (AP) — In a memoir Anne Heche worked on over the past year, the actor shared candid thoughts on her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres in the late 1990s, when they were among Hollywood’s first openly gay couples.
“I was labeled ‘outrageous’ because I fell in love with a woman. I had never been with a woman before I dated Ellen,” Heche wrote in “Call Me Anne,” which Start Publishing has scheduled for January. Heche, whose films included “Donnie Brasco” and “Wag the Dog,” died Aug. 14 at age 53 after a car crash in Los Angeles.
In her lifetime, Heche said that Hollywood effectively blacklisted her because of her being with DeGeneres, who around the same time made television history by having her character in the sitcom “Ellen” come out as gay.
“I did not, personally, identify as a lesbian. I simply fell in love! It was, to be clear, as odd to me as anyone else. There were no words to describe how I felt,” Heche wrote in her book, a sequel to the memoir “Call Me Crazy,” published in 2001. “Gay didn’t feel right, and neither did straight. Alien might be the best fit, I sometimes thought. What, why, and how I fell in love with a person instead of their gender, I would have loved to have answered if anyone had asked, but as I said earlier, no one ever did. I am happy that I was able to tell you in this book — once and for all.”
Start, an independent publisher based in Hoboken, New Jersey, shared the excerpt this week with The Associated Press. The book’s publisher, Jarred Weisfeld, says that he signed a deal with Heche in May and that she had turned in a manuscript shortly before she died. She will also write about having Harrison Ford as a mentor, along with stories about Alec Baldwin, Ivan Reitman and Oliver Stone, among others.
The book’s release was first announced by Publishers Weekly. Heche had mentioned writing a memoir during a podcast earlier this year, in which she promised that “some of the truths” about her and DeGeneres would be included.
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:15Z
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BERLIN (AP) — A Berlin museum opens fully to the public this week with a very modern take on the display of cultural items from around the world and the debate over demands for some of them to be returned to their homelands.
The east wing of the Humboldt Forum contains items from the city’s Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art. It will display some 20,000 objects, among them dozens of Benin Bronzes that were stolen in Africa during colonial times — as well as an exhibit explaining to visitors how most of them are soon to return to Nigeria.
The east wing opened Thursday with a preview for reporters and will be open to the public starting Saturday. The west wing of the museum — located in the heart of of the German capital, next to the neoclassical Museum Island complex — opened in 2021. It also contains items from the two collections.
The objects on display offer a survey of the world’s cultures and have been chosen to place a new emphasis on the importance of art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas.
During the development of the exhibition, German curators worked closely together with teams from countries and regions where many of the objects originated.
“It was important for us to develop the narratives of these objects in cooperation with colleagues from all over the world,” said Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, an authority that oversees many of Berlin’s museums including the Humboldt Forum.
“This house was created through dialogue and exchange,” Parzinger added. “Our commitment to openness and transparency, the recognition of colonial injustice with resulting restitutions … will continue to define our work in the future.”
Earlier this year, Germany and Nigeria signed an agreement about the return of 514 objects from the famous Benin Bronzes collection that were looted from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria, by a British colonial expedition in 1897.
The artifacts ended up spread far and wide. Hundreds were sold to collections such as the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, which has one of the world’s largest groups of historical objects from the Kingdom of Benin. Many of them date from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
While the first pieces will be returned to Nigeria later this year, about a third of the collection will remain on loan in Berlin for an initial period of 10 years.
In one of the galleries, 40 of the Benin Bronzes will be presented at the opening. They include iconic cast bronze memorial heads, carved ivory tusks and rectangular relief plaques.
A second gallery is dedicated to illustrating the restitution process. In video installations, German and Nigerian scholars, artists and representatives of museums and the royal family in Benin City explain from multiple perspectives the history and significance of the objects and give their view on the current restitution debate.
Other objects that will be on display include a sixth-century Buddhist cave temple from Kizil, located near Kucha on the Northern Silk Road in China, an exhibition of textiles and pottery from Central Asia, and traditional buildings and houses from different regions in Oceania such as a meeting house from Palau from 1907, as well as a replica of an Abelam cult house from Papua New Guinea.
Several galleries are dedicated to art from the Americas. Among the highlights are large stone reliefs from the Aztecs, and a 16-square-meter (172-square-foot) painted cloth with inscriptions by Mixtec, Nahuatl and Choco artists from what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which records social events spanning a period of more than 500 years.
In addition to the permanent exhibitions, there will be changing temporary exhibits.
Among those shown during the opening of the museum, is a collection of around 60 objects that was compiled by Francis La Flesche, a native American ethnologist who was born on the Omaha Reservation in the United States’ Midwest in 1857. La Flesche collected the items, such as clothes, decoration and ornaments on behalf of the Ethnological Museum in the 19th century hoping to preserve parts of his culture this way.
All in all, the collections of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art comprise about 500,000 objects, which were previously shown in museums in the city’s Dahlem district. Less than 3 percent will be on display in the Humboldt Forum.
Since the opening last year of the west wing of the Humboldt Forum — which is a partial replica of a Prussian palace that was demolished by East Germany’s communist government after World War II — more than 1.5 million people have visited.
Entrance to the museum will be free at least until the end of this year.
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:21Z
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Wearing a blue suit, black hat and multi-colored socks, master keyboardist Booker T. Jones leaned away from the Hammond B3 organ, tilted his head back and worked the keys and foot pedals as he played the funky and familiar hit “Green Onions” for a head-bobbing, toe-tapping crowd at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.
The intimate performance by Jones and a tight backup band Wednesday was part of an event at the Memphis, Tennessee, museum that previewed its yearlong 20th anniversary celebration planned for 2023.
Built on the site of the former Stax Records, the museum celebrates the influential soul music born from the studio where Otis Redding, Booker T. and the MGs, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and others recorded some of American popular music’s most memorable songs.
“Right here in this space, you are on hallowed ground,” said Pat Mitchell Worley, president and CEO of the Soulsville Foundation, which oversees the museum.
Jones’ rousing renditions of “Hip Hugger,” “Time is Tight,” “Soul Limbo,” and the 60-year-old “Green Onions” followed a video announcing events celebrating the museum’s opening two decades ago. They include a year’s worth of free field trips for students, a concert series featuring performances by national acts, and a mobile “pop-up” vehicle that will take Stax music, merchandise and more to locations like Austin’s SXSW, Nashville’s Americana Fest and New Orleans’ Essence Festival.
A Memphis native, Jones, 77, said he feels fortunate to have been able to develop his musical talent just a few blocks from his house, at Stax. Jones said he feels “an openness” when he walks into the Stax building.
“I guess you can say that there are locations on the Earth, some more conducive to art than others,” Jones told reporters before his performance. “This is a location that is conducive to art.”
The museum is a top attraction in Memphis, where Graceland, Sun Studio, Beale Street and the Memphis Rock N’ Soul Museum also treat tourists to the music created in the Mississippi River city.
Stax fostered a raw sound born from Black church music, the blues and rock ‘n’ roll. It featured tight rhythm sections, powerful horn players, and singers who could be sexy and soulful in one tune, loud and forceful in another.
Some of Stax’s musicians grew up near the studio, which moved into the old Capitol Theatre in 1960. They called it “Soulsville U.S.A.” — a name that stuck to the surrounding working class neighborhood, now called Soulsville.
Jones was a member of Booker T. and the M.G.s, a biracial quartet that served as the recording studio’s house band, backing up many of the studio’s hitmakers. Along with the multiracial Memphis Horns, they provided the foundation for songs that became to soul music what Motown was to rhythm and blues.
“Working at Stax was like giving a daily sermon to the world, of being open with loving emotions to others regardless of who they were or looked like,” said David Porter, who wrote hits such as Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man.”
Stax Records enjoyed massive success into the late 1960s. But Redding and four members of the Bar-Kays died in a plane crash in 1967, and the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 intensified racial division in Memphis and around the country.
By the mid-1970s, Stax was out of business due to financial turmoil and legal problems. The building that housed the studio was demolished.
The museum opened in May 2003. It offers self-guided tours and includes a film detailing the studio’s history, exhibits chronicling the origins and development of Memphis soul music, listening stations and memorabilia such as Hayes’ flashy Cadillac car.
Adjacent to the museum is the Stax Music Academy, an after-school program where teenagers from some of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods learn how to dance, sing and play instruments. The Soulsville Foundation operates the museum, the academy and a charter school.
Porter, who co-wrote “Hold On I’m Comin” after songwriting partner Isaac Hayes called for him to hurry up while Porter was in the bathroom, is among several Stax ambassadors for the anniversary. Others include guitarist and songwriter Steve Cropper, former Stax Records executive and owner Al Bell and singer-songwriter Eddie Floyd, of “Knock on Wood” fame.
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:28Z
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NEW YORK (AP) — CNN is shaking up its morning lineup, saying Thursday that Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins will team up as hosts of a “reimagined” program that debuts later this year.
They will replace the current team of John Berman and Brianna Keilar at “New Day,” which airs on the news network from 6 to 9 a.m. Eastern.
It’s the first major programming move announced by new CNN Chairman Chris Licht, who has an extensive background in morning television. He helped develop “Morning Joe” at MSNBC and also produced “CBS This Morning” in the early 2010s.
“There is no stronger combination of talent than Don, Poppy and Kaitlan to deliver on our promise of a game-changing morning news program,” Licht said in a statement. “They are each uniquely intelligent, reliable and compelling. Together they have a rare and palpable chemistry.”
Much of the news Licht has made since starting his job in May has been subtractions, canceling the “Reliable Sources” media show and letting go host Brian Stelter, as well as parting ways with legal affairs reporter Jeffrey Toobin and White House correspondent John Harwood.
The morning show announcement also opens another hole in CNN’s prime-time lineup, where Lemon has hosted the 10 p.m. weeknight hour. CNN still hasn’t replaced Chris Cuomo at 9 p.m. after he was fired last December.
Lemon said in a statement that his last eight years as a prime-time host have been an incredible ride, but that it’s time to “shake things up.”
“I was honestly floored when Chris Licht asked me to do this and I’m honored by his belief in me,” Lemon said. “It’s going to be a thrill ride to take on this challenge with Poppy and Kaitlan.”
“New Day” will get a new name, format and set in the revamp. CNN said those details, including the premiere date, will be announced later.
For Harlow, the change means getting up earlier. She currently anchors the 9 to 11 a.m. hours on CNN, where she has worked since 2008.
Collins, 30, has had a meteoric rise at CNN. She joined the network in 2017 and was named the network’s chief White House correspondent last year. She’ll be leaving the White House, but unlike Lemon and Harlow, Collins was also named “chief correspondent” of the new morning show, meaning she’ll often be reporting from news locations.
Mornings are particularly competitive in television news. Besides network offerings “Good Morning America” on ABC, the “Today” show on NBC and “CBS Mornings,” cable competitors have well-established franchises with “Fox & Friends” and “Morning Joe.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:43Z
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CHICAGO (AP) — Federal prosecutors this week scored multiple convictions against R. Kelly at the singer’s trial in Chicago, but they lost on the headline charge — that Kelly obstructed justice by rigging his 2008 state child pornography trial, at which jurors acquitted him.
Kelly co-defendant and longtime business manager Derrel McDavid was also acquitted on the same count, as well as three other charges.
After the verdict, U.S. Attorney John Lausch expressed disappointment in not winning convictions across the board. But he said Kelly was still looking at a prison sentence of 10 to 90 years. He said he was pleased Kelly was “finally being held accountable.”
Sentencing is set for Feb. 23. Kelly, 55, is already serving a 30-year prison term imposed by a federal judge in New York for racketeering and sex trafficking.
At least one legal expert said obstruction of justice charges aren’t generally hard to prove. “But in this case,” said Phil Turner, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago, “the facts just weren’t there.”
Jurors also acquitted Kelly of receiving child pornography and one count of producing child pornography. He was convicted of producing child pornography and enticing girls for sex. His attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, plans to appeal.
Here’s a look at the trial-fixing charge:
WHAT DID PROSECUTORS ALLEGE?
The claim was that Kelly and McDavid conspired to ensure key witnesses at the 2008 trial would lie about Kelly’s sexual abuse of girls and refuse to testify.
Prosecutors also alleged Kelly and McDavid concealed critical evidence. Witnesses at the just-ended trial described their frantic scramble to recover lost Kelly videos of himself sexually abusing girls.
They offered six — and in at least one case seven — figure payoffs in cash for the return of videos, which prosecutors said they knew would lead to a conviction in 2008.
The conspirators, said prosecutors, applied particular pressure on a girl — now 37 and referred to in federal court as “Jane” — and her parents. State and federal prosecutors said she was the girl Kelly is seen sexually abusing on a VHS tape that was at the heart of the 2008 trial.
DID THE PRESSURE WORK?
Prosecutors said it did.
Jane and her parents said they lied to a grand jury in the early 2000s about Kelly’s sexual abuse, and they didn’t testify at the 2008 trial. Jurors at that trial said they had no choice but to acquit Kelly because the victim did not testify.
“That jury was scammed. They were scammed by Robert Kelly and his fixers,” prosecutor Jeannice Appenteng told jurors this week, using Kelly’s given first name.
Federal prosecutors said the payoffs that started in the early 2000s included funding trips by Jane and her parents to the Bahamas and Cancun, Mexico.
Critically to their theory of the case, federal prosecutors also alleged Kelly intermittently paid Jane’s rent — by then in her 30s — until just several years ago to ensure she kept quiet.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES FOR PROSECUTORS?
Steps Kelly and others allegedly took to fix the 2008 trial happened two decades ago, so memories of how the purported crime unfolded have dimmed. At least four men who may have had direct knowledge of what happened have since died.
Among them was Jane’s father, who died a year ago.
For the child pornography count, the evidence included video that jurors saw. On enticement, they heard directly from Kelly accusers — Jane, Nia, Pauline and Tracy. One of the enticement counts they didn’t convict him on was related to an accuser who did not testify.
WHAT WITNESSES DID PROSECUTORS CALL?
Their star witness was Jane.
On the stand, she said publicly for the first time that she was the girl in the video at the center of both the federal trial and the trial 14 years ago. She said she was 14 in the video and that the man was Kelly, who would have been around 30.
She testified she lied to a state grand jury in 2002 when she said that it was not her. She said she wanted to protect Kelly, and added: “I also did not want that person to be me. … I was ashamed.”
Jane’s mother, who went by “Susan,” also testified. She said she lied to the state grand jury, in part because she and her husband felt threatened by Kelly and feared for their lives.
Susan said she, her husband and Kelly cried as the parents confronted Kelly about sexually abusing their daughter. While asking for forgiveness, she said Kelly also said: “You are either with us or against us.”
She took Kelly’s words as a threat. “We were very, very frightened,” she said.
Another key witness was Kelly’s ex-girlfriend Lisa Van Allen. She told jurors she stole a sex video around 2000 from a gym bag Kelly had that was full of such recordings on a rare occasion when he left it unattended.
Van Allen said McDavid told her in 2007 that she should have been killed for all the trouble she caused Kelly.
WHAT DID DEFENSE LAWYERS TELL JURORS?
They repeatedly attacked the credibility of the government’s main witnesses, noting that most testified with immunity, including Jane, her mom and Van Allen.
“They came in here to tell the government’s version of the truth,” Bonjean, Kelly’s lawyer, said.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE JURORS HAD DOUBTS ABOUT?
Kelly’s payments for Jane’s rent, what they were for and how long they lasted was critical to deciding guilt on the trial-fixing charge.
That’s because the federal statute of limitation says someone can’t be charged with such a conspiracy if it ceased within five years of an indictment.
Kelly and McDavid were indicted on that and other charges in 2019. So prosecutors had to show the conspiracy ran up to at least 2014. The rent payments to Jane after 2014, they say, was part of the continuous conspiracy.
Attorneys for Kelly and McDavid balked at the claim that the rent payments were hush money. They noted that Kelly remained friendly with Jane and her parents for many years after the 2008 trial. Jane testified, too, that she cared deeply for Kelly at least until his 2019 indictment.
Defense lawyers argued that, even if there ever was a conspiracy, it didn’t last beyond 2014.
WHAT WERE SOME OF OTHER ARGUMENTS?
Defense attorneys said several core government interpretations of things Kelly said were a stretch.
For example, they said Kelly’s remark to Jane’s parents that “you are either with us or against us” could have meant any number of things — not only that Kelly would hurt them financially or otherwise.
Bonjean also questioned why Susan continued to mix with Kelly socially for the next 20 years, if she felt so threatened.
McDavid’s lawyer, Beau Brindley, also mocked Van Allen’s claim that McDavid threatened to kill her, sarcastically referring to his client as a “murderous accountant.”
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Joey Cappelletti and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mtarm and find AP’s full coverage of the R. Kelly trial at https://apnews.com/hub/r-kelly
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| 2022-09-21T00:30:58Z
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NEW YORK (AP) — A biography of the late George Floyd and poetry by Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds were among the works included Thursday on long lists for the National Book Awards.
“His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, was a nonfiction nominee, along with John A. Farrell’s “Ted Kennedy: A Life,” New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz’s “Lost & Found: A Memoir,” Anna Badkhen’s “Bright Unbearable Reality: Essays” and Natalie Hodges’ “Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time.”
Olds’ “Balladz” was among the 10 nominees on the poetry list, which also included Jenny Xie’s “The Rupture Tense,” Quincy Troupe’s “Duende,” Sherry Shenoda’s “Mummy Eaters” and Jay Hopler’s “Still Life,” a collection in which he confronts his diagnosis for terminal cancer. The book was published shortly before he died, in June, at age 51.
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, has previously announced long lists for young people’s literature and books in translation and will announce fiction nominees Friday. The lists will be narrowed to five on Oct. 4, and winners will be announced Nov. 16.
Nonfiction nominees also include Meghan O’Rourke’s “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness,” Imani Perry’s “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,” David Quammen’s “Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus,” Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ “The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir” and Kelly Lytle Hernández’s “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands.”
In poetry, other nominees include John Keene’s “Punks: New & Selected Poems,” Roger Reeves’ “Best Barbarian,” Rio Cortez’s “Golden Ax,” Shelley Wong’s “As She Appears” and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s “Look at This Blue.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:31:05Z
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BEIRUT (AP) — The news of a Lebanese dance group winning the TV competition show America’s Got Talent brought a rare moment of joy on Thursday to many in this crisis-hit Mideast country.
Mayyas, an all-female dance troupe, dazzled the show’s judges and audience on the competition’s 17th season before winning $1 million and a headlining show at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The group paid tribute to their native country during their performances and on social media in the buildup to the finale.
The victory is a major boost for any aspiring artist. But inside Lebanon, where the political leadership is scrambling to overcome years of economic and political turmoil, there was a high-profile rush to congratulate the dance troupe.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and a handful of lawmakers congratulated Mayyas on social media, while President Michel Aoun’s office in a statement said the Lebanese head of state will award the dancers Order of Merit medallions upon their return home.
In their hypnotic winning performance in the finale, Mayyas dressed in gold-colored outfits, as they fluttered in sync on stage in a performance that brought together traditional belly-dancing and inspirations from India, the United States and the United Kingdom, where their choreographer attended years of dance workshops.
Holding white feathers, they formed a flowing snow-covered cedar tree, Lebanon’s national symbol, before they swayed together holding glowing balls like a moving constellation of stars.
Lebanese, who have been in the grip of the ongoing crises for years, found a rare moment of pride and joy in their country.
“I am among Lebanese citizens who over the past three years went through severe financial, psychological, and social crises,” Marie Ziyade, a fan of Mayyas, told The Associated Press. “I have always had hope in the people of my country, but Mayyas brought me joy.”
Lebanon’s crippling economic crisis has pushed three-quarters of its population into poverty, and resulted in a massive brain drain of young professionals leaving the country for better job opportunities abroad.
Nour Massalkhi is among a surging number of the country’s youth who left Lebanon for better jobs and lives. Since leaving in 2019 when the economy crumbled, she says she’s felt a sense of “anger and despair” watching her native country’s rapid decline from her new home in the United Arab Emirates.
But she says Mayyas’ journey to the top on America’s Got Talent is a “small glimmer of hope” that Lebanon needs.
“Their win was only one example of the hundred other artists, innovators, and entrepreneurs that continue to persevere abroad,” Massalkhi told the AP. “Everything from the music to the choreography and down to their outfits are curated with extreme precision and honors our Lebanese roots.”
The dance group’s victory was never going to stop Lebanon’s economy from spiraling or help break months of political deadlock and tensions that have followed decades of rampant corruption, nefarious financial mismanagement and sect-based power-sharing. But it may have brought a brief moment of hope for the troubled country.
“Mayyas is a group based on merit, that brings together women who have a passion for dance and are talented at it, and coordinate together to put out creative and stunning work,” Ziyade said. “I wish our government would appoint ministers and officials the same way … we could have fixed our devastated country.”
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More at AP Entertainment: https://apnews.com/hub/entertainment
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| 2022-09-21T00:31:11Z
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LONDON (AP) — The death of Queen Elizabeth II set in motion a tightly choreographed series of ceremonial and constitutional steps, as Britain undergoes a period of national mourning and enters the reign of King Charles III.
A long-established 10-day plan, code-named Operation London Bridge, covers arrangements for the queen’s final journey to London and state funeral. Here is a look at what will happen in the coming days:
Thursday, Sept. 15
— The queen’s coffin lies in state in Westminster Hall in London for the first of four full days. Thousands of people joined a huge line to pay their respects to their late monarch. By midday, the queue had grown to 4.4 miles (7 kilometers), winding past Tower Bridge.
Friday, Sept. 16
— The king and queen consort will visit Wales, the last leg of their royal tour of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.
— On Friday night, the king and his three siblings — Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward — will hold a 15-minute vigil around the queen’s coffin as it lies in state.
Sunday, Sept. 18
— Britain holds a “national moment of reflection” with 1 minute of silence at 8.p.m. (1900 GMT, 3 p.m. EDT).
Monday, Sept. 19
— The queen’s lying in state period finishes early Monday morning.
— The king will lead the royal family in a procession that takes the queen’s coffin from Westminster Hall to nearby Westminster Abbey for a state funeral that begins at 11 a.m. Leaders and dignitaries from around the world are expected to attend.
— Two minutes of silence will be observed across the U.K. at the end of the funeral.
— The funeral marks the end of 10 days of national morning, and the day will be a public holiday across the U.K.
— A committal service for the queen takes place at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor on Monday afternoon. She will be interred alongside her late husband, Prince Philip, in the chapel in a private service later that night.
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Follow AP stories on the death of Queen Elizabeth II at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii
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| 2022-09-21T00:31:33Z
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DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas anesthesiologist was arrested on charges alleging that he injected nerve-blocking agents and other drugs into bags of intravenous fluids at the surgical center where he works, which led to the death of a co-worker and caused cardiac emergencies for several patients, authorities announced Thursday.
Dr. Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr. was arrested Wednesday on a criminal complaint alleging that he tampered with a consumer product causing death and intentional drug adulteration, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office for the northern district of Texas. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Ortiz, 59, remained in the Dallas County jail without bond on Thursday. Records don’t list an attorney for him.
According to the criminal complaint, a 55-year-old female coworker of Ortiz experienced a medical emergency and died June 21 immediately after treating herself for dehydration with an IV bag of what she thought was saline taken from the surgical center. An autopsy found that she died from a lethal dose of bupivacaine, a nerve-blocking drug that is rarely abused but often is used when an anesthetic is given.
On Aug. 24, an 18-year-old male patient experienced a cardiac emergency during routine sinus surgery, was intubated and transferred to an intensive care unit. Chemical analysis of the fluid from a saline bag used during his surgery revealed the presence of bupivacaine, the stimulant epinephrine and the topical anesthetic lidocaine, drugs that could have caused the patient’s sudden symptoms, according to prosecutors.
