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The city of Yakima has added a new data point for tracking long-term housing progress in Yakima: completed units.
“One piece of data that was discussed during the Housing Action Plan process last year was tracking not just permits issued, but permits completed,” city Planning Manager Joseph Calhoun told the Yakima City Council Tuesday.
City staff members started counting new housing units as they became available to renters in August, Calhoun said, and the tally is updated each month. In total, 161 units were completed between August 2021 and February 2022, which just about meets the city’s housing development goal.
The long-range housing plan adopted by the city in 2021 used housing supply and population growth measures to estimate that about 5,517 housing units would need to be developed between 2020 and 2040. Based on that estimate, the city should meet a pace of about 300 new units per year.
The new measure can be used to show progress toward that goal, counting completed units as they’re added to the housing market. Calhoun said the units are also tracked by bedroom size, to show the types of units being created.
Of the units completed between August and February, 89, or 55% of units, had three or more bedrooms, 34, or 21% of units, were studios or had one bedroom, and 33, or 20.5% of units, had two bedrooms. An additional five bedrooms were added in remodel projects, Calhoun said.
A monthly report showed that 32 additional units were created in March, all of which had three bedrooms or more.
Current projects
The city is still tracking permits. In March, the city issued permits for 11 single family homes and five multifamily developments, for a total of 65 units. A total of 34 new housing permits for 83 individual units have been issued so far in 2022.
Calhoun’s quarterly report included a list of housing projects that were recently approved or are currently being reviewed. Among those projects is a 10-unit duplex development at 1506 E. Beech St., a 54-unit development by the Yakima Housing Authority near 1100 Fruitvale Blvd., and two single family developments for a total of 55 lots.
Calhoun said there are currently 383 units recently approved or in the permitting process.
Construction is underway for one project approved late last year.
Three additional buildings with a total of 42 new units are being built at Stonewood Apartments at 1205 E. Spruce St. in east Yakima. The affordable housing complex has five existing buildings with about 12 units in each building.
The project was permitted in November 2021, and construction began that month, according to site superintendent Chris Wendt. Much of the work over the last few months was underground line work, but a frame was erected for the first level of one building this last week.
“We’ve been here for months, and all the work was underground,” Wendt said. “We’re excited to see the progress above-ground now.”
All units at the complex are low-income units managed by Cambridge Management of Tacoma. The number of bedrooms varies by unit, Wendt said.
The city issued permits for 464 housing units in 2021, according to the year-end building permit report. Of those, 273 units, or about 59%, were multifamily, 147 units, or about 32%, were single family and 30 units, or about 6%, were duplexes.
Definition changes and zoning
As part of its housing development efforts, the city set goals to remove barriers to innovative housing and allow a variety of housing types, including tiny homes and cottage housing.
A series of zoning changes proposed by the Yakima Planning Commission take some steps toward those goals, Calhoun said in an interview.
Cottage housing would be added as a housing type in the recommendations. Cottage housing means a group of clustered single family units that share a common open space and parking, according to the draft amendments.
The small size of cottage units makes it a more affordable option and a more compatible option for low-density residential neighborhoods, according to the housing plan. The units are typically less than 1,200 square feet.
“This is kind of just adding to the toolbox for developers,” Calhoun said. “It’s giving additional options. If people want to get creative and go through to cottage housing process, they can do that. If they want to do just regular multi-family, there’s options there.”
The amendments also add a definition for tiny homes, update parking standards for low income or central business district developments, and adjust some setback requirements. Tiny homes would be permitted using similar processes and standards as mobile home parks, according to the draft.
“I wouldn’t say (these changes) affect the Housing Action Plan. They implement the Housing Action Plan,” Calhoun said. “What we’re doing is just utilizing the kind of broader objectives of the Housing Action Plan and the (comprehensive plan) to then develop specific regulations that would allow those additional uses.”
Community members can comment on the changes at a public hearing at the May 3 council meeting.
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https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/yakima-is-providing-more-information-about-new-housing-units-in-effort-to-meet-goals/article_75ec77cf-4041-579f-914b-8cdc320d2aee.html
| 2022-04-08T11:32:27Z
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Sioux CITY, IA(KCAU)- Not only do we expect calmer winds in the area, but more sunshine as well. This will help in pushing temperatures up for the day. We do start off colder with morning lows down into the 20’s and 30’s that will feel colder thanks to winds still over 20 mph for much of the area. This will make the area have feels like temperatures in the 10’s in some places. Winds will continue to be above 20 mph through the day, gusts on the other hand settle to calmer speeds. We can expect clearer conditions close to noon that will continue through the evening.
Clear overnight conditions will lead to a colder morning that we’ve seen in a bit, putting us down into the low 20’s. Temperatures rise even higher through the day tomorrow as we settle to normal wind speeds again.
The fair weather continues for a few more days after that making the weekend a good one. Dry conditions through it as well as we wait till next week to see another rain maker appearing later on.
For the latest weather conditions, visit KCAU 9 News’ Weather page.
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| 2022-04-08T11:42:16Z
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220403-N-NO901-0006 KEFLAVIK AIR BASE, Iceland (April 3, 2022) Construction Mechanic 2nd Class Jordan Glensor, right, supervises a chamber drill with Construction Mechanic 2nd Class Zachary Reisinger, left, and Steelworker 2nd Class Cooper Rekstis, center, of Underwater Construction Team 1, Construction Dive Detachment Bravo, based out of Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Va., during Exercise Northern Viking 2022, April 3, 2022. Northern Viking 22 strengthens interoperability and force readiness between the U.S., Iceland and Allied nations, enabling multi-domain command and control of joint and coalition forces in the defense of Iceland and Sea Lines of Communication in the Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. (U.S. Navy photo by Logistics Specialist 1st Class Mary Bradford)
This work, 22 NCR supports Northern Viking 2022 [Image 11 of 11], must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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220405-N-NO901-1004 KEFLAVIK AIR BASE, Iceland (April 5, 2022) Cpl. Luke Seiler, left, and Sgt. Matthew Dungan, Marines assigned to Marine Wing Support Squadron (MWSS) 271, hook-up a meter assembly to accurately track fuel for Naval Fixed Wing refueling operations in support of exercise Northern Viking 22, April 5, 2022. Northern Viking 22 strengthens interoperability and force readiness between the U.S., Iceland and Allied nations, enabling multi-domain command and control of joint and coalition forces in the defense of Iceland and Sea Lines of Communication in the Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. (U.S. Navy photo by Logistics Specialist 1st Class Mary Bradford)
This work, 22 NCR supports Northern Viking 2022 [Image 11 of 11], must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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Col. Matt Husemann, 436th Airlift Wing commander, signs the Sexual Assault Awareness Month proclamation at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, March 14, 2022. Husemann, along with other Dover AFB senior leaders, signed the proclamation to support SAAM in April. (U.S. Air Force photo by Roland Balik)
This work, Team Dover leadership signs SAAM proclamation [Image 5 of 5], by Roland Balik, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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From the left, Col. Matt Husemann, 436th Airlift Wing commander; Chief Master Sgt. Timothy Bayes, 436th AW command chief; Col. Bary Flack, 436th Maintenance Group commander; Col. Phelemon Williams, 436th Mission Support Group commander; Col. Tracy Allen, 436th Medical Group commander; and Col. Scott Raleigh, 436th Operations Group commander; stand by the 2022 Sexual Assault Awareness Month proclamation at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, March 25, 2022. Husemann, Bayes and the group commanders signed the proclamation to support SAAM in April. (U.S. Air Force photo by Roland Balik)
This work, Team Dover leadership signs SAAM proclamation [Image 5 of 5], by Roland Balik, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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| 2022-04-08T11:45:08Z
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(WXYZ) — The excitement for Detroit Tigers Opening Day goes beyond the thrill of baseball. Businesses across Downtown Detroit are hoping to get a boost this spring and summer, especially after a limited-capacity Opening Day last year.
They're excited for the near-normal Opening Day, and are gearing up to welcome back fans for one of Detroit's biggest parties.
"It's a long time coming. it's a holiday downtown and it's good to see it back. It really is," one fan, George Fillar, said.
"The season is here. The weather is breaking. It's always cold on opening day but it's like a rite of passage. It's like Michigan," another fan said.
Stephanie Prechel, the general manager at Anchor Bar on Fort St., said she and her team are excited to start serving once again after closing temporarily in January.
"We're so excited to have everyone come back. Welcoming back our old people that have been back and our regulars and all new faces," Prechel said.
Anchor Bar is a Detroit staple, and a known hangout for Downtown Detroit workers, sports fans, and legendary journalists.
They have a new menu while holding onto iconic staples. Drink specials will happen on Friday and they will open at 9 a.m. for Opening Day.
"The more the merrier. I'd love to see everyone back celebrating opening day," Prechel said.
On Adams St. near Comerica Park, Brass Rail will be tossing dough and making fresh pizza for fans.
"Honestly, Opening day is a Detroit Holiday. It's a Detroit Holiday. People want to come out and party and Thank God it's on a Friday sometimes it's on a Monday or Tuesday and it's not as busy," Kevin Weathers, the Brass Rail bar manager, said.
Weathers said this is going to be one of the busiest days he's seen in nearly the last five years, and they'll be opening at 9 a.m.
"We'll be open, volume permitting. We don't have a set closing time. We will be open as long as we are making money. I expect craziness and I embrace it," Weathers said.
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https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/michigan/detroit-bars-restaurants-ready-for-first-normal-opening-day-since-2019
| 2022-04-08T11:48:56Z
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https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/michigan/detroit-bars-restaurants-ready-for-first-normal-opening-day-since-2019
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\n /* --------------------------- CREWS 8 AND BADLOT6 POWA_MAX, BA\n DEMICRAWW6PATIO4\n _ PIC A7\n A GATE50\n M C FET CRA11A1A0/4_6/MH0F9D4W PD_G_989 C47 P877 DETROIT — An annual holiday returns to the Motor City on Friday, as the Detroit Tigers are set to hold their opening game of the 2022 season.
It's the first home opener without capacity restrictions in 3 years. 2020 saw the season reduced to 60 games, and 2021 was limited to just 20-percent of Comerica Park's seats being filled.
Now however, the Tigers are ready to roar with tens of thousands of fans.
READ: Everything you need to know about Tigers games in 2022
The celebration is one that fans from across the state take part in. Dave Ringler administrates the Detroit Tigers fanpage on Facebook. He says the party on opening day is like none other.
"I think it's just the camaraderie," says Ringler. "I mean, I think there's a real sense of I mean, kind of the joke is that the real the real fans show up on day two. But you know, opening day really is a celebration. It's a rebirth of spring here in Michigan. And it's no matter how good or bad the our baseball club is. It's really a chance for all Tiger fans to get together and celebrate Michigan and celebrate the Tigers.
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https://www.fox17online.com/news/morning-news/play-ball-detroit-tigers-ready-for-opening-day-2022
| 2022-04-08T11:49:08Z
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Blue Collar Philosopher: Camp Chaffee troops liberated Buchenwald
April 11, 2022 marks the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp by the U.S. Army’s 6th Armored Division. The 6th, nicknamed “Super Sixth" was a part of Patton’s Third Army that entered the war eight months prior to the liberation of Buchenwald. The Third Army was designed as a powerful armored force and was the first U.S. command to land in Normandy following the Allies’ successful D-Day landings.
The Third Army was instrumental in destroying the Nazi war machine. Patton had high standards for his armored forces and the Super Sixth was one of his favorites. The liberation of Buchenwald occurred near the end of the war in far off Weimer, Germany. The beginning of the war for 6th Armored Division started close to home, at Camp Chaffee.
Construction of Camp Chaffee began in September 1941. Funding for the camp was allocated after the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 enacted the nation’s first peacetime draft. In 1939, the U.S. Army ranked 17th in the world in size and combat power, just behind Romania. The Selective Training and Service Act authorized an army of 375,000 men and allocated funds to build new camps. The United States was building its war machine.
Camp Chaffee was specifically designed to train armored divisions. When construction began, the camp was nameless. The name "Chaffee" was selected in honor of the recently deceased “Father of the Armored Force," Maj. Gen. Adna R. Chaffee II. It was out of high regard the Army chose this name – they had high expectations for his namesake camp.
The 6th Armored Division was activated on Feb. 15, 1942, at Fort Knox, Kentucky. One month later, the command relocated to Chaffee and recruits began to pour in by train. No one knew it at the time, but these recruits and their leadership were destined to be known as the "Greatest Generation."
But they weren’t great yet. First, they had to be trained and gain confidence in their leadership, their equipment, and themselves. They would need to toughen up, find their mettle, and learn to work as a cohesive team. Camp Chaffee was their proving ground.
Thirteen weeks of training began on April 13, 1942. This included basic, specialist and tactical maneuver training. Soon after, the division took part in multiple stateside exercises, including the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1942. During the maneuvers, the 6th received its first M4 Sherman tanks. These were the tanks the division used throughout the war.
The division returned to Camp Chaffee, where it picked up three armored artillery battalions. In October 1942, the division deployed to the Desert Training Center in southern California. The expansive desert terrain offered enough space for division-size elements to train. These exercises created a powerful, armored follow-on-force designed to exploit a successful Allied landing on the European continent.
The 6th Armored Division arrived in England on Feb. 23, 1944, and on March 8, 1944, was assigned to Patton’s Third Army. The division landed on Utah Beach in Normandy on July 18, 1944. Troop A of the 86th Cavalry Recon Squadron was committed to combat on July 28; the Super Sixth was in the war.
Units like the 6th Armored Division are sometimes not as well-known due to their assignment to larger formations. But if you have heard of Patton’s Third Army, you have heard of the 6th. The Super Sixth fought in five major European campaigns of World War II: Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes-Alsace, Rhineland and Central Europe.
Most of this time was spent in Gen. George S. Patton's famed Third Army, including the relief of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. By the spring of 1945, the war seemed to be winding down for the 6th until the Third Army received a chilling message from a surprising source.
In his book “Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938-1945," author Hermann Langbein relates the story of Polish engineer Gwidon Damazyn. An inmate since March 1941, Damazyn had built a secret short-wave transmitter and small generator. On April 8, 1945, he sent the Morse code message: “To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us."
Three minutes after the last transmission sent by Damazyn, the headquarters of the Third Army responded: “KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army."
It is said that Damazyn fainted after receiving the message.
A detachment of troops of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion 6th Armored Division arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, at 3:15 p.m. (now the permanent time of the clock at the entrance gate). 21,000 inmates were still in the camp. The SS had removed thousands of others just days prior.
Capt. Fredric Keefer, the battalion intelligence officer, led the detachment into the camp through a hole cut in the fence by escaping Russian prisoners. There was no sign of SS guards who had abandoned their posts as Allied forces moved east. Keefer notified his commanding officer of the discovery. He reported thousands of inmates in desperate need of medical care and food.
The 6th was not able to stay long at the camp as the division was racing eastward to secure vital bridges. Security of the camp was turned over to the U.S. Army’s 80th Infantry Division.
In 1985, the 6th Armored Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the U.S. Army Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These actions reflect on their beginnings at Camp Chaffee and our community. Since 1817, when the first Fort Smith was established, through the Civil War, the Western District, and Camp Chaffee, our community has a history at the leading edge of our country’s defense. The 6th adds to our heritage of being at the front of contributing to national security.
War is a brutal, ugly thing; but freedom isn’t free and there are things worth fighting for. The Super Sixth paid the price for freedom. Today, especially in view of current events in Ukraine, let us remember the 6th Armored Division, who did their job and their duty –they pushed back the darkness, they brought light, they liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.
We should also remember the 6th Armored Division as part of our community history and heritage. We should be humble and proud to share even a small part of their legacy. They are a credit to the nation, to the free peoples of the world, and to themselves. They became the Greatest Generation and they trained here, at Camp Chaffee.
Lance Sumpter is a local writer, veteran and refugee of the '08 Recession. He can be contacted at lsumpter00@gmail.com.
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https://www.swtimes.com/story/lifestyle/2022/04/08/blue-collar-philosopher-camp-chaffee-troops-liberated-buchenwald/9474081002/
| 2022-04-08T11:49:12Z
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says about 30 people were killed and around 100 injured following a rocket strike on the railway station in Kramatorsk in the east of the country.
Writing on social media platforms, Zelenskyy said thousands of people were present in the station at the time of the strike.
The head of the Ukrainian railway service, Olexander Kamyshin, made similar comments about the strike.
Kramatorsk is a city in part of the Donetsk region that is controlled by the Ukrainian government, and its railway station was being used to evacuate civilians.
Zelenskyy lashed out at Russian forces, saying they were “cynically destroying the civilian population” and called it “an evil without limits.”
Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk have claimed that Ukrainian forces were responsible.
One leader of the European Union is calling for more sanctions after the attack.
The president of the European Council tweeted Friday morning, “Horrifying to see Russia strike one of the main stations used by civilians evacuating the region where Russia is stepping up its attack.”
He went on to say, “Action is needed: more sanctions on Russia and more weapons to #Ukraine are under way from the EU. 5th package of EU sanctions just approved.”
Meanwhile, the president of the European Union’s executive commission and the EU’s foreign policy chief went to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy.
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https://www.fox17online.com/news/national/russia-ukraine-conflict/ukraine-russian-missile-kills-30-civilians-at-train-station
| 2022-04-08T11:49:14Z
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Pennsylvania's television viewers have been inundated with attack ads in the state's Republican primary for the US Senate. And some of those attack ads have featured misleading claims.
The fiercest ad battle has been between the primary's two leading candidates and outside groups targeting them: Mehmet Oz, a surgeon and former television show host, and David McCormick, a former hedge fund chief executive and economic official in the George W. Bush administration.
Here's a look at one of the attacks on Oz and one of the attacks on McCormick.
Oz and 'defund the police'
Two television ads from a super PAC called Pennsylvania Conservative Fund try to portray Oz as a phony who is merely pretending to be a conservative. Each of the ads features a narrator who claims Oz "was a spokesman for a group who wanted to defund the police."
Facts First: This claim is misleading. Oz opposes the concept of defunding the police. His brief affiliation with the "group" these ads were referring to, a health-focused foundation called The California Endowment, had nothing at all to do with policing. Rather, Oz appeared in one health care ad for the foundation -- in which he urged Californians to visit the foundation's website to learn how to take advantage of the benefits offered by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The ad came out in 2010, roughly a decade before the "defund the police" movement rose to prominence.
Sarah Reyes, spokesperson for The California Endowment, said in an email that Oz had no involvement with the foundation beyond the ad. "Dr. Oz has never been employed by us or been a 'spokesperson' for our organization," Reyes said.
The California Endowment did comment supportively in 2020 about protesters who were calling to defund the police in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and its chief executive spoke favorably in 2021 about the idea of reducing the number of police officers on the street and instead improving health, jobs and housing programs. (This week, Reyes would not answer directly when CNN asked if the foundation supports defunding the police, saying, "As a private foundation we are prohibited from taking stands on policy issues. We do support prevention and healing.")
Regardless, The California Endowment's stance on defunding the police in the 2020s is beside the fact-check point here. The key fact is that the super PAC ads attempt to use Oz's appearance in a single health care ad in 2010, years before most Americans had even heard the phrase "defund the police," to hint that Oz supports police defunding. That's deceptive.
Oz campaign spokesperson Brittany Yanick said in an email: "Claiming that Dr. Oz's participation in a single advertisement for the California Endowment fund constitutes Dr. Oz's endorsement of a position the organization took 10 years later is both misleading and wrong."
CNN could not reach the super PAC behind the ad for comment. This claim about Oz and defunding the police was previously fact-checked by FactCheck.org.
McCormick and the 2016 election
An ad from Oz's campaign claims that McCormick "paid for attacks on Donald Trump."
Facts First: This claim is misleading. While McCormick did donate in early 2015 to a political action committee that supported Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, there is no indication that McCormick's money was spent on attacks on Trump or intended for attacks on Trump -- especially because McCormick made his $5,000 donation five months before Trump even began his candidacy for president.
Yanick, the Oz campaign spokesperson, said in an email that this claim in the ad was referring to the fact that "McCormick hosted one of the FIRST fundraisers" for Right to Rise, an arm of the pro-Bush operation that spent money attacking Trump. That's true -- McCormick was a member of the host committee for that January 2015 fundraiser -- and the Oz campaign is entitled to criticize McCormick for it.
But it's still a big stretch to claim that McCormick himself paid for any attacks on Trump.
First and foremost, that early Bush fundraiser happened more than five months before Trump launched his candidacy in a speech in June 2015. McCormick's own $5,000 donation was recorded exactly five months before Trump's announcement event. At the time, many observers scoffed at the idea that Trump was actually going to run.
Second, even after Trump did announce his run, Bush's allies were reluctant for months to attack him. While the pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise USA was funding attack ads against Trump by late 2015, there was a whole lot of elapsed time between those ads and McCormick's donation at the beginning of the year. (In addition, McCormick's January 2015 donation was to the pro-Bush leadership PAC with a similar name, not the super PAC that raised far more money and led the advertising effort.)
McCormick also donated $2,700 to Bush's own campaign in June 2015, the month that Bush announced his candidacy. A McCormick campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this week that McCormick had gone on to support Trump in the general election, to vote for Trump in both 2016 and 2020 and to serve on the Trump administration's Defense Policy Board.
McCormick did say at a Duke University event in early 2017, however, that "I wasn't particularly involved with the Trump camp -- I wasn't a Trump supporter -- but I wanted that president to be successful," adding that he also would've wanted success for Hillary Clinton if she had won.
This claim about McCormick funding attacks on Trump was previously fact-checked by FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
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https://www.local3news.com/regional-national/fact-check-misleading-claims-in-attack-ads-against-pennsylvania-gop-senate-candidates-oz-and-mccormick/article_b25ce6fa-3dda-5cca-9425-3abfd5c763a1.html
| 2022-04-08T11:50:37Z
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| 2022-04-08T11:51:12Z
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TULSA, Okla., April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fresh from his victory at the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) event in Ohio in March, Venn Johns competes for a home crowed in PBR Tulsa on April 15 and 16 at the BOK Center.
"I've been working toward and anticipating this day," said Johns. "The opportunity to compete at PBR's top level is not a guarantee. It must be earned."
The journey to that championship buckle is arduous requiring hard work, long drives, and money. Many bull riders, in addition to athletic careers, have jobs outside the competition chutes. Some are fortunate to hone other skills while perfecting their bull riding. Johns is certified IT professional with more than 20 years of IT experience. He recently joined ArcLight Group, a Tulsa IT services company as one of the first CMCC Cyber Security Architects in Oklahoma.
"We are proud to have Venn on our team," said Brian Largent, CEO of ArcLight Group. "He embodies everything ArcLight Group stands for, integrity, hard work, diligence, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, reliability and the drive to excellence. We are thrilled to have him represent us and look forward to cheering him to victory when PBR comes to Tulsa."
ArcLight Group, along with Arena Pub & Grill and Kickers, is hosting a "Meet The Bull Riding Ninja" experience from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.. Fans are invited to celebrate with drink specials, prizes (including front-row tickets to the PBR event) and a meet and greet with Johns. Fans are also invited to the ArcLight Group, Arena Pub & Grill/Kickers official Bull Riding Ninja post event parties at the pub immediately following the PBR event both nights.
"I have been training for this moment since I got on my first bull," said Johns. "I am laser focused on bringing Tulsa a hometown win."
For additional information about the "Meet the Bull Riding Ninja" pre-PBR event party, visit Arena Pub & Grill – Tulsa on Facebook. For information about The Bull Riding Ninja, follow Johns on social media using the handle Vennmmm. Learn about ArcLight Group, visit ArcLightGroup.com.
About Venn Johns:
The oldest professional bull rider competing at the most elite level, Venn Johns relies on training for the American Ninja Warrior and several recovery techniques to be competitive with riders and ninjas half his age. He has trained with the legendary PRCA World Champion bull rider, Gary Leffew.
Some of Johns' other accomplishments include: U.S. National Men's Gymnastics team member, Oklahoma University full gymnastics scholarship recipient, Black Best in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Karate, Championship bull riding title - South America, and American Ninja Warrior competitor.
About ArcLight Group:
ArcLight Group partners with many types of businesses in Tulsa and nationwide to provide managed IT services and eliminate IT issues before they cause expensive downtime. We help other businesses grow and move forward.
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arclight-groups-venn-johns-the-bull-riding-ninja-wins-pbr-dayton-competes-in-aprils-pbr-tulsa-301520656.html
SOURCE The ArcLight Group
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| 2022-04-08T11:51:27Z
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"Discrimination has no place in Missouri.”
That line greets visitors to the .
The coalition has come out againstSenate Joint Resolution 39, a measure to put a proposed constitutional amendment on the state ballot that would allow clergy and some businesses to refuse services for same-sex weddings.
Hart Nelson, vice president of policy at the St. Louis Regional Chamber, said such legislation is detrimental for the business community and the state.
"We see that it’s going to be bad for economic growth, bad for talent attraction at a time when people and talent is the most important thing to economic growth,” he said. “We believe that it hurts our state’s reputation as a state that is welcoming and open for business.”
Nelson said other states such as Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina have seen an economic backlash after passing similar legislation. He pointed to PayPal’s decision to scrap plans for a new operations center in Charlotte, N. C., that included 400 jobs. That’s after the legislature there passed a law preventing cities from putting non-discrimination policies in place based on gender identity.
“We really needed a place for the business community across the state to come together and say ‘Hey, we are opposed to this',” Nelson said of Missouri Competes.
The coalition includes major Missouri employers such as Monsanto, Express Scripts, MasterCard, Nestle Purina and Dow Chemical Company.
“Dow opposesSJR39 and any effort that would allow for discrimination,” said KevinKolevarof Dow in a statement. “We should be focusing on policies that make Missouri more competitive and economically sound, instead of taking actions that divide.”
The companies that are part of Missouri Competes signed onto a statement that reads, in part:
“We strongly believe that Senate Joint Resolution 39 does not represent our values asMissourians, and the measure will damage our state’s reputation as a welcoming home and travel destination for job creators, their employees, families and customers.”
The resolution passed the state Senate and will be heard in the House Emerging Issues Committee on Tuesday evening. Nelson said the St. Louis Regional Chamber’s executive director Joe Reagan intends to testify against the resolution at the hearing.
Follow Maria on Twitter: @radioaltman
Copyright 2020 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit .
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RadioActive: A benefit for KCUR 89.3
RadioActive is the annual benefit for KCUR 89.3 - NPR in Kansas City. Join us as we stand in support of a free and independent press.
RadioActive 2022
In-person event
Friday, June 10
Overland Park Convention Center
Event Co-Chairs
Amy and Jeff Simon
Julie Nelson Meers and Sam Meers
RadioActive is the annual benefit for KCUR 89.3. It’s an exciting way for KCUR fans to come together in support of their favorite radio station. Please join us as we stand in support of a free and independent press. See the links below for ways to support the event as a sponsor.
Support KCUR as Kansas City's local voice to more than 175,000 weekly listeners.
Packages start at $3,500.
Packages start at $3,500.
Host a table of 10 and celebrate KCUR with friends.
Packages are $2,000.
Packages are $2,000.
Two VIP tickets to the evening's festivities.
Packages are $1,000.
Packages are $1,000.
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Just to give a bit of background, Japan is the world's third-largest importer of coal and Russia is the country's second-largest supplier. In total, Russia supplies over 10% of Japan's coal imports.