The surgical center staff concluded that the incidents suggested a pattern of intentional adulteration of IV bags used at the center. They identified 10 additional unexpected cardiac emergencies that occurred during otherwise unremarkable surgeries between May and August, which was an exceptionally high rate of complications over such a short period, according to the complaint.
The incidents began two days after Ortiz was notified of a disciplinary inquiry of an incident during which he allegedly “deviated from the standard of care” during an anesthesia procedure when a patient experienced a medical emergency. Ortiz, who had a history of disciplinary actions against him, expressed concern to other physicians over the disciplinary action and complained that the center was trying to “crucify” him.
The complaint alleges that all of the incidents occurred around the time Ortiz performed services at the facility, but none happened while he was on vacation.
In one instance captured in the surveillance video, agents observed him walking quickly from an operating room to an IV bag warmer, placing a bag inside, visually scanning the empty hallway and walking quickly away. Just over an hour later, a 56-year-old woman suffered a cardiac emergency during a scheduled cosmetic surgery after a bag from the warmer was used during her procedure, according to the complaint.
In another instance recorded on video, agents saw Ortiz leave his operating room with an IV bag concealed in what appeared to be a paper folder, swap the bag with another from the warmer and walk away. Roughly half an hour later, a 54-year-old woman suffered a cardiac emergency during a scheduled cosmetic surgery after a bag from the warmer was used during her procedure.
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| 2022-09-21T00:31:48Z
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BATON ROUGE (AP) — The Louisiana Bond Commission on Thursday approved a $39 million future line of credit for a critical New Orleans area power plant project that had become an unlikely pawn in the ongoing political tug-of-war over enforcing Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban.
For two months the commission — generally known for its historically actuarial role, rather than taking political stances — held up a necessary financial approval step for the project as a way to “send a message” to leaders in New Orleans, who have expressed opposition to enforcement of the ban.
But as members debated on Thursday, they asked if any abortion “laws were been broken” in New Orleans and noted that the project, which is critical to power drainage pumps that remove rainwater in a city that faces chronic flood problems, was too important to possibly delay.
“We need to quit messing around with this and go ahead and approve it,” said Republican Sen. Bret Allain, who voted in favor of the item in August as well.
Battles between Democratic city leaders and Republicans in reliably red states have been happening across the country since the U.S. Supreme Court decided to end constitutional protections for abortion in June.
Dozens of prosecutors nationwide — including in Florida — have promised not to pursue charges against those seeking or providing abortions. In St. Louis, hours after the mayor signed a measure providing $1 million for travel to abortion clinics in other states, the Missouri Attorney General sued to block it. City councils in places such as Austin, Texas, and Nashville have passed measures urging law enforcement not to prioritize abortion ban enforcement.
In Louisiana, legislation bans all abortions except if there is substantial risk of death or impairment to the patient if they continue with the pregnancy and in the case of “medically futile” pregnancies — when the fetus has a fatal abnormality. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.
Following the downfall of Roe v. Wade, the New Orleans city council passed a resolution directing police and prosecutors not to use city funds to enforce the ban and to make it “the lowest priority for enforcement.”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican who is considered a likely 2023 gubernatorial candidate, described city leaders’ opposition as a “dereliction of duty.” He turned to the Bond Commission, who voted to deny a preliminary authorization of the line of credit for a power plant project of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.
On Thursday, members voted in favor of the future line of credit, 11-1. The sole objection was from Landry’s stand-in Algelique Freel. During August’s Bond Commission meeting Landry urged fellow commission members to “use the tools at our disposal to bring” leaders in New Orleans opposing enforcement of the abortion ban “to heel.”
Freel read a letter from Landry on Thursday that reiterated his continuing stance.
“This issue is much more fundamental than Louisiana’s abortion ban,” the letter said. “Each and every elected official takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of our state. These New Orleans officials have taken it upon themselves to pick and choose which laws they are going to enforce, in direct contradiction to their oath. What’s next? Can leaders of other municipalities now simply refuse to enforce any state statutes they personally disagree with?”
Caught in the middle of the political wrangling has been a vital power plant project for the state’s most-populous city.
State Sen. Jimmy Harris, a Democrat who represents New Orleans, urged commission members to approve the future credit line — noting that the plant would help protect 384,000 people, allowing them clean water to drink and bathe in, instead of undergoing frequent water boil advisories. Currently the pumps are powered by outdated turbines, which also power the city’s water and sewage system.
“Find something nonessential to go after,” Paul Rainwater, a lobbyist for New Orleans, told the commission in August. “Not the Sewerage and Water Board, not the power station, not the pumps.”
In a state that has been devastated by natural disasters, flooding is at the forefront of mind — especially as Louisiana is in the midst of hurricane season. Forecasters have predicted there will be 14 to 20 named storms this year, including six to 10 hurricanes.
“For this Bond Commission to hold up flood protection in any form shouldn’t be our position,” said Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser.
While approval of a future line of credit will not immediately release project funds, the approval sends a “critical signal” to contractors that funds will be available to finish the project. The city and Entergy New Orleans are paying for the majority of the project’s cost, but Rainwater said state funding will be necessary to keep the project on track to be completed in 2024.
“The reckless politicization of this process was improper and risked the safety of our city,” New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno said following the commission’s vote. “Thankfully, this funding is moving forward, and the attempts to derail this essential project failed.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:31:55Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials are warning against overuse of the lone drug available to treat monkeypox, saying that even a small mutation in the virus could render the pills ineffective.
The Food and Drug Administration updated its guidance this week for Tpoxx, which has been prescribed to tens of thousands of patients with the virus.
In an online update, FDA officials cautioned that a single molecular change to monkeypox “could have a large impact on the antiviral activity of Tpoxx.” Since viruses are constantly evolving to overcome obstacles to infection, including drugs, regulators stressed that doctors should be “judicious” in prescribing the medication.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday said Tpoxx should no longer be given to otherwise healthy adults who are not suffering severe symptoms.
“For most patients with healthy immune systems, supportive care and pain control may be enough,” agency officials said in a statement.
The moves to scale back Tpoxx’s use follow weeks of criticism from HIV advocates and other patient groups who have urged the Biden administration to make the antiviral drug more widely available. Tpoxx is approved for the related smallpox virus, and its use against monkeypox is considered experimental and tightly controlled by federal officials.
Doctors wishing to prescribe the drug must submit an application to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, documenting their patient’s need and agreeing to track their results and any side effects. Officials have shipped 37,000 courses of the drug to physicians.
Tpoxx works by targeting a single protein found on monkeypox, smallpox and similar viruses. The FDA said this week that research in labs, animals and people suggests multiple ways in which monkeypox could develop resistance to the therapy.
The update came as federal officials on Thursday expressed cautious optimism about the trajectory of the outbreak, noting that new cases have fallen about 50% since their peak in August.
During a White House briefing, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky attributed the decline to vaccinations, educational outreach and individuals reducing behaviors linked to spread. The vast majority of U.S. cases have been in men who have sex with men, though officials emphasize that the virus can infect anyone.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official, noted that resistance is always a risk when using antiviral drugs.
“That’s why we’re uncomfortable when you only have a single drug,” Fauci told reporters. He added that a recently launched study of Tpoxx supported by the National Institutes of Health will track signs of mutation that could lead to resistance. The study is expected to enroll more than 500 patients across 60 U.S. sites.
Last month, the Biden administration invoked rare emergency powers to stretch the nation’s limited supply of monkeypox vaccines. And last week a separate declaration expedited the use of experimental tests for the virus.
But no changes were made to allow emergency use of Tpoxx, stoking complaints from groups representing gay and bisexual men.
The U.S. government’s national stockpile contains has more than 1.7 million courses of Tpoxx, originally manufactured for use during a potential bioterrorism attack.
The FDA approved the medication in 2018 under its “animal rule,” which allows approval based on animal data when human testing is unethical or unfeasible. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980 by the World Health Organization, ruling out the possibility for human studies.
Even though the drug was approved for smallpox, its effectiveness was measured in monkeys infected with monkeypox, considered a reasonable predictor of smallpox’s effect on humans. Animals receiving Tpoxx survived at higher rates than those on a placebo. But FDA officials have cautioned that results in animals must be confirmed in human testing.
“Without human trials, we don’t know if Tpoxx is beneficial for humans with monkeypox,” FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf told Senate lawmakers at a hearing this week.
The CDC reported last week that 3.5% of patients tracked through its Tpoxx program reported side effects, mainly headache and nausea.
The agency has only gotten back about 200 forms from physicians documenting patient’s initial symptoms and results, accounting for less than 1% of the doses shipped since the start of the outbreak.
___
Stobbe reported from New York
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:03Z
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Where goes Queen Elizabeth II, there — inevitably — go each of us and all those we love.
Because she reigned and lived for so long, seemingly immutable and immortal, the death of the British monarch after 70 years on the throne and 96 years of extraordinary life was a reminder, in Britain and beyond, that mortality and the march of time are inexorable, waiting for neither man nor woman, even a royal.
That kernel of wisdom from Elizabeth’s passing, the last of many she dispensed during her lifetime, is uncomfortable, even difficult, for the living. The reality of death — the queen’s being, by extension, a glimpse at the eventuality of their own — is part of the reason why some Britons mourning the only monarch most have known are feeling a complex soup of emotions.
Some have called bereavement counselors for solace and said her departure has rekindled grief for others they loved and lost. And Britons acknowledge that they sometimes struggle with the emotions of loss. “We don’t necessarily do grief and bereavement that well,” says Lucy Selman, a professor of palliative and end-of-life care at Bristol University.
British bereavement experts are hoping, however, that the queen’s death and its manner — at home, with family, in her beloved Balmoral Castle — might also spur a national conversation about the sometimes awkward relationship that Britons have with dying. In the process, the experts hope, it might prompt them to better prepare for the inevitable.
“If we are going to die in a way that we hope is peaceful, comfortable, and satisfying for us, we have got to do what the queen did: Recognize that it is going to happen at some point and put some plans in place for what we want and what we don’t want to happen,” says Kathryn Mannix, author of “With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well.”
Mannix has witnessed thousands of deaths in her 30-year career as a palliative care physician. She says it became clear in the last two years of Elizabeth’s life that she was dying. She recognized familiar patterns — in the slowdown of the habitually frenetic queen’s schedule and the preparations she made.
In her final months, Elizabeth made it known that when now-King Charles III succeeded her, she wanted his wife, Camilla, to be known as “Queen Consort.” And she lingered to see her grandson, Prince William, and his wife, Kate, relocate their family from central London to a royal cottage in Windsor.
One of her very last actions as queen was to ask Conservative Party leader Liz Truss to become her 15th and, as it turned out, last prime minister. That audience was last Tuesday, Sept. 6. It was the first time in Elizabeth’s reign that she’d been away from her official London residence, Buckingham Palace, for a prime ministerial appointment. Instead, she stayed in Balmoral, her Scottish vacation home, and Truss traveled to her.
Duty done, the queen died two days later. Mannix was reminded of other deaths she encountered in her medical career, of people who clung to life “to hear the news that a baby has been born or an exam has been passed” and who then relaxed “very quickly into dying.”
“There is nothing at all disrespectful about recognizing that even our monarchs are mortal and that what happens at the very ends of people’s lives is a recognizable pattern,” Mannix says. “We perhaps can use this as an occasion to start to think about knowing the pattern, being able to recognize the pattern, being able to talk to each other about the pattern — not being afraid of it.”
Described by the government as “a period of time for reflection,” the 10 days of national mourning decreed for Elizabeth’s passing are also, unavoidably, giving dying, loss and bereavement starring roles in the wall-to-wall media coverage of the queen’s life and times.
Bereavement experts say the rituals of communal grieving and the mourning period — practically an age in the swipe-and-tap era of short attention spans — are an exceptional and important opportunity for Britons to adjust to the loss of a queen and the gaining of a king, and to process the emotions and anxiety that enormous change sometimes brings.
For young people, “this might be first time that they learn about the finality of life and what that means,” says psychologist Bianca Neumann, the head of bereavement at Sue Ryder, a British charity that offers support through terminal illness and loss.
“We never really look at the end of life like that, unless we have to,” she says. “It would be nice as a nation if those conversations could become more mainstream.”
Psychotherapist Julia Samuel, who was a close friend of the late Princess Diana, is urging Britons to pause and digest their loss. Posting on Instagram, she said that “if we just keep going and doing what we normally do, our brain isn’t given the information to let us know that something very big has happened.”
“The task of mourning is to adjust to the reality of a death,” she says. “To do that, we need to let our brain kind of slow down.”
To be fair, British conversations about death and loss have taken place for centuries. In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare had his prince muse famously about the human condition, clutching the skull of Yorick, a court jester.
“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him,” Hamlet mourns. “Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs?”
Britons also surprised themselves and the world, casting off their reputation as a nation of stiff upper lips, with a deluge of public tears over the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
“The pendulum went from the one side to the other,” says Adrian Furnham, a London-based professor of organizational psychology at the Norwegian Business School and author of “Psychology 101: The 101 Ideas, Concepts and Theories that Have Shaped Our World.”
“It’s now much more acceptable, and indeed a lot more healthy, to ‘let it out,’” he says. “That has changed in this country, because there was a time when that was distinctly a sign of weakness.”
Still, Britons concede that they could do better in helping others and themselves through bereavement. Sue Ryder last year launched a “Grief Kind” campaign, to help people find words when those around them lose loved ones.
Selman is a founding director of the “Good Grief Festival,” started during the COVID-19 pandemic to break taboos around dying. She hopes mourning for the queen will produce “a bit more awareness and an ongoing discussion about bereavement and loss and our social attitudes towards it.”
“There’s a conversation to be had about what a good death is,” she says. “And what we can do to try and ensure that we have the death that we want.”
___
Follow AP stories on the death of Queen Elizabeth II and Britain’s royal family at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:10Z
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – New research shows Arkansas is making progress in the effort to prevent opioid overdose deaths.
The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement announced Wednesday that the state had made strides in expanding statewide access to the lifesaving opioid overdose treatment drug naloxone.
According to the ACHI study, naloxone prescriptions are up, with 4,848 receiving prescriptions in 2021, compared to only 86 people in 2017. Meanwhile, opioid prescriptions in Arkansas are declining. In 2021 prescriptions were issued to 238,774 Arkansas residents, a 38.1% drop from 2017 and its 385,774 prescriptions.
Access to the drug continues to improve through the ACHI-administered NaloxHome program, which launched on May 31 and is now at 21 hospitals in the state.
The program provides free naloxone to participating Arkansas hospitals to dispense to patients or caregivers of patients who have experienced an overdose or are at risk for an overdose at discharge from the emergency room. To date, 37 units of naloxone have been dispensed via the program.
ACHI studied naloxone and opioid prescriptions for Arkansans with Medicaid or commercial insurance for the fiscal years 2017 to 2021, using data from the Arkansas All-Payer Claims Database, which is part of the Arkansas Healthcare Transparency Initiative.
Naloxone was originally marketed and known under the name “Narcan” nasal spray but has now expanded and is available under different trade names. It may be injected or inhaled.
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:25Z
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The Biden administration narrowly avoided an infrastructure calamity on Thursday by brokering a tentative contract agreement between railroads and their workers, keeping the nation’s rail system intact.
The breakthrough comes after years of contentious negotiations and just before nearly 125,000 rail workers were set to strike as soon as Friday. Workers will now vote on whether to ratify the contract.
Here are five things to know about the railroad deal:
Unions secured hard-fought concessions
The agreement aims to address rail workers’ concerns about unsafe working conditions and obstacles to taking time off, the two largest railroad unions said Thursday.
The contract would allow workers to take time off for doctors’ appointments or other scheduled events without being penalized under railroads’ attendance policies, a key sticking point in negotiations. Workers complained that they often face roadblocks to taking even unpaid time off for any reason.
It would mandate two-person crews, another win for workers who warned about dangerous consequences of forcing workers to operate trains solo.
The deal also places new caps on workers’ health care costs, unions said.
“We listened when our members told us that a final agreement would require improvements to their quality of life as well as economic gains,” the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the SMART Transportation Division said in a statement.
Workers would receive 24 percent raises over five years, back pay and cash bonuses. Those terms are largely unchanged from recommendations released by a White House-appointed board last month.
The contract dispute isn’t over yet
Rail workers will soon vote on the tentative deal, and if any of the unions reject it, the nation will once again brace for a railroad strike.
Workers had largely opposed the presidential board’s contract recommendations, which ignored their demands for better quality of life and working conditions.
A recent survey from the SMART Transportation Division found that 78 percent of the union’s railroad workers would have rejected that contract. Another survey from grassroots group Railroad Workers United found that 9 in 10 railroad workers opposed it.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said Wednesday that its 4,900 railway workers voted to reject the Biden administration-appointed board’s contract. It delayed a strike until Sept. 29 to allow more time for negotiations.
It’s unclear whether the revamped contract announced Thursday does enough to win over workers, who eagerly awaited the specific terms of the deal.
A strike would devastate the US economy
A walkout would shut down the nation’s rail network, which carries nearly one-third of all cargo shipments, bringing large sections of the U.S. economy to a halt.
Huge amounts of food, clean water, fertilizer, fuel, lumber, packaged goods, finished cars and other products would not make it to their destinations, limiting supply and driving up prices.
A shutdown would also ravage supply chains as containers piled up at ports.
It would cost the economy $2 billion per day, according to estimates from the Association of American Railroads. Another estimate from the Michigan-based Anderson Economic Group found that it would cost consumers far less: $60 million on the first day and $90 million on the second.
Some railroads began to limit the transport of perishable food and fertilizer this week in anticipation of a strike, rattling the U.S. agricultural sector, which called on lawmakers to resolve the strike threat as soon as possible.
Commuter rail systems, which rely on freight rail lines, were also preparing for widespread service disruptions.
In response to Thursday’s deal, Amtrak said Thursday that it would restore long-distance lines that it suspended this week.
The Biden administration intervened in last-ditch effort
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh joined union and railroad negotiators for more than 20 straight hours to help spearhead a compromise, while President Biden also personally weighed in on talks.
Biden wanted to avoid massive economic disruptions just before November’s midterms and the holiday shopping season. For weeks, the White House urged both parties to compromise for the sake of the nation’s economy, which is still struggling with red-hot inflation.
“This is a great deal for both sides, in my opinion,” Biden said Thursday.
Congress no longer needs to act, for now
Congress this week was preparing to step in and use their authority to block the strike, but lawmakers were divided on how to intervene.
GOP senators on Wednesday pushed for a bill to force unions to accept the terms outlined by the presidential board, but Democrats blocked the resolution, arguing that negotiators should be given up until Friday’s deadline to reach a deal.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee were ready with legislation to prevent a railroad shutdown if negotiations collapsed.
“Thankfully this action may not be necessary,” Pelosi said in a statement.
If workers in any of the rail unions vote to reject the tentative agreement, the issue could come back before Congress.
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:32Z
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) says he knows who recorded him in a phone call with GOP colleagues last year when he criticized former President Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, rioting at the Capitol.
McCarthy also told Politico that he would, at some point, present his findings about the mysterious recorder.
“I know who recorded it. I know who recorded me,” he told the publication. “I’ll bring it forward. I have it.”
McCarthy did not divulge any further details.
The audio recording was first leaked by The New York Times in April for a then-upcoming book from Times reporters.
In the Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with House GOP colleagues, McCarthy said he would recommend Trump resign because the Democratic-controlled House was moving to impeach him for the Capitol attack.
“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy said in response to a question from Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on what Trump would do at the time. “I mean, that would be my take but I don’t think he would take it. But I don’t know.”
Additional leaked recordings of the call revealed McCarthy saying he was fed up with Trump and that the situation after Jan. 6 was “not great.”
“I’ve had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it,” the minority leader said.
In a larger call with Republican colleagues, McCarthy went even further.
“But let me be very clear to all of you, and I’ve been very clear to the president: He bears responsibility for his words and actions,” the GOP leader said. “No ifs, ands or buts. I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened?”
McCarthy had originally denied the reporting from the Times back in April, calling it “totally false and wrong” in a statement.
After the leak, Trump — who has ferociously gone after any GOP dissenters and challengers — said he “didn’t like the call” but later repaired his relationship with McCarthy because the California Republican and other colleagues ultimately sided with him.
Trump endorsed McCarthy in his primary battle this year, calling him “strong and fearless.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:39Z
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The Senate confirmed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator David Pekoske to a second term on Thursday.
In a 77-18 vote, the upper chamber confirmed Pekoske to a second five-year term after previously confirming him to the post in August 2017 by unanimous consent.
“It is a privilege to continue serving the American people alongside an incredible workforce of dedicated and highly skilled professionals,” he said in a TSA statement. “I will continue to work tirelessly to ensure our nation’s transportation system remains secure and facilitates the movement of people and cargo.”
President Biden in May renominated Pekoske, who was nominated for his first term by former President Trump. Pekoske also served a brief stint as the Department of Homeland Security’s acting secretary when Biden took office.
Pekoske leads a workforce of roughly 60,000 employees at nearly 430 airports nationwide, and the agency is also responsible for security of pipelines, rail and mass transit systems.
TSA’s statement also outlined Pekoske’s priorities for his second term, which include implementing more equitable compensation, investing in technology and strengthening partnerships with transportation stakeholders and international governments.
“TSA’s mission lies in the commitment of professionals and highly skilled individuals, and Admiral Pekoske’s confirmation and continued leadership of this team will enable the TSA to further its ongoing and important mission,” Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said on the Senate floor prior to the vote.
The agency during Pekoske’s first term grappled with a large number of unruly passengers amid the coronavirus pandemic, with thousands of reported mask-related incidents.
Prior to joining the TSA, Pekoske was a vice commandant in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he was second-in-command and chief operating officer. He also served as commander of Coast Guard Pacific Area and Coast Guard Defense Forces West.
TSA now faces passenger levels not seen since before the pandemic, with the agency regularly screening more than 2 million passengers per day.
The airline industry has seen a chaotic summer travel season with many flight cancellations and delays, but TSA has continually touted low wait times during peak travel days.
Earlier this month, Labor Day marked the first holiday weekend to surpass pre-pandemic air travel levels. TSA said over the course of the weekend, 94.9 percent of PreCheck passengers waited less than five minutes, and about 91.6 percent of standard-screening passengers waited less than 15 minutes.
“TSA’s highly trained and dedicated workforce facilitated secure travel for millions of passengers during the busy summer travel season with very little disruptions at the checkpoint,” Pekoske said at the time.
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:47Z
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Former President Trump will hold a rally in Michigan on Oct. 1 to boost several GOP candidates, including Tudor Dixon, who trails in the polls of his closely watched race to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
Trump’s Save America PAC said in a Thursday release that the 7 p.m. rally will be held at the Macomb County Community College Sports & Expo Center.
The former president will seek to boost the candidacies of Dixon, Republican state attorney general nominee Matthew DePerno and Republican secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, all of whom he has endorsed.
The news comes as the high-stakes race between Dixon and Whitmer heats up.
Earlier this week, Whitmer’s campaign embraced the new Republicans for Whitmer group, which consists of more than 150 prominent Republicans pushing to reelect the Michigan Democrat.
The group said its backs Whitmer because she has been an effective leader for the state and was best suited to heal rifts between the two parties.
She is polling well ahead of Dixon less than two months out from Election Day.
DePerno is also lagging slightly behind in the polls against current Democratic state Attorney General Dana Nessel in their race.
Nessel last month called for a special prosecutor to probe DePerno and others who she said sought to gain improper access to ballot voting machines after the 2020 election.
DePerno has denied the allegations, while a prosecutor is considering charges in the matter, according to nonprofit news source Bridge Michigan.
Trump-backed Karamo, who has also repeated the former president’s false claims the 2020 election was stolen, faces a tough battle against Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
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| 2022-09-21T00:32:55Z
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The White House on Thursday bashed Republican governors for sending migrants to Democratic-run cities such as Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Washington, D.C., in an attempt to make a point about immigration policy.
“It’s really just disrespectful to humanity. It is — it doesn’t afford them any dignity, what they’re doing, when you’re abandoning families and children in a place where they were told they were going to get housing, in a place where they were told they were going to get jobs,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “It is just cruel.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) flew two planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday. He has been sending migrants to “sanctuary” cities or states, which limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has repeatedly made similar moves, including sending two buses of migrants to Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington that arrived on Thursday.
“The fact that Fox News and not the Department of Homeland Security, the city or local NGOs were alerted about a plan to leave migrants, including children, on the side of a busy D.C. street makes clear that this is just a cruel, premeditated political stunt,” Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say if what is being done is illegal, deferring to the Department of Justice, but stressed that there is a process in place for handling migrants in the U.S.
“There’s a legal way of doing this, for managing migrants. Republican governors interfering in that process and using migrants as political pawns is shameful, is reckless and just plain wrong. And remember, these are people who are fleeing communism, who are fleeing hardship,” she said.
Jean-Pierre said she hasn’t spoken to Biden specifically on his response to the migrants being dropped off.
She said the White House is working to manage the consequences of these bus loads of people and has been in touch with the cities and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“They deserve better than being left on the streets of D.C. or being left in Martha’s Vineyard. They deserve a lot better than that,” Jean-Pierre said. “And as we have done many times in response to attempts to create chaos and confusion by Republican governors, we are working to manage the kind of consequences of these two stunts as well.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:33:02Z
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President Biden is scheduled to attend the keystone event celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month in Washington.
Organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), the Annual Awards Gala hosts a who’s who of Latinos in politics, culture and advocacy.
Biden’s attendance at the 45th annual gala is the first by a president since former President Obama delivered an address at the 39th edition in 2016.
“It’s an example of the commitment of our nation’s highest ranking leaders to our community and desire to engage with us directly – to speak to us, to hear from us, to learn about our needs and desires,” said Marco Davis, the CEO of CHCI.
From 1979 to 2016, every sitting president was invited to address the gala, and only former President George H.W. Bush was unable to attend during his time in office.
But in 2017, CHCI broke with tradition and didn’t invite former President Trump after he pardoned Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and announced a plan to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
CHCI’s main function is to train young Hispanics who want to work in government, and its intern classes usually include a number of DACA beneficiaries.
“The president was not invited this year based on his slanderous comments and strongly disagreeable actions for the Latino community in the United States,” then-CHCI Chair Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said at the time.
Trump also did not attend or address the following galas, and the coronavirus pandemic forced CHCI to take the event online in 2020 and 2021.
Biden participated twice as a keynote speaker in the virtual editions, sending video messages as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020, and as president for the 2021 gala.
“When we were virtual it was definitely a very different experience. I will say that the president did send a video message that we were able to air when we were virtual last fall, so technically he participated … but him being [there] in person is a very different thing,” said Davis.
The gala’s return is a boon for Beltway Hispanics, who sometimes refer to the event as “Latino Prom” or “Brown Prom,” in reference to the White House correspondents’ dinner tongue-in-cheek moniker of “Nerd Prom.”
Although CHCI and its parent institution, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, are nonpartisan, both groups are more closely associated with Democrats.
Still, the CHCI gala has historically brought together Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated Hispanics with an interest in political leadership.
The 2022 event will posthumously honor Celia Cruz, the famed Cuban American singer, with the 2022 Medallion of Excellence Award. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will receive the 2022 American Dream Medallion Award.
Also receiving awards will be retiring Reps. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) and Albio Sires (D-N.J.), Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Kenia Seoane López, and Marvin Figueroa, a CHCI alumnus who heads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs.
Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off on Sept. 15, Mexican Independence Day, and runs through Oct. 15.
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SAN DIEGO — If you haven’t heard of a pupusa, this is your month to try one.
“Basically like a stuffed tortilla and you can stuff it with different ingredients. The most popular are beans, cheese and pork,” said Monica Aguilar, daughter of owner of Cuscatlan Salvadorean Food in Kearny Mesa.
The popular Salvadorean dish can be found all over San Diego, from North County to the South Bay.
Juan Alvarenga, owner of Cuscatlan Salvadorean Food, opened his restaurant in August 2021.
“Wanting his own restaurant was always something that he wanted to do and so during the pandemic, he stopped working where he was and then he was was like, ‘I’m just going to go for it,’” Aguilar said.
Alvarenga opened his restaurant in Kearny Mesa after his brother opened the first Cuscatlan in Escondido years ago.
“We are going to prepare some banana empanadas, delicious and traditional from El Salvador,” Alvarenga said.
Alvarenga immigrated from El Salvador, the small Central American country bordering Guatemala and Honduras, over 30 years ago. The family restaurant is something Aguilar is really proud of, saying it’s her parents’ American dream.
The menu ranges from traditional Salvadorean food, including the popular pupusas, which can be stuffed with anything, according to Aguilar.
“We have jalapeno and cheese, chipotle and cheese, different varieties. We have carne asada as well,” she said.
FOX 5’s Clara Benitez’s personal favorite, growing up in a Central American household, are fried yuca and fried pork — also known as yuca frita con chicharron.
This Hispanic Heritage Month, the Alvarenga family is excited to be able share their culture with the rest of San Diego.
“Having everybody learn a little more about El Salvador through us is an awesome experience,” Aguilar said.
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| 2022-09-21T00:33:18Z
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SAN DIEGO – Major League Baseball history will happen in April as the San Diego Padres embark on a two-game series against the San Francisco Giants in Mexico City — the MLB’s first regular season series ever played there.
“To be able to bring the sport down there and play a major league game in that city, it’s a tremendous opportunity and we’re honored to be a part of it,” said Padres CEO Erik Greupner.
The Padres are familiar with games across the border. The team will embark on their fourth series in Mexico with the previous three in Monterey, most recently happening in 2018.
“It’s critical for Major League Baseball to continue to hold games in Mexico,” continued Greupner. “It’s such a passionate and loyal fanbase, really a great country for baseball and the sport of baseball.”
The NL West rivals will face off at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, a ballpark built by and named after a Padres’ minority owner.
According to an article published by Newsweek at the beginning of this season, Hispanic and Latino players make up nearly 30% of Major League Baseball.
“It’s always fun to play internationally,” said Padres outfielder Jurickson Profar. “Since I was young, I played a lot of baseball internationally and it’s going to be great for MLB. I think we should do it a lot more.”
“It’s been awesome, the way they’ve been doing it in London and Mexico. I hope someday in the future they will do it in Columbia,” added Padres right-handed pitcher Nabil Crismatt, a native of Barranquilla, Colombia.
The Padres had originally scheduled to make MLB’s Mexico City debut in 2020, with a series scheduled against the Arizona Diamondbacks, but that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be the Giants’ first series ever across the Mexican border.
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| 2022-09-21T00:33:25Z
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Cares Krewe has been surprising members of the community at random locations.
On a recent stop, they headed to the Raceway gas station on Bert Kouns in Shreveport. There, they took care of gas for multiple locals, who all seemed to be expressing the same frustrations in their everyday lives.
Stay tuned to see where the Cares Krewe heads next.
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| 2022-09-21T00:33:32Z
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BOSSIER PARISH, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Two students from Bossier Parish are now National Merit Scholar semifinalists.
Bossier Parish high school seniors Kylie Authement and George Latimer were named semifinalists for the 68th annual National Merit scholarship program. They were selected for their academics.
Authement is a senior at Airline High School, and Latimer is a senior at Benton high.
They now advance to the main competition for scholarship money.
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(Loving Living Local)- Four talented artists will be featured at Artspace for the Critical Mass 9 and 10 Solo Shows.
In 2012, the Shreveport Regional Arts Council (SRAC) launched Critical Mass, a reoccurring annual showcase of Northwest Louisiana art and artists and critical review by renowned critics from across the United States. Those whom the critics select as “Best of Show” in each category of visual and literary artists, each receive a $2000 commission to plan and execute a solo show exhibited in Artspace, located in downtown Shreveport. Nationally known critics then review the solo shows.
In 2020, Covid-19 shook the world, and like many events at the time, the Critical Mass 9 Solo Show was forced to cancel. So in a celebration of the work and dedication of these astonishing artists, this weekend, two years of Critical Mass Critics’ Choice Awards Solo Shows will open at artspace.
The four extraordinary artists featured in this year’s solo showcase joined host, Susan Kirton to share more about their work, their inspirations, and what being a part of this event means to them. Eric Francis, the 2020 Critical Mass 9 Visual Critics’ Choice Artist discusses his exhibition, “Into The Imagination” and some of his biblical inspiration. Julie Kane, the 2020 Critical Mass 9 Literary Critic’s Choice Artist also shares about her inspiration for her nineteen-minute-long video based on twenty of her pandemic duplex poems entitled “I Will Not Write a Pandemic Poem.”
Debra Roberson, the 2021 Critical Mass 10 Visual Critics’ Choice Artist invited viewers to join her on a journey around Cane River of Natchitoches with not only her artwork but also her book “Cane River Chronicles: Unveiled.” Genaro Ky Ly Smith, the 2021 Critical Mass 10 Literary Critics’ Choice Artist, expanded on the contrast and paradoxes in the juxtaposition of pages from his literary work, “A Napalm Lullaby” depicted alongside the black and white, large canvas photos of his smiling family in Vietnam from 1967 to 1971.
Events kick off on Friday, September 16 with the “Ask a Critic- Ask Them Anything and Everything” panel discussion with renowned critics curated by Los Angeles award-winning journalist, Robert Pincus. The panel will start at 11:30 AM at Central ArtStation located at 801 Crockett Street. Then later join the adoring masses at Artspace located at 708 Texas Street for the opening reception of Critical Mass 9 and 10 Solo Shows at 5:00 PM.
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CAMBRIDGE, Md. - Today's run-off election will decide who will be the next Mayor of Cambridge.
Polls opened from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Those in the running are Senator Addie Eckardt and Steve Rideout.
Today, Addie Eckardt was pounding the pavement, but her competitor, Steve Rideout was sidelined with Covid. But, Rideout's volunteers were rallying support for him.
Both candidates were the two finalists in last months special election. Neither received more than 50 percent of the votes, so today was the run-off election.
Some of the voters said today's decision was an easy one to make. And their decision came down to the candidates character. "I like honesty, someone out in the community, and a people-person. And, I thought that candidate was a person that could lead Cambridge forward," says George Aimes.
But for some other voters, their decision was under consideration for a bit of time. "Actually, it was very close. I'm an independent and there were pluses and minuses with both of them. So, it wasn't a super strong vote one way or another," said John Stackhouse.
For some of the morning, the Chesapeake College Cambridge Center had a steady flow of voters. In that mix was LaShon Foster. A candidate from the Aug. special election. She says even though she wasn't on the ballot, it's still important to vote.
"If you don't vote, you're still voting. You could very well be voting for the candidate that you feel is not going to help you with your agenda. And without the right candidate, we will not get any of that done or any of that accomplished," says Foster. Foster added, "As long as you vote, you're standing for something. That's what matters. If you have reasons for not wanting either candidate, you're going to have to try, look, and see which of the two candidates will give you what you want achieved."
The winner will finish the term of Andrew Bradshaw who stepped down after pleading guilty to posting revenge porn. That term ends in Dec. 2024.
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LUCKNOW, India (AP) — Heavy rains flooded hundreds of homes, knocked out power and collapsed structures in northern India, causing 12 deaths and more injuries, officials said Friday.
Schools were closed for the day in Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital, where the meteorological office recorded 35 millimeters (1.4 inches) of torrential rain in the past 24 hours, said Brijesh Pathak, the state’s deputy chief minister.
A wall collapsed on a slum dwelling made of polyethylene sheets and mud early Friday in the Hazratganj area of the state capital where laborers were sleeping. Nine died on the spot and another three were hospitalized with injuries, Pathak said.
In Unnao, a town 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Lucknow, another three people were killed in a house collapse following torrential rains, Pathak said.
Earlier this month, life was disrupted in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru after two days of torrential rains set off long traffic snarls, widespread power cuts and heavy floods that swept into homes and submerged roads.
People hopped onto tractors to get to work. Boats were deployed to rescue people submerged in floodwaters in Bengaluru, the capital of southern Karnataka state. The two zones that make up the city, Bengaluru Urban and Bengaluru Rural, saw 141% and 114% excess rainfall, making it the wettest September day in the past eight years.
Monsoon rains in South Asia typically begin in June. But this year, heavy downpours lashed northeastern India and Bangladesh beginning in March, triggering floods as early as April in Bangladesh.
The monsoon season that ends in October leaves hundreds of people dead and tens of thousands homeless every year.
The weather system for the Indian subcontinent is being altered due to climate change. Scientists say this is making extreme events such as excess rainfall the new normal.
With rising global temperatures due to climate change, experts say the monsoon is becoming more variable. Much of the rain that would typically fall in a season is arriving in a shorter period of time.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the Asia-Pacific region at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific
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SUSSEX COUNTY, Del.- Twenty-five homes on Cape Henlopen Drive in Lewes now have a new address. Changes were made suddenly and some homeowners feel they should have had a say in the matter.
Lewes City Manager, Ann Marie Townshend, said the changes were made partly because original addresses were causing confusion for the postal service.
Townshend also said some newly built homes were originally given an address that did not exist. Homes that used to be located at Debraak Preserve were not receiving mail because there is no street under that name in the city.
Townshend said the address changes may be a short term inconvenience for residents, but will be beneficial in the long run.
Residents were first made aware of the change when they received a letter from the city in August. Some are happy about the update but others feel they should have been made aware of the plan ahead of time.
Maria Levitsky lives in Lewes year round. She said residents should have had the opportunity to give their input about the decision.
Homeowners were responsible for contacting those they receive mail from to alert them about the update.
Seven out of the twenty-five homes effected are owned by full time residents.
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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday it would be “perfectly acceptable” for King Charles III to continue to advocate for climate change action in his new apolitical role as monarch.
Albanese was speaking ahead of his departure for Queen Elizabeth II ’s funeral.
Albanese said the new king would decide whether he continues to advocate for reduced greenhouse gas emissions, as he has done for years as a prince.
“It’s important that the monarchy distance from party political issues. But there are issues like climate change where I think if he chooses to continue to make statements in that area, I think that is perfectly acceptable,” Albanese said. “It should be something that’s above politics, the need to act on climate change.”
The British monarch is also Australia’s head of state.
In his first speech as king last week, Charles suggested he would be more circumspect as monarch and step back from his advocacy on a range of issues.
The lifelong environmentalist said he was confident that work on “the issues for which I care so deeply” would “go on in the trusted hands of others.”
Albanese’s new center-left Labor Party government has enshrined in law a target to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 42% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
Under the previous conservative government, Australia had been branded a laggard on climate action over its target to reduce emissions by only 26% to 28% by 2030.
Australia said it was helping officials from Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Samoa and a fifth unnamed British Commonwealth nation in the Oceania region to travel to London for the funeral on Monday.
But those officials are not flying on the same Royal Australian Air Force plane as Albanese, his partner Jodie Haydon, Governor-General David Hurley and his wife Linda Hurley. They are accompanied by nine so-called “everyday Australians,” including wheelchair tennis star Dylan Alcott, who have been invited by Buckingham Palace.
There were supposed to be 10 everyday citizens, but racehorse trainer Chris Waller decided against going to the funeral because a close contact had caught COVID-19.
Horse trainer Gai Waterhouse and her bookmaker husband, Robbie Waterhouse, who are also guests of the palace, are flying with the prime minister because they informed Albanese’s office on Wednesday that they couldn’t book a commercial flight because of heavy demand.
The Australian government has not released details of how it is assisting leaders of Pacific island neighbors to travel to London.
Some likely traveled on a second air force Boeing 737 jet that left Sydney on Thursday.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape and Governor-General Bob Dadae, who represents the monarch, arrived in London on Wednesday, the Papua New Guinea government said.
The Solomon Islands will be represented by its governor-general, David Vunagi, who left the country on Wednesday, that government said.
Tuvalu will be represented by Prime Minister Kausea Natanopo and Governor-General Tofiga Vaevalu Falani. Samoan Head of State Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II will also attend, government officials said.
Albanese’s government wants an Australian president to replace the British monarch as Australia’s head of state.
But Albanese said holding a referendum on creating an Australian republic is “not feasible” during his government’s first three-year term in office. His said his priority is a referendum that would acknowledge in the constitution that Indigenous people were living in Australia before British settlers arrived in 1788.
“Regardless of people’s views about other issues — the constitution and our system of government — I think it’s impossible to not respect the extraordinary job and dedication to service that her majesty showed,” Albanese said.
Albanese has meetings arranged with the king, British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the weekend before the funeral.
A referendum in 1999 that would have replaced the queen with an Australian head of state failed.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to develop floating platforms in the deep ocean for wind towers that could power millions of homes and vastly expand offshore wind in the United States.
The plan would target sites in the Pacific Ocean off the California and Oregon coasts, as well as in the Atlantic in the Gulf of Maine.
President Joe Biden hopes to deploy up to 15 gigawatts of electricity through floating sites by 2035, enough to power 5 million homes. The administration has previously set a goal of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 using traditional technology that secures wind turbines to the ocean floor.
There are only a handful of floating offshore platforms in the world — all in Europe — but officials said the technology is developing and could soon establish the United States as a global leader in offshore wind.
The push for offshore wind is part of Biden’s effort to promote clean energy and address global warming. Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. A climate-and-tax bill he signed last month would spend about $375 billion over 10 years to boost electric vehicles, jump-start renewable energy such as solar and wind power and develop alternative energy sources like hydrogen.
“Today we’re launching efforts to seize a new opportunity — floating offshore wind — which will let us build in deep water areas where turbines can’t be secured directly to the sea floor, but where there are strong winds that we can now harness,” White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy said at a news conference Thursday.
Deepwater areas in the Pacific especially have potential to vastly expand offshore wind energy in the U.S., McCarthy and other officials said.
McCarthy acknowledged that the floating technology is at an early stage. But she said “coordinated actions” by federal and state officials, working with the private sector, can position the U.S. “to lead the world on floating offshore wind and bring offshore wind jobs to more parts of our country, including the West Coast.”
Two pilot projects are planned off the north and central California coast, and a third is planned in southern Oregon, officials said.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said her state and California have some of the best wind resources in the world, but called floating platforms crucial to develop them due to the depth of the ocean floor along the West Coast.
Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, an industry group, called the announcement a “game changer” that will spark investment in a new domestic supply chain and allow the U.S. to lead in this emerging technology. Along with incentives in the sweeping climate-and-tax bill, Zichal said she expects costs for offshore wind development to dramatically decrease, allowing deployment of clean energy at the scale needed to take action to address climate change.
The Energy Department announced nearly $50 million, including funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law Biden signed last year, for research, development and demonstration work to support floating offshore wind platforms. Officials aim to cut the cost of floating offshore wind energy 70% by 2035, to $45 per megawatt hour, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.
“We think the private sector is going to quickly see the real opportunity here not only to triple the country’s accessible offshore wind resources but to make the U.S. a global leader in manufacturing and deploying offshore wind,” she said.
Emerging technology for floating platforms “means there’s real opportunity for greater energy security,” affordability “and course tens of thousands of good-paying in-demand jobs,” such as electricians, engineers, ship builders and stevedores, Granholm said.
The Biden administration “is all-in on making floating offshore wind a real part of our of our energy mix and winning the global race to lead in this space,” Granholm said. ”And that’s why we set this big, hairy audacious goal” of 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department has approved the nation’s first two major offshore wind projects in federal waters and has begun reviewing at least 10 more. An offshore wind lease sale off the New York and New Jersey coast set new records, she said, and a lease sale also was held in North Carolina. Seven lease sales for offshore wind projects are planned by 2025.
More than half of the nation’s offshore wind resources are in deep waters where traditional offshore wind foundations are not economically feasible, Haaland said, adding that “floating wind will help us reach areas once not attainable. And this is critical because floating wind will help us build on the administration’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.”
The world’s first floating wind farm has been operating off Scotland’s coast since 2017. Norway-based Equinor, which operates the 30-megawatt Hywind Scotland project, is currently building a huge, floating offshore wind farm off Norway to provide electricity for offshore oil and gas fields.
Lauren Shane, a spokeswoman for Equinor in the United States, said the company is upbeat about floating offshore wind and will evaluate possible opportunities in the U.S. “We’re excited about the development of offshore wind in the U.S.,” she said.
Another offshore wind developer with projects in the United States, Denmark-based Ørsted, also applauded the administration’s efforts.
“The administration’s innovation priority is well-placed, and with the right investment and public-private partnerships,” floating platforms “can expand deployment, drive down costs and bring more clean energy to millions of Americans,” said Bryan Stockton, head of regulatory affairs for Ørsted North America.
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McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
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BOSTON (AP) — The sex lives of constipated scorpions, cute ducklings with an innate sense of physics, and a life-size rubber moose may not appear to have much in common, but they all inspired the winners of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement.
Held less than a month before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, Thursday’s 32nd annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony was for the third year in a row a prerecorded affair webcast on the Annals of Improbable Research magazine’s website.
The winners, honored in 10 categories, also included scientists who found that when people on a blind date are attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize, and researchers who looked at why legal documents can be so utterly baffling, even to lawyers themselves.
Even though the ceremony was prerecorded, it retained much of the fun of the live event usually held at Harvard University.
As has been an Ig Nobel tradition, real Nobel laureates handed out the prizes, using a bit of video trickery: The Nobel laureates handed the prize off screen, while the winners reached out and brought a prize they had been sent and self-assembled into view.
Winners also received a virtually worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill.
Curiosity Ig-nited? Learn more about some of the winners:
GET YOUR DUCKS IN A ROW
“Science is fun. My sort of a tagline is you’re not doing science if you’re not having fun,” said Frank Fish, a biology professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania who shared the physics Ig Nobel for studying why ducklings follow their mothers in single-file formation.
It’s about energy conservation: The ducklings are drafting, much like stock cars, cyclists and runners do in a race, he said.
“It all has to do with the flow that occurs behind that leading organism and the way that moving in formation can actually be an energetic benefit,” said the appropriately named Fish, whose specialty is studying how animals swim.
He shared the prize with researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, who found that the ducklings actually surfed in their mother’s wake.
THAT SYNCING FEELING
Eliska Prochazkova’s personal experiences inspired her research on dating that earned her and colleagues the cardiology Ig Nobel.
She had no problems finding her apparent perfect match on dating apps, yet she often found there was no spark when they met face-to-face.
So she set people up on blind dates in real social settings, measured their physiological reactions and found that the heart rates of people attracted to each other synchronized.
So is her work evidence of “love at first sight”?
“It really depends, on how you define love,” Prochazkova, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said in an email. “What we found in our research was that people were able to decide whether they want to date their partner very quickly. Within the first two seconds of the date, the participants made a very complex idea about the human sitting in front of them.”
A CRUEL STING
Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado of the University of São Paulo in Brazil won the biology Ig Nobel for studying whether constipation ruins a scorpion’s sex life.
Scorpions can detach a body part to escape a predator — a process called autotomy. But when they lose their tails, they also lose the last portion of the digestive tract, which leads to constipation — and, eventually, death, they wrote in the journal “Integrated Zoology.”
“The long-term decrease in the locomotor performance of autotomized males may impair mate searching,” they wrote.
THAT’S A MOOSE, DUMMY
Magnus Gers won the safety engineering Ig Nobel for making a moose “crash test dummy” for his master’s thesis at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which was published by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute.
Frequent moose vs. vehicle collisions on Sweden’s highways often result in injuries and death to both human and animal, Gers said in an email. Yet automobile makers rarely include animal crashes in their safety testing.