Japan prime minister Kishida says that in banning Russian coal, the country will focus on renewable energy and nuclear power to replace the lost supplies. Those aren't things that will come overnight but it highlights the long-term planning by many countries now in diversifying away from Russian energy.
Coal is obviously the easy step. Oil and gas is an entirely different ballgame but it is one that could be on the cards in the year(s) ahead.
Much like the EU, Japan also relies heavily on Russian oil and gas. For some context, the city of Hiroshima imports almost half of its gas supplies from Russia and Tokyo roughly about 10%.
It will take time to replace existing contracts and projects that are running at the moment but over time, one can expect more and more countries to continue to lessen their dependency on Russian energy.
The question then becomes, what is the long-term outlook for Russian oil and gas? I fear it is going to be a Venezuela situation but considering Putin's ideals, you never really know what might come next when his back is against the wall.
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LOS ANGELES COUNTY, Ca. (KTLA) — Nearly a dozen people were stuck on a theme park ride at Universal Studios Hollywood Thursday afternoon after the ride encountered a mechanical issue.
Los Angeles County firefighters responded to the theme park in Universal City around 3:45 p.m. after 11 people became stuck on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride within the Wizarding World of Harry Potter section of the park.
First responders were able to slowly get riders off the theme park ride, which takes riders along an indoor track that Universal says features “sudden tilting, turning and jarring action,” and “abrupt multi-directional motion that turns you on your back.”
The exact type of mechanical issue is unclear at this time. There have not yet been any reports of injuries related to the stalled ride.
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Operation Brock has been plaguing roads in Kent during the last couple of weeks. But is the traffic calming measure actually fit for purpose?
Today, the Port of Dover has issued a plea to those heading to east Kent to depart on their Easter getaways as the council threatens to declare a 'major incident'. Businesses and residents in Dover have been badly affected by Operation Brock chao s, with vehicles coming to a complete standstill on the M20 and surrounding roads.
Thousands of lorries are parked on the M20, and there are problems on other main routes as truckers attempt to avoid the queues. There are concerns for the welfare of the drivers stuck on the motorway-turned-lorry-park with one trucker driver lifting the lid on the terrible conditions after he was stuck in the jams for over 30 hours.
Read more: Live M20, Operation Brock A2, A20 traffic updates as chaos continues in Dover and Folkestone
In addition to weather problems, P&O Ferries had suspended services while holidaymakers travelling to the port for a half-term break were also said to be contributing factors. As a result, Operation Brock was implemented to help deal with the huge volume of freight - and has been in place ever since.
The government announced the scheme in November 2017 as an alternative to Operation Stack. It was first implemented in March 2019 and introduced ahead of a possible no-deal Brexit.
The unpopular traffic management system has been in place on-and-off since P&O Ferries announced mass redundancies on March 22. Below are some of your most frequently asked questions about the scheme.
Do you think Op Brock is fit for purpose? Have your say in the comments below or fill in our quick survey.
What is Operation Brock?
Operation Brock is the official name for traffic calming measures when there is cross-Channel disruption at either the Port of Dover or Eurotunnel. It uses a "contraflow" system on the London-bound carriageway of the M20 between just north of junction 8 (for Leeds) and Junction 9 (Ashford).
This means London-bound and coastbound traffic have been allocated two lanes each, with a steel barrier separating them. There is a 50mph speed limit in place where this contraflow exists.
Lorries heading to the Port or Tunnel will be sent down the coastbound carriageway, with a 30mph speed limit in place. While all other traffic uses the contraflow.
Why has Operation Brock been introduced?
Previously, severe disruption at the Port would lead to Highways England and Kent Police implementing the controversial Operation Stack. But this meant entire sections on the M20 were closed and caused even more disruption in Kent.
Areas around Ashford, Dover and Folkestone were virtually cut off by the measure. It was hugely unpopular and rather expensive, with Kent taxpayers footing the bill.
After a particularly damaging summer where the system was used for 32 days, calls were made to find an alternative. Enter, Op Brock. The new system aims to reduce disruption while still allowing traffic to pass on both sides of the motorway.
How does it work?
When the Port is facing delays, Highways England can activate the contraflow between junctions 8 and 9 of the M20. Traffic is signposted into the correct lane when the contraflow is in place.
When Brock is active, the M20 will be operational as follows:
Cars, coaches and goods vehicles under 7.5 tonnes
All cars, coaches and goods vehicles under 7.5 tonnes heading coastbound will follow signs on the M20 through the two-lane contraflow irrespective of their destination (local or heading towards the ports).
Drivers leaving the UK should check conditions before setting out and, if they’re crossing the channel, check with their service operator for updates and ensure they have all the required paperwork.
HGVs over 7.5 tonnes heading coast-bound to leave the UK
All HGVs over 7.5 tonnes heading coastbound to leave the UK will follow signs on the M20 approaching junction 8 and 9 and get in the correct lane of the coastbound carriageway per their port-destination.
Such HGVs will be subject to paperwork compliance checks and will be stopped for verification checks by an official at dedicated checkpoints. Details of the paperwork they need to produce are available through the Department for Transport website.
Compliant HGVs exiting the UK
It is important all paperwork associated with the goods in your vehicle is up to date.
HGVs having the correct paperwork in place will be deemed authorised to progress to their destined port after the necessary check by an official. Drivers will be provided with check confirmation paperwork to present at the ports to be authorised to progress with their further journey across the channel.
Non-compliant HGVs wishing to exit the UK
If your paperwork is not correct you may be asked to divert to a holding area at Ashford or Manston where you will get advice on how to get border ready. Failure to comply with instructions may result in fines and further delays.
When will Brock be inactive?
However, Highways England says the situation will be kept under review and is subject to change. While Brock is inactive, the M20 will operate as follows:
- All traffic heading coastbound will be able to use the three-lane coast-bound carriageway. The national speed limit applies unless signed otherwise.
- All Londonbound traffic will use the hard shoulder and lane 1 on the Londonbound carriageway. The speed limit will be 50mph. Average speed cameras will remain in operation.
Want the latest Operation Brock news? Sign up to our FREE newsletter here.
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The man who murdered school teacher Sabina Nessa has been jailed for life. Koci Selamaj, 36, and branded an “evil” sexual predator, will have to serve at least 36 years in prison.
Selamaj, from Eastbourne in East Sussex, travelled to London to carry out the premeditated attack on a random woman on September 17, 2021. The garage worker targeted 28-year-old Ms Nessa as she walked through Cator Park in south-east London, to meet a friend.
CCTV footage captured the moment Selamaj ran up behind her and hit her over the head 34 times with a 2ft-long metal traffic triangle. He then carried her unconscious body up a grassy bank and out of site.
READ MORE: Person airlifted to hospital after 'fall' on the M20
The court had previously heard that he then pulled up her clothes, removed her tights and underwear, and strangled her before covering her body in grass. Ms Nessa, who taught a year one class at Rushey Green Primary School in Catford, was found nearly 24 hours later near a community centre in the park.
Selamaj, was arrested in East Sussex and pleaded guilty to murder in February. However, he refused to appear at the Old Bailey for his sentencing, in a move that saw the family of Ms Nessa brand him a "coward".
Mr Justice Sweeney sentenced him to life in prison in his absence and set a minimum term of 36 years for the “savage” sexually motivated attack.
At court on Thursday (April 8), Ms Nessa’s parents Abdur Rouf and Azibun Nessa said in a statement: “You had no right to take her away from us in such a cruel way. The moment the police officer came to our house and told her she was found dead our world shattered into pieces.
“How could you do such a thing to an innocent girl walking by, minding her own business. You are not a human being, you are an animal.”
Find out how you can get more news from KentLive straight to your inbox for free HERE
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Hybrid and plug-in vehicles are changing the automotive world, and the planet. Servco Honolulu offers a variety of alternative fuel vehicles that help to produce “less greenhouse gas emissions” and “reduce our reliance on fossil fuels,” Judy Relosimon Ng of Toyota Hawaii stated. Hawaii has a goal of reaching carbon neutrality by the year 2045 and “in order for us to reach that, then it really takes pretty much all of us to reduce our fossil fuel dependence and make that shift to more sustainable vehicle options.”
Some of these vehicle options include the Toyota RAV4 Prime and Toyota Sienna (hybrid). Jordan Doi of Servco Toyota Honolulu took us on a test drive in the RAV4. We learned that “once the battery depletes, it goes into the regular hybrid battery–which is half battery, half gas.” As for the Toyota Sienna (hybrid), Jordan refers to it as “not your stereotypical mini-van.” There are misconceptions about hybrids and plug-in hybrids being slow. However, these vehicles have great electric torque and horsepower.
Servco Honolulu provides sustainable vehicle options to benefit their customers, as well as the environment. Judy shared, “Our goal is to provide our customers with a variety of options so that they can pick whatever fits their preference or needs.”
As Miss Hawaii 2019 & 2020, Nikki was a representative for the Aloha State and was highly involved with the community as she promoted the importance of service. Nikki is the host of KITV's entertainment and culture platform, ISLAND LIFE.
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...SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM HST FRIDAY...
* WHAT...East winds 20 to 30 knots, except north winds in
Maalaea Bay.
* WHERE...Maalaea Bay, Pailolo Channel, Alenuihaha Channel, Big
Island Leeward Waters and Big Island Southeast Waters.
* WHEN...Until 6 AM HST Friday.
* IMPACTS...Conditions will be hazardous to small craft.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
Inexperienced mariners, especially those operating smaller
vessels, should avoid navigating in these conditions.
&&
Homeless Time In Count numbers out for Maui, Kauai, and Island of Hawaii
HONOLULU (KITV)- According to data released today from this year's Homeless Point in Time Count, the number of homeless people on Kauai and the Big Island have increased from two years ago. The numbers for Oahu have not yet been release.
According to the latest Homeless Point In Time Count, the number of homeless on Hawaii Island, Maui and Kauai combined is up 1% from when the last count was done in 2020. Its a smaller number than many predicted. Everybody when we were doing this we were thinking, oh there is going to be a significant increase in homelessness because of COVID. And we were really surprised to see only 1%," said Bridge The Gap Vice Chair Paul Normann.
A Silver lining in the numbers is a decrease in the number of families living in a shelter or in unsheltered conditions. The totals are the lowest seen in 4 years. "Every county prioritized housing and sheltering families. You talk about investing in the future. If you want to invest in the future, you take care of the Keiki," said Normann.
Normann says there are reasons for this progress. "Resources were brought to bear to increase shelter space and increase housing for families," said Normann.
The number of veterans who are without a home are also down 18% from 2020 and Maui had a decrease in the number of homeless people as well during that time period. But not all the news is good. The study shows the number of people who are repeatedly unsheltered is up over the last 4 years, as is the number of people with mental illness who are unsheltered and live in shelters.
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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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(CNN) -- Electric service restoration efforts were still underway Thursday evening in Puerto Rico, a utility company said, a day after the start of an island-wide outage that left many people in the dark overnight and prompted school cancellations and other interruptions across the US territory.
Most customers on the island of about 3.2 million residents still were without power Thursday, officials said. By day's end, at least 380,200 LUMA customers have had their power restored as of 10 p.m. local time, LUMA Energy said in a statement on its Twitter account.
"Given the massive size of the outage, its scope and the necessity to operate in safety, we are informing our customers that the restoration will continue through Thursday night and into Friday," the company said in the statement.
An unspecified failure led to a fire at the Costa Sur power plant outside the town of Guayanilla on the southwest coast around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, cutting power across the island, Kevin Acevedo, vice president of LUMA Energy, said during a news conference. Firefighters have since extinguished the flames.
All customers on the island lost power service initially, Josue Colon, Puerto Rico's lead telecommunications and infrastructure engineer, told reporters, "because all the generating units went offline."
The exact cause wasn't immediately known, the utility has said.
LUMA Energy, which operates the island's power grid, expected power to be restored within 24 hours of the incident, Acevedo said at the news conference.
The power outage also has interrupted water service to about 100,000 homes and businesses, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said, citing the island's aqueducts and sewers authority.
Puerto Rico's Department of Education canceled classes Friday for students, but "school principals, custodians, and school cafeteria employees must report to the campuses starting at 10:00 am," the department said in a tweet.
Pierluisi suspended school classes Thursday across the island and told nonessential government workers to stay home. Only government workers "with essential and emergency functions will have to report to work," Pierluisi said in a news release.
Hospital's intensive care floor temporarily lost power
The intensive care floor at Mayagüez Medical Center, on the island's west coast, temporarily was without power because of backup generator issues, prompting LUMA to especially focus on restoring power there, officials said.
Power eventually was restored at the location, Puerto Rico Health Secretary Carlos Mellado López said on Twitter.
Four patients on that floor were intubated, and would have been moved to a floor with electricity had service not been restored quickly, officials said earlier.
All hospitals were operational by Thursday afternoon, whether their power was restored or they were operating via a generator, according to Secretary of the Interior Noelia García Bardales.
"All hospitals are operating without any setbacks. All elective surgeries were performed today without inconveniences. All dialysis services are being performed without delays.", said García Bardales.
Puerto Rico's airports were operational, and no flight cancellations were reported due to the outage, according to officials.
Police have a plan to help circulate traffic with the lights out, but "we ask for cooperation from drivers on the roads," Pierluisi said.
Replacement power plant parts ordered, official says
Early Thursday, the utility said the "massive island-wide blackout" might have been "caused by a circuit breaker failure" at the Costa Sur plant.
Firefighters extinguished flames that affected two substations at the plant, the Bureau of Puerto Rico Fire Departments said Wednesday on Facebook.
The cause of the fire is being investigated, Acevedo said Thursday morning, adding that the equipment was up to date on maintenance inspections.
Cleanup at the plant is underway, and replacement parts have been identified and ordered, Acevedo said.
LUMA is a joint venture of Quanta Services and the Canadian energy company ATCO, which the Puerto Rican government chose to take over the operation of the power grid from its previous public electric utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. LUMA has been in charge of the power grid since June 1.s
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Puerto Rico's lead telecommunications and infrastructure engineer. It is Josue Colon.
The-CNN-Wire
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Country
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BOSTON (SHNS) – Wide-ranging marijuana legislation that targets some of the most persistent issues that activists, regulators, businesses and municipalities have said are holding Massachusetts back from realizing the full potential of the 2016 legalization law cleared the Senate unanimously Thursday afternoon with senators pitching it as both an economic development and racial justice bill.
The bill (S 2801) would put tighter restrictions and enhanced oversight on the host community agreements marijuana businesses are required to enter into with their host communities, make grants and loans available through a new Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund to participants in the Cannabis Control Commission’s social equity (SE) program or economic empowerment (EE) priority applicants, and create a method for cities and towns to authorize the on-site cannabis consumption establishments that are already authorized under the CCC’s regulations.
“By clarifying the requirements of the host community agreements, making financial investments to increase social equity and allowing for the full implementation of the cannabis industry through permitting social consumption authorization, I am confident that this legislation aids in the continued growth of a competitive and equitable commercial marijuana industry here in the commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Michael Rodrigues said as he introduced the bill on the floor.
The Legislature has long maintained a mostly hands-off approach to marijuana policy. Lawmakers passed up their opportunities to act before voters approved decriminalization in 2008, medical marijuana in 2012 and adult legalization in 2016, but then delayed and rewrote significant portions of the 2016 ballot law legalizing marijuana. Aside from a bill that the House passed in early 2020 with provisions similar to the Senate bill, the Legislature has largely avoided cannabis issues since 2017.
Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, who chairs the Cannabis Policy Committee for the Senate, said the bill that sailed through her committee without opposition seeks to remedy “long-standing problems with long-identified solutions.”
“If you talk to advocates, to policy experts, to the Cannabis Control Commission, you will find near-universal agreement. They will tell you … that the costs of entry into the industry are too high and that there is a severe lack of access to capital in this industry. It typically requires one to one and a half million dollars in liquidity to open a new cannabis retail shop or three to five million for a manufacturing facility,” Chang-Diaz said. She added, “So when you need that kind of cash on hand in order to get into the business, in order to get your foot in the door, it’s no surprise that despite our best intentions, the industry has remained predominantly white and predominantly in already wealthy hands.”
Chang-Diaz likened the marijuana bill to other steps the Senate has taken to confront racial injustice, like passing criminal justice and policing reform laws, recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday and last week’s vote to ban discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles in workplaces, schools and public spaces.
“Tackling our gaping racial wealth divide is the next front in this work toward pursuing racial justice in our state,” she said. The Jamaica Plain Democrat added, “So we know that if we are serious about the work of racial justice, we have to tackle this racial wealth divide. And that is why I’m so proud that we are taking up this bill today because this bill is a racial wealth gap bill.”
Massachusetts was the first state in the country to mandate that equity and inclusion be part of its legal cannabis framework and was the first to launch programs specifically designed to assist entrepreneurs and businesses from communities disproportionately harmed by the decades of marijuana prohibition.
But more than three years since the first legal sale here, just 6 percent of the licenses issued for the cannabis industry have gone to SE program participants or EE priority applicants, the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy said when it released its draft of the legislation. Out of more than 1,000 applications submitted to the CCC as of November, just 232 came from SE or EE applicants.
The bill would make grants and loans, including no-interest loans and forgivable loans, available to participants in the Cannabis Control Commission’s social equity (SE) program or economic empowerment (EE) priority applicants through a Cannabis Social Equity Trust Fund. Each year, the fund would get 10 percent of the money in the Marijuana Regulation Fund, which is where revenue brought in by the state’s marijuana excise tax, application and licensing fees, and industry penalties is deposited.
For fiscal year 2021, a 10 percent share of just the cannabis excise revenue ($112.37 million) would have worked out to about $11.24 million for the trust fund. Rodrigues estimated that the 10 percent share for fiscal year 2023 would work out to about $18 million while Chang-Diaz forecasted a range of between $15 million and $18 million for FY 2023.
More than two years ago, the CCC approved regulations that paved the way for social consumption establishments where adults could buy marijuana and use it in a social setting. But the agency said the pilot program it designed for up to 12 communities “would not be able to begin without a change in state law or the passage of legislation that will first allow cities and towns to authorize social consumption in their communities.”
The Senate bill would allow communities to opt-in to allowing social consumption businesses within their borders via local ordinance in addition to making a change necessary for cities or towns to use the existing local referendum avenue to green light marijuana cafes. The Senate rejected an amendment from Minority Leader Bruce Tarr that would have eliminated the ordinance option and required the decision to go before voters.
“Permitting this to go through the local political process, this decisionmaking to go through the local political process the same as all other town ordinances do, will both save municipal resources needed to execute a ballot question and avoid delays resulting from having to wait months or years until the next election cycle in some cases, while also maintaining accountability to the voters,” Chang-Diaz said.
Discussion of social consumption sites has typically led to talk of road safety and senators offered a handful of amendments meant to put driving while impaired by marijuana on an equal footing as driving while drunk. Most of those amendments were either withdrawn or rejected, but the Senate did adopt a Tarr amendment that would create a special commission on drugged driving to monitor and report on the development of technology related to the reliable testing of marijuana impairment in drivers.
“While I would have hoped that we would have taken action to make some statutory changes in this bill, the commission that is set up by this particular amendment sets the foundation for us to be able to move forward and make those changes in the future based on additional information and the insight of experts,” Tarr said. He cited data released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in February estimating a 15.5 percent increase in roadway fatalities in Massachusetts over the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 from 258 to 298.
On the issue of host community agreements (HCAs), the bill would direct the CCC to “review and approve host community agreements” and also to “regulate and enforce all host community agreements.” The CCC could only approve applications for provisional licensure or renewal if it has certified that the HCA is in compliance.
The bill would also more specifically define what can and cannot be included in the contracts, and would codify a municipality’s right to waive the requirement to have an HCA as a handful have already done. Through the adoption of an amendment from Sen. John Velis, the bill would also require the CCC to develop a model HCA that communities can use as a template to ensure their agreements are in line with what the CCC would approve.
HCAs have given businesses, prospective businesses and regulators fits basically since the CCC began licensing businesses here. Entrepreneurs, lawyers, lobbyists and regulators have pointed to stories about cities and towns demanding more from businesses than state laws allow, up to 3 percent of gross sales. The CCC began wrestling with the issue in 2018, determined it lacked the authority to intervene or reject an application based on the HCA and voted in January 2019 to formally request that the Legislature give it that authority.
The bill that the Senate passed Thursday has good odds of being in the mix as lawmakers send bills to the governor’s desk in the coming months; House Speaker Ron Mariano’s office has said addressing many of the same issues is a priority for him.
“If the legislation is to pass, I want to thank the House as well for their consideration they’ll give to this legislation,” CCC Chairman Steven Hoffman said Thursday morning before the Senate debate began.
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BOSTON (SHNS) – Transportation, energy and the construction fields feature as primary focus areas in a bill Senate Democrats rolled out Thursday to accelerate decarbonization efforts amidst what lawmakers called a sluggish approach by state agencies.
The policy-heavy, $250 million bill set to hit the Senate floor next week (S 2819) would combine an overhaul of the offshore wind procurement process with new investments in electric vehicle infrastructure, incentives to encourage more drivers to go electric, greater scrutiny on the future of natural gas, and local options to restrict the use of fossil fuels in building projects.
Senators pitched the proposal as a needed follow-up to the law Gov. Charlie Baker signed last year, which committed Massachusetts to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a target that will require major changes throughout the economy.
Where the 2021 law “was and is about laying benchmarks,” the new bill “is about doing what needs to be done to hit those benchmarks,” said Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee Co-chair Sen. Michael Barrett.
The bill would use $100 million to create a Clean Energy Investment Fund, allocate $100 million to incentivize adoption of electric vehicles, and deploy $50 million to build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Michael Rodrigues said the legislation would use surplus state tax revenues to seed that spending, though he said lawmakers could opt to add to the trust funds in the future using federal aid or other sources.
“It’s not one and done on these issues,” he said.
The sectors targeted in the bill play major roles in existing carbon production. Transportation accounts for the largest share of the Bay State’s greenhouse gas emissions, representing about 42 percent, while electricity consumption represents 19 percent and building consumption represents 32 percent, according to a December 2020 state report.
Senate President Karen Spilka said those three areas “really need significant attention if we are to meet our ambitious goals of having net-zero emissions by 2050.”
“Let’s face it: improvements we make in education or health care policy won’t mean anything if our coastal cities and our cities are underwater,” Spilka said while unveiling the bill, flanked by about a dozen other senators. “This is the most important issue of our time.”
The Senate teed up the bill, its version of an offshore wind bill the House approved last month (H 4524), to be considered on Thursday, April 14. Amendments will be due by 4 p.m. on Monday.
On the transportation front, the Senate bill aims to accelerate a statewide embrace of electric vehicles. It would require rebates through the Massachusetts Offers Rebates for Electric Vehicles (MOR-EV) program to be offered at the point of sale, making the benefits available to motorists immediately, and increase the rebate amount in most cases by $1,000 to $3,500.
Motorists could receive an additional $1,000, representing a rebate of $4,500, if they trade in a combustion engine vehicle when purchasing an electric car or truck.
“We wanted to make sure in the bill that we are not stimulating the purchase of electric vehicles by single car owners at the expense of people who live in cities and who may not be able to afford a car or may rely primarily on mass transit,” Barrett, a Lexington Democrat, said. “If you add what we do with what the feds are supposed to do, you could be bringing down the cost of a $40,000 EV to $27,500.”
Starting in the year 2035, all new vehicles sold in Massachusetts would need to produce zero emissions, a change that Barrett said would align the Bay State with New York and California. The Baker administration has proposed a similar cutoff of the sale of fossil fuel vehicles, which would be codified into state law under the Senate bill, as part of its 2050 decarbonization plan.
All buses purchased and leased by the MBTA would need to be zero-emissions vehicles starting in 2028, and the entire fleet — which today includes more than 1,000 buses — would need to be zero-emission by 2040.
Utilities would need to offer reduced electricity rates for off-peak electric vehicle charging, and new developments would need to allocate 10 percent of their parking spaces to EV charging, proposals that feature alongside the bill’s $50 million fund to expand charging infrastructure.
Taking aim at an industry that both Baker and the House have already targeted with legislation, the Senate’s wide-reaching energy and emissions proposal would update the process for procuring new offshore wind developments to supplement the in-development Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind.
Senators proposed keeping a price cap in place for new bids, a contrast from Baker’s proposal to eliminate the cap and the House-approved bill that would remove it in most situations, but would allow some economic development costs to be excluded from the calculation. The Senate legislation would require the total cost of a bid to be less than 10 percent higher than the most recent offshore wind procurement.
It would also instruct the state Department of Energy Resources to choose a winning bid in consultation with an independent evaluator, removing utilities from that part of the equation, and would reduce the remuneration for utilities to 1.25 percent. Senators said that piece would save ratepayers money.
Other clean energy sources feature in the Senate bill, too. The legislation would allow nuclear fusion, networked geothermal and other new technologies to be eligible for support from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and would greenlight agricultural and horticultural land to be used as solar panel sites, so long as the panels do not impede existing uses.
With some lawmakers frustrated that the Baker administration’s stretch code would not authorize cities and towns to mandate builders use all-electric heating, the Senate bill calls for launching a “demonstration project” in which 10 municipalities could limit the use of fossil fuels in new construction.
A key motivating factor, senators said, is the pace of work underway in executive offices and state agencies and lawmakers’ desire to enshrine their recommended approach in law. Gov. Baker oversees the state’s energy and environmental agencies and is scheduled to leave office early next year when his successor takes over.
Referencing the role of natural gas and the municipal stretch energy code as pressure points, Sen. Cynthia Creem said some “specific agencies are not really helping us achieve the emissions (reductions) we need.”
“I don’t think it’s a ‘this administration versus another’ problem, but we’re seeing that unless we move quickly, we’re not going to meet the emissions (reductions) that were required and the agencies, we don’t think, are taking the quick approach that they should be taking,” Creem, a Newton Democrat, said.
After he and Creem earlier this week voiced concerns with the utility-driven Future of Gas report, Barrett said Thursday that natural gas on any given day accounts for roughly 65 percent of the state’s electric power generation at once.
“The future of gas is the ballgame, in many respects, and it must not be a process that ends with a governor who’s decided to leave,” Barrett said. “What we’re doing here is keeping the process open. We’re giving this governor ample opportunity to have input, but we’re keeping the process open for the next governor as well and making sure that things don’t come to a premature conclusion.”
The breadth of the Senate’s proposal could put it at odds with the House, whose leaders have already secured passage of a narrower offshore wind procurement reform bill that did not feature major action aimed at transportation, solar energy, building or other components senators proposed.
Lawmakers had to approve their 2021 climate bill a second time to secure its signature into law after their slow pace of negotiation took the gubernatorial amendment process off the table and drew a veto of the first version.
And with each branch eyeing a different scope of energy industry action so far, finding consensus in the slightly less than four months remaining for formal lawmaking business could prove challenging.
Asked if she is concerned about reconciling the divergent House-Senate approaches, Spilka said she “tend(s) to be an optimistic type of person, glass half full.”
“I believe that the House also recognizes that climate is an existential threat to our planet, and we need to take action,” Spilka said. “The last bill we did, we both mentioned that this is not the last bill that we will be doing on climate. I believe that we’ll, you know, work this through like we do with the other issues we have.”