“I believe this is a fascinating and still very unexplored area that deserves all the attention it can get,” he said. “This topic is mystical, life threatening and more relevant than ever.”
CAN YOU SPEAK LEGALESE?
Anyone who has ever read a terms of service agreement knows that legal documents can be downright incomprehensible.
That frustrated Eric Martinez, a graduate student in the brain and cognitive science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also has a law degree from Harvard.
He, Francis Mollica and Edward Gibson shared the literature Ig Nobel for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand, research that appeared in the journal “Cognition.”
“Ultimately, there’s kind of a hope that lawyers will think a little more with the reader in mind,” he said. “Clarity doesn’t just benefit the layperson, it also benefits lawyers.”
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As Republican governors ramp up their high-profile transports of migrants to Democratic-run jurisdictions, the practice is getting a mixed reaction from Christian faith leaders — many of whom, especially evangelicals, have supported GOP candidates by large numbers in recent elections.
Some depict the actions as inhumanely exploiting vulnerable people for political ends, while others say it’s a harmless way of calling attention to the impact of immigration on states near the southern border.
“Playing political games scores points — and the hypocrisy of the current immigration system is easy to point out,” Ed Stetzer, a professor, Dean and Executive Director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center in Illinois, said in a statement.
“However, it does not solve the actual problems. … Let’s fix the system,” he added, “and stop turning people into pawns of political one-upmanship.”
But the Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas and a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump, who imposed restrictive immigration policies during his term, backed the transports.
“Government officials who refuse to fulfill their biblical responsibility to protect our borders should be made to feel the effects of their lawless policies,” Jeffress said via email.
“Busing illegal migrants to Washington D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard is not exactly the same as sending them to Siberia,” he continued. “Most Americans would love the opportunity to visit either destination.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew immigrants on two planes to the upscale island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts on Wednesday, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has also dispatched migrants to cities with Democratic mayors. Most recently, on Thursday, two busloads from his state disembarked near Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also has adopted the policy.
The Republican governors are trying to draw attention to what they contend is failed border policy under the Biden administration.
Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy agency, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said such actions “seem to be more about public relations.”
“We have called long for strengthened border protections and at the same time (for) folks who are coming into this country to be treated in a way that respects the imago Dei (image of God),” he said.
Most Americans, including Southern Baptists, “want a solution to our broken immigration system,” Leatherwood added. “Let’s cut down on some of these actions and instead come to the table and figure out a solution that actually respects human dignity.”
Joshua Manning, pastor of the ethnically diverse Community Baptist Church in Noel, Missouri, a town of 1,800 with a large immigrant population, agreed that the transports are the wrong way to highlight a real problem.
“You shouldn’t be loading people up and treating them as political props — that’s dehumanizing,” Manning said.
He said, however, that immigration is a tricky subject. Places that have declared themselves in support of migrants and asylum seekers may not “see the difficulties of everything that’s associated with that,” he said.
In the mostly Latino neighborhood of Corona, in New York City’s Queens borough, the large congregation of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic church held a special service Wednesday to pray for the immigrants. In an interview, their pastor, the Rev. Manuel Rodriguez, called the transports a “horrible crime.”
“All of us are horrified about the steady violation of human rights by Gov. DeSantis and other governors who are so inhumane and unethical to keep sending human beings to places where they weren’t even informed that they’d be sent,” Rodriguez said.
“You don’t use human beings who are fleeing their homelands in fear, because of violence, hunger, persecution, because of the threat of rape … as tools, as objects to make political points,” he said.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said Thursday that a prehistoric human skeleton found recently in a flooded cave system along the country’s Caribbean coast was actually registered by the institute in 2019 and would not be threatened by a nearby tourist train project.
Earlier this week, archaeologist Octavio del Rio said he and fellow diver Peter Broger saw the shattered skull and skeleton partly covered by sediment in a cave. They reported it to the institute, which had not publicly spoken of the find until its statement Thursday.
“The referenced skeleton corresponds to a 2019 discovery and is fully registered and identified as part of the Holocene Archaeology program,” the institute said. It added that scientific analysis had still not been carried out on the remains, but that it was 400 yards (meters) from the path of the government’s Maya Train project and was not threatened.
Del Rio, who has worked with the institute in the past but who is not currently affiliated, said Thursday the fact that the discovery was made in 2019, but still had not been analyzed, illustrated how long it takes to explore and investigate the extensive cave systems in the train’s path.
“This proves the area’s archaeological potential for investigation of the first settlers of America, and what there still is to discover,” Del Rio said.
He had said the skeleton was about 8 meters (26 feet) underwater, about a half-kilometer (a third of a mile) into the cave system.
Given the distance from the cave entrance, the skeleton couldn’t have gotten there without modern diving equipment, so it must be over 8,000 years old, Del Rio had earlier said, referring to the era when rising sea levels flooded the caves.
Some of the oldest human remains in North America have been discovered in the sinkhole caves known as “cenotes” on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, and experts say some of those caves are threatened by the Mexican government’s Maya Train tourism project.
Del Rio feared that even if the train did not pass directly over the site, its construction could damage or contaminate the cave system.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is racing to finish his Maya Train project in the remaining two years of his term over the objections of environmentalists, cave divers and archaeologists. They say his haste will allow little time to study the ancient remains.
Activists say the heavy, high-speed rail project will fragment the coastal jungle and will run often above the fragile limestone caves, which — because they are flooded, twisty and often incredibly narrow — can take decades to explore.
Caves along part of the coast already have been damaged by construction above them, with cement pilings used to support the weight above.
The 950-mile (1,500-kilometer) Maya Train line is meant to run in a rough loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting beach resorts and archaeological sites.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Vanessa Nakate’s climate activism over the past three years has propelled her to the world stage.
Since 2019, Nakate has worked to amplify the voices of African climate activists through a platform she created called Rise Up Movement, spearheaded an initiative to stop the deforestation of African rainforests and launched the Vash Greens Schools Project, which aims to install solar panels in remote areas of her home country, Uganda.
These endeavors led UNICEF to announce her as their new goodwill ambassador this week, with UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell saying Nakate’s appointment to the role “will help ensure that the voices of children and young people are never cut out of the conversation on climate change — and always included in decisions that affect their lives.”
Despite the global recognition, Nakate says it’s not enough — not enough to save the planet or to save the people in the global south she says are suffering significantly from the effects of climate disasters.
“For so long the world has ignored what happens in the global south,” the 25-year-old Ugandan native told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Fresh off a week-long trip to Turkana County, Kenya with UNICEF, Nakate saw the effects of food and water insecurity caused by the worst drought in eastern Africa in four decades.
“To go back to the Horn of Africa — where I was in Turkana — there was a time people talked about it, but now people have forgotten,” she said. “It’s no longer being talked about, but does that mean that situation has come to an end? No. The drought situation is much worse and many people are suffering right now.”
Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development warned that higher temperatures and less than normal rainfall were recorded across the African continent by weather agencies, and rains were further expected to fail — indicating that countries in East Africa, as well as the Horn of Africa, could be facing the most severe drought in 40 years. Over the years, droughts have led to crop failure, livestock deaths and millions of cases of malnutrition.
Countries like Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya could see current famine conditions intensify.
“When it comes to the climate crisis, it has different, horrible realities. One of them is that those being impacted the most right now, they are the ones the least responsible,” she said.
According to the Global Carbon Project, a team of scientists that monitor countries’ carbon dioxide emissions, Africa — which accounts for about 16% of the world’s population — is responsible for only 3.2% of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere since 1959.
Carbon dioxide is the primary contributor to climate change. As a natural greenhouse gas, it traps heat in the atmosphere, which in turn causes global temperatures to rise. Where the African continent is a minor contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, more industrialized countries such as the United States, Russia and China are greater contributors.
For activists like Nakate, tackling the climate crisis isn’t just about raising awareness or urging global leaders to make swift policy changes addressing climate change that is devastating countries like Pakistan and Kenya — it also requires amplifying the voices of non-western climate activists, who she said are largely ignored in international conversations about climate change.
Looking ahead to COP27 — the United Nations’ annual climate summit — which is being held in Egypt this November, Nakate said she notices a significant deficit during these global discussions: the lack of real human experience.
“I think what really misses in these conversations is the human face of the climate crisis and I think its really the human face that tells the story that, tells the experiences of what communities are going through,” she said. “It’s what also tells the solutions that communities need because many times there’s a disconnect between what is being discussed and between what communities are saying.”
To Nakate, that is a failure of global leadership. She believes that leaders, specifically western leaders, would take immediate action if they understood and saw the hardships people experienced as a result of the climate crisis.
Ultimately, she said, the responsibility and burden of tackling climate change and ensuring the numerous, nameless faces of the climate crisis are not ignored needs to fall on global leaders — not solely the youth that have built a global movement.
“The question should be like, what should the leaders do? What should governments do? Because this whole time I’ve done activism, I have realized the youth have done everything,” Nakate said.
Still, she tries to look for hope in the situation.
“In all this, you try to look for the hope because it’s in that hope that you find the strength to keep saying we want this or we don’t want this,” she said.
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EWA BEACH, Hawaii (KITV4) -- Police are on the lookout for a man who escaped from custody after being arrested for violating a temporary restraining order.
Honolulu Police officers (HPD) arrested 27-year-old Sky Brede just after 3 a.m. for violating a family court protective order. After his arrest, police said they took Brede to Queen’s West Hospital to be medically cleared before being taken to jail.
When leaving the hospital, police said Brede took off running toward a waiting getaway car. An officer chased Brede and fought with him as he tried to get into the getaway car. The driver of the getaway car and two other people inside the vehicle pushed the officer out as it sped away. The officer fell out of the car and suffered minor injuries, according to the report.
While investigating this incident, police found the getaway car and the driver – later identified as 47-year-old Eric Yamaguchi. He was arrested on complaints of first-degree facilitating an escape and first-degree assault on a police officer.
The other two passengers that reportedly helped push the officer out of the car have not been identified. It is unclear if they will face any charges.
Brede remains at large. Police say he is known to frequent the Ewa Beach area and Waipahu areas. Anyone with information about this incident, or on Brede’s whereabouts, is asked to call Honolulu Police CrimeStoppers at 808-955-8300.
Matthew has been the digital content manager for KITV4 since September 2021. Matthew is a prolific writer, editor, and self-described "newsie" who's worked in television markets in Oklahoma, California, and Hawaii.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A bay-breasted warbler weighs about the same as four pennies, but twice a year makes an extraordinary journey. The tiny songbird flies nearly 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers) between Canada’s spruce forests and its wintering grounds in northern South America.
“Migratory birds are these little globetrotters,” said Jill Deppe, the senior director of the migratory bird initiative at the National Audubon Society.
A new online atlas of bird migration, published on Thursday, draws from an unprecedented number of scientific and community data sources to illustrate the routes of about 450 bird species in the Americas, including the warblers.
The Bird Migration Explorer mapping tool, available free to the public, is an ongoing collaboration between 11 groups that collect and analyze data on bird movements, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, the U.S. Geological Survey, Georgetown University, Colorado State University, and the National Audubon Society.
For the first time, the site will bring together online data from hundreds of scientific studies that use GPS tags to track bird movements, as well as more than 100 years of bird-banding data collected by USGS, community science observations entered into Cornell’s eBird platform, genomic analysis of feathers to pinpoint bird origins, and other data.
“The past twenty years have seen a true renaissance in different technologies to track bird migrations around the world at scales that haven’t been possible before,” said Peter Marra, a bird migration expert at Georgetown University who collaborated on the project.
The site allows a user to enter a species — for instance, osprey — and watch movements over the course of a year. For example, data from 378 tracked ospreys show up as yellow dots that move between coastal North America and South America as a calendar bar scrolls through the months of the year.
Or users can enter the city where they live and click elsewhere on the map for a partial list of birds that migrate between the two locations. For example, ospreys, bobolinks and at least 12 other species migrate between Washington, D.C. and Fonte Boa, Brazil.
As new tracking data becomes available, the site will continue to expand. Melanie Smith, program director for the site, said the next phase of expansion will add more data about seabirds.
Washington, D.C. resident Michael Herrera started birdwatching about four months ago and was quickly hooked. “It’s almost like this hidden world that’s right in front of your eyes,” he said. “Once you start paying attention, all these details that were like background noise suddenly have meaning.”
Herrera said he’s eager to learn more about the migratory routes of waterbirds in the mid-Atlantic region, such as great blue herons and great egrets.
Georgetown’s Marra hopes that engaging the public will help spotlight some of the conservation challenges facing birds, including loss of habitat and climate change.
In the past 50 years, the population of birds in the U.S. and Canada has dropped nearly 30%, with migratory species facing some of the steepest declines.
___
Follow Christina Larson on Twitter at @larsonchristina.
___
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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Country
United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary
People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine officials have warned of possible danger to aircraft and ships from debris from a new Chinese rocket launch that might fall in northern Philippine waters, authorities said Thursday, adding no debris has been sighted so far.
The Philippine Space Agency said China’s Long March 7A rocket was launched Tuesday night from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan island. That prompted the agency to notify Philippine authorities of potential danger in two offshore areas where the debris could crash down.
The possible “drop zones” were 71 kilometers (44 miles) off Burgos town in Ilocos Norte province and 52 kilometers (32 miles) from Santa Ana town in Cagayan province, the space agency said, citing information from a notice to pilots released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Rocket parts that detach before reaching space should by design fall back offshore less than an hour after a rocket launch, Philippine Space Agency spokesperson Tricia Zafra said.
“So far, no sighting. We continue to seek out reports,” Zafra told The Associated Press. “Hopefully, no injuries or damage related to it.”
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines warned Wednesday in a notice to pilots about the possible danger posed by the debris in the two northern Philippine offshore areas.
“While debris from CZ-7A is unlikely to fall on land features or inhabited areas in the Philippine territory, falling debris still poses a considerable threat to ships, aircraft, fishing boats, and other vessels that will pass through the drop zones,” the Philippine Space Agency said in a statement Tuesday.
In July, the core stage debris of a Long March 5B rocket that was launched by China landed in Philippine waters in an uncontrolled reentry, the agency said. No damage or injuries were reported.
Fishermen at the time found a torn metal sheet showing part of the Chinese flag and a marking of the Long March 5B rocket in the West Philippine Sea about 160 kilometers (100 miles) off Mamburao town in Occidental Mindoro province, according to the space agency, using the Philippine name for a part of the South China Sea closer to its western coast.
The agency asked the public on Tuesday to immediately inform authorities if suspected floating debris is sighted at sea and warned people against retrieving or coming in close contact with such materials.
Manila’s space agency says it’s working with the Department of Foreign Affairs to push for the Philippine ratification of two U.N. treaties, including one that promotes accountability among nations for possible damage or injuries arising from the launching of objects such as satellites to space.
China has faced criticism for allowing rocket stages to fall to Earth uncontrolled at least twice before. NASA accused Beijing last year of “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris” after parts of a Chinese rocket landed in the Indian Ocean.
The country’s first space station, Tiangong-1, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2016 after Beijing confirmed it lost control. An 18-ton rocket fell uncontrolled in May 2020.
China also faced criticism after using a missile to destroy one of its defunct weather satellites in 2007, creating a field of debris that other governments said might jeopardize other satellites.
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to accurately reflect Amazon’s stage of planning for a fulfillment center in Greensboro, North Carolina.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) – The dozens of fulfillment centers Amazon is closing, canceling or delaying means a proposed Greensboro facility may never come to fruition.
CNBC reported that there would be 44 canceled or closed facilities and 25 delayed sites, based on a post by logistics consultant MVPVL International. That report said that delivery stations are the most common type of facility being closed.”
Amazon said Thursday that plans for a Greensboro fulfillment center were never finalized.
Seattle-based Amazon doubled the size of its operations during the pandemic, adding more warehouses and workers to keep up with demand from homebound consumers who felt more comfortable buying things online. But as the worst of the pandemic eased, it found itself with too much warehouse space and too many workers. In May, it announced it planned to sublease some of its warehouse space.
In November, the Greensboro City Council approved the annexing and rezoning of 109 acres from residential property to light industrial for Amazon to open a distribution center.
Documents on file with the city planning department said a facility as large as 634,812 square feet could be built, and a representative for the developer told the City Council that “the tenant is committed to being a long-term asset in the community.”
The facility apparently would have employed about 1,000.
Nexstar’s WGHP reached out to Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan and City Manager Taiwo Jaiyeoba seeking comment on this development and was still awaiting a response at publishing time.
Thursday’s announcement might not be unpopular with residents near the site, some of whom have expressed displeasure with the rezoning to accommodate the facility.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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NORFOLK, Va. (Sept. 20, 2022) Aviation Ordinanceman 2nd Class Brittany Simpson, assigned to the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5), sings the National Anthem during the ship’s 25th birthday celebration, Sept. 20, 2022. Bataan is homeported at Naval Station Norfolk. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Darren Newell (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Darren Newell)
This work, Bataan Celebrates 25th Anniversary [Image 27 of 27], by SN Darren Newell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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Hurricane Fiona battered the Turks and Caicos islands most of Tuesday with hurricane-force winds, torrential rain and up to 4 feet of storm surge, prompting officials to urge residents to stay indoors.
In its devastating path of destruction, the storm killed at least five people across the Caribbean, cut power and water service for most of Puerto Rico's 3.1 million residents and left more than 1 million without running water in the Dominican Republic.
Officials in the Turks and Caicos announced Tuesday afternoon that a shelter-in-place advisory remained in effect amid heavy winds and rain, adding those conditions were expected to last for several more hours.
"The public is again asked to remain indoors, on all islands, as it is not safe to travel on roadways, especially where there are fallen power lines and cables," the National Emergency Operations Center said in a news release.
Fiona, a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 115 mph, was continuing to hammer parts of the islands around 5 p.m. ET Tuesday while it was centered about 50 miles north of North Caicos Island, according to the National Hurricane Center. Forecasters have warned of possible "life-threatening flooding" as the storm's heavy rains continue pouring over parts of the British territory of about 38,000 people, the center said.
The storm will slowly move away from the islands Tuesday night and Wednesday and begin approaching Bermuda Thursday, where it's expected to dump up to 3 inches of rain and create "life-threatening surf and rip current conditions," the center said. A Tropical Storm Watch has been issued by the Bermuda Weather Service.
Still dealing with Fiona's ruinous path are the Dominican Republic -- where the storm's outer bands still could cause flooding after it traversed the Caribbean nation Monday -- and Puerto Rico, which Fiona crossed a day earlier, causing a near blackout and leaving damage not seen there since Hurricane Maria made landfall five years ago Tuesday, officials said.
At least two people died in the severe weather in the Dominican Republic, according to Major General Juan Manuel Méndez García, director of the country's emergency operations center. Aurielys Esther Jimenez, 18, was traveling by motorcycle when she was struck by a power pole that fell due to strong winds, the director said. She was taken to a hospital where she was later pronounced dead.
Officials there on Monday also confirmed the death of a man in Nagua, in northeastern Dominican Republic, who died after powerful winds knocked down a tree that hit him. There was also one death reported in the French territory of Guadeloupe, which Fiona hit late last week, and two in Puerto Rico.
In Puerto Rico, 58-year-old Gilberto Ayala Aponte was swept away by a swollen river behind his home in Comerío. A second man, 70-year-old José Cruz Román, died in a fire accident that occurred when he was trying to put gasoline in his generator while it was turned on, officials said.
Parts of Puerto Rico will have seen rain totals of more than 30 inches, as Fiona pushed rivers to overflow and high water to collect in parts of the territory, flooding homes, streets and fields. Rushing waters wiped away a bridge, carrying its structure downstream, one video shows. Mudslides blocked some roads leading from coastal areas to the interior, a CNN crew saw.
The damage is catastrophic in the territory's center, south and southeast regions, Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said Tuesday.
A large portion of the population should have power by late Wednesday, but greater damage in the southern part of the island means restoration will take longer there, the governor said.
More than 1.16 million of the island's roughly 1.47 million utility customers still were without power as of Tuesday evening, according to estimates from PowerOutage.us, which notes updated information on restoration efforts is limited.
More than 2,000 people were working to restore power, Mario Hurtado, the chief regulatory officer for utility company LUMA Energy, told CNN's Jake Tapper Tuesday. LUMA operates Puerto Rico's power grid.
On the same day, New York's attorney general called on federal authorities to investigate the energy provider, saying residents continued to experience frequent outages and high electrical rates five years after Hurricanes Irma and Maria and "after billions of federal dollars were spent to modernize and strengthen the island's electrical grid."
Fiona strengthens as it pushes north
Fiona intensified into a Category 3 storm as it moved away from the Dominican Republic's northern coast early Tuesday.
This is the first major hurricane -- Category 3 or higher -- of this year's Atlantic hurricane season.
The Turks and Caicos islands could see 4 to 8 inches of rain Tuesday on top of what they received earlier, as well as storm surges -- ocean water pushed onto land -- of 2 to 4 feet above normal tide levels Tuesday evening, according to the hurricane center.
Hurricane conditions continued in Turks and Caicos Tuesday evening, and tropical storm conditions -- winds of at least 39 mph -- were expected over parts of the southeastern Bahamas for the next several hours, the hurricane center said Tuesday evening.
Strengthening is expected as Fiona turns from the Turks and Caicos. It could be a Category 4 storm -- with sustained winds of 130 to 156 mph -- by late Wednesday over the Atlantic. It could still be at Category 4 when it passes Bermuda, forecasters say.
Over the weekend, Fiona might make landfall in eastern Canada as a hurricane. It is too early to know exactly where or how strong it might be.
Fiona leaves behind devastated Puerto Rico
Tuesday marks five years since Hurricane Maria's catastrophic landfall in Puerto Rico and some who lived through the 2017 crisis say Fiona's flooding destruction could be even more severe.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a business owner in Puerto Rico, told CNN that his neighborhood had still not finished its recovery from Maria when Fiona struck. But this time, he says, the flooding brought even more damage to their homes.
"A lot of people -- more than (during) Maria -- lost their houses now ... lost everything in their houses because of the flooding," Gonzalez told CNN on Monday. "Maria was tough winds. But this one, with all the rain, it just destroyed everything in the house."
Water service also was interrupted for most, because river flooding affected filtration processes and must recede before safe treatment can resume, officials said. On Tuesday morning, about 60% of customers on the island had no running water, the territory's aqueduct and sewer authority said.
More than 1,200 people were staying in about 70 shelters on the island Tuesday, Pierluisi said. Emergency crews battled against unrelenting rain to rescue approximately 1,000 people as of midday Monday, said Maj. Gen. José Reyes, adjutant general of the Puerto Rico National Guard.
School buildings will be inspected to make sure they are safe for students to return to class in the coming days, the governor said Tuesday.
In addition to the hundreds of Puerto Rican National Guard members aiding in rescue and recovery efforts, the White House said Monday that President Joe Biden told Pierluisi during a phone call that federal support will increase in the coming days.
"As damage assessments are conducted, the President said that number of support personnel will increase substantially," the White House said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also announced the state would send 100 state troopers to assist relief efforts in Puerto Rico. She also said teams from New York Power Authority are available to help with power restoration.
More than 1 million customers left without water service in Dominican Republic
In the Dominican Republic, where up to 20 inches of rain fell in places, emergency workers brought nearly 800 people to safety, the country's emergency management director of operations, Juan Manuel Mendez, said Monday. At least 519 people were taking refuge in the country's 29 shelters Monday, he said.
As of Monday afternoon, at least 1,018,564 customers across the Dominican Republic had no access to running water as 59 aqueducts were out of service and several others were only partially functioning, according to Jose Luis German Mejia, a national emergency management official.
Some in the Dominican Republic were also without electricity Monday as 10 electric circuits went offline, emergency management officials said. It's unclear how many people are impacted by the outages.
Correction: This story has been updated with the correct age of the second victim in Puerto Rico, after updated information from officials.
The-CNN-Wire
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Amtrak on Thursday worked to accommodate travelers whose plans were disrupted this week ahead of a tentative railway labor agreement.
Crowds were noticeably smaller at New Jersey stop on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line between Philadelphia and New York hours after the agreement was announced, customers said.
Amtrak cancelled several of its long-distance routes this week because there would not have been enough time for them to reach their destinations before the strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. Friday.
That strike would have disrupted commuter traffic as well as freight rail lines because Amtrak and other commuter train lines use tracks owned by major freight railroads.
Amtrak suspended its California Zephyr and Empire Builder lines that run from Chicago to the West Coast, and said Wednesday that it would stop running its City of New Orleans, Starlight and Texas Eagle lines along with several others.
Amtrak said Thursday that it is reaching out to customers whose plans were disrupted and that it will accommodate them on the earliest available departures.
“Thank you also to our customers for their patience and understanding, and we look forward to welcoming them back on the rails starting today and tomorrow,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a prepared statement.
Railroads and union representatives had been in negotiations for 20 hours at the Labor Department to hammer out a deal ahead of a strike, which would have created chaos in a national supply chain that is already stressed due to the pandemic.
The tentative agreement will go to union members for a vote after a post-ratification cooling off period of several weeks.
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BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets followed Wall Street lower on Friday after higher-than-expected U.S. inflation dashed hopes the Federal Reserve might ease off more interest rate hikes.
Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney declined. Oil edged higher.
Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index lost 1.1% on Thursday, adding to declines since this week’s release of government data showing inflation stayed near a four-decade high in August despite four interest rate hikes this year to slow the economy.
On Thursday, U.S. government data showed unemployment claims last week declined while August consumer sales rose. That gives ammunition to Federal Reserve officials who say the economy can tolerate more rate hikes.
Wall Street’s decline indicates “no sign of relief for risk sentiments” while the job market data “provided the go-ahead for further tightening” in monetary policy, Yeap Jun Rong of IG said in a report.
The Shanghai Composite index lost 0.7% to 3,178.31 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo sank 1.1% to 27,568.68. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong retreated 0.8% to 18,800.78.
The Kospi in Seoul shed 0.6% to 2,386.81 and Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 was 1.2% lower at 6,762.00. Singapore gained less than 0.1% while New Zealand and other Southeast Asian markets declined.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 declined to 3,901.35 after the Labor Department said the number of applications for unemployment benefits last week fell to a four-month low.
The market benchmark is down 4.1% for the week following the biggest pullback in two years on Tuesday after the government reported U.S. consumer prices rose 8.3% from a year earlier and 0.1% compared with July.
The overall figure was down from June’s 9.1% peak, but core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices to give a clearer picture of the trend, rose to 0.6% over the previous month, up from July’s 0.3% increase.
Traders worry aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and central banks in Europe and Asia to control price rises might derail global economic growth. Two of the Fed’s rate hikes this year have been by 0.75 percentage points, triple its usual margin, and traders expect a similar increase this month.
Fed chair Jerome Powell said in August that rates would stay elevated for some time until the U.S. central bank is sure inflation is under control.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6% to 30,961.82. The Nasdaq slid 1.4% to 11,552.36.
Retail sales data gave a mixed view of how American consumers are coping with inflation.
Sales rose by an unexpectedly strong 0.3% in August after falling 0.4% in July.
Railroad operators mostly edged higher after a tentative labor agreement was reached, averting a disruptive strike. Union Pacific rose 0.2% and Norfolk Southern gained 0.3%. CSX fell 3.4%.
In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude rose 15 cents to $85.25 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $3.38 on Thursday to $85.10. Brent crude, the price basis for international oil trading, gained 23 cents to $91.07 per barrel in London. It lost $3.26 the previous session to $90.84.
The dollar edged down to 143.44 yen from Thursday’s 143.49 yen. The euro gained to 99.94 cents from 99.91 cents.
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| 2022-09-21T00:35:23Z
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Boeing officials said Thursday they will find new buyers for some Boeing 737 Max jets that were built for Chinese airlines but can’t be delivered because China’s aviation regulator has not cleared the plane to fly after two deadly crashes.
Boeing hopes the move will reduce its inventory of undelivered Max jets, which built up while the planes were grounded around the world.
However, the decision risks adding to tension between the aircraft manufacturer and China, which was once Boeing’s biggest market for the Max.
Arlington, Virginia-based Boeing had 290 undelivered 737s in inventory as of June 30, with about half of them earmarked for China, company officials said. The company did not disclose how many might be resold to new buyers.
Boeing’s hopes were raised last December, when China’s aviation regulator took a major step toward letting airlines resume using the Max. In February, Chinese airlines ran flight tests. But the Civil Aviation Administration of China has not taken the final steps to allow Max flights and deliveries to resume, which Boeing officials blame on COVID-19 lockdowns.
Meanwhile, the company was running out patience.
“We have deferred decisions on those planes for a long time. We can’t defer that decision forever,” Boeing Chief Financial Officer Brian West said Thursday. “So we will begin to re-market some of those airplanes that were otherwise earmarked for our Chinese customers.”
China “is an important market,” and Boeing did not make the decision lightly, West said during a Morgan Stanley investor conference. But he expressed confidence that Boeing can find new buyers for the planes, which list at $100 million and up — although airlines routinely get deep discounts.
China is the last major market where the Max is still awaiting approval to fly. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration approved changes Boeing made to the plane in late 2020, and regulators in Europe, Canada and Brazil have followed suit.
The importance of the Chinese market to Boeing was underscored in July, when China’s three largest airlines ordered nearly 300 planes from its European rival Airbus.
U.S. relations with China were strained during the administration of former President Donald Trump, who waged a trade war with China. On Thursday, Boeing CEO David Calhoun said free trade with China has helped the company but that recent “geopolitical events” will “slow us down.”
“I think we will get back there some day,” Calhoun said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event. “I just don’t think it’s a day soon.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:35:31Z
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ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s consumer inflation surged to a 17-year high in August 2022, its statistics agency said Thursday, signalling more hardship for citizens and businesses in Africa’s largest economy.
The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported in its latest consumer price index that inflation rose to 20.5% in August, up from 19.6% in July this year and 17% in August last year.
It is the seventh consecutive monthly increase in Nigeria’s inflation this year and the highest since 2005.
The rise in inflation was driven by “a disruption in the supply of food products, an increase in import cost due to the persistent currency depreciation and a general increase in the cost of production,” the statistics agency said.
The food inflation rate in August 2022 was 23.1%, the statistics agency said, blaming increases in prices of some of the most common food items in Nigeria including bread, cereals and tubers.
The 17-year high consumer inflation — more than double the Central Bank of Nigeria’s 9% target — draws more concerns of hardship from citizens and businesses in Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people.
Despite being Africa’s largest economy and one of the continent’s top oil producers, corruption, insecurity and lack of good governance have caused economic hardship to many in this West African country.
Analysts also see “external shocks” from the war in Ukraine as a contributing factor to Nigeria’s growing inflation. With the rising price of oil and gas, for instance, “our importation numbers and payment of subsidies have gone up, impacting the price of retail petrol which is key to businesses in the Nigerian market,” said Ese Osawmonyi with the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence research firm.
The security challenges which have led to the death of thousands in the last year in Nigeria’s north have also further pushed food inflation higher by limiting supplies from some of Nigeria’s biggest food-producing states, said analyst Osawmonyi.
That is in addition to fears that floods — which have displaced many homes and damaged crops across huge swathes of farmland in Nigeria’s north — might further impact food prices.
The flour market is one of the worst hit by rising inflation in Nigeria. Some bakeries are now shutting down operations amid dwindling profits, according to Emmanuel Onuorah, who runs a bakery in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
“People are closing,” Onuorah said of the hardship faced by bakers and other businesses. “It is no longer profitable for us. You just sustain yourself.”
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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — CSX has hired an auto industry executive to lead the railroad after its current CEO retires.
Jacksonville, Florida-based CSX Corp. said Thursday that Joe Hinrichs will take over from Jim Foote at the end of this month. Hinrichs previously served as president of Ford Motor Co.’s global auto business.
Hinrichs said in an interview with The Associated Press he’s very excited that CSX and the other major railroads were able to reach a tentative contract agreement Thursday with unions to prevent a potentially devastating national strike.
“Our employees are going to get a well-deserved raise after working so hard the last couple years through the pandemic,” Hinrichs said. “We’re excited about moving from here. Now we can move our conversation into how do we work together to grow the business and better serve our customers.”
The railroads have been plagued with delivery delays that prompted shippers to complain loudly this year about poor service. Federal regulators got involved and ordered the railroads to address the problems.
But improvement has come slowly. CSX and the other major railroads each needed to hire and train hundreds of additional workers, and that has been difficult amid the ongoing nationwide labor shortage.
Hinrichs said he hopes the new union contracts will help CSX attract and retain more employees.
He said he knows the railroad business as a customer, but not the details of its operations. He has been studying up on the Precision Scheduled Railroading model that CSX has used to slash its costs in recent years and will plan to lean on the expertise of CSX’s managers.
“Fortunately, we have a very strong operating team here at CSX that has implemented Precision Scheduled Railroading in the last couple years,” Hinrichs said. “The results have been outstanding. Many people believe CSX is a leader in that regard.”
Hinrichs said he has “read all the books that Hunter Harrison put out” and has been talking to people in the industry to learn more. Harrison originated the Precision Scheduled Railroading model when he led the Canadian railroads and implemented it at CSX before his death.
The model relies on using fewer, longer trains with a mix of freight on them, so railroads can operate with fewer locomotives and employees. Since CSX put it in place, the model has been widely adopted by other U.S. railroads. Collectively, the major U.S. railroads have used the model to cut nearly one-third of their workforce over the past six years.
Foote agreed to remain on as an advisor through March to help with the transition.
CSX is one of the nation’s largest railroads, and it operates more than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of track in 26 Eastern states and two Canadian provinces after acquiring Pam-Am Railways in the northeastern United States earlier this year.
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| 2022-09-21T00:35:45Z
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BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers on Thursday declared that Hungary has become “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” under the leadership of its nationalist government, and that its undermining of the bloc’s democratic values had taken Hungary out of the community of democracies.
In a resolution that passed 433-to-123 with 28 abstentions, the parliamentarians raised concerns about Hungary’s constitutional and electoral systems, judicial independence, possible corruption, public procurement irregularities, LGBTQ+ rights, as well as media, academic and religious freedoms.
The lawmakers said that Hungary — which its populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban characterizes as an “illiberal democracy” — has left behind many of the democratic values of the bloc. In part, they blamed the other 26 EU member countries for turning a blind eye to possible abuses during Orban’s 12 years in office.
The vote is the latest in a series of showdowns between the EU’s institutions and Orban’s government in Budapest. The bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, is expected to announce Sunday that it is prepared to suspend payments of some EU money to Hungary over its alleged violations.
The French Greens parliamentarian who chaperoned the resolution through the assembly, Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, said “for the first time, an EU institution is stating the sad truth, that Hungary is no longer a democracy.”
In the text, the lawmakers condemned “the deliberate and systematic efforts of the Hungarian government to undermine the founding values of the Union.”
The vote is highly symbolic in that it sets Hungary apart from other EU countries in its alleged failure to uphold values enshrined in the EU treaty like “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.”
But the vote, which came during a plenary session in Strasbourg, France, doesn’t impose any penalty on Orban’s government, nor does it bind other EU countries into taking any particular actions.
Delbos-Corfield said Orban and the ruling Fidesz party “have put their time and effort into tearing apart the fabric of democracy and ripping up the rule of law instead of supporting their citizens.”
“The costs for Hungarian citizens are clear: They are having their rights removed and opportunities undermined, all while their state is stripped apart by autocrats and oligarchs,” she said.
Lawmakers opposing a report on the resolution said it contains “subjective opinions and politically biased statements, and reflects vague concerns, value judgements and double standards.”
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said Thursday during a news conference in Budapest that Hungarian voters had “decided in four parliamentary elections in a row what kind of future they want for the country” by electing Orban and his party.
“We resent that some people in Strasbourg and Brussels think that the Hungarian people are not mature enough to decide their own future,” Szijjarto said.
Hungary has long been on a collision course with its European partners. It has routinely blocked joint statements, decisions and events, ranging from high-level NATO meetings with Ukraine to an EU vote on corporate tax and a common EU position on an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.
The government in Budapest has opposed some EU sanctions against Russia, notably a freeze on the assets of Russia’s Orthodox Church patriarch, as well as energy-related sanctions against Moscow.
Members of the European Commission are meeting Sunday, when they are expected to announce a cut in Hungary’s EU funding unless it takes action to end its democratic backsliding.
Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn said says suspending around 70% of the funding to Hungary in some EU programs, notably related to public contract procurement, “can be considered proportionate.” It’s unclear how much money that would involve.
A full suspension of EU funds is unlikely. Any action must be approved by the member countries, and this requires a “qualified majority,” which amounts to 55% of the 27 members representing at least 65% of the total EU population. Some EU lawmakers have expressed concerns that if Italy’s far right wins the country’s Sept. 25 election it could be difficult to establish that majority.
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| 2022-09-21T00:35:53Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell again last week to a four-month low even as the Federal Reserve continues its aggressive interest rate cuts to bring inflation under control.
Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Sept. 10 fell by 5,000 to 213,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s the fewest since late May.
First-time applications generally reflect layoffs.
The four-week average for claims, which offsets some of the weekly volatility, fell by 8,000 to 224,000.
The number of Americans collecting traditional unemployment benefits inched up by 2,000 for the week that ended Sept. 3, to 1.4 million.
Hiring in the U.S. in 2022 has been remarkably strong even in the midst of rising interest rates and weak economic growth. The Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates in an effort to bring down inflation, which generally also slows job growth.
Earlier this month, the Labor Department reported that employers added still-strong 315,000 jobs in August, though less than the average 487,000 a month over the past year. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7%, its highest level since February, but for a healthy reason: Hundreds of thousands of people returned to the job market, and some didn’t find work right away, so the government’s count of unemployed people rose.
The U.S. economy has been a mixed bag this year. Economic growth has declined in the first half of 2022, which, by some informal definitions, signals a recession.
But businesses remain desperate to find workers, posting more than 11 million job openings in July, meaning there are almost two job vacancies for every unemployed American.
Inflation continues to be the biggest obstacle for a healthy U.S. economy. The rise in consumer prices slowed modestly the past couple months, largely due to falling gas prices. But overall, prices for food and other essentials remain elevated enough that the Federal Reserve has indicated it will keep raising its benchmark interest rate until prices come back down to normal levels.
Most economists expect the Fed to raise its benchmark borrowing rate by three-quarters of a point when it meets next week.
The Fed has already raised its short-term interest rate four times this year and Chairman Jerome Powell has said that the central bank will likely need to keep interest rates high enough to slow the economy “for some time” in order to tame the worst inflation in 40 years. Powell has acknowledged the increases will hurt U.S. households and businesses, but also said the pain would be worse if inflation remained at current levels.
Some of that so-called pain has already begun, particularly in the housing and technology sectors. Online real estate companies RedFin and Compass recently announced job cuts as rising interest rates have tripped up the housing market.
Other high-profile layoffs announced in recent months include Tesla, Netflix, Carvana, and Coinbase.
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BERLIN (AP) — The Group of Seven major economies have agreed to take a tougher, more coordinated stance toward China when it comes to trade, Germany’s economy minister said Thursday.
After a two-day meeting with fellow G-7 officials, Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck told reporters that discussions about China were part of an effort to ensure high international trade standards and to prevent Beijing from using its economic might to steamroll other nations.
“The naivety toward China is over,” Habeck said, referring to Germany’s own position on China. “The time when one said ‘Trade, no matter what,’ regardless of the social or humanitarian standards, … is something we shouldn’t allow ourselves anymore.”
He said Germany would work to persuade the European Union to establish “a more robust trade policy toward China and respond as Europeans to the coercive measures that China takes to protect its economy.”
“The other partner countries will do exactly the same,” Habeck said, adding that the G-7 members – which also include Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States – agreed to coordinate their respective actions.
In a joint statement following the meeting at Neuhardenberg Palace, east of Berlin, the G-7 didn’t explicitly name China.
The statement expressed concerns about “unfair practices, such as all forms of forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, lowering of labor and environmental standards to gain competitive advantage, market-distorting actions of state-owned enterprises, and harmful industrial subsidies, including those that lead to excess capacity.”
The group also pledged to continue seeking a reform of the World Trade Organization. The United States has been particularly wary of subjecting itself to the Geneva-based body’s jurisdiction on trade matters.
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:14Z
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DETROIT (AP) — General Motors said Thursday it will spend $491 million to expand and upgrade an Indiana metal stamping plant for production of steel and aluminum stamped parts for “future vehicles,” including electric vehicles.
The automaker said it would install two new press lines, complete press and die upgrades and make renovations to the Marion, Indiana, plant, where a roughly 6,000-square-foot (557.4-square-meter) addition also is planned.
GM said work would begin later this year to prepare the Marion plant “to produce a variety of steel and aluminum stamped parts for future products, including electric vehicles, built at multiple GM assembly plants.”
News of the Marion project comes as GM is working to strengthen its foothold in the electric vehicle market.
“While this investment prepares the facility for our all-electric future, it’s really an investment in our talented Marion team and will keep the plant working for many years to come,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president of global manufacturing, said in a news release.
GM’s Marion Metal Center opened in 1956 about 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) northeast of Indianapolis. The plant currently produces sheet metal parts for multiple GM assembly plants to support production of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles.
The plant employs more than 750 people. GM said its employment is expected to remain stable “with the addition of this new work in the plant.”
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation has proposed providing GM with up to $12 million in conditional tax credits and up to $500,000 in training grants, among other incentives, based on the company’s plans. That funding must be approved by the IEDC’s board of directors.
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:22Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates climbed over 6% this week for the first time since the housing crash of 2008, threatening to sideline even more homebuyers from a rapidly cooling housing market.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the 30-year rate rose to 6.02% from 5.89% last week. The long-term average rate has more than doubled since a year ago and is the highest it’s been since November of 2008, just after the housing market collapse triggered the Great Recession. One year ago, the rate stood at 2.86%.
Rising interest rates — in part a result of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive push to tamp down inflation — have cooled off a housing market that has been hot for years. Many potential homebuyers are getting pushed out of the market as the higher rates have added hundreds of dollars to monthly mortgage payments. Sales of existing homes in the U.S. have fallen for six straight months, according to the National Association of Realtors.
“The increase will have an impact on the buying power of would-be homebuyers,” said Steve Reich, chief operations officer at Finance of America Mortgage, a home financing company. “We are hearing that some buyers are taking a wait-and-see approach until rates come down.”
The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, popular among those looking to refinance their homes, rose to 5.21% from 5.16% last week. Last year at this time the rate was 2.19%.
Justin Casale, a high school guidance counselor in New York who’s been looking to buy a home for about a year, says he and his wife are now ruling out properties that would have been affordable a year ago when rates were far lower — and the market was far more competitive.
Back then, they could afford a home going for up to $950,000, but to keep their monthly payment at no more than $4,000 with today’s higher mortgage rates, their price ceiling is now $750,000, said Casale, 31.
“While we’re not completely stopping our search, I definitely feel that home prices need to come down for them to become affordable,” he said.
Many would-be buyers are pausing their home searches amid rising rates and high home prices, said Josh Horner, an agent with Re/Max Masters in Salt Lake City.
“We’ve seen a few layers of buyers peel off and kind of sit on the sideline, if you will,” he said. “Either they’re discouraged or they are kind of forecasting a better time to maybe enter the market.”
Mortgage rates don’t necessarily mirror the Fed’s rate increases, but tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. That’s influenced by a variety of factors, including investors’ expectations for future inflation and global demand for U.S. Treasurys.
Recently, faster inflation and strong U.S. economic growth have sent the 10-year Treasury rate up sharply, to 3.45%.
The Fed has raised its benchmark short-term interest rate four times this year, and Chairman Jerome Powell has said that the central bank will likely need to keep interest rates high enough to slow the economy “for some time” in order to tame the worst inflation in 40 years.
More inflation data this week suggests that while gas prices have retreated significantly since early in the summer, prices for most other necessities have actually gone up, panicking investors who fear a possible recession if the Fed keeps boosting rates.
Most economists forecast that the Fed will jack up its primary lending rate another three-quarters of a point when the central bank’s leaders meet next week. Some fear the Fed could raise the rate by a full point, following consecutive jumbo increases of three quarters of a point at its last two meetings.
The government reported that U.S. economy shrank at a 0.6% annual rate from April through June, a second straight quarter of economic contraction, which meets one informal sign of a recession. Most economists, though, have said they doubt that the economy is in or on the verge of a recession, given that the U.S. job market remains robust.
Applications for jobless aid fell again last week and remain at their lowest level since May, despite the Fed’s moves to tame inflation, which has a tendency to cool the job market as well.
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AP Business Writer Alex Veiga contributed to this report from Los Angeles.
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:29Z
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Here are the statewide high school team rankings for the S.C. Prep Football Media Poll released Tuesday, Sept. 20. First-place votes in parentheses.
Class 5A
1. Dutch Fork (18)
2. Byrnes
3. Hillcrest (1)
4. Dorman
5. Sumter
6. River Bluff
7. Fort Dorchester
8. White Knoll
9. Lexington
10. Summerville
Others receiving votes: Gaffney, West Ashley, TL Hanna, Spartanburg
Class 4A
1. South Florence (15)
2. AC Flora (3)
3. West Florence
4. Northwestern (1)
5. South Pointe
6. Catawba Ridge
7. Indian Land
8. Ridge View
9. Westside
10.Irmo
Others receiving votes: James Island, Hartsville, York, Wilson, Greenville
Class 3A
1. Daniel (18)
2. Dillon (1)
3. Clinton
4. Powdersville
5. Beaufort
6. Belton Honea Path
7. Hanahan
8. Gilbert
9. Loris
10. Camden
Others receiving votes: Seneca, Aynor, Marlboro County, Lake City
Class 2A
1. Saluda (15)
2. Oceanside Collegiate (3)
3. Barnwell (1)
4. Abbeville
5. Buford
6. Marion
7. Woodland
8. Wade Hampton (H)
9. Gray Collegiate
10. Fairfield Central
Others receiving votes: Andrews, Academic Magnet, Pelion, Strom Thurmond, Andrew Jackson
Class A
1. St. Joseph’s (15)
2. Bamberg-Ehrhardt (1)
3. Johnsonville
4. Lewisville (2)
5. Whale Branch
6. Christ Church
7. Lake View (1)
8. Baptist Hill
9. Lamar
10. Southside Christian
Others receiving votes: Calhoun County, Estill, Denmark-Olar, Cross
Voters this week: Lou Bezjak (The State), Jed Blackwell (PrepRedzone), Travis Boland (Times & Democrat), Dennis Brunson (High School Sports Report), Scott Chancey (Florence Morning News), Tyler Cupp (WRHI), Joe Dandron (Greenville News), Chris Dearing (Cola Daily/Prep RedZone), Cody Estremera (Greenwood Index Journal), Thomas Grant (Lexington Chronicle), Ian Guerin (My Horry News/Prep RedZone), Travis Jenkins (News & Reporter), Wes Kerr (LowCo Sports), Gene Knight (WRHI), James McBee (Boiling Springs Sports Journal). Chris Miller (WRHI), David Shelton (Post and Courier/Prep RedZone), Brandon Stockdale (Prep RedZone), Pete Yanity (WSPA)
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:31Z
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Outdoor gear company Patagonia says “the earth is now our only shareholder” after transferring the company’s ownership from founder Yvon Chouinard and his family to two nonprofits established to fight climate change.