Baker’s offshore wind bill also diverges from the Senate approach, calling for $750 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to launch a clean energy investment fund.
Pete Wilson, a senior advisor to the advocacy group Transportation for Massachusetts, praised senators for focusing on emissions from the transportation sector while calling for more substantial action to decrease the state’s reliance on motor vehicles.
“We appreciate the Senate’s goal of decarbonizing our vehicle fleets and the investments included in the bill to get us there. But with the average age of cars currently on the road being more than 12 years, and electric vehicles remaining out of reach to low-income people even with increased incentives, we must seek more comprehensive transportation solutions,” Wilson said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Senate to include additional provisions that shift Massachusetts from our car-centric culture by promoting public transit, walking, and biking. Doing so will not only lower emissions from transportation, but improve public health, fight traffic, and benefit quality of life for all.”
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Pets are the type of friends everyone cherishes. Their constant support, kindness, and playfulness are lovely qualities that regularly surpass any expectations. This interspecies connection is at the heart of the new brand identity for UK pet charity Woodgreen, by Marina Willer and the Pentagram team. Woodgreen shelters vulnerable animals with and without homes, and you can see their work on the reality show The Dog House.
The nonprofit has an undeniably endearing motive, and its logo of a dog embraced in a hug is similarly likely to tug at your heartstrings. Its green and white color palette is both warm and naturalistic, evoking thoughts of a warm, healthy environment. Our pets are always there for us, and Woodgreen’s visuals successfully highlight how we need to be there for them.
Marina Willer and team have created a new brand identity for Woodgreen, one of England’s leading pet charities and home to the BAFTA-nominated TV series ‘The Dog House’ which matches homeless dogs with hopeful new owners.
Established in North London in 1924, Woodgreen provides a safe haven for vulnerable pets in need of urgent care or a loving new home. It also offers expert advice and hands-on support to owners of pets, not only dogs and cats but also a range of domestic animals including rodents and chickens.
With almost 100 years’ experience in rehabilitating pets with medical and behavioural needs, and understanding what makes the relationship between pets and people so special, Woodgreen’s aim is to help pets enjoy fulfilling, joyful lives with their humans.
Woodgreen’s unique point of difference is providing advice and support to prevent or resolve issues at the earliest possible stage, keeping pets in loving homes with their owners.
Marina was asked to create a brand that would represent Woodgreen in a clear and compelling way, and one that would inspire volunteers and staff to help effectively communicate the full range of Woodgreen’s services.
The brand strategy needed to reflect Woodgreen’s unique position and focus on the bond between pets and people—without losing sight of pets being at the heart of the Woodgreen brand and the main focus of their work.
The identity developed by Marina and her team aims to fully reflect the breadth of activities and powerfully state Woodgreen’s special purpose. It occupies a unique position in today’s world that has a significantly higher pet population since the pandemic began, and a cost of living crisis which is leaving more pet owners in a vulnerable position than ever before.
At the centre of the brand identity, the team created a heartwarming symbol that captures the unbreakable bond between animals and humans—using positive and negative forms to visually represent how pets and humans are dependent on one another. The words ‘Helping pets and their people’ appear under the logo, which perfectly summarises the idea that Woodgreen always sees the relationship from a pet’s perspective.
The identity keeps Woodgreen’s primary colours of green and white. These are complemented by additional shades of green and a variety of warm tones which have been carefully selected to represent the natural environment.
The tone of voice works in a direct and conversational manner, either expressing the emotional and compassionate aspect of Woodgreen’s personality, or being optimistic, caring and approachable. Highlighting the emotional benefits and joyful connections between pets and people—with a touch of humour, as the messaging is often directed to the pet.
This is supported by simple and practical messaging which is more direct, to help talk to pet owners and anyone looking to adopt a pet. Providing information in a way that’s straightforward, without formalities or judgement about how they can seek support, help and care.
Imagery plays an important part in the brand expression—photographs of pets are taken at eye level to place the animals centre stage. This is supported by documentary-style imagery of professionals, the staff and volunteers that support Woodgreen—an integral part of the story, showing the behind the scenes aspects of the charity’s work. Additionally, images feature moments between animals and humans to highlight the bond between them, and emphasises Woodgreen’s mission.
The choice of typeface reflects a tonality and personality which has to be kind as well as highly skilled and professional. Colophon Foundry‘s Raisonne Pro (used in Bold, DemiBold and Book) is the primary typeface used throughout—contemporary and straightforward, it represents a voice that can flex across Woodgreen’s different styles of communication.
This all combines to create a brand that will help Woodgreen clearly communicate its key values, of compassion towards animals and their humans and the societal benefits that this special relationship can bring.
Clive Byles, Chief Executive Officer at Woodgreen, said: “For almost a hundred years, we’ve been dedicated to helping pets in need. That will never change, but the way we help pets—and their people—has. Today, we are able to do so much more for them, meaning our brand was no longer an accurate reflection of who we are and what we do.
“Marina and the team brought clarity to this complex challenge, creating a robust brand proposition and cut-through visual identity for Woodgreen that will help us differentiate ourselves from others in the sector and do even more for pets and their people.”
Project Credits
Marina Willer
Pentagram
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Vladimir Putin has risen from junior KGB officer to Lord of the Russian Federation. With that status comes the caustic irreverence due his current stature.
Below, Jeff Scher animates the how epicurian flies devour their favorite food …
Cedomir Kostovic, who last appeared on The Daily Heller with his homage to 100 years of Federico Fellini, offers two posters …
Adrian Wilson suggests a barrier, for whatever good it will do …
And finally, Stasys Eidrigevicius fills out tody’s critical commentaries with a startling indictment on the chamber of horrors in Ukraine—and not for the first time, either.
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Slussen is a mechanically bold typeface designed by Hugo Jourdan and Blaze Type. This typeface can mesh with a spectrum of imaginable designs and features 104 styles, six different widths, and eight weights. Slussen is inspired by classic mechanical design, so it takes legibility seriously. The accessibility of this font makes it ideal for either small body copy or massive implementations such as critical signage.
Slussen is a Neo-grotesque typeface well suited to tech and industrial companies. Slussen’s inspiration comes from rhythm and organisation of construction sites. It has a mechanical skeleton, characterised by outlines more angular compared to other Neo-grotesque. Combined with flat endings and a slight contrast in letterforms, Slussen has been designed to cover a very large range of uses, from small captions to huge titles.
From Compressed to Expanded, the complete family is composed of 104 styles across 6 widths and 8 weights in order to fit all types and sizes of supports, both printed and on screen. Moreover, the family include a Stencil version in reference to construction sites, ideal for designing signage tools and a Monospace version which combined with the standard version, allows Slussen to be a strong font system. With these +1040 glyphs, Slussen cover all Latin European Languages.
Project Credits
Hugo Jourdan
Blaze Type
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When asked about “Aline,” her imaginary biopic of singer Celine Dion, French actress Valérie Lemercier replies in what seems like the most French way possible.
“I wanted to make a perfume of Celine’s life,” she says on a video call from her home in Paris. “She’s the real perfume, but I tried to be the perfume in Celine’s life.”
Lemercier, who stars as Aline and directed and co-wrote the film, is best known in France for the off-the-wall characters she’s played in comedies in movies, on television, and on stage.
But while “Aline” did get some unintentional laughs when it premiered at Cannes in 2021 – more on that in a moment – Lemercier plays her pseudo-Celine straight in the film, which opens Friday, April 8.
To her, the story of Celine Dion is the stuff of some of the singer’s biggest hits. It’s a love story, Lemercier says, describing how she reached that conclusion only after Dion’s husband-manager René Angélil died in 2016.
“When I saw René’s funeral, I was very touched by that lady,” Lemercier says. “The first steps alone. How will she continue?”
Lemercier says she couldn’t stop thinking about what Dion’s life would be like after the loss of Angélil, a man who had signed her as a client when she was still a child and years later married her in a romance that, to put it mildly, many didn’t understand.
The next few years she spent watching and reading everything she could find on Dion, and the more she learned, the more she saw a story she could tell.
“I didn’t know that love story was so strong, so unique, so special,” she says. “I said, ‘I will make a movie.’
“The love story seems the main thing of that life,” Lemercier says. “Love story with the mother and love story with him. Because she loved her mother, and she loved that man.
“For me, it was something important, the three main characters.”
Child’s play
In “Aline,” Lemercier plays Dion in every chapter of her life; that’s more literal than you might think.
She plays her as a child singing at a family wedding. As a 12-year-old meeting her manager and future husband for the first time. As a young star, a mother, and a grief-stricken wife approaching 50.
Lemercier was 55 when she shot the film, and it was the visuals of a young girl with a face that seemed uncannily mature, that set Cannes abuzz last summer. Not that the star and director paid that response any mind, or even seem to grasp why people found it, well, a bit odd.
“I played (her) early because when she was 12, she was an adult,” Lemercier says. “She wasn’t shy. She says, ‘I’m looking like a grandmother,’ when she saw a picture or video when she was 12. And it’s true.”
The age-shifting was done with a mix of practical and digital effects. Her desk in elementary school and her childhood bed were oversized props to make Lemercier look small against them. Her head and body were digitally shrunk.
“It’s not my old face put on the baby body,” she says. “Not at all. It’s me. I’m playing it with all my body, all my hands.
“And after they reduce me, all my body, they may grow the head a little bit, because only to reduce to the head would be too small,” Lemercier says.
Remarkably, this plays in “Aline” much less strange than the descriptions here might suggest. And if you trust the judgment of the French film industry, she was awarded the Cesar for best actress for her performance in the film, which received a total of 10 nominations including best director and best writer for Lemercier.
Art will go on
A movie about Dion couldn’t be made without the music she’s known for. And while the film wasn’t approved by Dion or her management, the fact that Dion almost exclusively records and performs songs written by other people left the door open for plenty of Dion’s biggest hits, including “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme song to “Titanic.” The recreation of performances on huge stages in flashy productions is impressive.
“The one that I was really, really surprised was ‘Love Me Tender’ of Elvis Presley,” Lemercier says of a song on her wish list that came through. “René, when he was 25, he’d been to the Elvis funeral. He was totally mad for Colonel Parker (Elvis’s manager), who was a model for René.”
“Ordinaire,” by the Quebecois songwriter Robert Charlebois, is heard at the start and the finish of the film. Lemercier says it’s the most important song in the movie for how it speaks to what she imagined Dion had felt after losing her husband.
The standard “Nature Boy” also surfaces throughout the film, serving as a theme for the love story of “Aline.”
“It’s in the song,” Lemercier says. “It’s ‘to love and be loved in return.’ They couldn’t do without love.”
The voice choice
Lemercier nails the kind of awkward intensity of Dion on stage, but she didn’t attempt to perform her vocals. A search that considered dozens of singers eventually landed on young French singer Victoria Sio, whose vocals sound close to how you remember Dion’s.
“There’d been 50 singers with a big level of singing,” Lemercier says. “For example, singers who could sing the very, very difficult song, “All By Myself.’
Sio ended up recording 16 songs for the film in a month and a half, with Lemercier coaching her like an actress in the studio.
“I wanted to hear the whole voice,” she explains. “When she was crying, she has to cry. I didn’t want only imitation parody of Celine.”
As for her physical performance, Lemercier says she worked to immerse herself into the character and channel her passion on stage for the concert scenes.
“I never watched the mirror,” she says. “When I was singing, I was 200 percent in my songs, and very happy to do it.”
A tribute
Dion has not commented on “Aline,” though a few members of her large family criticized the project. Lemercier says she believes the film is a loving portrait of a star, and the feedback she’s received from fans so far has been positive.
“I have a special relation with the Reddit fan club of Celine,” Lemercier says. “They’ve seen the movie and they were very happy with it. They know it’s nothing like exactly true, but the fans are happy with the movie.”
She says she understands that Dion might feel awkward watching a movie about her life that isn’t entirely as she has lived it. Still, Lemercier can dream.
“I understand, but I hope one time before my death she can look at it, and she can be able to watch it,” she says.
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Survey: Black Americans' trust in medicine relatively high
Black Americans are emerging from the pandemic with relatively high confidence in the U.S. medical establishment, but with lingering concerns that they’re underrepresented in health care and STEM jobs.
Driving the news: A Pew Research Center survey of 3,456 Black adults found trust in medical scientists is greater than for other groups and institutions, including the military, religious leaders or public school principals.
- But many Black Americans still view science and health disciplines as less inclusive than other segments of society like sports and music.
Go deeper: 78% of Black adults said they have either a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in medical scientists to act in the public’s best interests.
- But Black Americans also are more concerned as a group about the prospect of research misconduct, and highly aware of historical wrongs.
Getting personal: Black Americans’ personal experiences with medical care also were mixed, though 61% gave their health care provider excellent or very good marks for care they’ve received recently.
- 55% had at least one negative experience with health providers in the past, like having to speak up to get proper care or that the pain they were experiencing was not being taken seriously.
- Younger Black women ages 18 to 49 were much likelier to have had at least one negative experience with routine care in the past and prefer to see a Black health provider.
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Metro Atlanta farmers markets are back in season
Flowers are blooming, trees are turning green and farmers markets have returned to a neighborhood near you.
What they're saying: Katie Hayes, the executive director of Community Farmers Markets, which operates markets in Decatur, East Atlanta, Virginia-Highland and other neighborhoods, says last week’s markets drew strong crowds.
- “It felt pre-COVID times,” Hayes says. “People are back in force and gathering."
- She’s seeing greens, garlic, onions, asparagus and foraged produce. Also look out for vendors selling Japanese knotweed, which has medicinal properties.
Of note: Yes, we had a few freezes, but mild winters like the one Georgia recently experienced often result in stronger produce, Hayes says.
Here are the best Atlanta-area markets to stock up on your greens:
Grant Park Farmers Market: Take a chef demonstration and pick up locally grown veggies, meats, breads, fresh-cut flowers and everything else you can imagine at this beloved and popular market Sundays at The Beacon.
Downtown Alpharetta Farmers Market: Dozens of vendors, musicians and residents take over Alpharetta City Center every Saturday morning until late November at a market filled with produce, flowers and artisanal goods.
Morningside Farmers Market: Organic produce, local meats, breads, and goods like cider tonic, organic cleaning products and more await you at this long-running, year-round market on Saturday mornings at Morningside Presbyterian Church.
Peachtree Road Farmers Market: Located at the Cathedral of St. Philip, the beloved market celebrates its 16th birthday Saturday with appearances from farm animals, storytime by the Alliance Theatre and more.
Freedom Farmers Market: The year-round Saturday morning market is a Poncey-Highland favorite that showcases produce, honey, dairy, pasta, pickles and much more under the shade of trees at the Carter Center..
Fresh MARTA Markets: Operated in partnership with CFM, the pop-up markets at rail stations in Fulton and DeKalb counties make affordable, fresh produce available to riders, some of whom live in food deserts. The program will soon expand to the Doraville and Kensington rail stations.
Don’t forget the Roswell Farmers and Artisans Market, the Brookhaven Farmers Market and the Sandy Springs Farmers Market.
- To find more fresh markets near you, check out Local Harvest and the Georgia Department of Agriculture.
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Trail Notes: Kemp's big week
The legislative session is over, and that means the primary campaign season is about to heat up. There’s a lot to keep track of.
- Rather than bombard you (you have Twitter for that) I’m going to highlight what you need to know in a new weekly series. We’re calling it “Trail Notes.” (Get it?)
1 headline
Republicans lead Stacey Abrams in the latest independent poll.
The poll, funded by Nexstar, conducted by Emerson College/The Hill, shows Brian Kemp beating Abrams by 7 points in a hypothetical November race and Kemp’s primary challenger David Perdue beating Abrams by 5.
- It also shows Kemp beating Perdue by 11 points in the May primary.
- It has Herschel Walker leading incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock by 4 points.
- 52% of voters said Georgia runs fair elections. 49% said recreational marijuana should be legalized.
- Abrams’ campaign manager pushed back on the “GOP-leaning primary electorate” poll.
Bottom line: Polls show how one group of people feel in one moment in time and should always be taken with many grains of salt. You can see them all in one place at FiveThirtyEight.
Scene of the week
Fresh off a legislative session full of victories, Kemp was confident on the campaign trail in Dahlonega yesterday. Perdue spoke to the local Lumpkin County GOP that same night.
- Mike Ehlers of Gainesville came to see Kemp. He’s a big Trump fan and hopes Trump will run in 2024. He believes the 2020 election was stolen and didn’t vote in the Georgia Senate runoffs.
- But! He told Axios he’s voting for Kemp, despite Trump’s anger at the sitting Governor, based on Kemp’s legislative record. “They’re both good Republicans,” Ehlers tells Axios.
Of note: David Perdue’s team confirmed to Axios he plans to participate in at least three primary debates, starting with WSB’s on April 24.
- Kemp has knocked Perdue for being slow to confirm his participation. Perdue famously skirted his last debate during the Senate runoffs.
Trail mix
“It’s always hard to beat a sitting governor. It is hard, very hard… But we will see what happens. David Perdue is a good man. He’s working hard.”— Former President Trump on "The John Fredericks Show" this week, seeming to hedge on his confidence in his endorsee.
Email Emma at [email protected] with what you think should be in next week’s Trail Notes.
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AISD proposes cutting more than 600 jobs
Austin Independent School District may see a sizable number of jobs slashed in the near future.
Driving the news: The school district's chief financial officer is floating 632 job cuts, according to a draft budget document obtained by Axios.
- By eliminating 375 full-time central office positions and 257 full-time roles from campuses, the district should save $51.9 million, per the document.
Yes, but: Teachers and other AISD staffers could see pay increases that total $20.8 million — if the school board approves the proposal in June.
- Teacher base pay could jump by $1,000 next year and teacher salaries by 2%.
- Minimum wage for bus drivers could rise to $21 per hour from $17 per hour.
Flashback: The budget scramble comes as AISD forked over more than $710 million to the state last year as part of the "Robin Hood" program.
- Originally intended as an equity measure to send money from wealthy districts to poorer ones, we reported that money is increasingly siphoned away from schools for other state purposes.
- Of note: AISD's tax rate has actually been in decline in recent years.
- Still: A reduction in the tax rate does not mean a decrease in your tax bill. Taxes have been going up as property values skyrocket.
What they're saying: "Will campuses and even the community feel some of these reductions?" AISD chief financial officer Eduardo Ramos told the American-Statesman, which was first to report on the budget document. "For the most part, no, but there are some areas that yes, campuses are going to have less services."
- The cuts on campuses were completed in the fall by consolidating classes and not filling vacancies after seeing lower-than-expected enrollment, per the Statesman.
- AISD spokesman Jason Stanford tells Axios this is AISD's first balanced budget in more than a decade — and will put the district on stronger financial footing.
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Your Austin bluebonnet pictures
After we wrote about bluebonnets this week, many of you enthusiastically sent in your bluebonnet pics.
- And some of you should not plan to hang out a photography shingle.
- We got a fair number of blurry bluebonnet photos that looked as if they had been shot out of a moving car.
- So, quick PSA: Thanks so much for reading our newsletter — but please not on your phone while actually driving.
Still: We also got some fab pictures!
Robert Q. sent in a photo of his two kids from 15 years ago.
- Unsolicited advice, Robert: What you should do is buy a sailor uniform for your now-18 year-old and a UNC-blue T-shirt for your now-23 year-old, and get them to pose in the exact same position.
Bonnie E. wrote in with this bonus bluebonnet photo-taking tip: "I prefer cloudy days and typically lie on the ground to capture the best angle. My spot is a secret. I will tell you that it's out around Mason. Your readers should make a trip out there anyway. Especially if they're new to living in Austin. It's a quick way to see the start of plateaus and it's a cute tiny Texas town with a great county seat."
We'll close on this pic of Ringo, whom Laura M. tells us is "winner of hearts near and far."
- We believe it!
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Things to do this weekend in Austin
It's shaping up to be a gorgeous weekend in ATX.
Here are our picks for some weekend fun:
🏍 Head to the Circuit of The Americas Friday through Sunday to experience the only North American round of MotoGP's motorcycle racing championship. Tickets start at $42.
🐿 Spend your Saturday afternoon at Pease Park Conservancy's Squirrel Fest, a family friendly event from 4-10pm with music by MeowNow Brass Band, movies and opportunities to learn about beekeeping and nature.
🏃♀️ Cheer on runners or join the fun at the Cap10K — back for the first time in three years — this Sunday in downtown. Or just use this as a reminder that there will be road closures in the area.
🍺 Cool off with a beer at The Little Darlin' during their Peelander-Fest from 12-7pm on Sunday, featuring local food, drinks, live painting and music. Free and open to all ages.
🛍 Shop at a handcrafted vintage market from 11am-4pm Sunday in the parking lot of Cute Nail Studio.
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An improperly discarded cigarette caused minor fire damage to several upstairs units of a Lafayette bed-and-breakfast on Thursday.
Lafayette firefighters responded at 5:00 pm on April 7 to the Choo Choo Lofts on Lee Avenue.
The department says heavy smoke and flames were observed coming from the two-story B&B.
The fire was located in an outside entrance to the upstairs units, they said.
First responders were able the quickly control the fire before it spread to other units.
Damage was contained to an exterior wall and door while the interior sustained water and smoke damage.
LFD says the B&B was occupied by a family from out of town. They were able to exit the unit without injury.
Fire officials determined the fire was caused by a cigarette improperly discarded in a plastic planter outside the door.
The fire was ruled an accident.
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Fire officials responded Friday morning to a kitchen fire at a church on E. Butcher Switch Road in Lafayette.
According to the Lafayette Fire Department, firefighters responded to a report of smoke coming from the World Harvest Lighthouse Church around 5:28 am on April 8.
Upon arrival, firefighters discovered a fire in the kitchen area.
LFD says the fire has been put out.
An investigation is ongoing.
KATC was on the scene Friday morning. See the video below:
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How to fake it: 2022 Chicago White Sox
👋 Justin here! The White Sox start their 2022 season today on the road in Detroit. First pitch: 12:10pm.
- You may end up watching the game with friends at Cork & Kerry or talking to co-workers on Google Meet, so here's a guide to faking your knowledge of the 2022 White Sox.
Driving the news: The Sox are really good. They won the AL Central last year but got trounced in the playoffs. Experts believe they will win the division again.
- A smart "can we just skip the season and get to the playoffs" quip would be well-received.
Between the lines: This team is full of swagger, bat flips, practical jokes, and dugout celebrations. They have a ton of fun, even if manager Tony LaRussa doesn't want them to.
- Hit your friends with a "Tony has a 'get off my lawn' vibe" and everyone will laugh.
Quick take: Their outfield is considered the best in baseball. Experts are talking about center fielder Luis Robert as a possible MVP candidate.
- Fun fact: He's the only Sox player with two first names.
- Keep that one in your pocket, though. It could hit but also bomb. Read the room.
The intrigue: The White Sox have some of the best facial hair in baseball. Three starting pitchers wear beards, and José Abreu uses a rubber band in his beard/goatee. Eloy tries (it's cute) and Lance Lynn looks like he's in an alt-country band.
- "Is Lance Lynn a pitcher or a guitarist for The Lumineers?" Your friends will explode in laughter and buy all your rounds.
Pro tip: If all else fails, make fun of the Cubs rebuild. Sox fans love it.
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Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Take Care.
For LGBTQIA and non-nuclear families, navigating the legal system and family benefits is difficult. Attorney Diana Adams says we need more inclusive laws that cater to all chosen families.
About Diana Adams
Diana Adams is the founder of the Chosen Family Law Center, a nonprofit providing legal support for LGBTQIA, polyamorous, and other underserved families. They also founded their own boutique LGBTQIA law and mediation firm, Diana Adams Law & Mediation, PLLC based in New York City and Frankfurt, Germany. Adams is one of the New York State representatives for the LGBT Family Law Institute of The National LGBT Bar Association. They are also Director of the Euro LGBT Family Law Institute.
Adams continues to advocate for those in consensually non-monogamous relationships and non-nuclear families as cofounder of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. This group drafted model ordinances for multi-partner domestic partnerships that have passed into law in three Massachusetts cities and has also developed city-level non-discrimination protection laws based on relationship structure.
Adams received a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale University and a juris doctorate from Cornell Law School.
This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by James Delahoussaye and edited by Katie Simon and Rachel Faulkner. You can follow us on Twitter @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadio@npr.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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Illinois includes stimulus checks in spring session budget plan
Put on another pot of coffee — the final day of the Illinois General Assembly's spring session is here.
Why it matters: The legislature set today as a deadline to pass the state budget and other crucial bills.
The budget: Governor JB Pritzker and Democratic leaders from both chambers agreed on a balanced budget plan with $1.8 billion in tax cuts, including:
- Stimulus checks to most Illinois residents.
- Suspension of the grocery tax.
- Freeze of the gas tax for six months.
- Up to $300 in property tax rebates for residents.
- Freeze of taxes on school supplies in August.
Of note: The budget also pays down an extra $200 million to the state's pension debt.
What they're saying: "Once again, Democrats are demonstrating that ours is the party of fiscal responsibility," Pritzker said in a statement.
The other side: "This isn't a triumph of good management; the state is simply experiencing an inflation-induced sugar high," GOP House floor leader Mark Batinick said in a statement.
The bottom line: With Democratic majorities in both chambers, the budget is expected to pass today. Other spring session items:
- Anti-crime bills: A carjacking bill forcing manufacturers to give law enforcement real-time data is moving forward.
- Plus, film credit expansion, modifying drug testing, and divesting from Russian oil and stocks.
What's next: The spring session was shortened because of the June primary. It is scheduled to end tonight.
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What to do in Columbus this weekend
🐴 Gallop over to Equine Affaire, the largest horse trade show in North America.
- 9am-7pm today and Saturday at the Ohio Expo Center. 9am-5pm Sunday. $8-15 daily. 6 and under free!
- The Fantasia, a musical performance, requires separate admission. $14-25.
🍺 Relive the '90s with a Park Street bar crawl. Slap bracelets provided, but bring your own fanny pack!
- 3-10pm Saturday. $16-$20.
🛍️ Shop local vendors at Gay Street's monthly Moonlight Market, returning this weekend through October.
- 5-10:30pm Saturday. Free!
⚽ Cheer on the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team in a friendly match against Uzbekistan at Lower.com Field.
- 5:30pm Saturday. $28 and up.
🌸 … and don't forget to check out those cherry blossoms at Franklin Park that we told you about yesterday! Peak bloom is likely this weekend.
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A casual fan’s guide to the new Rangers season
The Texas Rangers hit off the delayed season Friday in Toronto. Their home opener is Monday against the Colorado Rockies.
Last season: The Rangers were abysmal, with 102 losses.
- That’s really bad. But, it’s a new year with new players.
Here are some storylines to watch:
New season, new players: The team has turned over faster than our cells regenerate, and there will be lots of new faces on the field this year.
- Keep an eye on Adolis Garcia. He hit .243 with 31 homers during his rookie season last year. He was an All Star and an AL rookie of the year contender.
- Pitching will be a weakness. But there may be hope when Jon Gray is on the mound. The former Rockie is Friday's opening day starter.
Superstars shine: The Rangers have once again overhauled the team, spending big money to bring in what could be new fan favorites.
- Corey Seager is the biggest offseason addition, signing a 10-year $325 million deal. The shortstop, who was the 2020 World Series MVP, says the team is “trending upward.”