In a letter posted on the 50-year-old company’s website Wednesday night, Chouinard said Patagonia would transfer 100% of its voting stock to the Patagonia Purpose Trust, created to uphold the values of the company long known for its environmental activism. All of its nonvoting stock will go to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit “dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature.”
“While we’re doing our best to address the environmental crisis, it’s not enough,” Chouinard wrote. “We needed to find a way to put more money into fighting the crisis while keeping the company’s values intact.”
Patagonia estimates that after reinvesting some profits back into the company, about $100 million annually will be distributed to the Holdfast Collective as a dividend, depending on the health of the business.
Grace Chiang Nicolette, The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s vice president of programming and external relations, said this unusual move by the Chouinard family may become a blueprint for company founders looking to donate their businesses to causes important to them.
“Business owners are often faced with fraught decisions on the future of their company when it’s time to sell,” said Nicolette, who also co-hosts the “Giving Done Right” podcast. “The very wealthy are also faced with the fact that their net worths are growing faster than they can conceive of giving it away. This plan makes the company’s social impact its guiding principle and I think we’re going to see more donors pursuing this approach.”
Chouinard said other options for the Ventura, California, company to dedicate itself to protecting the planet — selling the company and donating the proceeds; or taking the company public — were not viable for Patagonia’s ultimate goals.
“Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth,” Chouinard wrote.
Chuck Collins, the Institute for Policy Studies director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good, said Chouinard’s actions reflect a personal connection to the environmental crisis and a desire to back up his beliefs with his wealth.
“It shows that somebody who has substantial wealth is responding with the kind of scale needed to address the problem,” he said. “He’s working with the tools that he’s got. And it’s a pretty good response.”
Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert said in a statement that the Chouinards challenged him and others at the company to develop a new ownership structure.
“They wanted us to both protect the purpose of the business and immediately and perpetually release more funding to fight the environmental crisis,” Gellert wrote. “We believe this new structure delivers on both and we hope it will inspire a new way of doing business that puts people and planet first.”
Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University who focuses on nonprofit organizations and their financial statements, said the new Patagonia structure is similar to the one Paul Newman created for his salad dressing company, Newman’s Own. The profits from the business go into the Newman’s Own Foundation, which donates to nonprofits supporting children facing adversity.
The difference is that the Holdfast Collective is organized as a 501(c)4 corporation, according to the New York Times, which first reported the ownership change. That allows it to lobby politicians, which a public benefit charity like Newman’s Own Foundation is not allowed to do.
“What I don’t think is getting enough attention here is that the tax advantages of choosing a donation to a charity over a social welfare organization just aren’t that pronounced in this particular case,” said Mittendorf. He noted that the gift tax the Chouinards will pay is on their initial investment in Patagonia, not on its current worth, estimated at $3 billion.
“I kind of just view it as a desire to retain control over the company while ensuring that the resources that the company generates are used for a particular goal,” he said.
Patagonia makes outdoor clothing, gear and accessories for everything from skiing to climbing and camping. The company said it will continue its previous charitable donations, including donating 1% of its sales each year to grassroots activists and remaining a B Corp, a designation for companies that prioritize social and environmental standards as well as profits.
Chouinard said he never wanted to be a businessman and started Patagonia as a craftsman, making climbing gear for himself and his friends.
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:36Z
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NEW YORK (AP) — Americans picked up their spending a bit in August from July even as surging inflation on household necessities like rent and food took a toll on family budgets.
U.S. retail sales rose an unexpected 0.3% last month after falling 0.4% in July, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Excluding business at gas stations, sales rose 0.8%.
The sales figures for August were largely boosted by higher spending on vehicles. Sales of purchases at motor vehicles and parts dealers rose 2.8% last month. Excluding vehicle sales, spending slipped 0.3%. Excluding both vehicle and gas spending, retail sales rose 0.3%.
While the report showed shoppers’ resilience, the figures also are not adjusted for inflation unlike many other government reports. In fact, sales at grocery stores rose 0.5% , helped by rising prices in food.
There was, however, weakening in some areas of discretionary spending with Americans fully aware of inflation’s bite. Business at restaurants ticked up 1.1%, but the pace has slowed. Sales at furniture stores fell 1.3%. Online sales fell 0.7% last month after Amazon’s Prime Day boosted e-commerce sales in July.
“Retailers would probably like to be growing more, especially relative to inflation, but I’m not sure they could realistically hope for much more,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com. “Consumer spending habits are changing as the pandemic continues to recede and inflation remains high.”
Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70% of U.S. economic activity and Americans have remained mostly resilient even with inflation near four-decade highs. Yet surging prices for everything from mortgages to milk have upped the anxiety level. Overall spending has slowed and shifted increasingly toward necessities like food, while spending on electronics, furniture, new clothes and other non-necessities has faded.
On Thursday, it appeared that the U.S. dodged a national freight rail strike, which could have sent retail prices higher.
Still, inflation remains stubbornly high. Lower gas costs slowed U.S. inflation for a second straight month in August, but most other prices across the economy kept going up — evidence that inflation remains a heavy load for American households.
Consumer prices rose 8.3% from a year earlier and 0.1% from July. But the jump in “core” prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, was especially worrisome. It outpaced expectations and sparked fear that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates more aggressively and raise the risk of a recession.
Retailers are wrapping up what has turned out to be a decent back-to-school shopping season. But many retail executives say that customers are being more selective when they buy, a trend that could hold through the only shopping period that tops back to school in sales, the weeks leading up to winter holidays.
Jill Renslow, executive vice president of business development and marketing at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, said that mall is faring well with families generously spending for the back-to-school season. But she said the lower income Americans are tightening their belts and waiting for sales.
“They’re being more selective in where they are shopping and what they are purchasing, what they’re spending their time on,” she said.
Shoe Carnival, which has stores located in strip malls rather than enclosed malls, did well during the pandemic as Americans avoided being indoors as much as possible. CEO Mark Worden said the chain is now getting another bump as people trade down to lower price footwear amid soaring inflation.
Shoppers are buying fewer shoes this year compared with the last year when business was boosted by the government stimulus checks. But customers are still buying more shoes than in the pre-pandemic 2019.
The government’s monthly report on retail sales covers about a third of all consumer purchases and doesn’t include spending on most services, ranging from plane fares and apartment rents to movie tickets and doctor visits. In recent months, Americans have been shifting their purchases away from physical goods and more toward travel, hotel stays and plane trips as the threat of the virus fades.
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Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:44Z
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AMSTERDAM (AP) — The CEO of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has quit after a summer that descended into chaos and flight cancellations amid staff shortages in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve done my very best, but we’re not there yet. I do hope it gets better soon,” CEO Dick Benschop said in a statement released by the airport Thursday, after he told the board of his decision on Wednesday night.
He said he was stepping down “to give Schiphol the space to make a new start. I do not want attention on me to become an obstacle for Schiphol.”
The busy aviation hub on the outskirts of Amsterdam has been hit by huge queues and piles of unclaimed baggage over the summer vacation months as air travel roared back after the pandemic.
The surge in demand for air travel came after airlines and airports had slashed jobs during the aviation slump during the pandemic.
Jaap de Winter, chairman of the Schiphol board, said he and board members “respect and understand Dick’s decision” and will be looking for a successor.
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Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:51Z
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NEW YORK (AP) — The largest part of the U.S. economy is holding up against the hottest inflation in four decades and the threat of a potential recession.
Hotels, restaurants and other businesses that provide services have managed to keep gaining ground through the summer, according to the latest survey from the Institute for Supply Management. The sector has been expanding since May, and August’s gain was the biggest so far this year.
“Business activity is the highest since December, an important breakpoint, as the consumer showed stable demand for services after the headwinds of war, inflation and geopolitical uncertainty,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial, in a note to investors.
Inflation remains Wall Street’s main concern as investors try to gauge how the Federal Reserve will continue its rate hikes in order to tame higher prices. But several reports from the government suggest that inflation may be easing and some drivers of higher prices, including gas prices and food commodities, have also been dropping.
For example, prices paid by purchasing managers have been falling since April. In August, prices hit their lowest point of the year.
“We continue to be really pleased with the recovery and resilience of the business in the summer,” Kathleen Oberg, chief financial officer of Marriott International, said at a recent business conference.
The hotel chain’s revenue per available room, a key industry metric, rose 2% globally in July compared with 2019. A recession would definitely impact the industry, she said, but support from several areas of the economy remain strong.
“I think you’ve still got some pent-up revenge travel, if you will, of people trying to make up. You’ve still got excess savings that have not been worked off. And you’ve also got a really strong labor market,” Oberg said.
The airline industry benefitted from a jump in demand over the summer, prompting several carriers to give investors encouraging updates on operations. United Airlines expects demand to remain strong past the summer and increased its revenue projections for the current quarter.
Restaurant and food service companies are also holding their ground as consumers continue to spend. Starbucks surprised Wall Street with record revenue during its quarter that ran from April to June and noted that it hadn’t yet seen any measurable impact on sales from inflation.
Investors and economists remain cautious about the road ahead for the economy, though. While services account for roughly 70% of the economy, the strength there hasn’t been enough to offset the impact to gross domestic product from supply chain problems that have kept many products stuck in factories and waiting to be shipped.
Inflation is seemingly easing its grip, but the Fed has been resolute in its plan to keep raising interest rates in order to make sure that it reins in high prices. That could potentially slow the economy too much and throw it into a recession.
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| 2022-09-21T00:36:58Z
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Last week ended with a local veteran receiving a timeless gift.
Tallapoosa County Schools recognized former superintendent Joseph “Joe” C. Windle Friday, September 16, for both his service as an educator and a military commander.
Current Superintendent Ray Porter joined other school leaders in surprising his predecessor with the unveiling of a road dedication at Reeltown Elementary School, announcing that the school’s entrance henceforth will be named Colonel Joseph Windle Drive.
Porter declared the occasion historic, and justified given Windle’s contributions to Tallapoosa County and the nation.
“Today, we recognize an individual but also a family that means a tremendous amount to Tallapoosa County, and especially to the [Reeltown] community,” Porter said.
The location is fitting given that Windle served on the football team at Reeltown High School and then later as the school’s principal.
In addition to a sign at the school, the Tallapoosa County Board of Education issued an official resolution cementing the commemoration into the school district’s records and Tallapoosa County history.
Board members unanimously approved the dedication during a meeting on September 8, but waited until last week before announcing the news to Windle.
Windle reacted with shock, unaware prior that he would receive the honor. Surrounded by his family, Windle cried as school leaders announced the decree, describing the occasion as a special day in his life.
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“This is a special place, and this is a special day. Thank you very much for doing this,” Windle said.
Porter proceeded to read the resolution during the ceremony, highlighting Windle’s extensive career in public education.
“It is with great sense of pride that the Tallapoosa County Board of Education names the driveway of the new Reeltown Elementary School the Colonel Joseph Windle Drive in honor of our friend and former Superintendent Of Education, who ably served his country with 28 years of service and over 20 years of service to public education,” Porter said as he read the resolution aloud to Windle and his colleagues.
The resolution listed Windle’s contributions during his tenure as the school district’s superintendent, most notably being elected District 4 “Superintendent of the Year” and his advocacy for the passage of a one cent sales tax which has resulted in over $25 million dollars in funds for the school system.
Given the driveway’s inclusion of Windle’s military rank, the dedication also pays tribute to Windle’s service in the line of duty. Windle is a former Army Ranger and paratrooper and a Commandant at Lyman Ward Military Academy.
Among his military decorations include: The Legion of Merit (four awards), Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Meritorious Service Medal (five awards), Army Commendation Medal and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry and the Combat Infantryman’s Badge.
Despite Windle’s vast achievements, he expressed appreciation to the board of education and his former colleagues for their service.
“I see people who have done a lot more than me and who go to work everyday to improve reading scores or that run a career-tech center,” he said. “Tallapoosa County has got so many good things going forward to give kids an opportunity.”
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LONDON (AP) — Shell CEO Ben van Beurden is stepping down at the end of 2022 after nine years in charge, the energy giant said Thursday, a change that comes as oil and natural gas companies are under pressure to shift away from fossil fuels even as they see soaring profits from energy prices driven up by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Taking over Jan. 1 is Wael Sawan, a Lebanese-Canadian who has worked for Shell for 25 years and is now director of integrated gas, renewables and energy solutions. The choice signals the focus of the London-based company to take what it calls a leading role in the energy transition despite facing criticism that it’s been slow to reduce climate-changing emissions.
“I’m looking forward to channeling the pioneering spirit and passion of our incredible people to rise to the immense challenges, and grasp the opportunities presented by the energy transition,” said Sawan, who has been a member of Shell’s executive committee for three years.
He takes over at a tumultuous time for Shell and other oil and gas giants. While the world is looking to transition to renewable sources like wind and solar, the war in Ukraine has created volatility that has driven up energy prices and fueled inflation.
Natural gas prices have soared as Russia has curbed supplies to Europe, where an energy crisis is forcing governments to institute conservation measures and go back to coal and oil despite climate goals to ensure the lights stay on this winter.
Volatile oil prices soared above $120 per barrel in June, pushing gasoline prices at the pump to record highs in the United States. Crude has since fallen below $90.
That has translated to record profits for energy companies at a time when households and businesses are getting stung by rising costs. Some European governments have approved taxes on excess profits of energy companies to help households and businesses, and the European Union’s executive Commission proposed Wednesday a similar levy on electricity producers across the 27-nation bloc.
In late July, Shell posted record profits of $11.5 billion for a second straight quarter. That was up from $5.5 billion in the same three-month period last year, despite a hit worth billions from pulling out of Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
Ellen Wald, the founder of energy consulting firm Transversal Consulting, notes that prior to heading natural gas and renewables, the incoming CEO was involved in the company’s upstream operations. Despite efforts by Shell to shift toward more renewables, the company still makes most of its money selling and trading crude oil, Wald said.
“It’s not like he’s just a renewable guy,” Wald said. “He’s still an oil and gas person, but I do think the fact that he was in this (renewables) division before moving to CEO shows how integral they see this to the future of the company.”
Shell Chairman, Sir Andrew Mackenzie, called Sawan “an exceptional leader, with all the qualities needed to drive Shell safely and profitably through its next phase of transition and growth.”
Sophie Lund-Yates, a lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, an investment services firm, called Sawan’s appointment “a clear marker” that Shell intends to make its renewable strategy clearer, even if “change won’t happen overnight.” He “won’t be ignorant to the fact oil prices can collapse at short notice” and that is “all but guaranteed to be something he’ll have to navigate,” Lund-Yates added.
Formerly known as Dutch Royal Shell, the company late last year left the Netherlands and consolidated its headquarters in London as it simplified its archaic corporate structure. Shell has resisted pressure to break itself up, with one company focused on renewable energy and the other on legacy fossil fuels, as other firms have done.
It has a goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 by investing in renewable energy, restoring forests and taking other steps but has been accused of moving too slowly.
Last year, the Hague District Court ordered Shell to cut carbon emissions 45% by 2030, saying the company’s net-zero target “is not concrete, has many caveats and is based on monitoring social developments rather than the company’s own responsibility for achieving a CO2 reduction.”
“It’s a tricky position for these European legacy energy companies because they face an immense amount of pressure to basically get out of their core business, and yet there’s still demand for their core products—a lot of demand for it,” Wald said.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:04Z
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After a 3-1 start under first-year coach Smitty Grider, and two new coordinators, the big mystery with Benjamin Russell was how the team would respond to a third new coaching regime in three years.
Simply put, the team has taken off.
Last Friday’s loss is a singular blemish on what had been a spectacular season thus far, including a top-10 ranking for the first time since 2018.
At the midway point in the season, many of Benjamin Russell’s players are not only some of the best in 6A ball, but in the state.
Offensively, things get started with junior quarterback Gabe Benton.
Benton is known for his big arm, and is aided hugely by playmakers all around him.
Benton currently sits at the 16th best quarterback in the entire state in terms of total passing yards.
Through four games, Benton has thrown for just shy of 1,000 yards. He has 11 passing touchdowns, a handful of rushing scores and only two interceptions.
For his class, he is the seventh best quarterback. Only two of the quarterbacks ahead of him have received any college interest, so if Benton continues his pace, he could become one of the best class of 2024 quarterbacks in the state. He and other Wildcats even spent time at Auburn recently.
Benton’s big target on offense is wide receiver Corri Milliner.
Milliner sits at 21st in the state in total receiving yards, with 384. The senior averages 96 yards per game and has five touchdowns through four games.
He is top-15 in his class, and has received a few college offers, including an offer from Alabama State.
Earlier this season, Milliner sat around the top-10, even being so high as third in the state in pass catching. Benjamin Russell’s offense has cooled off as the season has gone along, but at anypoint the lanky speedster is prime to make his mark on a game.
In terms of total offensive production, Benjamin Russell’s numbers are actually lacking overall.
In all of 6A ball, Benjamin Russell sits last in total points scored with 121, and second-to-last in points per game with 30.3.
However, Benjamin Russell’s offense is supported by a stellar defense.
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Defensively, the Wildcats are the eighth best defense in 6A in terms of points allowed per game. Through four games, the Wildcats have allowed 58 total points for an average of 14.5 per game. Benjamin Russell will score over 14 a game, so the two units work in great synchronicity.
The defensive unit is led by D’Nalius Woods, who is having a monster senior year.
Woods is tied for seventh overall in the state in sacks with four, averaging one a game. The senior defensive end is tied for fifth overall in sacks in the class of 2023.
For 6A ball, Woods is tied for third in the state in sacks.
Woods is also accompanied by fellow senior Bryan Simmons at the top of the state in sacks.
Simmons has three sacks, which sits him tied for ninth in the state.
A third senior, Savon Spradley is seventh overall in 6A in total tackles with 40, for an average of 10 a game.
Someone whose name has not been mentioned is Malcolm Simmons, who likely will land himself at a major Division 1 school when he graduates next spring.
Simmons leads the Wildcats in rushing yards per game and total touchdowns, while being third on the team in receiving yards per game. He is also tied for a team lead in interceptions.
His numbers overall may not shatter the charts in the state, but are integral for the Wildcats sustained success this season.
Looking forward to the year, the remainder of Benjamin Russell’s schedule looks incredibly favorable.
Next up for Benjamin Russell is a date with 1-4 Smiths Station at the Sportplex. Of Benjamin Russell’s next six games, three teams have losing records.
Only Helena has an above .500 winning record (4-1) on Benjamin Russell’s schedule. Both Briarwood and Valley are 2-2.
The last time Benjamin Russell made the playoffs was in the same 2018 season the Wildcats drew a top-10 ranking.
For Grider and Co., this year could be the year the Wildcats are back in the postseason.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:06Z
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EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — Led by a woman known as the “Boss Lady,” an alleged human smuggling ring hid migrants in suitcases or crammed them into the back of tractor-trailers, federal authorities announced Tuesday.
The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced the disruption and dismantling of this “prolific” human smuggling operation, which operated in Texas and across the Southern United States, and the unsealing of an indictment charging eight individuals with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.
Court documents obtained by Border Report identify the ring leader as 31-year-old Erminia Serrano Piedra, aka Irma, aka Boss Lady.
During a news conference on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr., said that Serrano and her coconspirators allegedly coordinated the transportation and harboring of migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border near Laredo, Texas, to places like Austin and San Antonio and other points in the interior of the United States.
Prosecutors say smugglers placed the lives of migrants in danger by frequently holding them in deplorable conditions, including tight spaces with little ventilation and no temperature control.
While transporting the migrants, drivers allegedly hid them in suitcases placed in pickups, cramming them in the back of tractor-trailers, the covered beds of pickups, repurposed water tankers or wooden crates strapped to flatbed trailers.
“This organization was motivated by personal greed, and Serrano and her coconspirators prioritized that greed over the safety of those that they allegedly smuggled,” Polite said.
The documents state that smugglers commonly referred to the migrants as “boxes” or “packages.”
The migrants — identified only as citizens of Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia — and/or their families allegedly paid members of the human smuggling organization to help them travel illegally to and within the United States.
Documents show that migrants typically paid about $3,000 to smugglers up-front in Mexico and another $5,000 to the smuggling organization once in the U.S.
The human smuggling organization paid drivers $2,500 for each migrant they picked migrants near the border and took to “stash houses.”
Serrano, described in court documents as a “hands-on” leader, and seven other alleged coconspirators were all arrested in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release. The other defendants include Kevin Daniel Nuber, aka Captain, 41; Laura Nuber, aka Barbie, 40; Lloyd Bexley, 51; Jeremy Dickens, 45; Katie Ann Garcia, aka Guera, 39; Oliveria Piedra-Campuzana, 53; and Pedro Hairo Abrigo, 33.
“Sadly, this case is an example of what we see in our district, too many times, especially in our border communities,” said Jennifer B. Lowery, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. “Our Laredo office works continuously with our valued partners to bring to justice those who allegedly put profits ahead of everything else. No amount of money should be a substitute for human life.”
Polite said the operation was a part of Joint Task Force Alpha, which launched over a year ago to strengthen U.S. efforts to dismantle some of the most dangerous human smuggling and trafficking networks. In April, the Biden Administration committed over $50 million and over 1,300 personnel to Latin America and the Southwest border to bolster those efforts, which have resulted in the arrest of 5,000 people and the seizure of 7,603 kilograms of drugs.
Investigators say that as part of the investigation, they reviewed Serrano’s accounts and found substantial cash deposits that did not have a legitimate source. In one instance, court documents state, she received $129,000 in seven separate deposits, all within 11 minutes on Aug. 4, 2020.
“The charges announced today are just the latest example of these efforts’ success,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said Tuesday. “The Justice Department will continue to bring our full resources to bear to combat the human smuggling and trafficking groups that endanger our communities, abuse and exploit migrants, and threaten our national security.”
Polite said the investigation into this smuggling operation began last summer and has resulted in about 120 arrests, of which 50 have resulted in convictions. If convicted, the defendants could forfeit three properties and $2.3 million.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:12Z
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NEW BOSTON, Texas (KTAL/KMSS) – The prosecution in the Taylor Parker trial on Thursday made a point to remind the jury that the woman accused of killing a New Boston mother and cutting her unborn baby from her womb was found competent to stand trial.
“If Ms. Parker was incompetent, we would not be in this courtroom,” Bowie County First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp said after Parker’s defense attorney Jeff Harrelson asked Parker’s ex-husband, Tommy Waycasey, whether she ever had a mental evaluation. “Ms. Parker is not insane, or we would not be having this jury trial. So as Ms. Parker sits here today, she’s found competent.”
Parker, now 29, is charged with kidnapping and capital murder of 21-year-old Reagan Simmons Hancock and her unborn baby, Braxlynn. Parker could face the death penalty if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty.
So far in the trial, Parker’s defense team has not denied even the most outrageous of the lies and schemes detailed in testimony. Instead, they questioned how anyone believed them. The defense also questioned why no one contacted law enforcement if they suspected Parker was faking her pregnancy. The investigator on the stand pointed out that it’s not illegal to fake a pregnancy, and you can’t arrest someone on suspicion they might commit a crime.
At times, Harrelson seemed to lean into the suggestion that Parker’s behavior was not normal and asked witnesses questions that prompted them to expand even more on testimony that reflected poorly on Parker’s behavior and actions.
While on the stand, Waycasey, who was married to Parker when they opted for sterilization in 2014 after the birth of their son and was there when she had her hysterectomy in 2015, recounted how the doctor came to him during her surgery for an ovarian cyst to tell him they found endometriosis and a tubal pregnancy. Waycasey says the doctor asked him to decide whether to go ahead with the hysterectomy and that he told the doctor to do what he would do for their own loved one.
According to Waycasey, Parker “flew off the handle” when she woke up from surgery and learned her uterus and one ovary had been removed. She wanted to know why they did not wake her up so she could make the decision for herself.
Waycasey also testified that he used an anonymous number to reach out to warn to Wade Griffin in January 2020 after learning she was claiming to be pregnant. He didn’t want Parker to know it was him because it would have made his life difficult.
“It’s funny how Taylor is pregnant but every hospital with a 60 mile radius is watching for her because they’re scared she’s gonna come in and steal a baby because there’s no possible way she’s pregnant and they all know that because They got all the hospital records,” cell phone records show Waycasey texted to Griffin on September 11, less than one month before the murders.
Three days later, Waycasey texted Griffin again to tell him Taylor was not pregnant. On September 16, he texted him again.
“I’m reaching out to you because I feel like it’s the ethical thing to do. In 2015 Taylor had a hysterectomy. She isn’t pregnant. She can’t get pregnant! She’s a con artist and is lying to keep you around. I’m sure you haven’t been to one Dr appointment with her, for whatever reason.”
Waycasey went on to tell Griffin that the two sonograms Taylor had been sharing on social media were faked, with one being a scan from her pregnancy with her daughter with her name and the name of the clinic cut off.
“I don’t do drama, not at all, but because I know for a fact she isn’t pregnant and is running out of time. I had to reach out. Please be careful! She has lied about so much for so long she has her self in so deep she can’t get out. I’m concerned how far she might go with this. All hospitals are high alert because she may go to the extent of stealing a child!”
Phone records show Griffin sent a screenshot of Waycasey’s anonymous warning to Parker. Fifteen minutes later, data from Parker’s devices show she was searching for information about out-of-hospital births. Prosecutors say it was a pivotal moment in the timeline leading up to the murders, as the evidence shows a clear escalation in the measures Parker was considering as she worked out a plan to come up with a baby.
Testimony continued Thursday afternoon as the prosecution worked to establish just how massive and layered Parker’s fabrications were in her efforts to make Wade Griffin believe she was a millionaire who just could not get hold of her money because her mother was plotting against them. When some of those elaborate stories began to fall apart, prosecutors say she pretended to be pregnant in increasingly desperate hopes of keeping Griffin from leaving her.
These motivations are behind the “staggering” layers of fraud prosecutors told the jury in their opening statements they would have to understand in order to understand what happened on October 9, 2020.
That’s when Hancock was found stabbed, strangled, and beaten in a bloody scene discovered by her mother inside her Austin Street home in New Boston. Hancock had been cut open. Her baby, nearly 35 weeks along, was gone.
Testimony wrapped up just before 4 p.m. Thursday and will resume Monday morning. Hancock’s mother is expected to take the stand next week.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:18Z
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SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – A man who threatened to commit anti-LGBTQ violence against Merriam-Webster, causing their offices to close, has pleaded guilty in federal court.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, 34-year-old Jeremy David Hanson of Rossmoor, California, pleaded guilty in Springfield federal court to one count of interstate communication of threatening communications to commit violence against the employees of Merriam-Webster and another count charging the same offense, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, targeting the President of the University of North Texas.
In a written statement, Hanson also admitted to threatening various corporations and politicians, including Walt Disney Co., the Governor of California, the Mayor of New York City, a New York rabbi, and professors at Loyola Marymount University. Hanson admitted that he targeted these people because of their gender, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation.
According to the charging documents, between October 2 and October 8, 2021, Springfield-based Merriam-Webster, Inc. received various threatening messages and comments demonstrating bias against specific gender identities submitted through its website’s “Contact Us” page and in the comments section on its webpages that corresponded to the word entries for “Girl” and “Woman.” Authorities later identified the user as Hanson.
Specifically, it is alleged that on October 2, 2021, Hanson used the handle “@anonYmous” to post the following comment on the dictionary’s website definition of “female”: “It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda. There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.’ The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.”
As a result of the threats, the Springfield and New York City offices closed for approximately five business days.
“Every member of our community has a right to live and exist authentically as themselves without fear. Hate-motivated threats of violence that infringe upon that right are not tolerated in Massachusetts in any capacity. This conviction represents my office’s dedication to protecting targeted communities and bringing accountability and justice when those who aim to endanger act upon their hatred,” said United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins. “I want to remind people to call the 1-83-END-H8-NOW (1-833-634-8669) line if they have information about concerning or troubling incidents of hate, potential hate crimes, or concerns regarding individuals believed to be espousing hate-filled views or threats of actions.”
“Jeremy Hanson is now a convicted felon after admitting to making hate-fueled threats of violence related to the LGBTQ+ community,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division. “If you believe you are a victim or a witness to similar conduct, we encourage you to report it to the FBI so we can hold the perpetrators behind these crimes accountable for their actions like we did in this case.”
Hanson’s sentencing is scheduled for January 5, 2023. He faces up to five years in prison and three years of supervised release.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:30Z
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NATCHITOCHES, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A man was arrested in Natchitoches after officers said he led them on a chase through the city on Monday.
Just after 11:30 a.m., the Natchitoches Police Department says detectives attempted to arrest Gregory Washington at a gas station in the 1400 block of Texas St. Authorities say when officers informed Washington of multiple active warrants for him, he got into his vehicle and reversed quickly. A detective standing in the doorway was knocked to the ground by the vehicle, and Washington fled the area.
After a few minutes, officers say they located his vehicle, and Washington led them on a chase through several neighborhoods. He crashed into a Natchitoches Parish Sheriff’s Office vehicle and stopped in the 1400 block of Roy Dr.
Washington was found several blocks away, arrested, and booked into the Natchitoches Parish Detention Center.
He is charged with three counts of aggravated battery, aggravated flight from an officer, two counts of resisting an officer, hit and run, drug paraphernalia, four counts of failure to stop for a stop sign, two counts of running a red light, and ten counts of failure to use a turn signal. Washington also faces charges for two active warrants.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:37Z
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BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin shares Nov. 8 election reminders with Louisianans. Here’s what he says voters need to know.
Voter registration deadlines
The deadline to register to vote in person or by mail is Tuesday, Oct. 11, while the deadline to register online is Tuesday, Oct. 18. Ardoin says these deadlines are for citizens who have never registered to vote as well as voters who would like to make changes to their registration.
To register to vote online, click here.
How to check voter registration
Residents can check their voter registration at GeauxVote.com, at the parish Registrar of Voters Office, or through the GeauxVote mobile app.
When does early voting begin?
Ardoin says early voting for the Nov. 8 Open Congressional Primary Election begins Tuesday, Oct. 25 through Tuesday, Nov. 1, excluding Sunday, Oct. 30, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
When are absentee ballot deadlines?
Voters submitting an absentee ballot for the Nov. 8 election must request an absentee ballot by Friday, Nov. 4 at 4:30 p.m. and the deadline to return a ballot is Monday, Nov. 7 at 4:30 p.m.
For information on how to properly complete an absentee ballot, click here.
What time do polls open on Nov. 8?
Polls are scheduled to open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m., according to the secretary of state. Ardoin says voters should bring an ID, such as a Louisiana driver’s license, a Louisiana Special ID card, a generally recognized picture identification card with a name and signature like a passport, or a digital license.
Ardoin suggests Louisiana voters download the GeauxVote mobile app or visit voterportal.sos.la.gov for more election day information.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:43Z
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LONDON (AP) — Two minutes of silence will be observed Monday across the United Kingdom at the end of Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral at Westminster Abbey, giving the British public across the nation a chance to pay their respects to the late monarch.
Buckingham Palace released more details Thursday about the state funeral of the queen who died Sept. 8 at 96 and her private interment later Monday. Her death at her beloved Balmoral Castle summer retreat ended the monarch’s 70-year reign.
Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, the official in charge of arrangements, said the funeral and events over the coming days are intended to “unite people across the globe and resonate with people of all faiths, whilst fulfilling her majesty and her family’s wishes to pay a fitting tribute to an extraordinary reign.”
Tens of thousands were standing in a line Thursday that snaked for more than four miles along the River Thames in London, waiting to file in silence past her coffin.
“The queen held a unique and timeless position in all our lives. This has been felt more keenly over the past few days, as the world comes to terms with her demise,” Fitzalan-Howard said.
On Friday evening, King Charles III and his siblings will stand vigil at their mother’s coffin for 15 minutes as it lies in state at the 900-year-old Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament. Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward also stood vigil with the coffin when it lay in St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh earlier this week.
After the state funeral on Monday, attended by 2,000 guests, including U.S. President Joe Biden and other visiting heads of state, Elizabeth’s coffin will be carried through the historic heart of London, from Westminster Abbey to Wellington Arch near Buckingham Palace on a horse-drawn gun carriage with Charles and other royals walking behind.
Also among the funeral guests will be nearly 200 people honored by the late queen for their work responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and in sectors including charities, healthcare, and education.
Amid pomp and pageantry, the coffin will travel along virtually the same route, including down the flag-lined Mall to the one it passed Wednesday in front of hushed throngs of mourners when it was taken from the palace to the Houses of Parliament.
London’s Heathrow Airport announced it will halt all flights for 15 minutes before the two-minute national silence on Monday, until 15 minutes after it has finished “to avoid noise disruption.”
From London, the queen’s coffin will then be driven in the state hearse to Windsor for a committal service at St. George’s Chapel near Windsor Castle, attended by 800 people, including members of the queen’s household and Windsor estate staff.
At the end of the service, the coffin will be lowered into the Royal Vault and the sovereign’s piper will play a lament. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will pronounce the blessing and the congregation will sing “God Save The King.”
Members of the royal family will then hold a private burial service at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, where the queen will be interred with her late husband, Prince Philip, who died last year at 99.
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Follow AP stories on the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the U.K. royal family at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:50Z
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Shreveport police are investigating a fatal crash with injuries in South Shreveport on Thursday morning.
Flornoy Lucas fatal crash (Image: KTAL/KMSS Staff) Flornoy Lucas fatal crash 3 (Image: KTAL/KMSS Staff)
According to police, the crash happened around 7 a.m near the intersection of Flournoy Lucas and Vera Street. An SUV and a passenger car collided head-on.
The other vehicle was driven by a mother whose child was riding with her they sustained moderate injuries and were taken to the hospital for treatment.
An officer on the scene confirmed that the driver of the SUV died on the scene.
The Caddo Parish Coroner has identified the deceased driver as 36-year-old Bennie Webster Jr.
Police are diverting westbound traffic on Flournoy Lucas to Aspen Circle.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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| 2022-09-21T00:37:58Z
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Louisiana Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser announced a project to revitalize the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail, which includes two stops on the trail which are located in downtown Shreveport, and he is asking citizens to contribute to the state’s Civil Rights Trail.
Nungesser announced the planned revitalization during a luncheon Tuesday at the Whitney Plantation in Edgard, La., which is one of 38 sites on the trail.
Nungesser says that the revitalization of the African American Heritage Trail came as a result of the La. Office of Tourism working on the Civil Rights Trail. He says that many of the locations and artifacts that they came across did not fit the Civil Rights Trail, and they decided to update and add to the African American Heritage Trail.
“Our African American Heritage Trail had not been really promoted in many years. We thought we would relaunch it, add some new exciting things to the trail, and jointly promote this as we continue to build on the Civil Rights Trail,” Nungesser said.
Nungesser says there is so much history that many citizens were never taught, and the trail is an exciting opportunity to highlight moments in American and Louisiana history.
“When we were able to come up and put the marker at that church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his last speech before he was killed right there in Shreveport, I didn’t know that. I was never taught that history in school.”
The Lt. Governor says education is the key to a better understanding of what took place and who the Louisiana heroes of the civil rights movement were.
“I think anytime you can educate people on history, the good and the bad, it’s a good thing for relations, both race relations and all kinds of relations in understanding what people went through and what we’re up against.”
The Lt. Governor’s office has implemented two educational programs, Homework Louisiana and Uniquely Louisiana, to provide resources to Louisiana students. He plans to use those platforms to incorporate information from the African American Heritage Trail and the Civil Rights Trail.
“We have a great team that did such a great job with those two sites we’re excited about the educational component of what we’re building. The great thing about these trails – we are able to get stories from those who lived it.”
Nungesser and his team have big plans for the Louisiana Civil Rights and African American History Trails to bolster tourism in the state and make Louisiana a destination for history lovers and those who have visited other Civil Rights Trails throughout the south.
The trail launched in 2008 and includes sites from New Orleans to North Louisiana.
The two Shreveport locations are the Southern Museum of Art and the Multicultural Center of the South.
Sherman Houston, a history instructor at SUSLA says that not knowing history is crucial to progression.
“Its very important overall for the general public to know the history of Shreveport and be excited about this art that is right here in our own community. If we don’t know our history, we are doomed to repeat it, so that’s why it is very important for people in this area to know the history. To know what we have offered right here in Shreveport. You don’t have to go anywhere else, yall come right here and see this African art.
Houston says the museum contains art depicting creole life and jazz music. He says it is crucial for African Americans to know their own history. He says the revitalization is a great way to learn Louisiana’s rich history.
Nungesser is encouraging any Louisiana citizen who has knowledge of a historical figure willing to share their memories can visit the Lt. Governor’s office to ensure that history is preserved.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:04Z
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BOSSIER CITY, La (KTAL/KMSS) – Only one item is on the agenda for a special-called meeting of the Bossier City Municipal Fire & Police Civic Service Board has called at 3:30 p.m. Friday.
The agenda item is to consider a request from Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler, who is seeking to remove Estess under a Louisiana law that provides a “working test” period for municipal fire and police civil service employees.
Because the request to remove Estess is less than six months from the date of his appointment, prior approval from the Bossier City Civil Service Board is required by law.
“Public safety has always been a top priority of mine and this decision is not one that has been made without great thought, consideration and prayer. Unfortunatley, the Bossier City Police Department under the leadership of Chris Estess has not progressed in a manner that best serves the Department or the citizens of Bossier City,” Chandler said in a statement.
“The men and women of the Bossier City Police Department and the Citizens of Bossier City deserve leadership that seeks to strenghten the Department and our community. While I understand the decision to remove the Chief during the working test period is unprecedented and controversial, I am committed to make the tough decisions that ensure that Bossier City progresses and prospers.”
Estess was formally appointed on April 26, meaning he has been in office just short of five months.
KTAL/KMSS has put in calls to the Bossier Mayor’s Office, as well as the Bossier Public Information Officer, but calls have not yet been returned.
RS 33: 2495 (3) (a) reads as follows:
(3)(a) Any probational employee in a position of a competitive class of the classified police service, except an entry-level police officer, and an entry-level radio, police alarm, or signal system operator, who has served less than six months of his working test for any given position may be removed therefrom only with the prior approval of the board. Any probational employee in a position of a promotional class of the classified police service, who has served less than three months of his working test for any given position may be removed therefrom only with the prior approval of the board. Any such probational employee may be removed only upon one of the following grounds:
(i) He is unable or unwilling to perform satisfactorily the duties of the position to which he has been appointed.
(ii) His habits and dependability do not merit his continuance therein.
(b) Any such probational employee in the classified police service may appear before the board and present his case before he is removed.
(c) Any such probational employee in the classified police service appointed to a position of a competitive class who is rejected after having served a working test of six months but not more than one year may appeal to the board only upon the grounds that he has not been given a fair opportunity to prove his ability in the position.
(d) Any such probational employee in the classified police service appointed to a position of a promotional class who is rejected after having served a working test of three months but not more than one year may appeal to the board only upon the grounds that he has not been given a fair opportunity to prove his ability in the position.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:10Z
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FERRUM, Va. (WFXR) — Mental health is a topic that is becoming less taboo in the mainstream. However, a behavioral health provider says more needs to be done to eliminate the stigma inside the Hispanic community.
“We don’t talk about it. It didn’t exist basically. There was a lot of ‘Stay away from that person’ or nobody never had a conversation, something as simple as anxiety,” said Victor Rivera, a behavioral health provider. “I have not met a single person in any race that does not have some anxiety. It is a completely normal thing that people experience. Never talk about it in the Hispanic community. It was never brought up.”
Rivera has been working as a behavioral health provider for 13 years. The Puerto Rican native says his family moved to Franklin County when he was 15 years old. Since then, Rivera earned a degree in criminal justice at Ferrum College and worked in the probation and parole system until budget cuts cost him his job.
A friend reached out to Rivera and told him he’d be well suited for home mental health services, which lead him to his current role and conversations with his family.
“The only reason my parents talked to me about it really is because of what I do. We see some of struggles that some families go through and things that start happening that they want to know more about. So that has been the way in my family that we bridged the conversation, but it’s still heavily stigmatized in the Hispanic community,” said Rivera.
Rivera blames the stigma on judgment by society.
“People that struggle with any mental illness were looked at as being ‘crazy.’ When all of your life, you hear of those type of struggles being categorized in that manner and for sure you are afraid to talk about it,” said Rivera. “Because you do not want to be looked at as in a certain way. You do not want to be vulnerable and then be judged for the things that you say while you’re vulnerable.”
According to Rivera, there are other stigmas when it comes to mental health problems in the Hispanic community, related to issues of race, culture and economics.
“Somebody that immigrates to a new country and probably experiences a certain amount of trauma in doing so — I have not met a single person in the Hispanic community that I do counseling with that doesn’t have PTSD. It is across the board, whether it is from coming here and being treated a certain way, whether it is the process of coming across to the United States,” added Rivera. “I have an individual that I see that tried to get here, he almost died, because there is no easy way to get here. He was trying to pursue better for his family. So you are taking emotional mental health damage along the way and you get here and you do not speak the language.”
Rivera says one key for helping the Hispanic community open up about their mental health problems is the development of trust with a counselor. He says having a counselor that is a Hispanic native can help build that trust.
“It is way better than having somebody that is a natural-born American, a Caucasian that learns Spanish. Counseling is a social interaction. It’s way better when you meet somebody that is a natural-born speaker of the language. I grew up speaking Spanish. We speak Spanish in my household still. I listen to music in Spanish. I am Hispanic,” said Rivera.
Rivera told WFXR that the biggest step is talking about it.
“Normalizing it. Diabetes, flu, colds, all of that stuff is normal health conversations, but mental health is health,” said Rivera.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:17Z
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DES MOINES, IOWA (WHO) — A GoFundMe account created for the 17-year-old Iowa teen who pleaded guilty to killing her rapist has raised more than $200,000 in fewer than 24 hours.
Pieper Lewis was 15 years old when she stabbed and killed 37-year-old Zachary Brooks after, she says, he repeatedly raped her.
She pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury. She faced up to 20 years in prison, but a judge on Tuesday handed her a deferred sentence that allows her to serve five years of probation, perform community service and get counseling. If she meets the terms of her probation, she won’t serve another day behind bars.
However, her conviction carries with it an automatic requirement by law that she pay $150,000 in restitution to her victim’s family. Her attorney argued forcefully that it should be considered cruel and unusual punishment to force her to pay her attacker’s family, but the judge said his hands are tied by the law.
Leland Schipper, one of Lewis’ former teachers, launched a GoFundMe account after her sentencing to seek help paying the fee. In fewer than 24 hours, the account exceeded that $150,000 goal. Schipper raised the fundraising goal to $200,000 on Wednesday morning. The account crossed that goal by 12:15 p.m. Wednesday.
“Pieper does not deserve to be finically burdened for the rest of her life because the state of Iowa wrote a law that fails to give judges any discretion as to how it is applied. This law doesn’t make sense in many cases, but in this case, it’s morally unjustifiable,” Schipper wrote on the fundraising page. “A child who was raped, under no circumstances, should owe the rapist’s family money.”
Schipper said in addition to paying the restitution fee, the funds will be used to pay an additional $4,000 restitution to the state, “remove financial barriers” should Lewis want to go to college or start a business, and also give her the “financial capacity to explore ways to help other young victims of sex crimes.”
“As the Donations have increased, I am overjoyed with the prospect of removing this burden from Pieper,” Schipper wrote.
As of Thursday morning, the total had reached more than $330,000 with over 8,600 individual donations made to the account.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:24Z
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GOLDEN, Colo. (KDVR) — A pair of pit bulls attacked a 12-year-old boy and his 89-year-old grandmother in Golden, Colorado on Wednesday.
Police said they used stun guns and less-lethal shotguns to try and subdue the dogs — but without any effect. Both victims were hospitalized after the incident, which happened around 3:35 p.m.
“The dogs involved in the attack are currently contained and are not a threat to the public,” the Golden Police Department said in a news release. “The dogs are known to the two victims of the attack.”
The boy went to a neighbor’s house to call for help, police said. When officers arrived, they found blood leading into the home and found the dogs attacking the grandmother in the backyard.
Officers put themselves between the dogs and the woman, challenged them verbally, and ultimately used Tasers and less-lethal shotguns to get the dogs away from her. But none of those methods worked.
“Less lethal options were not effective,” police said. Only once more officers arrived on the scene were they able to hold the dogs and rescue the woman.
She was transported to an area hospital with critical injuries. The boy was airlifted to a children’s hospital.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:32Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday a tentative railway labor agreement has been reached, averting a potentially devastating strike before the pivotal midterm elections.
He said the tentative deal “will keep our critical rail system working and avoid disruption of our economy.”
The Democratic president believes unions built the middle class, but he also knew a rail worker strike could have badly damaged the nation’s economy. That left him in the awkward position of espousing the virtues of unionization in Detroit, a stalwart of the labor movement, while members of his administration went all-out to keep talks going in Washington between the railroads and unionized workers in hopes of averting a shutdown.
But after a long night, the talks succeeded and Biden announced Thursday that the parties had reached a tentative agreement to avoid a shutdown that would go to union members for a vote. He hailed the deal in a statement for avoiding a shutdown and as a win for all sides.
“These rail workers will get better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs: all hard-earned,” Biden said. “The agreement is also a victory for railway companies who will be able to retain and recruit more workers for an industry that will continue to be part of the backbone of the American economy for decades to come.”
It looked far more tenuous for the president just a day earlier.
United Auto Workers Local 598 member Ryan Buchalski introduced Biden at the Detroit auto show on Wednesday as “the most union- and labor-friendly president in American history” and someone who was “kickin’ ass for the working class.” Buchalski harked back to the pivotal sitdown strikes by autoworkers in the 1930s.
In the speech that followed, Biden recognized that he wouldn’t be in the White House without the support of unions such as the UAW and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, saying autoworkers “brung me to the dance.”
But back in Washington, officials in his administration at the Labor Department were in tense negotiations to prevent a strike — one of the most powerful sources of leverage that unions have to bring about change and improve working conditions.
Without the deal that was reached among the 12 unions, a stoppage could have begun as early as Friday that could halt shipments of food and fuel at a cost of $2 billion a day.
Far more was at stake than sick leave and salary bumps for 115,000 unionized railroad workers. The ramifications could extend to control of Congress and to the shipping network that keeps factories rolling, stocks the shelves of stores and stitches the U.S. together as an economic power.
That’s why White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking aboard Air Force One as it jetted to Detroit on Wednesday, said a rail worker strike was “an unacceptable outcome for our economy and the American people.” The rail lines and their workers’ representatives “need to stay at the table, bargain in good faith to resolve outstanding issues, and come to an agreement,” she said.
Biden faced the same kind of predicament faced by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 with coal and Harry Truman in 1952 with steel — how do you balance the needs of labor and business in doing what’s best for the nation? Railways were so important during World War I that Woodrow Wilson temporarily nationalized the industry to keep goods flowing and prevent strikes.
Inside the White House, aides don’t see a contradiction between Biden’s devotion to unions and his desire to avoid a strike. Union activism has surged under Biden, as seen in a 56% increase in petitions for union representation with the National Labor Relations Board so far this fiscal year.
One person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House deliberations on the matter, said Biden’s mindset in approaching the debate was that he’s the president of the entire country, not just for organized labor.
With the economy still recovering from the supply chain disruptions of the pandemic, the president’s goal is to keep all parties so a deal could be finalized. The person said the White House saw a commitment to keep negotiating in good faith as the best way to avoid a shutdown while exercising the principles of collective bargaining that Biden holds dear.