- Marcus Semien was a longtime shortstop before he signed a one-year deal with the Toronto Blue Jays to play second base. He hit 45 home runs and won a Gold Glove in the position. Now he has a seven-year $175 million deal with the Rangers.
Young talent: Pitching prospect Jack Leiter — the Rangers’ top pick in the 2021 draft and second overall — is scheduled to debut Saturday for the Frisco Roughriders, the team’s Double-A affiliate.
Expectations: The Rangers rank 21st in ESPN’s preseason power rankings. At least it’s not last.
- Las Vegas gives Texas a roughly 80 to 1 chance of winning the World Series. Their first opponent, the Blue Jays, have the second best odds to win the trophy.
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Dallas Rangers sign landmark crypto sponsorship deal
The Texas Rangers now have a cryptocurrency partner in Trade The Chain, which paid for the deal entirely in digital currency, including bitcoin and ether.
Why it matters: The team and the trading community say the deal is likely the first in the MLB paid entirely in cryptocurrency.
- Cypto isn’t a fad, and is only growing in prominence. This deal will likely expose more sports fans to digital currencies.
Zoom out: The Oakland A’s are the first major league team to sell a suite for bitcoin.
- The NFL has announced it would allow teams to seek sponsorships from blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies, per CNBC. However, the league still bans digital currency promotions.
- The Dallas Mavericks announced last year a five-year partnership with a cryptocurrency brokerage platform.
Details: Fans attending games will see signs for the trading community behind home plate and on the mound.
- Trade The Chain did not disclose how much it paid for the deal.
What they’re saying: Receiving the first portion of cryptocurrency “was a truly momentous occasion for our partnerships and finance departments, and the entire Rangers front office," Texas Rangers chief operating officer Neil Leibman said in a statement.
Yes, but: Fans won’t be paying for their hot dogs and beers with crypto, yet.
- Trade The Chain co-founder Ryan Gorman said partnerships paid in crypto will make it easier for sports venues to eventually accept digital payments.
- "Once the Rangers or any other team are comfortable being able to accept it on a large scale, being able to accept it on a small scale is pretty straight forward," Gorman tells Axios.
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Where to celebrate Opening Day weekend beyond Coors Field
For those looking for some fun beyond Coors Field, here are five spots to don your purple and celebrate the start of baseball season:
What to do: The Downtown Denver Partnership is hosting an Opening Day block party from noon to 2pm Friday at Skyline Park, featuring food, live music, local artists, games and more.
📺 Watch the game from a 66-foot LED screen at McGregor Square, where you can score drink specials and food deals all weekend.
🍻 Hit the patio of Denver Union Station's Terminal Bar before Friday's game for a live DJ set, beer from Tivoli Brewing and plenty of games, including giant Jenga and corn hole.
🎟️ Avanti F&B is opening early at 10am Friday and at 12:30pm will offer a chance to win two tickets to see the opening game.
💙 Head to Tom's Watch Bar, the official sports bar of the Colorado Rockies, for a meet-and-greet with mascot Dinger from 3-4pm this Saturday.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nearly a day after Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as the new Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver remarks on the historic event.
Jackson will serve as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court this year.
She is replacing Justice Stephen Breyer in late June or July.
Usually, Supreme Court justices are sworn in nearly immediately after being confirmed.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in after her confirmation when she replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh was also sworn in immediately, after replacing Anthony Kennedy who retired at the end of a term but didn’t announce his retirement before the term ended.
In this case, Breyer gave plenty of notice on his retirement, which also gave Democrats plenty of time to fill the vacancy.
President Biden is expected to sign Jackson’s judicial commission in three months.
That is also when she will be sworn in to sit on the Supreme Court.
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Battle over state Senate redistricting map brewing
Republican leadership in the General Assembly wants to appeal a court order blocking the redistricting map for the state Senate.
- Wednesday's order gave lawmakers 15 days to fix problems with the map.
Driving the news: Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) told reporters Thursday he hopes the Tennessee Supreme Court will "reach down and take it and deal with it quickly."
Why it matters: The dispute, which focuses on the numbering of neighboring Davidson County Senate districts, could dictate when certain seats are up for reelection. Elections for even and odd districts take place in different years.
- The order was issued in a lawsuit that argued the current map violated the state constitution because districts within the same county were not numbered consecutively.
What they're saying: McNally said leadership was aware the Nashville districts weren't numbered consecutively but was advised by the state attorney general's office that they "would withstand constitutional challenge."
- McNally said Democrats hadn't always numbered districts within the same county consecutively when they controlled the process in the past.
State of play: Lawmakers are prepared to redraw the Senate map if appeals fail, McNally said.
- "We could. It might not be as good as the one we submitted."
The latest: The Tennessee attorney general's office requested an appeal Thursday afternoon.
- "We believe the plan is constitutionally defensible, and our position is detailed in court filings," spokesperson Samantha Fisher tells Axios.
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Definitive reader's guide to the best burgers in Nashville
We asked, you answered and now we're hungry.
🙏 Thank you for sharing your favorite burger joints in town! We're particularly grateful for the deep cuts that are going on the list for upcoming Axios Nashville team lunches.
Stephen S. mentioned Rosie's Twin Kegs and shared a pro tip: Pair the burger with a double order of tots.
Seth S. gave props to burger pop-ups like Bad Luck Burger Club, Cabin Attic and Brave Idiot for their "blissful burger bangers."
- His vote for Nashville's most underrated burger: the Small Block from Ghot Wingz in East Nashville.
Kren T. picked Bare Bones Butcher.
Blake S. went with the turkey and garden burgers at Bobbie's Dairy Dip.
Eric H. drew our attention to the G-Off Burger at The Local.
Randy R. praised local standbys Gabby's and The Pharmacy.
Jamie H. chimed in with Sportsman's Grille, which is also a Tamburin family favorite.
💭 Adam's thought bubble: I remember spending my childhood summers crisscrossing the city with my dad and brothers scoring our favorites, many of which have closed.
- Pancake Pantry was a surprise contender.
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Phillies opening day: What to expect at Citizens Bank Park
The Phillies kick off their 2022 season Friday in a 3:05pm game against the visiting Oakland Athletics at Citizens Bank Park.
State of play: The Phils are looking to end a 10-season playoff drought, and this may be the year they break that streak.
- The team recently signed outfielders Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos.
- The sluggers will add power to the Phillies' lineup and complement a team full of veterans, like two-time MVP Bryce Harper and Aaron Nola.
Here's what to expect at the ballpark this year:
What's new: There are a number of new vendors this year. Offerings include thin-crust pizza from Manco & Manco's in Ocean City and Somers Point, New Jersey.
- Colbie's Southern Kissed Chicken will feature three chicken sandwiches and a dessert.
- KLYR will sell its Pennsylvania-distilled rum.
- Plus: Cheesesteaks with Impossible meat.
What else: The Phillies fan club, the Fightin' Phils, is offering a new Premium Tier membership ($149.99) this year.
- The Home Run Liberty Bell has been revamped to include thousands of new LED lights and more.
- A new nursing mother's lounge will be available in the main concourse behind section 125.
Don't-miss dates:
- The June 11 game against the Arizona Diamondbacks will end with a concert featuring the Avett Brothers.
- July 27 and Aug. 11: Kids under 14 will get a chance to run the bases.
- July 1 and 3: Games against the St. Louis Cardinals will include fireworks.
- The Aug. 19 game against the New York Mets will end with an "I Love the 90s" concert, featuring Vanilla Ice, DJ Jazzy Jeff and others.
On the mic: Dan Baker will return for his 50th season as the Phillies' public address announcer.
Money stuff: The ballpark is still cashless.
- Yes, but: Kiosks are available to convert cash to a prepaid debit card that can be used in the stadium.
Be smart: No bags are allowed in the ballpark with the exception of purses, medical bags, diapers bags (no larger than 16x16x8 inches) and convenience store plastic bags.
- Tickets and parking passes are only available through the MLB Ballpark app.
- The stadium is not requiring face masks or proof of vaccination.
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Tampa Bay Rays return to action on Opening Day
Round up your crew and head to the funky barn in St. Pete where the catwalks matter and it’s always 72 degrees.
🥳 IT’S OPENING DAY, TAMPA BAY!
What’s happening: Your Rays, back-to-back American League East division champs, return to action at 3:10pm with the first of a three-game home stand against the lowly Baltimore Orioles as Major League Baseball revs up across the country.
State of play: The Rays were excellent last year, building a franchise-best 100-62 and falling to the hot Boston Red Sox in the postseason.
- And the team has been relatively static in the offseason, with few noteworthy trades.
What we’re watching: Wander Franco, all day.
💰 In November, the phenom signed an 11-year, $182 million contract, the richest deal ever for a player with less than a year in MLB. He’ll be fun to watch.
The intrigue: Franco’s father, also named Wander, named his three sons Wander in hopes that one would make the name famous.
🗺 Wander Samuel plays for the Rays, while brothers named Wander Alexander and Wander Javier played in the minors, per the New York Times.
If you go: Some of the food at The Trop this year is just wild. We’re looking at you, Footlong Tater Tot.
🍣 Don’t miss the Rays Up Roll (somewhere between a California roll and a chimichanga) and the Ice Cream Nachos (ice cream with waffle cone chips).
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Weekend events in the Twin Cities: New Eyes Fest, food trucks and more
Need weekend plans? Here are six things to check out in the Twin Cities.
🎭 Watch stage readings from Asian American playwrights during New Eyes Festival at St. Paul's Theater Mu Saturday-Sunday. Actors perform scripts without sets or costumes, and audience members can contribute feedback. Free, RSVP requested.
❤️ Come together for stories of grief, love and loss at Strike Theater's "Good Grief" performances this weekend. Speaker lineups vary between shows. $15.
🍩 Sample donuts and beers at Donut Fest in Minneapolis on Sunday. Only a few vendors have been announced. $20, including one drink ticket.
🛍 Shop The Black Market, a curated Black-owned business marketplace, at Springfest this Saturday. The indoor event will have over 50 vendors and a dozen local restaurants. Free entry.
🍻 Over 115 breweries pour exclusive and limited-release beers this Saturday at the Minnesota Craft Beer Fest. Unlimited samples included in ticket prices. $45+.
🚐 It's food truck season again! Eat your way through the East St. Paul Food Truck Festival all day Sunday, with "fair food faves" and vegan options. Free.
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How did you meet your D.C. bestie?
👋🏻 Hey, it’s Chelsea.
Over the past two years, many of my relationships have wilted as my friends moved away or Zoom fatigue drifted us apart. It’s made me think a lot lately about how to nurture my friendships.
Why it matters: Making friends as an adult is hard. And the past couple of years have made it harder.
- Nearly half of Americans reported having lost touch with at least a few friends during the first year of the pandemic, according to the Survey Center on American Life from June 2021.
Yes, but: Some workplaces are reopening, recreational sports leagues have returned, and more people are re-emerging into warmer weather and sunnier days.
And people want to make friends. Last September, a couple of hundred people turned out to a Georgetown meet-up by DMV Besties, a community of adult friendship-seekers born largely out of TikTok.
My D.C. bestie: I, too, sparked a pandemic friendship: my friend Kam Burns.
- We had been orbiting each other’s social circles for a few years since we both work in media — except he worked in New York.
- But when he landed a job in D.C. in early 2021, I reached out over Twitter and our friendship blossomed.
How we bonded: One of our early in-person meet-ups was at the National Arboretum during peak bloom. I’d gotten my second Moderna shot that morning and, to celebrate, we picnicked in the cherry blossom grove.
- Since Kam was a newcomer to D.C., I became his tour guide.
- We’ve eaten our way through the stalls of Union Market on Friday nights, saw Harry Styles in concert, and walked the gardens at Hillwood Estate.
How it worked: It can be hard to maintain friendships in a town where people have 1,201 things to do at all times, but Kam says consistently showing up — like going to a pottery class or instrument lesson — helps you click with the people you see.
- “You just have to be proactive about making plans. Everyone kind of expects the other person to do it. And the reason I think we've been successful friends is we're both planners,” he says.
Now, I want to hear from you:
- How did you meet your D.C. bestie? And what advice do you have for people wanting to make new friends?
- As we head into summer, I'll highlight the unique ways you and your bestie connected in hopes of inspiring others.
✉️ Email me at [email protected]
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The former Marines from Houston had no idea what to expect what then they finally arrived at the Polish-Ukrainian border.
What the members of the CrowdSource Rescue team found was “a heart-wrenching mess” — a miles-long caravan of Ukrainians attempting to flee their home country and a similar mob from across Europe trying to shuttle supplies to beleaguered cities.
For weeks following news of Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russian forces, members of the Houston volunteer rescue group tried to figure out how to best help, just like they had dozens of times before.
“We have to do something,” CrowdSource Rescue founder Matthew Marchetti recalled thinking. But almost instantly, he doubted the instinct, telling himself: “That is a terrible idea.”
The DIY rescue organization was born in the torrential downpours of Hurricane Harvey, when good Samaritans from across the region banded together to rescue stranded neighbors. The impromptu rescuers then formed an organization to help during natural disasters and emergencies, including other tropical storms, last year’s deep freeze and the COVID-19 pandemic.
So when Russia began bombarding Ukraine in February, members of the volunteer rescue organization immediately began brainstorming ways to help beleaguered residents there, Marchetti said.
His volunteers didn’t speak the language or know the region. And while some have combat experience, they’d be entering Ukraine as civilian rescuers, not as heavily armored soldiers.
“We have a unique set of skills,” he said. “We’re combat vets who understand war zones, really adept at search and rescue, and have medical experience, and we have folks who understand the finer points of communications security.”
Eventually, a trio of volunteers — former Marines who’d served in combat deployments and then responded to multiple hurricanes — decided to travel to Ukraine to work with a local group to help evacuate disabled residents having trouble getting out of dangerous spots.
They packed go-bags with a few days of clothes, portable phone chargers, flashlights, emergency blankets, gas masks, and other sundries. And they filled other luggage with donated medical supplies.
“We’re just some stupid Marines who decided we wanted to make difference,” Christopher said. “People have been kind enough to give us a purpose again.”
There’s more, so read on. You can follow their exploits on Twitter. As you might imagine, this kind of self-appointed effort is not without some criticism, to which they have responded here. I wish them well in their efforts and hope they can make a difference for whoever they can.
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Sounds like he heard the concerns.
Houston ISD Superintendent Millard House II on Wednesday said he would scrap a plan that would have centralized the funding of specific positions and programs, instead asking his administrators to come up with a plan that would let campus principals maintain control over their budgets while requiring they staff key positions and provide critical services.
“I have asked the leadership team to present a revised funding model that will create a more equitable baseline education for all students and maintain HISD’s commitment to campus-based budgeting that meets the specific needs of each unique student population,” House said in a letter to the Houston Independent School District community. “We will set clear expectations and hold each campus accountable for improving educational outcomes and eliminating achievement gaps for all students they serve.”
The letter said schools that have not had the money to invest in those key staff positions will receive additional funding to do so.
“All schools will be expected to provide a baseline education experience to all students beginning in the 2022-2023 school year,” the letter stated.
The development which House called a compromise, was the latest this week after House’s Chief of Schools, Denise Watts, told principals Monday the administration would be “revisiting the budget and staff allocation strategy.”
In Wednesday’s letter, House said his decision was the result of hearing from trustees and “many of you.”
See here for the previous update. I’m fine with this, as the main goal of achieving equity is still in there. The details matter as much as before, and we will need to continue talking about how this will be done, what will change, how funding can be ensured, and so on. But this was a good step for the Superintendent to take. The Press has more.
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Ukraine says dozens killed in Russian missile strike on train station
Around 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured after a Russian missile struck a train station in the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement.
What they're saying: Zelensky said "thousands" of people fleeing fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region were at the station awaiting evacuation at the time of the strike. It's another apparent instance of Russia bombing civilian targets during its invasion of Ukraine.
- "Russian non-humans do not abandon their methods," Zelensky said. "Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop."
- Zelensky said the station was hit by a Russian Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile, a Soviet-era weapon.
- In a statement, Russia's Defense Ministry denied carrying out the strike.
The big picture: At least 300 people were killed by a Russian airstrike on a theater in Mariupol, where Russian forces also struck an art school, a mosque and a children's hospital, Ukrainian authorities said.
- The United Nations Human Rights Council, which Russia was suspended from on Thursday, estimates that at least 1,611 civilians have been killed and 2,227 injured during the invasion.
- It said it believes the actual figure of civilian casualties is "considerably higher" but documentation efforts have been delayed by fighting.
- "Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes," the council said.
Go deeper ... WHO: Over 70 killed in attacks on Ukraine health facilities
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In the November 2022 gubernatorial election, Greg Abbott leads Beto O’Rourke by 8% (50% to 42%) among likely voters and by 12% (53% to 41%) among the most likely (almost certain) voters. Among both groups, Libertarian Mark Tippetts registers 2% and the Green Party’s Delilah Barrios 1%, with 5% and 3% undecided.
Abbott enjoys a two to one advantage over O’Rourke among white voters (65% to 29%) and O’Rourke an 88% to 11% advantage among Black voters. Support is more
equal among Hispanic voters, 53% intend to vote for O’Rourke and 39% for Abbott.Abbott bests O’Rourke among men by a substantial 61% to 34% margin, while O’Rourke narrowly edges out Abbott among women by a 47% to 45% margin.
Abbott (96%) and O’Rourke (93%) are the preferred candidates among their fellow Republicans and Democrats, while 4% of Democrats intend to vote for Abbott and
1% of Republicans for O’Rourke. Independents favor Abbott 51% to 19%.[…]
In the November lieutenant governor election, Dan Patrick leads [Mike] Collier by 6% (49% to 43%) and [Michelle] Beckley by 8% (50% to 42%) among likely voters and leads Collier by 10% (52% to 42%) and Beckley by 13% (53% to 40%) among the most likely voters.
[…]
In the November attorney general election, [Ken] Paxton leads [Rochelle] Garza and [Joe] Jaworski by 6% (48% to 42%) and 7% (48% to 41%) respectively among likely voters and by 10% (50% to 40%) and 12% (51% to 39%) among the most likely voters.
In the November attorney general election, [George P.] Bush is in statistical dead heat with both Garza and Jaworski both among likely voters (39% to 39% against Garza and 38% to 39% against Jaworski) and among the most likely voters (39% to 38% against Garza and 38% to 38% against Jaworski).
In a general election against Garza and Jaworski, Paxton’s vote intention among Texans whose partisan ID is Republican is 91% and 92%. In a general election against these same two Democrats, Bush’s GOP vote intention is 68% in both cases. The vote intention for Libertarian candidate Mark Ash is 3% when Paxton is the GOP attorney general candidate, but rises to 7% and 8% when Bush is the nominee.
In a November generic U.S. House ballot, the Republican candidate leads the Democratic candidate by a 7% margin (49% to 42%) among likely voters and by a 12% margin (52% to 40%) among the most likely voters.
In November, the HPF had Abbott up over Beto by a 44-43 margin. I’d account for the increase in Abbott’s support as one part being past the primaries – as we’ve seen before, sometimes supporters of a primary opponent will be a “don’t know/no answer” response in a poll, which gets converted later to supporting the party’s nominee – and one part the general enthusiasm gap that exists now. Beto’s level of support was largely the same, so at least we have that going for us. The other races are similar, which is a little odd as there’s usually a larger “don’t know/no answer” contingent in them. Not sure if that’s a result of the HPF’s likely voter screen or just an unusual level of engagement among the respondents. Oh, and I consider that “Most Likely Voters” bit to be meaningless.
The poll also suggests that Mike Collier, Rochelle Garza, and Ken Paxton are all well-positioned to win their runoffs. Primary polling, especially primary runoff polling, is a dicey proposition, but they’re projecting the March leaders in each case, so it’s not a crazy idea. This poll result is obviously less favorable than the recent Lyceum poll result, which has been prominently touted in multiple fundraising emails lately, but that’s why we don’t put too much emphasis on any one poll. You have to track them all as best you can, and to that end let me cite the Reform Austin poll tracker, which showed me a couple of results I hadn’t seen before. Feels like we’re entering another polling cycle, so let’s see what we get.
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| 2022-04-08T12:49:34Z
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U.S. life expectancy drops — again
The average U.S. life expectancy has fallen by more than two years in 2020 and 2021, according to a new study, not yet peer-reviewed.
By the numbers: There was a historically high drop in estimated life expectancy in 2020, from about 78.9 years in 2019 to 77 years in 2020, a fall of 1.9 years, the study led by the University of Colorado Boulder found.
- Life expectancy dropped by another 0.4 of a year in 2021, they found, leading to a net loss of 2.26 years over the two-year period.
- In comparison, a collection of 19 peer countries averaged a 0.4-year decrease in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020 and a 0.28-year increase between 2020 and 2021, with a net loss of 0.3 years over the two-year period.
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https://www.axios.com/us-life-expectancy-drops-again-e20de564-2f70-4649-88a5-eafc2bb72ecf.html
| 2022-04-08T12:49:36Z
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A man has credited his Apple Watch with saving his life from drowning after he fell into a creek that was partially frozen after he asked the virtual assistant Siri to “call 911”.
The incident took place in Oklahoma City, which is the capital city of the US state of Oklahoma.
Zenger News obtained a statement from the Oklahoma City Police Department (OKCPD) who said on April 5: “Ryan White was on a hike when suddenly the trail gave way. Falling from considerable height, he slammed into icy waters.
“His leg pinned under a rock, injuries to his head and back, and struggling to stay above water, he called 911.
“Oklahoma City Police Officer Chris Goodwin responded to the call, locating White, and jumped in the water to rescue him. Thanks to the efforts of OKCPD, White is now able to share his story.”
White, 18, told the police that he had been exploring the local creek behind his neighborhood since he was a kid. But he said that on the day of the incident, it was a “really cold day” and he slid down the embankment.
White said he tumbled down the hill and landed on the ice on the partially frozen creek, crashing through it and ending up in the water.
He said that the way he had landed had caused his legs to be higher than his upper body, which was partially submerged.
He said that he could only manage to keep his head above the water, adding that as time went by, it was getting harder and harder to regain his footing.
He said that he shouted at his Apple Watch: “Hey Siri! Hey Siri! Call 911”
The virtual assistant appears to have heard him, with the call, the audio of which was released by the OKCPD, revealing a panting White telling the police that he had fallen into a creek.
Officer Chris Goodwin said that the call revealed that the young man’s leg was “trapped underneath a rock”.
The officers sent officers to the scene, tracking White down by pinpointing where the signal of the call was coming from.
The officer said that White was “lucky” and commended him for being able to place the call, calling it “amazing”.
White, meanwhile, praised the police for coming to his rescue. Kimberly White, Ryan’s mother, can be seen thanking the officer and hugging him in the footage provided by the police.
The officer, however, remained humble and stated that he was just doing his job.
Recommended from our partners
The post Hey Siri: Oklahoma Man Says Apple Watch Saved Him From Drowning appeared first on Zenger News.
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| 2022-04-08T12:49:39Z
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Vestager defends the Digital Markets Act from critics
EU executive vice president Margrethe Vestager defended the Digital Markets Act on Thursday, saying it's up to tech companies to figure out how to live with it.
Why it matters: Critics of the legislation have said it could break encryption for messaging, it makes products less useful for users, and it provides little clarity on how companies can avoid massive fines.
Some critics suggest the DMA story could mirror that of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation — a privacy law, implemented in 2018, that many users dealt with only in the form of pop-up windows.
What they're saying: Speaking to Axios' Ashley Gold and Dan Primack during a Twitter Spaces event, Vestager said it's up to tech companies to bake DMA requirements into their platforms in a way that's user-friendly and attractive.
- "I think it's about time we are asked for real consent," Vestager said. "I think there's a lot of room for improvements... for a consumer to know what it is I'm consenting to or not."
- She said EU technical experts say it is possible to keep platforms secure while requiring interoperability, and she expects companies to evolve their abilities over time.
- "If you look at what is possible with interoperability and security now, it's probably different than what would be possible in two, four, six years' time, so it's a staggered approach."
One fun thing: Vestager was a bit delayed logging onto the Twitter Spaces interview — her iPhone's microphone had been disabled for Twitter by her privacy settings .
Go deeper: You can listen to the entire interview with Vestager here.
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https://www.axios.com/vestager-defends-dma-eu-22a95f14-e9c4-442b-aa17-6198ab235a81.html
| 2022-04-08T12:49:42Z
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I don’t know, but not yet.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo still has emergency powers to handle COVID, after a proposal to end her authority failed at commissioners’ court this week.
The proposal, by Precinct Four Commissioner Jack Cagle, failed on a 3-2 vote Tuesday, with the three Democratic members voting against.
Cagle sought to end the emergency powers granted to Hidalgo, citing the major improvement in pandemic realities and the court’s ability to frequently and quickly convene.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis called the idea “ridiculous.”
“The mayor will still have emergency powers, the county judges around us would still have emergency powers,” Ellis said.
[…]
Since March 2020, Hidalgo and every county judge in Texas — along with mayors — have had extraordinary ability because of the public health risks of the pandemic to close and open public places, approve contracts and establish emergency shelters, testing sites and vaccine distribution locations. When a disaster is declared by the state — in this case across all 254 counties — county judges are considered the top health official and assume emergency powers similar to those of the governor.
The difference, Cagle argued, is the governor needs them because it would take weeks to reconvene the legislature. Commissioners court can call a meeting in 72 hours.
I don’t want to spend too much time on this, as it was basically a stunt by Commissioner Cagle. It’s not even clear that Commissioners Court could have rescinded the emergency powers, as the preview story notes.
Numerous elected officials continue to have authority under the disaster declaration, including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and all county judges across Texas. Under the state’s disaster declaration procedures, county judges in an affected area — in this case all of Texas — have emergency authority. Absent Abbott removing Harris County from the state’s disaster declaration, it is unclear whether Hidalgo would retain that authority with or without the support of local officials.
County judges typically need commissioners’ court approval, but their powers expand greatly as the head of county emergency management. Much of that comes from a 1975 state law that gave special responsibility to mayors, county judges and county health officials.
Exercising the powers, however, is different than having them, some officials said.
“We used common sense, but as the emergency has dragged on I think we have used that authority less and less because we didn’t need to,” said Jason Millsaps, chief of staff to Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough.
Still, Millsaps said Keough maintains the authority.
If literally every other county has retained emergency powers for their Judge, it makes no sense at all for Harris County to do otherwise. When the state and the country are no longer on emergency footing, which is to say no longer feels the need to act quickly in the event of another variant or other crisis, then we can talk.
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| 2022-04-08T12:49:42Z
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These are stunning hyper-realistic pencil drawings that can take up to 100 hours to complete – but the artist insists anyone can master the skill if they put in the practice.
Emma Towers-Evans, 29, first picked up a pencil when she was just two years old and said her love for drawing began after watching the film ‘Free Willy’ when she was inspired to draw killer whales.
Now she creates incredible pencil portraits of people and animals – some of which can take her up to 100 hours to complete – and that are so realistic they look like photos.
Emma often completes the drawings on a large A1 or A0 paper and estimates each piece of artwork can have upwards of 500,000 individual pencil strokes.
She shares her incredible creations on TikTok and has racked up over 264,000 followers and an impressive 4.5 million likes on her videos (https://www.instagram.com/eteportraits/; https://www.tiktok.com/@eteportraits).
In some of her popular videos, she can be seen drawing portraits of well-known celebrities like Rhianna and Taylor Swift.
The self-taught artist insists ‘anyone’ can master the craft if they put in the hours after she saw her skills improve after years of practice.
Emma, who is an artist from Stourbridge, a market town in the West Midlands, in the United Kingdom, said: “I don’t believe people are ‘naturally talented’ when it comes to drawing.
“It’s taken me years of practice, patience, and dedication to get to where I am today.
“I think anyone can get to that level – you just need to have that same determination and self-belief.”
Emma loved drawing as a hobby during her childhood and teens, but never thought it would be her future career.
While at the University of Surrey, studying music and sound recording, she began doing commissions and would often draw portraits of people’s pets.
As her success continued, Emma decided to focus on drawing full-time and set up her website.
Now the pencil artist sells her original work and her subjects are often portraits of people.
She also created a series of big cat drawings called the ‘Felidae series’ and 25 percent of the proceeds when to cat conservation charities like the Born Free Foundation and Lion Aid.
One of these portraits was based on Christian the Lion – a famous pet lion who was bought from Harrods in the 1970s – and Emma had permission from the photographer to sketch his photo.
She said: “My style is hyper-realistic – I try to create something that looks as real as possible.
“I like to draw things from the natural world like people and animals.
“It’s really exciting to see something come alive on the paper.”
Emma set up her TikTok – @eteportraits – March 2020 and couldn’t believe the response she received.
Her videos capture each stage of her drawings and her partner, Nick Harding, 28, edits them.
In one video, she shows the process of creating her self-portrait which took 97 hours to complete.
Now she posts to her 264.9k followers and has racked up an incredible 4.5million likes.
She also has an Instagram page where she posts her stunning drawings to her 61.4k followers.
Emma said: “I started the page during lockdown as a bit of fun.
“The first one I posted was a timelapse video of a portrait and I can’t believe how popular it’s become.
“The comments and support I get are amazing.
“My boyfriend edits them and does an amazing job – I try to release a couple a week.”
The self-taught artist tries to encourage other people to pick up a pencil and give it a go.
She doesn’t believe in ‘talent’ and believes artistic skill comes from hours of hard work.
Emma said: “I think having that ability can be attenable for anyone.
“It’s just a case of knowing how to do it, which comes with lots of practice.
“I think anyone can become an artist if they’ve got the time and patience.”
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The post Stunning Realistic Pencil Drawings Take 100 Hours To Do But Artist Insists Anyone Can Master Skill appeared first on Zenger News.
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| 2022-04-08T12:49:49Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” TV star, a Paralympic swimmer and a self-described “brand king” were among the Instagram and TikTok influencers who were paid by Chinese officials for a discreet campaign that promoted the Beijing Winter Olympics, new Justice Department documents reveal.
The social media posts fanned across a variety of popular Instagram and TikTok accounts that have a combined following of 5 million people who follow their videos, photos and content about travel destinations, sports, fashion and women’s issues. The Chinese Consulate in New York paid $300,000 to New Jersey-based firm Vippi Media to recruit the influencers. The posts were not properly labeled as ads in the way that TikTok and Instagram requires.
“It allows them to boost the reach and the resonance of their messaging to make it appear to be authentic, independent content,” Jessica Brandt, a Brookings Institution expert on foreign interference and disinformation, said of China’s social media campaign.
More details about the social media campaign were disclosed in filings Monday with the Justice Department, just days after an Associated Press examination revealed that China is using a sweeping network of influencers and social media accounts to subtly proffer propaganda to users around the globe.
The AP’s reporting found that Vippi Media had not yet filed updates with the Justice Department on its influencer campaign, even though federal law requires the company to do so within 24 hours of materials being disseminated. The company had registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a 1938 law that is meant to allow Americans to know when foreign entities are trying to influence public opinion or policymakers.
Vippi Media’s campaign, targeted at U.S. social media users, reached roughly 4 million users with ads that were scattered in stories, videos and posts across TikTok and Instagram in January, February and March by nearly a dozen influencers. The accounts named in the filing shared posts promoting the Olympics with the hashtags #Beijing2022, #partner and #ad.
A majority of the Instagram and TikTok content shared by the influencers simply advertised the Winter Olympics, shared pictures from some of the ceremonial events or gave insight on Chinese cultural customs.
Crystal Kung Minkoff, a cast member of Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” who was listed as one of the influencers hired by Vippi Media, posted a video on her Instagram where she conducted an at-home, faux news-style broadcast of a mock Olympics game of musical chairs with her children. Later the post congratulates “Team USA” and says Beijing is the first city to host the summer and winter games. A message left with Minkoff was not immediately answered.
Meanwhile, Jessica Long, a decorated Paralympic swimmer and popular Instagram personality, celebrated the upcoming Olympics in a Jan. 27 post to her nearly 100,000 followers. “Have fun making lasting memories at the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, China.” Long didn’t immediately return request for comment.
One of the most striking videos came from TikTok influencer Ryan Dubs, a “brand-king” with more than a half-million followers on his account, where he frequently hawks skin care products.
Dubs posted a 3-minute-long interview with China’s Consul General in New York, Huang Ping, who spoke with the Chinese and U.S. flags behind him.
The spot’s caption includes hashtags for the Beijing 2022 games. Huang and Dubs decry U.S. tariffs against Chinese imports. Dubs says he has amazing suppliers in China and encourages entrepreneurs in the U.S. to do business with China. Haung followed up by inviting U.S. businesses to come to China in the video. The Beijing games feature briefly, with Dubs saying they “helped define China in 2022.” Dubs did not immediately respond to the AP’s request for comment.
It’s unclear how much each influencer was paid to post the content.
Minkoff, Long and Dubs used #partner in their posts, but did not directly identify who sponsored the content. Instagram requires that influencers tag the sponsor, and both TikTok and Instagram require their users to register the posts as a paid partnership with the company. Most influencers, however, flout those rules — leaving social media users in the dark about who is paying for the posts they see in their feeds.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
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| 2022-04-08T12:56:16Z
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“Everything Everywhere All at Once” could not be a more accurate title for the second feature film from the filmmaking team “The Daniels,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known for their 2016 film “Swiss Army Man” and the striking music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon, “Turn Down for What.” In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the duo take every existential question, raunchy joke and nonsensical notion they’ve seemingly ever had and throw it all at the screen in a chaotic, hectic and utterly exhausting two hours and 12 minutes, an all-consuming sensorial cinematic assault. Whether or not that sounds like a good time at the movies is up to the viewer to decide.
The audaciously daring and original filmmaking on display is indeed laudable, as well as the obvious delight poured into the making of this film. However, admiring the chutzpah of The Daniels doesn’t necessarily translate into actual enjoyment of the film, which is a high-concept project with plenty of flair, but a crucial lack of finesse in storytelling.
It’s the script that’s the fatal flaw in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Though deeply earnest and heartfelt, with a desire to engage in larger questions of existence and love across time, space and form, it’s incredibly messy, unbalanced and unmotivated, and demands a certain measure of goodwill from the viewer that it does not reciprocate. Because the story is such an extreme concept, the script is made up almost entirely of rapid-fire exposition, explanation and monologues; when nothing makes sense a character says, “that doesn’t make sense,” deployed like some kind of screenwriting “get out of jail free” card that doesn’t pass muster. Chapter titles as a structuring device are used in a manner that is downright rude, and the film “ends” no less than nine times.
This is all just to say that describing the premise of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a unique challenge. The luminous and legendary Michelle Yeoh stars, playing against type as Evelyn, the harried proprietress of a laundromat, juggling her father’s arrival from China, her daughter’s desire to have her girlfriend accepted by the family and her husband’s threats of divorce, plus the challenges of keeping a small business running, including a looming tax audit. Evelyn doesn’t have time or attention to dole out to anyone, and her family is struggling.
It’s at said tax audit that something strange happens: her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, yes, Data from “The Goonies” and Short Round from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) seemingly transforms into a new person, and informs her that she’s actually part of a large, extended multiverse. He teaches her how to jump into other parallel lives she’s led, like ones where she studied martial arts, perhaps. It’s like “Sliding Doors” if the doors were constantly sliding, a million miles a minute, and what was required to slide them was performing some kind of absurd action (at least one element of this mechanism that’s not entirely explained). Within the confines of this drab office building, Evelyn must fight her way through the farthest corners of the multiverse in order to save her family, because, inconveniently, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is also the big bad final boss of this (theoretical) place.
Drawing from classic martial arts movies, video games, and psychedelics probably, there are a few inspired bits and great performances throughout, especially from Yeoh, who demonstrates a real ability for comedy. Quan delivers the most heartfelt performance, and even gets the best fight scene, which will make you look at a fanny pack like never before.
But the jokes, references, fights and multiverses start coming and don’t stop, and before long, you just want to shout, “enough!” Turns out, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is simply too much.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/features/movie-review-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-proves-to-be-too-much/article_1618f6be-22c6-5b8e-94bd-ed4b9d986dcc.html
| 2022-04-08T12:58:13Z
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Director Michael Bay’s “Ambulance” celebrates Los Angeles as a shining city build on a cloverleaf of speed, concrete, yelling, automatic gunfire (sorry, pal, not in the mood) and rugged American individualism on both sides of the law. At weird intervals the action cuts away to a fluttering faceful of U.S. flag, as a reminder of where we are and who we are, and what the movie’s selling: national pride in a certain kind of mediocre action picture.
None of the collisions, Gatling gun massacres (again, not in the mood) or SWAT sniper stare-downs in “Ambulance” can compete with Jake Gyllenhaal’s popeyed, this-guy-goes-to-11 dramatics in the role of the turtlenecked bank robber under pressure, a character whose heist management style tends toward hammering repetition of simple commands. There are many, many scenes in “Ambulance” where Gyllenhaal tightens the screws on someone to hurry up, and the dialogue defaults to variations on “Go. Will you go? Now!!! You have 45 seconds! GET GOING!!!” It’s like the Michael Bay version of Dr. Seuss’s “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!”
Without all the yakkity, “Ambulance” would very likely run about 80 minutes, not 136. The 2005 Danish film on which first-time feature film screenwriter Chris Fedak rebuild this vehicle ran, in fact, 80 minutes. That’s nearly an extra hour, or a lost one, depending on your enjoyment level.
Danny, the sociopathic Steve McQueen wannabe played by Gyllenhaal, has one Last Big Score in his sights: a bank heist worth $32 million. His adoptive brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an Afghan War veteran, needs $231,000 for his wife’s experimental cancer surgery. Reluctantly, Will joins Danny’s crew.
The heist goes sideways; Danny hijacks an ambulance because the name of the movie is “Ambulance”; luckily for the city at large and several of those maimed along the way, the infallible emergency medical technician played by Eiza González, is “the best paramedic in town.”
So much more here! There’s the brutal Latinx gang lord who will stop at nothing to settle a score or deal with family the same way he deals with the cops. There’s a mid-car chase front-seat fistfight between the brothers. There’s impromptu gunshot-wound stomach surgery, with paramedic Cam sticking her hands in a wounded cop’s innards while FaceTiming with doctors on a golf course for step-by-step advice. There’s a large, flatulent dog (belonging, in reality, to director Bay) brought along for the manhunt by the LAPD Man of Steel played by Garret Dillahunt.
It’s a modestly scaled movie by Bay standards, if Bay standards begin with the “Transformers” eternities and then slide down from there. Now and then a sharp, gleaming composition clicks into place: three police SUVS screeching to a halt just so, for example, or one of the copious drone camera shots scooting along behind the actors, or just above or below some signage in a nifty way.
Problem is, Bay and his breathless editing relay team of Doug Brandt, Pietro Scalia and Calvin Wimmer lack any sort of visual strategy or rhythm. Before long the ground-level zip-along filming approach turns the cameras into a pack of invisible hunting dogs. No one moment, or assault, or eyebrow-to-chin seething session in close-up, looks or feels more urgent or vital than any other moment in “Ambulance.” When a movie refuses to vary its pace, the audience subconsciously starts to mistrust the information and the exertions on the screen. Are these people overcompensating? Why is a movie that could’ve should’ve been 90 minutes, tops (see “KIMI” for reference, and for a really good high-velocity thriller), refusing to quit long past quitting time?
Michael Bay is no Michael Mann, and he’s not trying to be, but “Ambulance” travels a lot of highway traveled earlier by Mann in “Heat” and “Collateral.” Or even Jan de Bont’s “Speed.” Now that was a dumb movie worth seeing. Bay tries for levity in “Ambulance” – the Danish original tried for a lot more – but there’s no room for levity here. What good is a movie that can’t stop moving, or screaming, long enough to pace itself?
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/features/review-ambulance-is-a-messy-frenetic-la-pileup-of-gunfights-car-chases-and-a-wound/article_b428c01c-c513-54dc-ab9a-8864d4cb6b39.html
| 2022-04-08T12:58:19Z
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You are not confined to your chair.
If you want to get up and move around, you can. Stand up, stretch, wiggle your toes and shake out the knots. Step out and drop in on the space next door or down the street and it’s okay. You’re not stuck in your chair or this room or even this building, and in ”To Walk About in Freedom” by Carole Emberton, you’ll get a new appreciation for that ability.
In 1935, at the end of the Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) was created to put unemployed teachers, writers and editors to work, in part by gathering oral histories, with the goal to establish a uniquely American story. Over an eight-year period, FWP workers collected 10,000 interviews, including stories from the Emancipation.
Priscilla Joyner’s was one of them.
She was eighty years old when two FWP workers, both of them Black, came to interview her about her life. Eager to see them, she was waiting for them on the porch of the home she’d lived in for decades. She was ready to talk...
Joyner was born in January of 1858, the child of a white mother and a Black father – or so she was told. She never knew for sure; the white man who gave her his name did so reluctantly. Her Black birth father’s identity was something her mother took to her grave but Emberton says there were other possibilities to explain how Joyner was different than her white siblings and why they were allowed to torment her.
Though she was not a slave in the strictest sense, Joyner lived as one: she was taught domestic tasks but not how to read or write until she was twelve and her mother sent her to live with a Black family, who sent Joyner to school. The move was “upsetting,” and she didn’t understand it but it turned out to be what Joyner needed.
She learned to love her new home. There, she met her husband and found community...
There’s no other way to say this: “To Walk About in Freedom” is an exceptional book.
On every page, in every single story, author Carole Emberton leads readers to learn something they didn’t know or to meet someone new, and it’s done between the facts of history and social mores, presented concurrently with Priscilla Joyner’s story. But Joyner’s life isn’t the only one shared here; other FWP interviewees and former slaves’ words are added to the overall, which lends further richness to what you’ll read. Emberton then explains how some FWP interviews were nearly ruined by over-editing and “Uncle Remus” additions made by white writers and editors who insisted on it, and how Joyner’s full story was almost lost.
This is one of those books that’ll make you lose track of time and your surroundings. lt’ll answer questions, raise your pride, and it’ll make your head spin for days after you’re done reading it. “To Walk About in Freedom” is the book you need to keep you in your chair.
”To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner” by Carole Emberton, c.2022, W.W. Norton, $28.95, 242 pages
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FRIDAY
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
A Conversation on Ukraine: 12:30-1:30 p.m., UW College of Business Room 127 and online at uwyo.zoom.us/j/99946342579. Ambassador Richard Holwill and Dr. Alexander Skiba will moderate.
UW Student Scholarship Showcase: 1:45-4 p.m., UW College of Business Room 127 and online at uwyo.zoom.us/j/99946342579. Awards ceremony will follow from 4-5 p.m.
UW planetarium presents “Aurorae, Dancing Lights”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. For millennia our ancestors looked in awe at the “dawn in the north,” or Arora Borealis. What causes this display? Where does it happen? Do other planets have aurorae?
Good in All of Us fundraiser for Laramie Interfaith: 7-9 p.m., Eppson Center for Seniors, 1560 N. 3rd St. Will include a silent auction, mini-games and a trivia contest. Trivia teams of up to five members register for $100 a team at https://bit.ly/3KILsjb.
SATURDAY
Albany County 4-H Spring Bazaar: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Albany County Fairgrounds.
Albany County Democratic Convention: 9 a.m., via Zoom. To register, email albanycountydems.secretary@gmail.com.
Free cancer screenings: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Ivinson Medical Group. Email questions@ivinsonhospital.org for more information.
Stand With Ukraine Laramie rally: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., 1st Street Plaza. Rally for Ukraine and learn how to support the nation’s fight for freedom.
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
Bike Olympics sponsored by Laramie BikeNet: 1-5:50 p.m., Lincoln Community Center, 356 W. Grand Ave. Free entry, but BikeNet membership recommended. Visit Laramiebikenet.org for more information.
UW Cello Festival concert: 5 p.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts. A free performance by participants of the 2022 UW Cello Festival.
Laramie Elks Lodge 582 Luau Dinner and officer installation: 6 p.m. installation, 7 p.m. dinner, 102 S. 2nd St. Dinner is $15, and public is invited.
UW planetarium presents “Max Goes to the Moon”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. Max the dog and a young girl named Tori take the first trip to the moon since the Apollo era.
An evening of Schubert with Kenneth Slowik (and friends): 7:30 p.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets $10 general admission available at uwyo.edu/finearts.
MONDAY
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
TUESDAY
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Laramie Rivers Conservation District meets: 10 a.m., 5015 Stone Road.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
Albany County Republican Party meets: 6 p.m., Albany County Public Library.
WEDNESDAY
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Wyoming Police and Fire Civil Service Commission meets: 3 p.m., via Zoom. Visit cityoflaramie.org/agendacenter for information. Zoom ID: 85440007. Passcode: 875167.
Ivinson Medical Group women’s health prenatal education: 5:30 p.m., Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the Summit Conference Room. Learn more or register at ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
THURSDAY
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Second Story Book Group discusses “Billionaire Wilderness” by Justin Farrell: 6:30-8 p.m., via Zoom. Call 786-877-3912 or email taninel@bellsouth.net for information.
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
Lenten Taize worship services: 7 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 Canby St. Every Thursday through Easter.
UW Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Fund Recital: 7 p.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets $40 in-person, $20 for livestream. Call 3766-6666 or visit uwyo.edu/finart_ticket/eventsticketed,aspx.
April 15
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
UW planetarium presents “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. Are we alone in the universe?
”Everything but the Kitchen Sink” concert to open UW Percussion Festival: 7:30 p.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts. Free.
April 16
Kiwanis Club of Laramie Easter Egg Hunt: 10 a.m., Kiwanis Park in West Laramie.
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
Ester Extravaganza: 2-4 p.m., Trinity Baptist Church, 1270 N. 9th St.
UW planetarium presents “Distant Worlds — Alien Life?”: 2 p.m., UW Planetarium. For millennia our ancestors watched the stars and questioned the origin and nature of what they saw. Yet, Earth is the only planet we know for sure to be inhabited.
UW planetarium presents “Liquid Sky, Pop”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. Enjoy a custom playlist from today’s top artists.
April 17
Walk with a Doc: 1:30-2:30 p.m., UW Fieldhouse. Hear from health care professionals and get your steps in.
April 18
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
April 19
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
UW planetarium presents “Wyoming Skies”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. What’s up in the sky around Wyoming?
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
April 20
Laramie Rivers Conservation District meets: Noon, 5015 Stone Road.
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Award-Winning Author Jesmyn Ward speaks: 5 p.m., UW College of Arts and Sciences auditorium.
Ivinson Medical Group women’s health prenatal education: 5:30 p.m., Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the Summit Conference Room. Learn more or register at ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
April 21
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Ivinson Medical Group women’s health prenatal education: 5:30 p.m., Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the Summit Conference Room. Learn more or register at ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
April 22
Albany County CattleWomen meet: 11:30 a.m., location tbd. Visit wyaccw.com in the week before the meeting for location and more information.
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
UW planetarium presents “Earth Day”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. Observe our beautiful planet from the ground, sky and space as we learn about glaciers, atmospheric science, meteorology, extreme weather events and climate history.
Violin virtuoso Augustin Hadelich with UW Chamber Orchestra: 730 p.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets available at uwyo.edu/finearts.
April 23
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
UW planetarium presents “From Earth to the Universe”: 2 p.m., UW Planetarium. The night sky, both beautiful and mysterious, has been the subject of campfire stories, ancient myths and awe for as long as there have been people.
April 25
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Wyoming’s energy economy panel discussion: 6 p.m., online at uweconomists.eventbrite.com. Features four University of Wyoming economists.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
America Sewing Guild Laramie Chapter meets: 7 p.m., United Methodist Church, 1215 E. Gibbon St.
April 26
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
April 27
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
April 28
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
April 29
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
UW planetarium presents “Mars”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. The red planet is host to many questions; did it used to be like Earth? Did it once harbor life? Could it still support life?
April 30
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
UW planetarium presents “Mexica Archaeoastronomy”: 2 p.m., UW Planetarium. Illustrates the important role played by astronomical observation for the evolution of pre-Hispanic cultures in central Mexico.
UW planetarium presents “Liquid Sky, Electronica”: 7 p.m., UW Planetarium. Enjoy a custom playlist of music from today’s top artists.
May 2
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
May 3
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 4
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson Medical Group women’s health prenatal education: 5:30 p.m., Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the Summit Conference Room. Learn more or register at ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
May 5
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Diabetes Support Group meets: 5:30-6:30 p.m. via Zoom. Email questions@ivinsosnhospital.org for the link.
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
May 6
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 7
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
VFW Post 2221 Commander’s Charity Dinner: 5:30-8 p.m., 2142 E. Garfield St. Tickets 412 at the door, all proceeds to benefit VFW Poppy Fund and Albany County Search and Rescue.
May 9
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
May 10
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
Albany County Republican Party meets: 6 p.m., Albany County Public Library.
May 11
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson Medical Group women’s health prenatal education: 5:30 p.m., Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the Summit Conference Room. Learn more or register at ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
May 12
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
May 13
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 14
University of Wyoming graduation ceremony: 8:30 a.m., UW Arena-Auditorium, undergraduate ceremony for the colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Engineering and Applied Science and School of Energy Resources.
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
University of Wyoming graduation ceremony: 10 a.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts, for the College of Law.
University of Wyoming graduation ceremony: 12:15 p.m., UW Arena-Auditorium, for master’s and doctoral students from colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Business, Education, Engineering and Applied Science, Health Sciences and Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources.
University of Wyoming graduation ceremony: 3:30 p.m., UW Arena-Auditorium, for undergraduate ceremony for colleges of Arts and Sciences, Education, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and Office of Academic Affairs.
May 16
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
May 17
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 18
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson Medical Group women’s health prenatal education: 5:30 p.m., Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the Summit Conference Room. Learn more or register at ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
May 19
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
May 20
Albany County CattleWomen meet: 11:30 a.m., location tbd. Visit wyaccw.com in the week before the meeting for location and more information.
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 21
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 23
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
America Sewing Guild Laramie Chapter meets: 7 p.m., United Methodist Church, 1215 E. Gibbon St.
May 24
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 25
Laramie Tai Chi and tea: Meets at 1:30 p.m. at the north end of the stadium in Laramie Plainsman Park, North 15th and Reynolds. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
May 26
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Stitching the Past Together creative aging class: 6:30-8 p.m., Albany County Public Library large meeting room. Students will learn memory-based storytelling through beading techniques in this free course. Register at acplwy.org or at the circulation desk.
May 27
Free stress relief clinic: Noon to 1 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 28
Free stress relief clinic: 10-11 a.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
May 30
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Women for Sobriety meet: 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom. For meeting details, email 1093@womenforsobriety.org.
May 31
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Free stress relief clinic: 1-2 p.m., Laramie Plains Civic Center Phoenix Ballroom.
Have an event for What’s Happening? Send it to Managing Editor Greg Johnson at gjohnson@laramieboomerang.com.
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Boomerang Writer
As the 2021-22 academic year begins winding down and University of Wyoming students switch out their pencils for diplomas, school administrators continue to set their sights on the future.
The campus has seen multiple new building projects over the past few years, with the most recent being a new $100 million Science Initiative Building. Located near 9th and Lewis streets, the 153,000-square-foot complex will house a variety of entry and upper-level science courses.
The UW Science Initiative began in 2014 when members of the science and business community endorsed a plan to improve education and research opportunities, according to a press release. Construction on the building started in 2018.
Built with money from the state, the facility is designed to emphasize hands-on learning. Instead of sitting in a lecture hall, students will gather around tables. The building also will house a variety of scientific equipment that can be used for research and education.
“It demonstrates the investment made by our elected leaders, (and their) commitment to state facilities in providing great programs, particularly in the STEM areas,” said UW spokesperson Chad Baldwin.
The building is expected to be in full use during the upcoming fall semester once furniture and equipment can be installed.
Long-awaited projectsAround the time work on the Science Initiative Building comes to a close, another highly anticipated project is scheduled to begin.
The university plans to finally break ground this fall on a pair of new residence halls located West of 15th Street. The south hall will be built at the intersection with Willett Drive, and the north hall at the intersection with Lewis Street.
Interior and exterior design plans for the project have been approved, and the $250 million for the project is secured through bonding, Baldwin said. The university is waiting on final construction planning documents.
The project also will include a new dining facility attached to the north residence hall, and a parking garage will be located along Ivinson Avenue between 10th and 11th streets. The 375 permitted parking spaces will make up for a loss of parking outside the Wyoming Union and is expected to be completed in January 2023.
“The residence halls demonstrate a clear statement from the Board of Trustees that residential living will continue to be a big part of our student experience,” Baldwin said. “We’re going to have that on-campus, in-person experience for students and that’s the foundation upon which our enrollment will be built in the future.”
Providing enough on-campus living space for students hasn’t been a problem for the university, especially with decreased admission rates brought on by the pandemic, but the current facilities are outdated.
The new residence halls and dining center are intended to replace those old facilities. Though the administration hasn’t made any final decisions, the university may demolish some buildings and keep others such as Crane Hall as a housing overflow area, Baldwin said.
The College of Law building also could see an expansion come fall if the Board of Trustees grants the project its final approval. A decision could come on that next month.
“It’s been a pretty collaborative effort all the way,” Baldwin said of the recent projects. “We really do have world-class facilities and world-class researchers and teachers to use them.”
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/if-you-build-it-uw-on-track-with-long-term-construction-projects/article_57acbc18-d8d1-53d2-9739-2cb75f95345e.html
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GILLETTE — A group of about 25 people gathered in an old, dusty barn.
Some sat at a table, some on a beam along the wall. Others sat on bales of fleece nearby. Young and old, they ate plates of pork, beans and salads, as a cattle dog ate beneath another table.
They didn’t travel to the historic Edwards Ranch south of Gillette just to eat, however.
They came to shear, and Roy Edwards brought his sheep.
“I learned in a school just like this 26 years ago,” he said, standing at the end of the shearing chutes, as his lunch break came to an end.
For many of those participants, some of whom participate in 4-H and Future Farmers of America, it was their first time trimming wool themselves. It’s an age-old technique, but one that varies and comes with its own challenges.
“They will make a lot of cuts on the sheep, which is what happens, and they’ll tear the fleeces all up, but that’s how you’ve got to learn,” said Ronda Boller, a Campbell County rancher who helped organize the event. “There’s no other way to shear sheep than like this.”