Biden also knew a stoppage could worsen the dynamics that have contributed to soaring inflation and created a political headache for the party in power.
Eddie Vale, a Democratic political consultant and former AFL-CIO communications aide, said the White House pursued the correct approach at a perilous moment.
“No one wants a railroad strike, not the companies, not the workers, not the White House,” he said. “No one wants it this close to the election.”
Vale added that the sticking point in the talks was about “respect basically — sick leave and bereavement leave,” issues Biden has supported in speeches and with his policy proposals.
Sensing political opportunity, Senate Republicans moved Wednesday to pass a law to impose contract terms on the unions and railroad companies to avoid a shutdown. Democrats, who control both chambers in Congress, blocked it.
“If a strike occurs and paralyzes food, fertilizer and energy shipments nationwide, it will be because Democrats blocked this bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The economic impact of a potential strike was not lost on members of the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based group that represents CEOs. It issued its quarterly outlook for the economy Wednesday.
“We’ve been experiencing a lot of headwinds from supply chain problems since the pandemic started and those problems would be geometrically magnified,” Josh Bolten, the group’s CEO, told reporters. “There are manufacturing plants around the country that likely have to shut down. … There are critical products to keep our water clean.”
The roundtable also had a meeting of its board of directors Wednesday. But Bolten said Lance Fritz, chair of the board’s international committee and the CEO of Union Pacific railroad, would miss it “because he’s working hard trying to bring the strike to a resolution.”
Back at the Labor Department, negotiators ordered Italian food as talks dragged into Wednesday night and the White House announced the agreement at 5:05 a.m. on Thursday.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:39Z
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – An electric vehicle charging infrastructure plan for Arkansas gained federal approval Wednesday, securing the state more than $50 million in federal grants.
Arkansas is one of 35 states that had its EV charging infrastructure approved by the United States Department of Transportation. Other states are pending approval.
The approval came ahead of schedule for the plan, which was first circulated for public comment in August. The funding schedule for the plan shows Arkansas will receive $54.1 million from the DOT through 2026 to support the project.
The plan will construct EV charging stations along Arkansas interstates. The plan will place 532 public charging ports along 512 miles of highway as Designated EV Corridors. Initial funding is $19.5 million for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
The EV plan, drawn up by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, will have charging stations every 50 miles along interstates 30, 40, and 49 throughout Arkansas. Each station will have four charging ports.
As the plan was submitted for public comment, ARDOT will not own or operate any of the charging stations. Stations will be created by private or public investment or a shared public-private investment, with each charging station expected to cost $1 million, 80% of which will be funded by a government grant, the remaining 20% by the investor.
An electric car has a 200-to-300-mile range and will take 10 to 20 minutes to recharge, on average.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:46Z
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A video shared with NBC 6 News shows the moment that Shreveport police officers were involved in a shooting with a man in the Twelve Oaks subdivision Wednesday afternoon.
The Louisiana State Police are sharing new details about an officer-involved shooting in Southeast Shreveport Wednesday.
According to LSP, 32-year-old Charles Nathan Anthony was seen on his parent’s home surveillance system loading weapons into a vehicle. His parents called 911 and requested officers to come to the home. Shreveport police arrived in the 600 block of Ashley River Road and crossed paths with Anthony as he left the neighborhood.
Officers made a traffic stop, and when Anthony stepped out of the vehicle, he was armed and pointed the gun at the officers. During the exchange with the police, they shot Anthony.
EMS arrived to provide aid to Anthony, and he was brought to a local hospital for treatment and is in critical condition.
LSP is leading this investigation as an officer-involved shooting, and the investigation is active and ongoing. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available.
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:52Z
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SANTA ROSA, CA. (BRPROUD) — Raising Cane’s Founder and Co-CEO has made a $100,000 donation to a national organization, Canine Companions.
Canine Companions is an organization that was created to enhance the lives of those with disabilities by providing service dogs at no charge.
After a successful Peanuts merchandise sale, founder of Raising Cane’s, Todd Graves, was on a tour of the Canine Companions training center, where he then presented a check for $100,000 to Canine Companions’ CEO, Paige Mazzoni.
“As a lifelong Peanuts fan, it was an honor to work with Mrs. Schulz to support this great organization,” Todd Graves said. “At Raising Cane’s, pet welfare is a core focus of our active community involvement, and we support thousands of organizations across the county. We are proud to partner with Canine Companions to give people the ability to live with greater independence.”
“Given Raising Cane’s’ commitment to animals and Canine Companions’ mission to provide enhanced independence through expertly trained service dogs, partnering is a seamless fit,” Mazzoni said. “Raising Cane’s’ generous support will help move our mission forward. We’re grateful to connect an additional layer of support through Jean Schulz to bring this partnership full circle.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:38:58Z
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(NewsNation) — Migrants who were bused from the southern border were dropped off at Vice President Kamala Harris’s Washington, D.C., residence early Thursday morning.
Harris’s residence sits on a hilltop on a 72-acre compound of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the official residence of the vice president. The two buses from Texas were parked outside the residence and NewsNation is on the scene and will be providing live updates throughout the morning.
The migrants being bused are asylum seekers who are now permitted to stay in the United States by U.S. Customs and Border Protection until their petitions to stay in the country go through the system. The migrants have escalated a gubernatorial feud and brought a humanitarian crisis across the country.
NewsNation affiliate DC News Now spoke with one of the migrants who arrived outside Harris’s residence. Wilder Alberto Pinto Sosa and his son traveled across eight countries from Venezuela to get to the United States. Sosa said he’s the first of his family to make it to the U.S. and is grateful to make a better life for his son. New York is their final destination.
When asked how he has been treated, he said “perfecto,” adding that he’s been treated with dignity and respect since getting to the U.S. — “much better than any other country I’ve passed through.”
The busing crisis began in spring when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced plans to send busloads of migrants to Washington, D.C., and New York City in response to President Joe Biden’s decision to lift a pandemic-era emergency health order that restricted migrant entry numbers. Abbott recently began busing migrants to Chicago this summer.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser last week declared a public emergency over the migrant busing. The move would help “triage the needs of people arriving” in the city, according to the mayor.
The declaration allows Bowser to create an Office of Migrant Services and allocate funds toward that department. She said the office will support the needs of migrants during a “humanitarian crisis.”
This comes as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents are arresting a record number of migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. U.S. authorities stopped migrants 1.43 million times at the Mexican border from January through July, up 28% from the same period last year, Customs and Border Protection said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:04Z
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Software company Adobe is buying online design company Figma in an approximately $20 billion cash-and-stock deal.
Figma, founded in 2012, allows those who design interactive mobile and web applications to collaborate through multi-player workflows, sophisticated design systems and a rich developer ecosystem.
The companies said that Figma’s web-based, multi-player capabilities will accelerate the delivery of Adobe’s creative cloud technologies on the web, making the creative process more productive and accessible to more people.
San Jose, California-based Adobe sells software for creating, publishing and promoting content, and managing documents.
“With Adobe’s amazing innovation and expertise, especially in 3D, video, vector, imaging and fonts, we can further reimagine end-to-end product design in the browser, while building new tools and spaces to empower customers to design products faster and more easily,” Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field said in a statement.
Each company will run independently until the transaction closes. At that time, Field, who will continue to lead the Figma team, will report to David Wadhwani, president of Adobe’s Digital Media business.
The deal is expected to close next year. It still needs approval from Figma’s shareholders.
Adobe Inc.’s stock fell more than 9% before the market open on Thursday.
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:10Z
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will be the first state to require online companies to put kids’ safety first by barring them from profiling children or using personal information in ways that could harm children physically or mentally, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
“We’re taking aggressive action in California to protect the health and wellbeing of our kids,” Newsom said in a statement announcing that he had signed the bill. He noted that as a father of four, “I’m familiar with the real issues our children are experiencing online.”
The bill requires tech companies that provide online services attractive to children to follow age-appropriate design code principles aimed at keeping children safe. Companies will eventually have to submit a “data protection impact assessment” to the state’s attorney general before offering new online services, products, or features attractive to children.
Facebook parent company Meta said it has concerns about some of law’s provisions but shares lawmakers’ goal of keeping children safe online.
“We believe young people should have consistent protections across all apps and online services they use, which is why we support clear industry standards in this area,” the social media giant said. It called the law “an important development towards establishing these standards.”
The bill is modeled after a similar measure in the United Kingdom. In the year since that law took effect, some of the U.S.’s most valuable technology companies “have begun to redesign their products in children’s best interests,” said Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a co-author of the law.
“Now we can ensure they do the same for California youth — and hopefully young people across the country,” Wicks said.
The law was opposed by a coalition including the Entertainment Software Association that said it includes “an over-inclusive standard and would capture far more websites and platforms than necessary.”
It’s the second groundbreaking online protections bill signed by Newsom this week. The earlier measure requires social media companies to provide details on how and when they remove disturbing content including hate speech.
But a third proposal failed to pass the state Legislature this year. It would have banned social media companies from adopting features it knows can cause children to become addicted.
Still, Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that advocates for children, said the bill Newsom signed on Thursday is “a necessary and positive steps forward in standing up to Big Tech.”
The challenge of protecting children online resonated personally with Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and Wicks, who are both mothers of young children.
“I am terrified of the effects technology addiction and saturation are having on our children and their mental health,” Siebel Newsom said in supporting the bill, though she acknowledged that “social media and the internet are integral to the way we as a global community connect and communicate.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:16Z
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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s executive arm proposed new legislation Thursday that would force manufacturers to ensure that devices connected to the internet meet cybersecurity standards, making the 27-nation bloc less vulnerable to attacks.
The EU said a ransomware attack takes place every 11 seconds, and the global annual cost of cybercrime is estimated at 5.5 trillion euros in 2021. In Europe alone, cyberattacks cost between 180 and 290 billion euros each year, according to EU officials.
The European Commission said an increase of cyberattacks was witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic and that Russia’s war in Ukraine has raised concerns that European energy infrastructure could also be targeted amid a global energy crunch.
The law, proposed as the Cyber Resilience Act, aims to remove from the EU market all products with digital elements that are not adequately protected.
The EU’s executive commission said the law would not only reduce attacks but also benefit consumers since it will improve data and privacy protection
“When it comes to cybersecurity, Europe is only as strong as its weakest link, be it a vulnerable member state or an unsafe product along the supply chain,” said Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for the internal market.
“Computers, phones, household appliances, virtual assistance devices, cars, toys… each and every one of these hundreds of millions of connected products is a potential entry point for a cyberattack.”
Breton said most hardware and software products are currently not subject to any cybersecurity obligations.
If adopted, the regulation would require manufacturers to take into account cybersecurity in the design and development of their devices. Companies would remain responsible for the security of products throughout their expected lifetime, or a minimum of five years.
Market authorities will have the power to withdraw or recall non-compliant devices and to fine companies that will not abide by the rules.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which represents computer, communications and internet industry firms, welcomed the commission’s goal of improving cyber resilience but said the draft law would introduce unnecessary.
“These cybersecurity rules should strive to weed out bad products from the EU market, but the current … proposal would lead to innovative products piling up in waiting rooms before they can be used by Europeans,” CCIA Europe Public Policy Director Alexandre Roure said.
“Instead, the new rules should recognize globally accepted standards and facilitate cooperation with trusted trade partners to avoid duplicate requirements.”
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:22Z
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A complex software change to the cryptocurrency ethereum holds the potential to dramatically reduce its energy consumption — and resulting climate-related pollution. But the transition known as “the merge” is not going to do the trick by itself.
With the change enacted late Wednesday, ethereum — the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency after bitcoin — has effectively eliminated the energy-intensive task of “mining” new coins on its blockchain. Mining requires enormous computing power, which translates to huge energy consumption and, in many areas, greater greenhouse gas emissions at older power plants.
By itself, however, the ethereum change won’t eliminate crypto’s expected environmental impact, although it’s expected to help a great deal. The backers of bitcoin have so far shown little interest in doing away with mining.
BACK UP A SECOND. WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY?
Cryptocurrency is a type of digital money secured via encryption in a publicly viewable and purportedly unalterable way. Using these currencies, people can make direct financial transactions without any need for a bank or other financial intermediaries.
They run on constructs called blockchains, which consist of digitally signed transaction records that document every time a crypto coin is transferred or spent. Blockchains are also known as distributed ledgers because synchronized copies are stored on computers around the world; these copies also make it extremely difficult to alter, insert or destroy blockchain records.
IS CRYPTO BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?
Researchers who have studied cryptocurrency are alarmed by its enormous energy usage. A recent report by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy cited research findings that as of August 2022, annual electricity consumption for cryptocurrency exceeded that of individual nations such as Argentina or Australia.
This problem, however, isn’t inherent to cryptocurrency. Most of that energy is used for mining, a computationally intensive process for verifying blockchain transactions that also distributes new coins as rewards for competing miners. Crypto mining favors well-resourced groups that can put together a lot of specialized computers and supply them with electricity as cheaply as possible.
That can have unexpected external effects. Prior to the plunge in cryptocurrency values earlier this year, demand for computer graphics cards soared, pushing up prices and emptying store shelves — much to the chagrin of gamers. Such cards turned out to be ideal for crypto mining rigs. Cities and states in the U.S. have also pushed back against crypto firms’ plans to build mining sites in their jurisdictions, citing not only power usage but noise.
SO WHAT DOES THE ETHEREUM CHANGE DO?
Primarily, the software update eliminates the need for miners. Where ethereum previously set miners against each other to solve complex cryptographic puzzles and win new coin as rewards, it now requires parties who want to help validate transactions to put some skin in the game by “staking” a certain amount of ether, the ethereum coin.
Parties from this pool are randomly chosen to validate a block of transactions; a wider group of ether holders will then check their work. Successful validators get paid a reward in ether that is generally proportional to the size of their stake and the length of time they’ve held it.
WILL THAT HELP THE ENVIRONMENT?
The ethereum merge many not sound like much, but it could have dramatic effects. Alex de Vries, an economist and founder of the Digiconomist consultancy that focuses on the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, calculates the shift will result in energy savings of between 99% and 99.99% for ethereum. (De Vries emphasizes that his work has not yet been peer reviewed.)
“It’s a really small change to the code that’s going to have a very big impact on environmental sustainability,” he said. Prior to the merge, ethereum was doing up to 900 billion calculations per second that are now not needed anymore.
According to his calculations, ethereum was responsible for about 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. If he’s correct, these will now be drastically reduced.
On the other hand, bitcoin’s energy usage and greenhouse gas emission is significantly larger than ethereum’s — and there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for moving away from bitcoin mining.
Ethereum’s merge was long planned and involved years of preparation by its developer teams, said Lena Klaassen, co-founder of the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute, a German company that specializes in measuring crypto environmental impacts. “Such ambitions never existed for Bitcoin and thus I don’t expect that Bitcoin will transition” away from mining any time soon, she said.
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AP reporter Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this article.
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:28Z
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Uber said Thursday that it reached out to law enforcement after a hacker apparently breached its network. A security engineer said the intruder had provided evidence of obtaining access to crucial cloud systems at the ride-hailing service.
There was no indication that Uber’s fleet of vehicles or its operation was in any way affected.
“It seems like they’ve compromised a lot of stuff,” said Sam Curry, an engineer with Yuga Labs who communicated with the hacker. That includes obtaining complete access to the Amazon and Google-hosted cloud environments where Uber stores its source code and customer data, he said.
Curry said he spoke to several Uber employees who said they were “working to lock down everything internally” to restrict the hacker’s access. That included the company’s Slack internal messaging network, he said.
He said there was no indication that the hacker had done any damage or was interested in anything more than publicity. “My gut feeling is that it seems like they are out to get as much attention as possible.”
The hacker had alerted Curry and other security researchers to the intrusion by using and an internal Uber account to comment on vulnerabilities they had previously identified on the company’s network through its bug-bounty program, which pays ethical hackers to identify vulnerabilities.
The hacker provided a Telegram account address and Curry and other researchers then engaged them in a separate conversation, sharing screenshots of various pages from Uber’s cloud providers to prove they broke in.
The Associated Press attempted to contact the hacker at the Telegram account where Curry and the other researchers chatted with them. But no one responded.
One screenshot posted on Twitter and confirmed by researchers shows a chat with the hacker in which they say they obtained the credentials of an administrative user and then used social engineering to access Uber’s internal network.
Uber said via email that it was “currently responding to a cybersecurity incident. We are in touch with law enforcement.” It said it would provide updates on its Uber Comms twitter feed.
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:40Z
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Sarah Collins Rudolph lost an eye and still has pieces of glass inside her body from a Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed her sister and three other Black girls at an Alabama church 59 years ago, and she’s still waiting on the state to compensate her for those injuries.
Gov. Kay Ivey sidestepped the question of financial compensation two years ago in apologizing to Rudolph for her “untold pain and suffering,” saying legislative involvement was needed. But nothing has been done despite the efforts of attorneys representing Rudolph, leaving unresolved the question of payment even though victims of other attacks, including 9/11, were compensated.
Rudolph, known as the “Fifth Little Girl” for surviving the infamous attack on 16th Street Baptist Church, which was depicted in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary “4 Little Girls,” has been rankled by the state’s inaction.
Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press, Rudolph said then-Gov. George C. Wallace helped lay the groundwork for the Klan attack with his segregationist rhetoric, and the state bears some responsibility for the bombing, which wasn’t prosecuted for years.
“If they hadn’t stirred up all that racist hate that was going on at the time I don’t believe that church would have been bombed,” said Rudolph.
Rudolph attended a White House summit about combatting hate-fueled violence on Thursday, the anniversary of the bombing, and was recognized by President Joe Biden.
“I visited the church on this day in 2019, and I’ll visit with you and always remember what happened,” Biden told Rudolph.
In Birmingham, hundreds gathered at the church for a commemorative service and wreath-laying at the spot where the bomb went off.
Rudolph said she still incurs medical expenses from the explosion, including a $90 bill she gets every few months for work on the prosthetic she wears in place of the right eye that was destroyed by shrapnel on Sept. 15, 1963. Anything would help, but Rudolph believes she’s due millions.
Ishan Bhabha, an attorney representing Rudolph, said the state’s apology — made at Rudolph’s request along with a plea for restitution — was only meant as a first step.
“She deserves justice in the form of compensation for the grievous injuries, and costs, she has had to bear for almost 60 years,” he said. “We will continue to pursue any available avenues to get Sarah the assistance she needs and deserves.”
Five girls were gathered in a downstairs bathroom at 16th Street Baptist Church when a bomb planted by KKK members went off outside, blowing a huge hole in the thick, brick wall. The blast killed Denise McNair, 11, and three 14-year-olds: Carole Robertson, Cynthia Morris, also referred to as Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins, who was Rudolph’s sister.
Three Klan members convicted of murder in the bombing years later died in prison, and a fourth suspect died without ever being charged. The bombing occurred eight months after Wallace proclaimed “segregation forever” in his inaugural speech and during the time when Birmingham schools were being racially integrated for the first time.
The church itself has gotten government money for renovations, as has the surrounding Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, formed by President Barack Obama in 2017 in one of his last acts in office. “But not me,” Rudolph said.
Ivey, at the time of the apology, said in a letter to Rudolph’s lawyer that any possible compensation would require legislative approval, said press secretary Gina Maiola.
“Additionally, in attorney-to-attorney conversations that ensued soon after, that same point was reiterated,” she said.
No bill has been introduced to compensate Rudolph, legislative records show, and it’s unclear whether such legislation could win passage anyway since conservative Republicans hold an overwhelming majority and have made an issue of reeling in history lessons that could make white people feel bad about the past.
While the Alabama Crime Victims’ Compensation Commission helps victims and families with expenses linked to a crime, state law doesn’t allow it to address offenses that occurred before the agency was created in 1984.
Rudolph has spent a lifetime dealing with physical and mental pain from the bombing. Despite her injuries and lingering stress disorders, Rudolph provided testimony that helped lead to the convictions of the men accused of planting the bomb, and she’s written a book about her life, titled “The 5th Little Girl.”
Rudolph’s husband, George Rudolph, said he’s frustrated and mad over the way his wife has been treated. Victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks were compensated, he said, as were victims of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
“Why can’t they do something for Sarah?” he said.
___
Reeves is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity Team.
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:46Z
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GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — At least nine people died and some 20 were injured in a stampede in Guatemala early Thursday as the country celebrated its independence, according to firefighters.
The concert was sponsored by a beer maker and held on a field often used for such events. While the Guatemalan rock band Bohemia Suburbana closed the show, some concertgoers were crushed as some tried to leave as others were entering the same place.
Nancy Quemé, who was at the concert, said there had been thousands of people there. “Because of the rain there was a lot of mud,” she said. “I think because of this the people couldn’t move and they fell.”
The lineup of bands had started playing Wednesday afternoon. She said that even in the early hours of Thursday there were still families with children there.
“They closed off the whole area and only left two access (points),” Quemé said. “The entrances seemed really small to me. I stayed pretty far back and decided to leave minutes before the end of the concert.”
Video circulating on social media platforms shows dozens of people smashing into others. Shouts can be heard called for people to stop pushing and to move to one side so those who fell could be rescued.
Amilcar Rivas, Quetzaltenango city manager, said that event organizers did not have a grip on security and crowd control. He said the event did have a permit.
Quetzaltenango, which holds Guatemala’s second largest independence celebration, is about 125 miles (200 kms) west of Guatemala City.
Guatemala is celebrating Thursday 201 years of independence from Spain.
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| 2022-09-21T00:39:54Z
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FORESTHILL, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters again prevented flames from entering a Northern California mountain town and reported major progress Thursday against the week-old blaze that’s become the largest in the state so far this year.
Conditions at the Mosquito Fire about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco were “looking a whole heck of a lot better,” according to fire spokesman Scott McLean.
Crews on the ground built up containment lines while water-dropping helicopters knocked down hotspots after the fire roared back to life on Tuesday, burning structures near Foresthill.
“It’s looking really good on the west end where we had that dramatic increase of fire earlier this week,” McLean said Thursday. Flames raced up a drainage ditch into a neighborhood, but firefighters saved all the homes.
Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In the last five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in its history.
Evacuation orders remained for some 11,000 residents because of the unpredictable nature of the winds, McLean said, which typically blow in the direction of several canyons and could rapidly spread flames if gusts pick up.
The Mosquito Fire was 20% contained after destroying at least 70 homes and other buildings. The 100-square-mile (258-square-kilometer) blaze on Wednesday surpassed the size of the previous largest conflagration in 2022 – the McKinney Fire – although this season has seen a fraction of last year’s wildfire activity so far.
In Southern California, dogs aided the hunt for a person missing in a heavily damaged area of the San Bernardino Mountains where thunderstorms unleashed rocks, trees and earth that washed away cars, buried homes and affected 3,000 residents in two remote communities. Nearly 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain fell Monday at Yucaipa Ridge between Oak Glen, home to apple orchards that are a fall tourist destination, and Forest Falls, once a summer getaway for cabin owners that has become a bedroom community.
“This entire area is blanketed with up to 6 feet (1.83 meters) of mud, debris, large boulders” said Jim Topelski, a San Bernardino County fire chief,
The mudslide damage in Oak Glen and Forest Falls served as a powerful warning to residents of the lingering damage wildfires can cause months or even years after flames are extinguished and the smoke clears.
An intense amount of rain even over a short period of time can have catastrophic effects on hillsides where fire has stripped vegetation that once held the ground intact.
The Mosquito Fire was one of three large fires in the state.
The Fairview Fire was burning about 75 miles (121 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. The 44-square-mile (114-square-kilometer) blaze was 84% contained Thursday. Two people died fleeing the fire, which destroyed at least 35 homes and other structures in Riverside County.
___
For more AP coverage of the climate and environment: https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
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| 2022-09-21T00:40:02Z
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