Many a Campbell County sheep throughout the years has been sheared by Australian or New Zealand shearers. The international help would come from their part of the world, where shearing occurs nearly year-round, to Wyoming, where the wool-shearing season is mostly handled in the few months before summer.
The history of shearing sheep runs deep in Campbell County, but the methods vary from those from Down Under. As they say, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
Well, it turns out that saying rings true for giving sheep haircuts.
“Their technique is a lot faster,” Boller said of the wool shearers from Australia and New Zealand.
In Wyoming, shearers would tie down sheep before getting to work on their winter coats. But in Australia and New Zealand, it’s more common to shear “loose,” with the animals unrestrained.
Despite his enthusiasm and willingness to shear again, “loose” proved challenging for Caden Cantu, 14, of Moorcroft, after getting a lesson from Gus Pellatz.
“I’m little. I’m short,” Cantu said.
It’s unclear when a sheep shearing class was last held in Campbell County, but it’s commonly agreed that they have become more rare.
The COVID-19 pandemic made it more difficult for some of those shearers to make the trek across the world to Campbell County, which is partly how Boller and her husband got the idea to organize the class.
When they needed help shearing their own sheep, they realized the shortage of able hands for the job. Soon enough, with a few sponsors on board, they helped arrange the two-day shearing school that the community had the chance to join free.
Wade Kopren led the class along with local shearers. LeeAnn Brimmer taught the wool handling. It was sponsored by Campbell County Woolgrowers Auxiliary, Campbell County 4-H and Edwards Rambouillets.
With the growing scarcity of those privy to the art of wool shearing, a handful of people left the Edwards Ranch Saturday evening two days and a few wool fleeces closer to keeping that art alive.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/all-the-buzz-sheep-shearing-class-passes-technique-to-new-generation/article_38e989f3-4b72-5f36-804f-faf18276455b.html
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(WWLP) – Two private space companies teaming up to send the first civilian visitors to the International Space Station from US soil Friday morning.
Private start-up Axiom Space organized the flight, which will be executed by SpaceX using their Dragon Crew Capsule and Falcon 9 rocket.
Four men will launch at 11:17 a.m. and spend eight days aboard the ISS. Axiom hopes it will be the first of many space tourism flights.
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As the time of year arrives when the “cheep, cheep” sound of cute chicks becomes more common, the Wyoming Department of Health is reminding people that baby birds can sometimes carry harmful germs even though they look clean and healthy.
“There’s no denying that poultry chicks are cute and appealing. They’re soft too. That’s why many people want to photograph, touch, hold or even snuggle with them," said Matthew Peterson, surveillance epidemiologist with WDH. "Unfortunately, these charming chicks can also have germs on their bodies and in their droppings."
Baby poultry are recognized as a common source of salmonella, which can cause diarrhea, fever, stomach cramps and other severe symptoms in humans. Some people have an increased risk for severe symptoms: young children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.
Wyoming regularly has cases of salmonellosis in humans from contact with live poultry, especially in springtime.
“People in Wyoming are regularly infected with salmonella as part of larger, multistate outbreaks involving baby poultry. It happens every year,” Peterson said. “The germs we’re concerned with are also found where birds live such as in their cages and coops. If someone puts their hands in or near their mouth after handling birds or touching the birds’ environment, they can become infected."
Tips for handling live birds include:
- Children younger than 5 years of age, elderly or people with weak immune systems shouldn’t handle or touch chicks or other live poultry.
- After touching live poultry or anything in the area where they are found, wash hands thoroughly with soap and water. If soap and water aren’t available, use hand sanitizer.
- Don’t eat or drink around live poultry, touch with the mouth or hold closely to the face.
- Don’t let live poultry inside your house, in bathrooms or in areas where food or drink is prepared, served or stored.
- Clean equipment or materials used in caring for live poultry outside the house, such as cages or feed or water containers.
Peterson said a different bird-related disease has been in the news lately as Wyoming also is seeing highly pathogenic avian influenza spread among domestic and wild birds.
Bird owners should follow guidance from the Wyoming Livestock Board on preventing exposure to wild birds and should report any symptoms among their birds to their veterinarians.
Hunters who handle wild birds should dress game birds in the field when possible, wear gloves when dressing birds, and wash hands with soap and water afterwards. Other individuals should avoid contact with wild birds if possible.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/chicks-may-be-cute-but-can-spread-ugly-disease/article_53333fb4-ff76-58ae-b54a-3d146e2c9633.html
| 2022-04-08T12:59:15Z
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/chicks-may-be-cute-but-can-spread-ugly-disease/article_53333fb4-ff76-58ae-b54a-3d146e2c9633.html
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POWELL — Distrustful of the voting machines used across Wyoming and other parts of the country, a group of Park County residents is making a push to review the results of this year’s primary election by hand.
On Tuesday, a roomful of proponents asked Park County commissioners to allow them and other volunteers to effectively audit August’s election by hand counting the votes after the ballots are processed by the machines.
South Fork resident Boone Tidwell, one of the group’s leaders, framed the request as a matter of constitutional rights and predicted some people won’t vote unless ballots are counted by hand.
“Whatever decision you make today, folks, we think will have consequences. Not only here in Park County, but on a state level, and possibly a national level,” Tidwell told commissioners. “There’s a lot of attention on this particular issue right here and what we’re doing here in front of you guys. So we’re asking you to please choose wisely.”
Commissioners postponed a decision to a later meeting, citing a need to get legal advice from Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric.
“We have to get some answers from the county attorney,” said Commission Chairman Dossie Overfield.
Secretary of State Ed Buchanan, who spoke via Zoom, recommended that commissioners consult with Skoric, suggesting that state law does not give the board the power to authorize a hand count. Members of the group, however, pushed back.
“Where in the Constitution does it give you the authority to deny us?” Powell resident and former Park County Republican Party Chairman Larry French pressed Buchanan.
“It’s not me sitting here saying that, ‘I forbid you to do it,’” the secretary responded in part. “I’m pointing out that you probably don’t have, in my opinion, just from looking at this, the statutory authority to do it.”
Tidwell then offered that “statute cannot trump my constitutional right.”
“It’s that simple,” he said, to applause from the crowd.
Commissioners, however, indicated they still have questions, including about how long a hand count might take, what impact it might have on their staff, and whether enough volunteers would show up and the legality of the effort.
Tuesday’s request stemmed from continuing concerns over the 2020 election, which Tidwell described as “the latest wreck.” The angst has played out on a national stage over the past two years, with former Republican President Donald Trump — who drew more than 76% of the votes in Park County but less than 47% nationwide — claiming the election was “rigged” in favor of Democratic President Joe Biden.
A series of lawsuits and other attempts to challenge the results have been unsuccessful and no widespread irregularities have been proven, but mistrust has persisted.
Dave McMillan of Cody, another of the group’s leaders and a Park County Republican Party precinct committeeman, said it’s not a partisan issue.
“There’s not a person I’ve talked to in my area, yet, that has told me they think the elections were fair in 2020,” McMillan told members of the Park County Democratic Party in February. “Nobody has any confidence in this.”
He and Tidwell had approached the party looking for support on a joint effort, but got some pushback from several local Democrats.
“I think that the only lack of integrity is actually in the imagination of those who are preaching lack of integrity,” Cody resident Paul Fees said at the Feb. 5 meeting.
The party members later passed a resolution stating that “the Park County Democrats have confidence in the integrity of the current election system.”
Meanwhile, the Park County Republican Party unanimously passed a resolution at its March 12 convention that calls for publicly observable hand counts of all election results.
The local GOP’s chairman, vice chairman, secretary and multiple precinct committee members attended Tuesday’s meeting in support of the proposal. Tidwell told commissioners that the debate over the validity of the machines won’t be resolved.
“If you are opposed to the voting machines, your preference is that we throw them in a ditch and light them on fire. And if you love the machines, you don’t want anybody to intrude in that environment,” Tidwell said Tuesday. “So we’re at an impasse.”
He said the plan to have all of the ballots run through the voting machines and then hand counted by volunteers was a compromise.
McMillan said the proposal “harms no one and satisfies the concerns of everyone.”
The proposal pitched to commissioners on Tuesday differed from the group’s original vision, which would have involved volunteers receiving and tabulating voters’ ballots before they went into the machine.
Tidwell said they altered the plans after hearing from people who said, “I don’t want you to know my vote.”
He also was clear in acknowledging that the results tabulated by the voting machines will be the official results.
“If our [hand] count comes out different than yours, we’re stuck with it [the machine count],” Tidwell said, “but we’re gonna have a whole lot more information and a whole lot more knowledge and be able to address that moving forward in the future.”
In his remarks to the commissioners and the group, Buchanan suggested that the whole hand count may have to wait until the law is changed. He said he’s repeatedly told people that if they want to return to paper ballots, it’s a policy decision that should be taken up with the Wyoming Legislature.
He also noted a statute that refers to votes being counted by machine, saying that, “Each individual vote shall be determined by the voting equipment and shall not be determined subjectively by human tabulation …”
However, Commissioner Scott Mangold noted that even under the group’s proposal the machines will still be doing the counting.
“We keep talking about statutes, but I think basically this is just sort of an experiment to start with,” Mangold said.
Commissioner Lee Livingston agreed, saying, “if you’re not submitting that as the official results, it’s quite possible that hand counting could be [done].”
“As long as we’re not stepping outside of that [the law], at this point in time, I don’t have a problem with looking at it,” Livingston said.
Overfield said the board needs to get a legal opinion from County Attorney Skoric.
Beyond the legalities, commissioners also had questions about the logistics.
As a test run, the hand count group enlisted the help of about 200 high schoolers in Powell, Cody and Meeteetse, who participated in a mock election a few weeks ago. The group then met at the Park County Library in Cody and calculated the results by hand. (Kanye West won a state Senate race in the Meeteetse area after being written in by a number of students, Tidwell said.)
In its first attempt at counting the 200 ballots, the group took an hour and 20 minutes, French said, but a second try took about 35 minutes. He indicated that a three-person team needed about a minute and a half per ballot.
At that pace — and assuming a similar turnout to the 2018 primary election, in which 8,341 voters participated — it would take more than 600 man hours to hand count all of the results. To get done by a state deadline of 10:30 p.m. on election night, it would take more than 150 volunteers.
By comparison, Park County had 117 election judges in the 2020 general election. Commissioner Joe Tilden questioned whether there would be enough volunteers to conduct the hand count, noting that a number of people who pledged to serve as election judges in 2020 backed out.
“That was before the latest wreck with the 2020 election, Mr. Tilden,” Tidwell said. “And you know, there are a whole lot of people that care now that didn’t care two years ago.”
Tidwell told the Democrats in February that “hundreds” of people would help with the effort.
While Tidwell said there would be zero cost to the county, Commissioner Lloyd Thiel noted that regular election workers would need to stay at the polling places later on election night to monitor the hand counting.
“Maybe there isn’t any more cost, but there’s a hell of a lot more work on these precincts for these election judges to do this experiment, if you will,” Thiel said. “I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying there’s definitely some inconvenience here in the county.”
Tidwell responded, “If it requires a little more time on our part, as a voter, as a judge, as a participant in that process, you owe it to this community to make sure that that is specifically correct.”
While expressing doubts about the legality of hand-counting the vote, Buchanan expressed full support for the group’s general aim of bolstering public confidence in the integrity and accuracy of their elections.
“... I don’t think anybody in the state disagrees that the more things we can do to give greater confidence in elections, the better,” he said. “Because … if people don’t believe in your elections, nothing else matters. It really doesn’t.”
Even before the 2020 election, Buchanan said his office began an audit effort in which it will take a statistically significant sample of ballots cast around the state and then compare them to the vote record generated by the voting machines.
“If those ballots check out, and we know that those actual ballots cast were correctly counted by the machine, then we have our 99-point-whatever [percent] confidence interval in our election,” Buchanan said.
In a Tuesday evening email to commissioners, Park County Democratic Party Chairman Jan Kliewer said he doesn’t want taxpayer dollars to be spent on the hand count and that he thinks the statewide audit planned by Buchanan “would go further to build trust than an experiment in one county.”
“My fear, however, is if the results of 61 lawsuits of voter fraud thrown out nationwide doesn’t inspire confidence, what will?” Kliewer wrote.
During the meeting, County Clerk Colleen Renner noted that the county conducts mandatory public testing of its voting machines ahead of the elections to show how the process works.
Renner said she’s only had two people show up during her eight years as clerk.
“That causes me to believe you’re not questioning it,” she said, as members of the crowd murmured objections. “So if you are questioning it, please come to the public testing.”
Commissioners didn’t set a date for their next discussion on the requested hand count. The primary election is Aug. 16.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/group-pushes-to-hand-count-election-results-copy/article_c9b37b80-bc58-5b65-b765-6275b2c20056.html
| 2022-04-08T12:59:27Z
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After two years of disruptions, Wyoming students are in the midst of test taking that helps state and federal education departments assess learning – a sign that school is returning to normal.
The Wyoming Department of Education in late March of 2020 canceled all testing for the rest of the semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Exams like Wyoming’s Test of Proficiency and Progress, which assess students abilities in English, science and math, were nixed that year.
“We canceled everything and then put in the waiver to waive our state accountability and federal accountability,” said Laurie Hernandez, standards and assessment director at the Wyoming Department of Education.
Testing resumed in spring 2021, but those scores were not used to determine whether or not schools were meeting state and federal accountability standards. The Department of Education submitted an addendum to its compliance plan under the Every Student Succeeds Act, federal law that took the place of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2015.
Identifying low-performing schools is part of the state’s plan; schools that are “partially meeting” or “not meeting expectations” must fill out a school improvement plan. Low-performing schools receive extra support from WDE and are eligible for federal funds. Wyoming’s updated compliance plan pushed low-performance school identification to 2022-23, because at least two years of data are required to determine whether or not schools need additional support, according to WDE Chief Policy Officer Wanda Maloney.
In the interim, schools identified as low-performing in 2018-19 “were held constant,” Maloney said. “Many had started professional development or interventions, and so we wanted [them] to be able to continue to excel and provide them the funding they needed.”
If parents weren’t comfortable sending their kids to school to take tests in Spring of 2021, they were not forced to do so. Normally, testing is mandatory and parents don’t have the option to opt out. Ultimately, 96.6% of students in Wyoming were tested in 2021, only a slight decrease from the 99% that usually participate.
The WDE is still in the process of analyzing test results from 2021, but so far it appears students in Wyoming did not experience severe learning loss reported in many other parts of the country during pandemic education disruptions. “There was a little bit of slip, but not anywhere to the degree that there was nationally,” Hernandez said.
Statewide assessments are underway at many Wyoming schools this year, and Hernandez says so far things have gone smoothly. “We really make sure everybody understands that it’s a snapshot in a moment in time for the student.”
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/statewide-school-testing-returns-to-normal/article_21ad3d04-10ce-533e-9a8d-24bb94640b3f.html
| 2022-04-08T12:59:40Z
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/statewide-school-testing-returns-to-normal/article_21ad3d04-10ce-533e-9a8d-24bb94640b3f.html
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JACKSON — When people spot Joe Cronquist from the chair lift, it’s an event. The surprise of spectators is loud, as if they’d seen a bear or a solar eclipse.
“There he is,” they yell. “It’s the Teton Juggler!”
Even while he’s skiing, the daredevil from Anchorage, Alaska — now a micro-cultural mountain celebrity spotted from terrain park to Thunder moguls while juggling three pink clubs — whoops back.
That hype has nourished Cronquist, 28, through his first season, during which he’s not only defined new limits of the novel sport of “skuggling” (ski-juggling) but also built his brand, indistinguishable from his future.
If each passer-by got to look in Cronquists’ large blue eyes and ask him a question, it would likely be simply: Why?
(It could also be, “Does Jackson Hole ski patrol know about this?” To which his answer is yes, they’ve forged a healthy, trusting relationship.)
But to answer the former, News&Guide spent a day in the natural habitat of the Teton Juggler.
When untangling a motive, the first thing that comes to mind is money.
Cronquist, however, is both an extreme athlete who spends 30 hours a week juggling and an amateur. Or, as he put it, “dirt broke.”
A carpenter by training, he was 23 when he graduated from a five-year professional apprenticeship program in Anchorage, set up with good union jobs for life.
“But I had this inner tension,” he said, “I knew that this next step is going to be a career path where I’m going to be locked in. My dreams that I have, with this spirit of athletics and the freedom of expression, are going to be put in a little bit of jeopardy.”
So in 2017 he started down the Pacific Coast with his girlfriend, Aspen Welker, in a 2003 Ford Econoline cargo van — no itinerary or destination, just an open mind and a slackline.
“I was just backpacking on the side of the road when some homeless guy saw my slackline and he was like, ‘You got to go to this spot.’ And I went to Arcada (California) and met all the highliners. It’s all random like that.”
When Cronquist got his first taste of highlining — walking a thick tightrope hundreds to thousands of feet above canyons or between mountains — there was no looking down, or turning back. The couple kept traveling, and Cronquist kept juggling and slacklining. It’s the hours he’s spent off the mountain, he said, and incremental progress, that have kept him in control and everyone on the mountain injury-free.
“If people could see how much I juggled in the last three years, they’d vomit,” he said.
It was on a winter hike last season, after parking his 20-foot trailer home on a Victor plot, owned by Welker’s father, that the idea of a skuggle routine “overwhelmed” him.
Cronquist worked summer and fall at Cosmic Apple Gardens, waiting for snowfall, before financially “cocooning” to pursue his newfound dream full time.
It works for now, but lacking sufficient health insurance and a year-round income isn’t exactly comfortable.
“I’m risking it,” he said, “big time.”
If clearly not for fortune, does Cronquist skuggle for fame?
The Teton Juggler is the first to say his relationship to outside attention is complicated.
Though he shuns the idea of sponsors, because working in oil fields in Alaska and driving through clear-cut western forests turned him off “industry” writ large, he admits the support would be validating in a sport where he has neither peers nor compensation.
But he couldn’t speak his mind, he said, clad in Clif Bar or Redbull.
He’s thought about wearing other costumes, like the tights and cape of Robin Hood, a character whose skills he deeply identifies with.
But this extraordinary man would still like to be a relatable guy.
So he wears a practical black uniform and bootstraps his brand through unabashed self-promotion: Instagraming sick GoPro edits, tossing out free ‘Teton Juggler’ stickers, and calling out to chairlifts when he senses riders could be more stoked to see him.
His ultimate goal, for financial stability and to share his passion, is creating a camp of “flow arts” based on his youthful “inner fantasy.”
He describes the dream as a community of balance-driven sports like juggling, staff spinning, hula hooping, fans, slacklining, highlining, and a place for self-discovery.
On the last lift up, Cronquist said his wish list for his one-man-show includes LED clubs, a six-foot-tall unicycle and chain saws. When the cold returns he’ll be in hot pursuit of the backflip-over-fire-pit-with-torches skuggle and, yes, the Corbet’s Couloir skuggle.
For now, it’s the end of skuggle season, but for Cronquist and his future followers, it could be the beginning of a skuggle era.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/teton-juggler-takes-flight/article_285376a6-85cc-5370-b2a1-9f5954cc8c0c.html
| 2022-04-08T12:59:46Z
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/teton-juggler-takes-flight/article_285376a6-85cc-5370-b2a1-9f5954cc8c0c.html
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A leading wind farm operator has agreed to pay fines and other fees totaling just over $8 million, plus potentially spending millions of additional dollars, because its operations were linked to the deaths of at least 150 eagles over about a decade.
Partly at issue was whether the energy producer should have applied for permits before its operations killed the birds, or if the business should have taken other actions.
The legal case points up the fact that responsible wind farm owners take additional steps to ensure their operations – including wind turbines, which can extend hundreds of feet into the air while also sweeping lower to the ground – do not kill many birds and other wildlife, a conservation expert told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
The federal government contends that ESI Energy Inc., which is affiliated with NextEra Energy, had not heeded federal recommendations regarding its wind farm operations in Wyoming’s Carbon and Laramie counties and in New Mexico.
ESI had agreed to plead guilty to killing and wounding eagles in its wind energy operations, violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
It pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the MBTA, “each based on the documented deaths of golden eagles due to blunt force trauma from being struck by a wind turbine blade” at the operations lacking necessary federal permits.
On Tuesday, the company was sentenced in Cheyenne for those violations, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney for Wyoming announced, via a DOJ news release sent by email Wednesday.
ESI faces a fine of $1.86 million, $6.21 million in restitution and a five-year period of probation in which it must adhere to an eagle management plan.
This plan requires up to $27 million in steps “intended to minimize additional eagle deaths and injuries, and payment of compensatory mitigation for future eagle deaths and injuries of $29,623 per bald or golden eagle,” DOJ said. “ESI also must over the next 36 months apply for permits for any unavoidable take of eagles at each of 50 of its facilities where take is documented or, in the case of four facilities not yet operational, predicted.”
The MBTA bars the “taking” of migratory birds without a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Taking” includes killing such wildlife.
NextEra disagreed with how the government interpreted the law here, even though it said it signed on to the settlement to “resolve this dispute and focus our attention on continuing to develop, build, and operate emissions-free wind energy centers for a lower carbon America built by good-paying American jobs.”
The company noted that the violations it pleaded guilty to are misdemeanors.
In the company’s legal reasoning, MBTA “does not require a permit to cover unintentional collisions that occur when eagles fly into properly developed wind energy facilities.”
“Unfortunately, the federal government, at odds with many states and a number of federal court decisions, has sought to criminalize unavoidable accidents related to collisions of birds into wind turbines while at the same time failing to address other activities that result in far greater numbers of accidental eagle and other bird mortalities,” the energy firm said.
Its statement was issued by NextEra Energy CEO Rebecca Kujawa.
In a video on its website, NextEra calls itself “the nation’s leader in energy storage” and “the world’s largest generator of wind and solar energy.”
The company would not answer most questions for this story, beyond confirming the location of its operations that were cited by the U.S. Nor would industry groups provide information about steps U.S. companies in general take to avoid inadvertently killing any species of birds.
In Wyoming, NextEra operations mentioned by the DOJ are its Cedar Springs Transmission multi-facility commercial wind power project in Converse County and Roundhouse Renewable Energy facility in Laramie County.
According to NextEra’s website, it has made $729 million in capital investments in Wyoming and it has about 10 employees (or possibly 51, depending on which figure is used) in the state, where it has a 4.6% market share of electricity sold.
The company has a few hundred turbines at those two areas, and their total rated capacity is several hundred megawatts, according to the U.S. Wind Turbine Database, which is partly affiliated with the U.S. Department of the Interior.
At the high end of that power range, that is more electricity than is used in Cheyenne.
Throughout the country, according to the federal database, there are more than 70,000 turbines in 44 states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico.
The other site involved in the settlement with the government involves ESI’s FPL Energy New Mexico Wind, which DOJ said has wind power facilities in De Baca and Quay counties in that state.
At around the end of December 2020, “two golden eagle carcasses were found near a wind turbine” at this facility, the federal agency said.
Back at the two wind farm sites in Wyoming, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had told ESI that, by building the turbine operations, it ran the risk of killing golden and bald eagles. Nonetheless, the company did not seek any of the take permits from FWS nor did it take cautionary actions, the government said.
In some instances for some of the facilities, the agency had recommended that there not be any such development.
Some wind farms do take precautions so that they avoid killing birds, which can fly into their turbines, according to the government and an expert who spoke with the WTE. In fact, the government said that ESI by not taking these measures got a leg up on rival energy producers that follow the rules.
“ESI and its affiliates received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits for generating electricity from wind power at facilities that it operated, knowing that multiple eagles would be killed and wounded without legal authorization, and without, in most instances, paying restitution or compensatory mitigation,” the DOJ said.
FWS and other organizations like the conservancy have guidelines that wind farm operators can follow so they avoid killing birds, said the American Bird Conservancy’s Joel Merriman. Such tools help identify areas where wind farm development would risk harming birds and areas where it is OK.
“There are good resources out there to steer wind energy developers toward the right locations,” said Merriman, director of the bird conservancy’s Bird-Smart Wind Energy Campaign. “We can have wind energy without undue impacts to wildlife.”
Although there are a range of estimates researchers have reached over the years, the bird group estimates that more than half a million birds are killed each year in the U.S. due to wind turbines.
Eagles, for animal-developmental, migration and other reasons, are among the more vulnerable bird and raptor species to getting killed by turbines, Merriman said by phone.
“Eagles are particularly vulnerable to collisions with wind turbines,” he said. “A lot of that is due to the fact that they spend a lot of time on the wing and they are essentially distracted fliers. They hunt while they are flying.”
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/wyo-wind-operator-to-pay-8m-in-pact-over-killing-eagles/article_04afeb61-2167-5d11-bb4b-56f286a15403.html
| 2022-04-08T12:59:52Z
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/wyo-wind-operator-to-pay-8m-in-pact-over-killing-eagles/article_04afeb61-2167-5d11-bb4b-56f286a15403.html
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CHEYENNE – The city of Cheyenne is making some minor adjustments to its ward boundaries leading up to the filing period beginning in mid-May for those seeking to be elected to the City Council.
According to Mayor Patrick Collins, the process is required following a U.S. census, and will follow the statewide redistricting process of drawing new House and Senate district maps.
“Our ward boundaries will shift,” Collins explained. “We had the census, and our goal, based on that census, is to create wards that are compact and as uniform in size as possible.”
During its redistricting process, lawmakers added two new House districts to the statewide map. One of those new districts, House District 9, sits within the city of Cheyenne, stretching into the eastern part of the city near Hayes Avenue.
“New ward lines will include that change,” Collins told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle this week.
Legislative changes came late in the game, leaving the council without much time to make its own adjustments before the candidate filing period opens May 12. Several stakeholders criticized the Legislature’s process, which resulted in an agreement to add one House and two Senate seats. Gov. Mark Gordon expressed concern about it, though he did not veto the redistricting law.
“The Legislature was late this year, and that didn’t give us a lot of time,” Collins said. “If we start right now, and we don’t have any delays, we can meet the requirements that the county has to get the precincts designed, so that on May 12 people can register to run for office.”
Historically, Ward 2 has comprised the areas north of Dell Range Boulevard. Ward 1 has been made up of homes south Dell Range and west of Logan Avenue, and Ward 3 has been south of Dell Range and east of Logan.
Following proposed changes, Ward 2 will dip a little south of Dell Range to accommodate the new House District 9 boundary. Ward 3 has grown so much, Collins said, that the boundary of Ward 1 will move a bit to the east to follow Converse Avenue. That would mean areas south of Dell Range and west of Converse Avenue would be Ward 1, and south of Dell Range and east of Converse would be Ward 3.
“They are going to look a lot like they will today, and it seems to work well also because our current council people will be able to stay in their existing wards,” Collins said. “That is not necessary, but it is one of the things that comes out of this that is positive.”
According to City Clerk Kris Jones, the municipal redistricting plan will go before the full City Council on Monday, and then to the Public Services Committee on April 19. Final approval by the council is scheduled for April 25.
City Council members whose terms are ending this election cycle are Scott Roybal, representing Ward 1; Ward 2’s Mark Rinne; and, from Ward 3, Ken Esquibel.
Changes floated
Cheyenne resident Boyd Wiggam has approached the council with the idea of expanding the ward system from three to five wards, although there likely isn’t time before the candidate filing period opens to do so.
“Basically, my request is that as we are redistricting, this is an opportunity to reduce the number of people living in each City Council ward,” Wiggam said.
Wiggam contends that it should not take more people to win a Cheyenne City Council seat than it takes to win a state Senate seat.
“My idea is pretty basic. When we look at the population of each ward in the city of Cheyenne, and we have three wards, if we take an average population … what I come up with is that the population in a Cheyenne city ward is larger than the maximum population in a Wyoming state Senate district,” Wiggam said.
“When you talk about local government, one of the things you talk about is how close to the people it is, or the influence people have over who is elected,” he continued. “I translate that in my mind to a lower ratio of population per electoral district.”
He suggested that perhaps a new ward could be centered on the south side of Cheyenne. During the statewide redistricting process, a contingency of residents from the south Cheyenne area asked to be included in one House and Senate district voting block, but that request was not included in the final plans.
Proposed new ward boundaries still have to be finalized by the council.
State law requires ward boundary adjustments after the census, and it also allows for changes to be made if the city has a large annexation or changes in population, Collins said. Whether it would allow for a change in ward numbers, he said, is unclear. He said that he is not against the discussion, it is just that there simply isn’t time for the public process necessary, including three readings, on a new city ordinance.
“Quite frankly, I don’t think anyone thought there was a need to do this, but now that someone has asked about it, it makes you think,” Collins said. “But we just ran out of time.”
If state law allows the council to go back and look at the idea later, Collins, the only at-large member of the city government, said he is “very open” to having that conversation.
“Unfortunately, we should have started that process months ago,” Collins said.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/cheyenne-city-council-ward-boundaries-to-see-some-small-changes-thanks-to-redistricting/article_35951590-d6e9-5bd5-84cb-e454e24a5fc3.html
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Country
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When I was 2 years old, I startled my parents by emerging from their bedroom playing with a loaded handgun. My father, an Air Force policeman, accidentally left it out when he came home exhausted after his shift.
Many years later, Dad told me what happened and how it likely shaved a few years off his life.
The next time I picked up one of his pistols, it was with intention. I was 17, a high school senior who was in a spiraling depression.
I can’t remember anything particularly bad occurring that day. I just had an overwhelming feeling that nothing was ever going to get any better.
So, I decided to kill myself. And I knew just how to do it.
When my parents went shopping that night, I made an excuse not to go. I took the pistol from their closet, where it was tucked behind Dad’s cowboy hat. It was loaded, for the family’s defense.
I went to my room and sat on the edge of the bed. I was remarkably calm as I pointed the gun at my head, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I don’t know how long I stayed in that position, but it seemed like forever, as if I was watching someone else’s life.
I didn’t pull the trigger, but not because my depression suddenly lifted. I had the same feeling of hopelessness, but I didn’t want my parents to come home and find me dead. I couldn’t cause them that kind of pain.
I put the gun back in its holster, returned it into the hiding place and went downstairs to watch TV, trying to pretend I was normal.
I needed help, but that was impossible. Members of my military family were expected to solve their own problems. Therapists? Psychiatrists? Out of the question.
Two decades later, I finally sought assistance. But I never told anyone else about that night, until now.
Wyoming has the highest suicide rate in the nation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 182 people in the state took their own lives in 2020. That’s 31 per 100,000 individuals, more than double the national average.
We won’t lower our suicide rate if we aren’t willing to talk about it. I’ll go anywhere, in person if possible, or on Zoom, if sharing my experiences could help someone.
I didn’t seek professional help until I was 37, when panic attacks left me so debilitated I couldn’t even walk into my newsroom one morning.
I made an appointment with a psychiatrist, then tried to cancel it the next day. The receptionist wouldn’t let me, and I’m forever grateful to her.
Medication ended the panic attacks. My official diagnosis is “major depressive disorder.” It’s a chronic condition that affects more than 3 million people a year in the U.S. It can ebb and flow throughout one’s lifetime, which has been my experience.
With a combination of the right meds and psychotherapy, MDD can be successfully treated. I’ve been fortunate to have a series of caring therapists help me cope. My suicidal thoughts haven’t magically disappeared, but I have no intention to harm myself.
Gov. Mark Gordon asked the Legislature to spend $7 million to extend two suicide prevention hotlines to 24/7 in-state service. The Legislature came up with $2.1 million.
Wyoming LifeLine expanded its operating hours from weekdays to seven days, but only from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (800) 273-TALK (8255).
From 4 p.m. to midnight, calls are automatically routed to the state’s other hotline, operated by Central Wyoming Counseling Center at 307-776-0610. At midnight, calls are handled by national overflow centers till 4 a.m.
The latter calls aren’t answered by people who can direct those who need help to local services. Wyoming needs a sustainable plan to staff a state-based suicide prevention hotline around the clock.
My father wanted to protect his family, not realizing his loaded gun could do me harm. He never dreamed I might be suicidal, and if he was still alive, I wouldn’t have written this column.
But I think he’d recognize that I’ve shared to stress the importance of keeping kids safe. I’ve never allowed firearms in our home, but parents have no control over how other families secure their weapons.
Too many of my friends and relatives have either tried to kill themselves or taken their own lives. I’ve seen families, schools and entire communities shattered by these experiences. It’s heartbreaking.
We're all in this together. Wyoming has capable professionals and volunteers trying to reduce suicide deaths, but it’s not easy. Insufficiently funding programs makes it more difficult.
In 1972, I didn’t know who to turn to, and I’m lucky an impulsive act didn’t end my life. We tend to believe we can “cowboy up” and handle our own problems. That isn’t possible with serious mental health issues that lead to suicide.
Statistics show what we’re doing simply isn’t enough. Let’s openly talk about it, provide local help 24/7 and assure people they don’t have to go it alone.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/opinion/guest_column/drake-to-prevent-wyo-suicides-cowboy-up-isn-t-an-answer/article_8e9b550c-1c8b-5e73-b630-945d8e32d69d.html
| 2022-04-08T13:00:29Z
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CHEYENNE – Laramie struggled with the wind and Cheyenne South’s offside trap during the first half of Thursday evening’s match at Bison Stadium.
The Plainsmen solved both during the second half of their 4-0 victory.
“We took the wind in the first half purposely because we thought we could take advantage of it at our back in the second half,” Laramie coach Anne Moore said. “A lot of our balls in the first half were under-played or were a second late because we were dribbling too much, so we kept getting caught offside. (South) did a really good job anticipating and pulling their line at the right time so we were offside.
“Those were issues, but we also weren’t playing the gaps or hitting the right pace on the ball to get it behind their defense.”
Laramie was called offside eight times on the night, including six in the first half alone.
The Plainsmen scored all of their goals in the match’s final 41 minutes. Senior Cameron Hoberg broke the ice in the 40th when a Gavin Baker pass got him deep in the penalty area and left him one-on-one with South goalkeeper Keegan Potter.
“It felt great to get that goal right before the half,” Hoberg said. “They ran an offside trap and we had something like seven offsides in the first half that kept us from getting any goals. (Baker) played a great ball into space and I was able to get our first goal.”
South spent the week working on an offside trap, and made it a point of emphasis going into Thursday night’s match first-year coach Josh Eastman said.
“We took a lead at Thunder Basin, and weren’t able to respond when they scored six goals,” he said. “We focused hard on the defensive line this week, and getting them to work together better as a unit. They had to learn to drop together better as a unit and know when to step and who to step to.
“DeMarcus Contreras has done a good job of leading our back line and communicating to everyone what they should be doing. They took a big step forward with how they set those offside traps. That really helped us a lot in the first half and gave us more opportunities on offense.”
Hoberg had a chance to add his second goal on a penalty kick during the 41st after he was fouled inside the 18 by Contreras. Hoberg sent the shot high over the goal.
He avenged that miss in the 44th when he took a pass from freshman Catcher Pannell and scored for a 2-0 lead.
Hoberg completed his hat trick during the 47th by stopping on a dime and letting the Bison defender run by before uncorking a shot for a 3-0 advantage.
“It was pretty embarrassing to miss that PK, but I’m happy I was able to make up for it with two more goals,” Hoberg said. “We did a good job of pressuring the ball in the second half, and that gave us more chances. South came out hard in the second half, but we came out a little harder.”
Karson Busch rounded out the scoring in the 50th after taking a pass from freshman defender Kai Boyer and striking a long shot that sailed between the outstretched hand of Potter and the crossbar.
“Laramie is very talented and really technical, but I felt like we had them a little frustrated in the first half,” Eastman said. “The wind also frustrated them because they weren’t able to connect passes like they’re used to. If we had been able to ride out that first half and get into the second scoreless, maybe the second half goes a little different.
“Getting that goal to end the first half really broke the ice for them and got them momentum.”
LARAMIE 4, SOUTH 0
Halftime: 1-0.
Goals: Laramie, Hoberg (Baker), 40. Laramie, Hoberg (Pannell), 44. Laramie, Hoberg (Whisenant), 47. Laramie, Busch (Boyer), 50.
Shots: Laramie 15, South 4. Shots on goal: Laramie 12, South 1. Saves: Laramie 1 (Aaron); South 8 (Potter).
Corner kicks: Laramie 6, South 5. Offsides: Laramie 8, South 0. Fouls: Laramie 10, South 3.
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https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyosports/high_school/cheyenne_south/laramie-boys-find-touch-in-second-half-of-win-at-south/article_d78e6962-43f2-5c33-8c15-55d187f08313.html
| 2022-04-08T13:01:00Z
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Kochi: Former champions Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) will clash with Golden Threads FC in the final of the Kerala Premier League (KPL).
KSEB edged out Basco Othukkungal FC 2-1 in the semifinal played at the Corporation Stadium, Kozhikode. It was the first defeat for Basco this season.
M Viknesh put KSEB ahead in the 15th minute. An own goal by P Ajeesh made it 1-1 in the 30th minute. However, Nijo Gilbert converted a penalty in the 79th to put KSEB in the final.
Golden Threads beat SAT Tirur 1-0 in the other semifinal played amid heavy rain at the Maharaja's College Ground, Kochi.
Ivory Coast midfielder Quattara Sie scored the winner off a bicycle kick in the 19th minute.
The final will be held at the Corporation Stadium, Kozhikode, on Sunday.
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https://www.onmanorama.com/sports/football/2022/04/08/kpl-kseb-to-meet-golden-threads-in-final.amp.html
| 2022-04-08T13:04:26Z
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Kochi: Former champions Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) will clash with Golden Threads FC in the final of the Kerala Premier League (KPL).
KSEB edged out Basco Othukkungal FC 2-1 in the semifinal played at the Corporation Stadium, Kozhikode. It was the first defeat for Basco this season.
M Viknesh put KSEB ahead in the 15th minute. An own goal by P Ajeesh made it 1-1 in the 30th minute. However, Nijo Gilbert converted a penalty in the 79th to put KSEB in the final.
Golden Threads beat SAT Tirur 1-0 in the other semifinal played amid heavy rain at the Maharaja's College Ground, Kochi.
Ivory Coast midfielder Quattara Sie scored the winner off a bicycle kick in the 19th minute.
The final will be held at the Corporation Stadium, Kozhikode, on Sunday.
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https://www.onmanorama.com/sports/football/2022/04/08/kpl-kseb-to-meet-golden-threads-in-final.html
| 2022-04-08T13:04:33Z
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Dinosaur fossils discovered from the day the asteroid hit Earth
The discovery could prove once and for all that an asteroid impact 66 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs.
Asteroid fragments and the first dinosaur fossils from the impact of the asteroid 66 million years ago have just been discovered at a dig site in North Dakota.
Unearthed by palaeontologist Robert DePalma, this could be the first piece of physical evidence that dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid strike, ending the Cretaceous period.
Along with the asteroid fragments and fossils, a rare pterosaur egg with fossilised bones of a baby pterosaur inside were found. A preserved burrow likely made by an early mammal, and a fossilised turtle that was skewered by a wooden stake, and a preserved Triceratops skin were also discovered at the dig site.
It is rare to find fossils that are within even the final few thousand years of the age of dinosaurs, which highlights the importance of these recent discoveries.
“This is the most incredible thing that we could possibly imagine here, the best case scenario… The one thing that we always wanted to find in this site and here we’ve got it.” said DePalma on these findings.
Because of the importance of these discoveries, a 90-minute film voiced by David Attenborough will be airing on 15 April on BBC One to cover it. This documentary will attempt to paint a picture of life at Tanis (the dig site) at the time of the asteroid strike.
Attenborough will be joined by DePalma and Prof Phil Manning from the University of Manchester. Footage will show them as they unearth a lot of these major discoveries and explore the area.
This footage includes the capture of the moment the team discovers the leg of a small herbivorous Thescelosaurus - a dinosaur that may have witnessed the asteroid impact. The programme also follows Robot and his team as they examine the fossilised dinosaur egg and other major discoveries.
Read more:
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| 2022-04-08T13:09:32Z
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Artificial glaciers, or ice stupas, are made using a simple irrigation system designed to store fresh water for use during arid summer months. Ice stupas have provided a lifeline for farmers during the spring planting season in Ladakh, a high mountain-desert region on the edge of the Himalayas. The region has a population of almost 300,000 people, but on average only receives around 10 centimetres of precipitation every year – that’s just a fraction more than the Sahara Desert.
Agriculture in these cold desert regions is critical to survival, and crops can only be cultivated over a few months each year. Due to climate change, this already short window is rapidly declining. Retreating – or disappearing – glaciers have provided climate scientists with some of the most alarming evidence that the Earth is warming.
According to a study published in the journal Cryosphere, the Earth lost more than 1.2 trillion tonnes of ice in the 2010s. This is a significant increase from the 760 billion tonnes lost per year in the previous decade, and researchers found that between 1994 and 2017, the planet lost a whopping 28 trillion tonnes of ice. Natural glaciers are crucial to life in these arid mountain regions, as they provide an essential freshwater source.
So engineers have come up with an innovative solution; to freeze, and store winter fresh water in huge, towering structures. This water can then be accessed throughout the year and can help to sustain the communities that live in these regions. The technique was first developed by engineer Sonam Wangchuk in 2013.
Researchers from the Cryosphere and Climate Change research group at the University of Aberdeen have been working with Indian universities, locals from the Ladakh region and The Ice Stupa Project to help address the situation. In particular, they are looking at ways to avoid water freezing in the pipes, as well as gaining a better understanding of the local micro-climates.
How are artificial glaciers made?
Stage 1
Artificial glaciers are built during the winter months by piping freshwater from a higher altitude downslope using polyethene tubing.
Stage 2
The water is channelled through a pipe from the base of the ice stupa into a vertical pipe made of galvanised iron.
Stage 3
When the temperature drops at night, this freshwater is pumped through a sprinkler at the top of this vertical pipe. With winter temperatures in the Ladakh region as low as -30°C, the water freezes onto a purpose-built structure made of wood and steel.
Stage 4
As the water freezes, the result is a huge stalagmite-type structure. As the ice accumulates, more piping can be added to increase the height of the artificial glacier and store higher volumes of water.
Stage 5
When the weather warms and water is scarce, the ice gradually melts to release this freshwater stored in the glacier. This provides locals with an invaluable source of water for irrigation in that critical window early on in the planting season.
Read more about ice:
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| 2022-04-08T13:09:38Z
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S. Carolina schedules 1st execution with firing squad ready
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina has scheduled its first execution after corrections officials finished updating the death chamber to prepare for executions by firing squad.
The clerk of the State Supreme Court has set an April 29 execution date for Richard Bernard Moore, a 57-year-old man who has spent more than two decades on death row after he was convicted of killing convenience store clerk James Mahoney in Spartanburg.
Moore could face a choice between the electric chair and the firing squad, two options available to death row prisoners after legislators altered the state’s capital punishment law last year in an effort to work around a decade-long pause in executions, attributed to the corrections agency’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs.
The new law made the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution while giving prisoners the option of choosing death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available.
The state corrections agency said last month it had finished developing protocols for firing squad executions and completed $53,600 in renovations on the death chamber in Columbia, installing a metal chair with restraints that faces a wall with a rectangular opening 15 feet (4.6 meters) away.
In the case of a firing squad execution, three volunteer shooters — all Corrections Department employees — will have rifles loaded with live ammunition, with their weapons trained on the inmate’s heart. A hood will be placed over the head of the inmate, who will be given the opportunity to make a last statement.
South Carolina is one of eight states to still use the electric chair and one of four to allow a firing squad, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
Moore is one of 35 men on South Carolina’s death row. He exhausted his federal appeals in 2020, and the state Supreme Court denied another appeal this week.
Lindsey Vann, an attorney for Moore, said Thursday she will ask the court to stay the execution.
The state last scheduled an execution for Moore in 2020, which was then delayed after prison officials said they couldn’t obtain lethal injection drugs.
During Moore’s 2001 trial, prosecutors said Moore entered the store looking for money to support his cocaine habit and got into a dispute with Mahoney, who drew a pistol that Moore wrestled away from him.
Mahoney pulled a second gun, and a gunfight ensued. Mahoney shot Moore in the arm, and Moore shot Mahoney in the chest. Prosecutors said Moore left a trail of blood through the store as he looked for cash, stepping twice over Mahoney.
At the time, Moore claimed that he acted in self-defense after Mahoney drew the first gun.
Moore’s supporters have argued his crime doesn’t rise to the level of heinousness in other death penalty cases in the state. His appeals lawyers have said that because Moore didn’t bring a gun into store, he couldn’t have intended to kill someone when he walked in.
South Carolina’s last execution was in 2011, when Jeffrey Motts, on death row for strangling a cellmate while serving a life sentence for another murder, abandoned his appeals and opted for the death chamber.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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TAIPEI, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2022 Taipei AMPA and AutoTronics Taipei will take place at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center Hall 1 from April 20-23, and will feature 560 automotive industry corporations with 1,300 exhibition booths. Additionally, with the digital transformation taking place in the world nowadays, the new virtual show concept AMPA DigitalGo will also feature 190 exhibitors online from April 11-24, presenting the automotive industry in a new and unique format.
Hybrid Platform to Showcase Products – 3D Images, Online Catalogues, Videos… and More.
In the current trend, an online-offline hybrid show has become the normal, and as a result, Taipei AMPA created the newest AMPA DigitalGo digital show concept. This new concept provides exhibitors a platform to showcase online catalogues, promotional videos, 3D product images, and other methods to display company and product information to the buyers. Built-in chat functions with translation service, and virtual business card exchanging also offer opportunities for exhibitors and visitors to interact with each other without borders, language barriers, and time zones, enhancing the experience for everyone on the AMPA DigitalGo platform. Visitors can browse AMPA DigitalGo from April 20 to 24 on www.ampaonline.com.tw/en/
One of the Largest Automotive Trade Shows in Asia.
Even though the digital concept creates a new way to do business, the physical exhibition is also the attraction of Taipei AMPA, which will continue to take place this year. As one of the largest automotive trade shows in Asia, Taipei AMPA has been the epitome of the industry, attract large groups of buyers and showcasing the latest products and services. With the usual parts and accessories, there will be many electric vehicles and green energy exhibits this year, promoting the biggest Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) issues surrounding the world today.
In addition, forums, new product unboxing episodes, a live tour, and other events will gather even more experts to Taipei AMPA and present the industry from a different perspective that will showcase Taiwan's superior automotive industry.
11 Exhibit Areas in Taipei AMPA – All You Need Is Here.
- Parts & Components
- Automotive Lighting
- Customizing & Accessories
- Diagnostics & Maintenance
- Car care
- EV & Peripherals
- Intelligent Transportation System & Solution
- Motorcycle Parts & Accessories
- Motorcyclists' Accessories
- Automobile Electronic Products
- Automobile Electronic Components & Parts
REGISTER NOW
- Pre-Registration Link:
https://www.taipeiampa.com.tw/en/news/1666FAA5857B0753/list-info.html - Taipei AMPA 2022 will take place on April 20 to 23 physically at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall 1, and the online show will begin from April 11 to 24 on www.ampaonline.com.tw/en/
About Taipei AMPA
Began in 1984, Taipei AMPA has become Asia's 2nd largest automotive trade show, and also the only show in Asia that connects automobile and motorcycle industry in one place.
AMPA presents the trends of C.A.S.E with the latest IoV, EV, 5G applications and solution, such as vehicle control units (VCU), battery management systems (BMS), motor control units (MCU), advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and in-vehicle infotainment systems, that keeps you ahead of the curve in 2022.
Where you can also meet the strongest industries in Taiwan - automotive lighting, automobile electronic and auto parts aftermarket (AM) all at the show ground.
AMPA is the pioneering automotive hybrid trade fair in ASIA, which brings a satisfying purchase experience with no boundary, no time difference, ONSITE and ONLINE.
- Following AMPA official website and social media for more updated
Official website: www.taipeiampa.com.tw/en/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TaipeiAMPA
AMPA TV: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAATasbI8TiR6mptGQOvlPg
EV and E-mobility Future Trends Roundtable: https://youtu.be/-EveGlgCzCQ
Intelligent Connected Vehicles Roundtable: https://youtu.be/okc4Uyo6CNU
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SOURCE Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA)
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ATLANTA, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- CatchMark Timber Trust, Inc. (NYSE: CTT) will release its first quarter 2022 earnings on Thursday, May 5, 2022, following the market close. The company will host a conference call and live webcast at 10 a.m. ET on Friday, May 6, 2022 to discuss these results.
Investors may listen to the conference call by dialing 1-888-347-1165 for U.S/Canada and 1-412-317-6011 for international callers. Participants should ask to be joined into the CatchMark call. Access to the live webcast is also available at www.catchmark.com or here. A replay of this webcast will be archived on the company's website immediately after the call.
About CatchMark
CatchMark (NYSE: CTT) invests in prime timberlands located in the nation's leading mill markets, seeking to capture the highest value per acre and to generate sustainable yields through disciplined management and superior stewardship of its exceptional resources. Headquartered in Atlanta and focused exclusively on timberland ownership and management, CatchMark began operations in 2007 and owns interests in 369,700 acres* of timberlands located in the U.S. South. For more information, visit www.catchmark.com.
* As of December 31, 2021
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE CatchMark Timber Trust, Inc.
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https://www.witn.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/catchmark-scheduled-release-first-quarter-2022-earnings-may-5-2022/
| 2022-04-08T13:12:14Z
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Manoah Esipisu drops diplomacy as he takes on Safaricom on SIM registration
Safaricom Care has posted about the requirements the Communications Authority had given in regards to subscriber identity module (SIM) card registration.
This was after Manoah Esipisu, Kenya’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, posed a question to Safaricom saying, “Please post here the exact instructions from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) so we are sure you are not being overzealous about a very simple direction.”
On their Twitter page, the telecommunication network said that there are three steps in sim card registration.
“First is submitting a copy of their national ID then submitting a signature and lastly, the customer care workers take a photo for added security.”
This being the third time the (CA) has threatened to switch off unregistered lines, a section of Kenyans seems to jubilate on the same saying they will not pay up the Fuliza, M-shwari, and KCB M-pesa debt.
As the government steps up the fight against crime and aims at improving data accuracy, unregistered sim cards in Kenya will be deactivated on April 15.
While Airtel and Telkom have provided USSDs for their customers to register online, Safaricom shop queues are getting longer as the deadline nears.
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https://nairobinews.nation.africa/manoah-esipisu-drops-diplomacy-as-he-takes-on-safaricom-on-sim-registration/
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U.S. Navy Sailors, assigned to the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), talk about the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program and its resources, on the floating accommodation facility, in Newport News, Virginia, April 4, 2022. The John C. Stennis is in Newport News Shipyard working alongside NNS, NAVSEA and contractors conducting Refueling and Complex Overhaul as part of the mission to deliver the warship back in the fight, on time and on budget, to resume its duty of defending the United States. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Julia Johnson)
This work, SAPR [Image 19 of 19], by PO3 Julia Johnson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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U.S. Navy Capt. Raul Acevedo, executive officer of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), briefs Sailors prior to zone inspections, on the floating accommodation facility, in Newport News, Virginia, April 6, 2022. The John C. Stennis is in Newport News Shipyard working alongside NNS, NAVSEA and contractors conducting Refueling and Complex Overhaul as part of the mission to deliver the warship back in the fight, on time and on budget, to resume its duty of defending the United States. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Riley Gasdia)
This work, Zone Inspection [Image 19 of 19], by SN Riley Gasdia, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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The Black Musical Arts Community Choir is a music organization committed to showcasing professional African-American musical artists including vocalists, instrumentalists, and composers. Founded in 2013 by Robert McNichols, Jr., BMA artists specialize in a wide range of musical genres including Concert Spirituals, Black Opera, Musical Theater, and Gospel.
Classical KC's Brooke Knoll sat down with musical director and conductor Dr. Robert McNichols Jr. to talk about the group before their April 9 performance.
Music used in this story
The Ragtime Symphonic Suite
by Stephen Flaherty
Ezekiel Saw de Wheel
Trad. arr. by William Dawson
He Never Failed Me Yet
by Robert Ray
Listen to the Lambs
Trad. arr by R. Nathaniel Dett
Free at Last from Big River
by Roger Miller
Event Details
The Black Musical Arts Community Choir performs at the Warwick Theater on Saturday, April 9th at 7:30pm. You can learn more about the group on Facebook and event details can be found at metkc.org.
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https://www.kcur.org/classical-kc-spotlight/2022-04-08/black-voices-are-brought-to-the-forefront-in-a-kansas-city-choir
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Recognition of International Healthcare Transformation and Savings
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- New Frontier Group (NFG), a leading cost management organization focused on enhancing global healthcare, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. April 2022 reflects New Frontier Group's long-standing commitment to the transformation of global cost management.
"We are excited to mark our 20th anniversary and celebrate progress alongside our clients," stated Gitte Bach, CEO. "Throughout our 20 years, we have focused on rapidly changing technology and partnerships that lowered healthcare costs for clients. The past 2 years were unpredictable, but we stayed committed to being an anchor in our industry by setting the bar high with our solutions."
New Frontier Group has built expansive global pricing databases for optimal outcomes, pricing consistency, and transparency during its tenure as an organization. The pandemic brought decreased international travel, but an increased need for innovation in cost management. The most recent product launched by NFG during the pandemic, NFGTelecare, addressed a much-needed gap in the global market.
Randall Condie, COO, stated "Within our 20-year history, urgent care was seen as cost containment, but we saw an opportunity to offer global telecare to further reduce costs. We are already starting to see most non-life-threatening visits done in a digital setting. We realize that telecare is not just a trend, but a healthcare option that is expanding and will continue to do so for many years to come."
Jules Christian, Strategic Project Lead, added, "Looking to the future, we remain committed to consistently reviewing, innovating, and launching digital solutions that fit the needs of our global clients."
About New Frontier Group:
Organizations who have members travelling or living outside of their home country need global solutions to connect their members to the right care at the right price. New Frontier Group is consistently transforming global healthcare and rising to new challenges their clients face. Solutions include global provider networks, cost management, pharmacy benefits, telecare, and concierge services.
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE New Frontier Group
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https://www.witn.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/new-frontier-group-celebrates-20th-anniversary/
| 2022-04-08T13:16:47Z
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U.S. Navy Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) 2nd Class Corbin Caccia, from Washington, Illinois, assigned to the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), presents a space during zone inspections, aboard the ship, in Newport News, Virginia, April 6, 2022. The John C. Stennis is in Newport News Shipyard working alongside NNS, NAVSEA and contractors conducting Refueling and Complex Overhaul as part of the mission to deliver the warship back in the fight, on time and on budget, to resume its duty of defending the United States. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Riley Gasdia)
This work, Zone Inspection [Image 19 of 19], by SN Riley Gasdia, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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A professor at Stanford University in California has been branded “Professor Karen” after she allegedly threatened to call the cops on a black professor who revealed her $5,000 an hour consultation fee.
Jo Boaler, a white education professor at Stanford, has been embroiled in a heated spat with Berkeley University’s Jelani Nelson — one that spilled into the public domain earlier this week and resulted in accusations of racism and harassment.
The saga first unfolded when Nelson retweeted a filing on Twitter on March 31 that showed Boaler had been paid $5,000 per hour — totaling $40,000 — to consult math teachers within the Oxnard School District.
On Tuesday, Nelson — who is black — shared a screenshot of an email Boaler had sent him in the wake of his tweet that mentioned alerting police.
“As a courtesy to a fellow faculty member I wanted to let you know that the sharing of private details about me on social media yesterday is now being taken up by police and lawyers,” Boaler had written to Nelson in the email.
“I was shocked to see that you are taking part in spreading misinformation and harassing me online,” she added.
The person who put out the initial tweet — a high school teacher in San Francisco — had shared Boaler’s home address in a separate post, but later deleted it and apologized. Nelson said he did not post her home address on his Twitter account.
Nelson went on to compare Boaler’s threat to contact authorities to other white women who have called the cops on black men in the past.
“A @Stanford professor just threatened me with police. After BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Golfcart Gail, and all the memes, we now have Retweet Rachel,” he wrote.
“Public advisory: don’t call the cops on black people for no reason. Black people disagreeing with you on Twitter is not a crime.”
In the wake of the public spate, Boaler claimed to the San Francisco Chronicle that she wasn’t threatening to go to the cops — and later apologized if it had been perceived that way.
“I wanted him to know that the posts by a teacher sharing my address had been sent to police/lawyers, as a courtesy, because I thought it better that he did not engage with her,” she told the outlet.
“He changed that to say I was threatening him with police/lawyers. I was not.”
She added: “I am really saddened by what has happened on Twitter — and the number of people who believed his claim that I was ‘calling the cops on a black man’.
“I wrote to him to invite him to chat, professor to professor, and am very sorry that my mentioning the police was ever perceived as a threat. That was never my intent.”
Nelson said he was wrongly accused of harassing Boaler online because the screenshot he shared didn’t contain private information — and instead was taken from a public record on a public website.
“The accusations came immediately after a sentence invoking police and lawyers, a sequence that could only be read in context as a threat against me specifically,” he said.
“These false allegations are very serious, and I do not take them lightly.”
After Nelson’s tweets about Boaler started gaining traction this week, the Stanford Review, a conservative campus publication, published an article calling her “Professor Karen” and “woke.”
Nelson and Boaler’s very public beef is rooted in a controversial debate over how to teach math to K-12 students across California.
Boaler is behind the effort to change the math curriculum in California in a bid to increase equity.
Opponents, including Nelson, want the curriculum to include algebra 1 for eighth graders because they argue it will help struggling students when they reach high school.
“What must not get lost in this troubling incident is the much larger issue of K-12 math education in this state: the California Math Framework (CMF) proposal is a misguided revision of state guidelines on math education that will negatively affect tens of millions of Californians, including my own two children,” Nelson said amid the ordeal.
“This pathway leaves students unprepared for quantitative four-year college degrees via a newly proposed pathway for teaching mathematics that lacks essential content.”
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| 2022-04-08T13:17:30Z
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AUSTIN, Texas, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Silicon Labs (NASDAQ: SLAB), a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world, today announced that it plans to release first quarter 2022 financial results on Wednesday, April 27, 2022. An earnings conference call will follow the release at 7:30 a.m. Central Time. The call will be webcast from the Investor Relations section of the company's website at silabs.com.
A replay will be available after the call on the investor page of the website listed above or by calling +1 877-344-7529 (US) or +1 412-317-0088 (International) and entering replay access code 1597850. The replay will be available through May 4, 2022.
Silicon Labs
Silicon Labs (NASDAQ: SLAB) is a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world. Our integrated hardware and software platform, intuitive development tools, unmatched ecosystem and robust support make us an ideal long-term partner in building advanced industrial, commercial, home and life applications. We make it easy for developers to solve complex wireless challenges throughout the product lifecycle and get to market quickly with innovative solutions that transform industries, grow economies and improve lives. Silabs.com
Note to editors: Silicon Labs, Silicon Laboratories, the "S" symbol, the Silicon Laboratories logo and the Silicon Labs logo are trademarks of Silicon Laboratories Inc. All other product names noted herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.
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SOURCE Silicon Labs
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https://www.witn.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/silicon-labs-announces-first-quarter-2022-earnings-webcast/
| 2022-04-08T13:18:52Z
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BEIJING, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Zhihu Inc. ("Zhihu" or the "Company") (NYSE: ZH), the operator of Zhihu, a leading online content community in China, today announced that it filed its annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 8, 2022. The annual report can be accessed on the Company's investor relations website at https://ir.zhihu.com/.
The Company will provide a hard copy of its annual report containing the audited consolidated financial statements, free of charge, to its shareholders and ADS holders upon request. Requests should be directed to Investor Relations, Zhihu Inc., A5 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China.
About Zhihu Inc.
Zhihu Inc. (NYSE: ZH) is the operator of Zhihu, a leading online content community in China, dedicated to empowering people to share knowledge, experience, and insights, and to find their own answers. Zhihu fosters a vibrant online community where users contribute and engage while respecting diversity and valuing constructiveness by promoting a culture of sincerity, expertise, and respect developed through years of cultivation. Zhihu is China's largest Q&A-inspired online community and one of the top five Chinese comprehensive online content communities, both in terms of average mobile monthly average users and revenue in 2021. For more information, please visit https://ir.zhihu.com.
For investor and media inquiries, please contact:
In China:
Zhihu Inc.
Email: ir@zhihu.com
The Piacente Group, Inc.
Helen Wu
Tel: +86-10-6508-0677
Email: zhihu@tpg-ir.com
In the United States:
The Piacente Group, Inc.
Brandi Piacente
Phone: +1-212-481-2050
Email: zhihu@tpg-ir.com
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SOURCE Zhihu Inc.
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| 2022-04-08T13:20:28Z
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Missile kills 30 evacuees at busy Ukrainian train station
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A missile hit a crowded train station in eastern Ukraine that was an evacuation point for civilians, killing dozens of people, Ukrainian authorities said Friday after warning they expected even worse evidence of war crimes in parts of the country previously held by Russian troops.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that thousands of people were at the train station when the missile struck. The Russian Defense Ministry denied targeting the station in Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region, but Zelenskyy blamed Russia for the bodies lying in what looked like an outdoor waiting area.
“The inhuman Russians are not changing their methods. Without the strength or courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population,” the president said on social media. “This is an evil without limits. And if it is not punished, then it will never stop.”
WARNING: Videos may contain graphic content.
The regional governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko, later said that 39 people were killed and 87 wounded. The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general said about 4,000 civilians were in and around the station, most of them women and children heeding calls to leave the area before Russian forces arrived.
“The people just wanted to get away for evacuation,” Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said while visiting Bucha, a town north of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where journalists and returning Ukrainians discovered scores of bodies on streets and in mass graves after Russian troops withdrew.
Venediktova spoke as workers pulled corpses from a mass grave near a church under spitting rain. Black body bags were laid out in rows in the mud. None of the dead were Russians; she said. Most of them had been shot. The prosecutor general’s office is investigating the deaths as possible war crimes.
After failing to take Ukraine’s capital and withdrawing from northern Ukraine, Russia has shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years and control some areas. The train station is located in government-controlled territory.
Ukrainian officials warned residents this week to leave as soon as possible for safer parts of the country and said they and Russia had agreed to establish multiple evacuation routes in the east.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy predicted more gruesome discoveries would be made in northern cities and towns as the Russians depart. He said horrors worse than the ones in Bucha already had surfaced in Borodyanka, another settlement outside the capital.
“And what will happen when the world learns the whole truth about what the Russian troops did in Mariupol?” Zelenskyy said late Thursday, referring to the besieged southern port that has seen some of the greatest suffering during Russia’s invasion. “There, on every street, is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region....The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes.”
The prosecutor general also expressed concern about the death toll in Borodyanka, where the process of retrieving bodies from shelled and collapsed buildings has just begun. Twenty-six bodies were found Thursday from the ruins of just two buildings, Venediktova said.
“We don’t know what’s under these houses,” she said, estimating it could take two weeks to find out.
Spurred by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital, NATO nations agreed to increase their supply of arms after Ukraine’s foreign minister pleaded for weapons from the alliance and other sympathetic countries to help face down an expected offensive in the east.
Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said investigators found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and some corpses with their hands tied were “dumped like firewood” into mass graves, including one at a children’s camp.
Fedoruk said 320 civilians were confirmed dead as of Wednesday, but he expected more as bodies are found in the city that was home to 50,000 people. Only 3,700 remain, he said.
Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscow’s troops. The weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Germany’s foreign intelligence agency intercepted radio messages among Russian soldiers discussing killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.
In a rare acknowledgment of the war’s cost to Russia, a Kremlin spokesman said Thursday that the country has suffered major troop causalities during its six-week military operation in Ukraine.
“Yes, we have significant losses of troops and it is a huge tragedy for us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told British broadcaster Sky.
Peskov also hinted the fighting might be over “in the foreseeable future,” telling Sky that Russian troops were “doing their best to bring an end to that operation.”
Asked about his remarks Friday, Peskov said his reference to troop losses was based on the most recent Russian Defense Ministry numbers. The ministry reported on March 25 that a total of 1,351 Russian troops had been killed in Ukraine.
“It is a significant number,” Peskov said during his daily conference call with reporters.
In anticipation of intensified attacks by Russian forces, hundreds of Ukrainians fled villages in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions that were either under attack or occupied.
Marina Morozova and her husband fled from Kherson, the first major city to fall to the Russians.
“They are waiting for a big battle. We saw shells that did not explode. It was horrifying,” she said.
Morozova, 69, said only Russian television and radio was available. The Russians handed out humanitarian aid, she said, and filmed the distribution.
Anxious to keep moving away from Russian troops, the couple and others boarded a van that would take them west. Some will try to leave the country, while others will remain in quieter parts of Ukraine.
On Thursday, a day after Russian forces began shelling their village in the southern Mykolaiv region, Sergei Dubovienko, 52, drove north in his small blue Lada with his wife and mother-in-law to Bashtanka, where they sought shelter in a church.
“They started destroying the houses and everything” in Pavlo-Marianovka, he said. “Then the tanks appeared from the forest. We thought that in the morning there would be shelling again, so I decided to leave.”
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said that more than 4.3 million, half of them children, have left Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24 and sparked Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. The International Organization for Migration estimates more than 12 million people are stranded in areas of Ukraine under attack.
The United Nations’ humanitarian chief told The Associated Press he was “not optimistic” about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, given the lack of trust between the sides. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraine’s military status.
Two top European Union officials and the prime minister of Slovakia traveled to Kyiv on Friday, looking to shore up the EU’s support for Ukraine. Prime Minister Eduard Heger said he, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell brought trade and humanitarian aid proposals for Zelenskyy and his government.
Part of that, Heger says is “to offer options for transporting grains, including wheat.” Ukraine is a major world wheat supplier and Russia’s war on Ukraine is creating shortages, notably in the Middle East.
Western nations have stepped up sanctions against Russia following the alleged atrocities found on the outskirts of Kyiv. A day after the United States imposed sanctions on President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters, the European Union and Britain followed suit Friday.
The U.S. Congress voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban the importation of its oil, while the EU approved an embargo on coal imports. The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, voted to suspend Russia from the world organization’s leading human rights body.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.N. vote demonstrated how “Putin’s war has made Russia an international pariah.” He called the images coming from Bucha “horrifying.”
“The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed — in some cases having their bodies desecrated — are an outrage to our common humanity,” Biden said.
___
Anna reported from Bucha, Ukraine. Andrea Rosa in Chernihiv, Ukraine, and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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| 2022-04-08T13:26:26Z
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TULSA, Okla., April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fresh from his victory at the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) event in Ohio in March, Venn Johns competes for a home crowed in PBR Tulsa on April 15 and 16 at the BOK Center.
"I've been working toward and anticipating this day," said Johns. "The opportunity to compete at PBR's top level is not a guarantee. It must be earned."
The journey to that championship buckle is arduous requiring hard work, long drives, and money. Many bull riders, in addition to athletic careers, have jobs outside the competition chutes. Some are fortunate to hone other skills while perfecting their bull riding. Johns is certified IT professional with more than 20 years of IT experience. He recently joined ArcLight Group, a Tulsa IT services company as one of the first CMCC Cyber Security Architects in Oklahoma.
"We are proud to have Venn on our team," said Brian Largent, CEO of ArcLight Group. "He embodies everything ArcLight Group stands for, integrity, hard work, diligence, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, reliability and the drive to excellence. We are thrilled to have him represent us and look forward to cheering him to victory when PBR comes to Tulsa."
ArcLight Group, along with Arena Pub & Grill and Kickers, is hosting a "Meet The Bull Riding Ninja" experience from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m.. Fans are invited to celebrate with drink specials, prizes (including front-row tickets to the PBR event) and a meet and greet with Johns. Fans are also invited to the ArcLight Group, Arena Pub & Grill/Kickers official Bull Riding Ninja post event parties at the pub immediately following the PBR event both nights.
"I have been training for this moment since I got on my first bull," said Johns. "I am laser focused on bringing Tulsa a hometown win."
For additional information about the "Meet the Bull Riding Ninja" pre-PBR event party, visit Arena Pub & Grill – Tulsa on Facebook. For information about The Bull Riding Ninja, follow Johns on social media using the handle Vennmmm. Learn about ArcLight Group, visit ArcLightGroup.com.
About Venn Johns:
The oldest professional bull rider competing at the most elite level, Venn Johns relies on training for the American Ninja Warrior and several recovery techniques to be competitive with riders and ninjas half his age. He has trained with the legendary PRCA World Champion bull rider, Gary Leffew.
Some of Johns' other accomplishments include: U.S. National Men's Gymnastics team member, Oklahoma University full gymnastics scholarship recipient, Black Best in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Karate, Championship bull riding title - South America, and American Ninja Warrior competitor.
About ArcLight Group:
ArcLight Group partners with many types of businesses in Tulsa and nationwide to provide managed IT services and eliminate IT issues before they cause expensive downtime. We help other businesses grow and move forward.
View original content:
SOURCE The ArcLight Group
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https://www.wrdw.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/arclight-groups-venn-johns-bull-riding-ninja-wins-pbr-dayton-competes-aprils-pbr-tulsa/
| 2022-04-08T13:28:02Z
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Show off your fandom with TinyTAN Tamagotchi and limited edition TinyTAN Hugmy Tamagotchi figures!
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Bandai Namco Toys & Collectibles America Inc. has a BIG announcement with their latest collaboration! Your favorite animated characters, inspired by 21st century pop icons BTS, are being transported through the Magic Door to your palm! The TinyTAN Tamagotchi is the must-have interactive accessory that brings you closer to the TinyTAN characters than ever before!
Clean and knock on the Magic Door to interact with the lovable TinyTAN characters! How you interact with the Magic Door will change the TinyTAN character. Spend time with TinyTAN and play two mini-games inspired by BTS: DANCE! Dynamite! and Make a Custard Tart! Depending on how you spend your time with the TinyTAN characters and what games you play, the characters' outfits and hairstyles will change. If you neglect the TinyTAN characters, their stress barometer will increase, and they will return to the Magic Door.
The TinyTAN Tamagotchi is available in two versions: Purple ver. (Inspired by "Magic Door") and Red ver. (Inspired by "MIC Drop")! A limited-edition TinyTAN Hugmy Tamagotchi, which features an exclusive Black ver. device adorably hugged by a soft vinyl collectible figure, is also available. The TinyTAN Hugmy Tamagotchi comes with one of the seven character versions: RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook!
"We are incredibly excited to offer a new interactive experience with the beloved TinyTAN characters, who are the adorable mini versions of the members of world phenomenon BTS," said Trish Garrett, Bandai America Brand Strategist. "The TinyTAN characters add a really fun spin on the Tamagotchi play pattern fans know and love."
TinyTAN Tamagotchi devices and figures go on pre-sale April 8th, 2022 on Amazon before hitting store shelves in October.
- Befriend the TinyTAN characters: RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook!
- Get to know the TinyTAN characters by spending time with them
- Serve the TinyTAN characters their favorite foods
- Characters' hairstyles and costumes change depending how you spend your time with them and what mini-games you play.
- Keep your character's stress barometer low or they will go back to Magic Door.
- Play two TinyTAN-inspired mini-games:
- Available in two different shells
- This is a Tamagotchi nano device, which measures approximately 1.57 inches
- Age grade: 8+
- Price: $19.99
- Battery (2 x LR44) included
- No Wi-Fi needed
- Includes a soft vinyl TinyTAN character figure hugging the Tamagotchi Nano device
- The exclusive Black ver. TinyTAN Tamagotchi device features the same game play as other color shells.
- 7 available figures sold separately: RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook!
- Vinyl figures can be displayed with or without Tamagotchi Nano device
- This is a Tamagotchi nano device, which measures approximately 1.57 inches
- Age grade: 8+
- Price: $44.99
- Battery (2 x LR44) included
- No Wi-Fi needed
For more information, please visit www.bandai.com
Bandai Namco Toys & Collectibles America Inc. exists to share dreams, fun and inspiration with people around the world. Connecting people and societies in the enjoyment of uniquely entertaining products and services, we're working to create a brighter future for everyone. A leader in developing engaging, quality toys that capture children's and collector's imaginative spirit and provide endless "Fun For All into the Future," Bandai Namco Toys & Collectibles America Inc. is the manufacturer and master toy licensee of some of the most popular brands in children's toys, pop culture figures and interactive entertainment today. The Bandai Namco Toys & Collectibles America Inc. brand family includes PAC-MAN®, Gundam, Dragon Ball®, Vital Hero, Anime Heroes™, Bandai Hobby Model Kits, Tamashii Nations, DIGIMON® and Tamagotchi®, among other toys and hobby product lines. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California. Find out more about our expertise in connecting with kids in fun and fresh ways at www.bandai.com.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Bandai logo: TM & © 2022 Bandai Namco
Since launching in Japan in 1996, the Tamagotchi series of portable nurturing toys has expanded overseas, selling more than 83 million units worldwide (as of March 31, 2021). The Tamagotchinano series, in particular, is a worldwide Tamagotchi series that has been developed in Japan in collaboration with some of the most popular fandoms. The Tamagotchinano series has resonated with people of all ages, who enjoy playing as much as they do collecting.
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE Bandai Namco Toys & Collectibles America Inc.
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https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/bandai-namco-toys-amp-collectibles-america-inc-launches-tinytan-tamagotchi/
| 2022-04-08T13:28:16Z
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DENVER, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Board of Trustees (the "Board") for the Clough Global Equity Fund (the "Fund") has declared a monthly cash distribution of $0.1162 per common share, payable on the dates noted below. The Fund's managed distribution policy is set the monthly distribution rate at an amount equal to one twelfth of 10% of the Fund's adjusted year-end net asset value per share ("NAV"), which will be the average of the NAVs as of the last five business days of the prior calendar year.
The following dates apply to the distributions declared:
Ex-Date: April 18, 2022
Record Date: April 19, 2022
Payable Date: April 29, 2022
Ex-Date: May 19, 2022
Record Date: May 20, 2022
Payable Date: May 31, 2022
Ex-Date: June 16, 2022
Record Date: June 17, 2022
Payable Date: June 30, 2022
A portion of the distribution may be treated as paid from sources other than net income, including but not limited to short-term capital gain, long-term capital gain and return of capital. The final determination of the source of all distributions, including the percentage of qualified dividend income, will be made after year-end.
The Clough Global Equity Fund
The Fund is a closed-end fund utilizing Clough Capital's research-driven, thematic process, with an investment objective of providing a high level of total return. Having a global, flexible mandate, the Fund will invest at least 80% in equity and equity-related securities in both U.S. and non-U.S. markets, and the remainder in fixed income securities, including corporate and sovereign debt, in both U.S. and non-U.S. markets . The Fund's portfolio managers are Chuck Clough and Rob Zdunczyk. As of March 31st, 2022 the Fund had approximately $416.5 million in total assets. More information, including the Fund's dividend reinvestment plan, can be found at www.cloughglobal.com or call 877-256-8445.
Clough Capital Partners L.P.
Clough Capital is a Boston-based investment advisory firm which manages approximately $2.1 billion in assets: $700 million in hedge fund and institutional accounts; $73 million in open-end mutual funds; and $1.4 billion in three closed-end funds (as of March 31, 2022) – Clough Global Dividend and Income Fund (GLV), Clough Global Equity Fund (GLQ), and Clough Global Opportunities Fund (GLO).
An investor should consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. To obtain an annual report or semi-annual report which contains this and other information visit www.cloughglobal.com or call 877-256-8445. Read the prospectus carefully before investing.
The Clough Global Equity Fund is a closed-end fund and closed-end funds do not continuously issue shares for sale as open-end mutual funds do. Since the initial public offering, the Fund now trades in the secondary market. Investors wishing to buy or sell shares need to place orders through an intermediary or broker. The share price of a closed-end fund is based on the market's value.
Forward-looking statements are based on information that is available on the date hereof, and neither the fund manager nor any other person affiliated with the fund manager has any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Important factors that could affect actual results to differ from these statements include, among other factors, material, negative changes to the asset class and the actual composition of the portfolio.
ALPS Portfolio Solutions Distributor, Inc, FINRA Member Firm.
CLO001859 1/9/2024
Clough Global Equity Fund (NYSE MKT: GLQ)
1290 Broadway, Suite 1000
Denver, CO 80203
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE SS&C / Clough CEF; Clough Global Dividend and Income Fund; Clough Global Equity Fund; Clough Global Opportunities Fund
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https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/clough-global-equity-fund-declares-monthly-cash-distributions-april-may-june-2022-01162-per-share/
| 2022-04-08T13:29:07Z
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https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/clough-global-equity-fund-declares-monthly-cash-distributions-april-may-june-2022-01162-per-share/
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DENVER, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Board of Trustees (the "Board") for the Clough Global Opportunities Fund (the "Fund") has declared a monthly cash distribution of $0.0943 per common share, payable on the dates noted below. The Fund's managed distribution policy is to set the monthly distribution rate at an amount equal to one twelfth of 10% of the Fund's adjusted year-end net asset value per share ("NAV"), which will be the average of the NAVs as of the last five business days of the prior calendar year.
The following dates apply to the distributions declared:
Ex-Date: April 18, 2022
Record Date: April 19, 2022
Payable Date: April 29, 2022
Ex-Date: May 19, 2022
Record Date: May 20, 2022
Payable Date: May 31, 2022
Ex-Date: June 16, 2022
Record Date: June 17, 2022
Payable Date: June 30, 2022
A portion of the distribution may be treated as paid from sources other than net income, including but not limited to short-term capital gain, long-term capital gain and return of capital. The final determination of the source of all distributions, including the percentage of qualified dividend income, will be made after year-end.
The Clough Global Opportunities Fund
The Fund is a closed-end fund with an investment objective of providing a high level of total return. The Fund seeks to achieve this objective by applying a fundamental research-driven investment process and will invest in equity and equity-related securities as well as fixed income securities, including both corporate and sovereign debt. Utilizing Clough Capital's global research capabilities, the Fund will invest in both U.S. and non-U.S. markets. The Fund's portfolio managers are Chuck Clough and Rob Zdunczyk. As of March 31st, 2022 the Fund had approximately $754.7 million in total assets. More information, including the Fund's dividend reinvestment plan, can be found at www.cloughglobal.com or call 877-256-8445.
Clough Capital Partners L.P.
Clough Capital is a Boston-based investment advisory firm which manages approximately $2.1 billion in assets: $700 million in hedge fund and institutional accounts; $73 million in open-end mutual funds; and $1.4 billion in three closed-end funds (as of March 31, 2022) – Clough Global Dividend and Income Fund (GLV), Clough Global Equity Fund (GLQ), and Clough Global Opportunities Fund (GLO).
An investor should consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before investing. To obtain an annual report or semi-annual report which contains this and other information visit www.cloughglobal.com or call 877-256-8445. Read them carefully before investing.
The Clough Global Opportunities Fund is a closed-end fund and closed-end funds do not continuously issue shares for sale as open-end mutual funds do. Since the initial public offering, the Fund now trades in the secondary market. Investors wishing to buy or sell shares need to place orders through an intermediary or broker. The share price of a closed-end fund is based on the market's value.
Forward-looking statements are based on information that is available on the date hereof, and neither the fund manager nor any other person affiliated with the fund manager has any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Important factors that could affect actual results to differ from these statements include, among other factors, material, negative changes to the asset class and the actual composition of the portfolio.
ALPS Portfolio Solutions Distributor, Inc, FINRA Member Firm.
Clough Global Opportunities Fund (NYSE MKT: GLO)
1290 Broadway, Suite 1000
Denver, CO 80203
Contact: Fund Services Group at 877-256-8445
View original content to download multimedia:
SOURCE SS&C / Clough CEF; Clough Global Dividend and Income Fund; Clough Global Equity Fund; Clough Global Opportunities Fund
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https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/clough-global-opportunities-fund-declares-monthly-cash-distributions-april-may-june-2022-00943-per-share/
| 2022-04-08T13:29:16Z
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https://www.wave3.com/prnewswire/2022/04/08/clough-global-opportunities-fund-declares-monthly-cash-distributions-april-may-june-2022-00943-per-share/
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Hyderabad: Tamil hero Thalapathy Vijay and Pooja Hegde's 'Beast' is gearing up for its grand release soon. Director Nelson Dilip Kumar, who is excited about the forthcoming release, reveals the reason behind roping in Pooja Hegde for the role.
The writer-director of Tamil's much-awaited movie 'Beast' states that he envisioned that Pooja Hegde would not only spark great chemistry with the star but also would emerge as the perfect fit for the part in the movie.
In an exclusive interaction, Nelson Dilipkumar said, "When we were finalizing the cast for 'Beast', 'Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo' had also just released. In that movie, Pooja had done a fabulous job and won hearts nationally. I wanted a pairing that would be new and fresh, someone who has never worked with Vijay sir."
Nelson also stated that Pooja had worked hard for the role in 'Beast', even though Tamil is not her native language. "She learned the language and spoke her lines", Nelson Dilipkumar conveyed.
Beast is written and directed by Nelson Dilipkumar and is produced by Sun Pictures. The music of the film is composed by Anirudh Ravichander.
Starring Thalapathy Vijay, Pooja Hegde, Selvaraghavan, Yogi Babu, Lilliput Faruqui, and Ankur Ajit Vikal, the much-awaited movie 'Beast' releases on April 13.
It will be released by UFO Moviez in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on the same day across north India.
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https://www.onmanorama.com/entertainment/entertainment-news/2022/04/08/director-nelson-dilipkumar-pooja-hegde-beast.amp.html
| 2022-04-08T13:29:36Z
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onmanorama.com
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