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BEIJING (AP) — The first day of medals at the Beijing Olympics could be the start of another Norwegian gold rush.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde is among the favorites in the men's downhill — one of the marquee events of NBC's prime-time coverage Saturday — and fellow Norwegian Therese Johaug looks poised to add to the three Olympic medals she's already won in cross-country skiing. Norway led all nations with 39 medals at Pyeongchang four years ago, including 14 golds.
The U.S., of course, has its share of contenders. Snowboarder Jamie Anderson is trying for a third straight slopestyle gold, and the final is Saturday night. The team figure skating competition resumes that evening, too. The Americans lead that after a strong start by Nathan Chen and Co.
Here are some things to watch (all times Eastern):
ALPINE SKIING
The world's top downhill racers had little time to familiarize themselves with the Rock course after test events were canceled because of the pandemic.
“For everybody it is new, us athletes as well as the coaches," Switzerland's Marco Odermatt said. “It’s a big challenge for the whole team to find a perfect setup.”
The downhill will be shown live on NBC and Peacock. It’s scheduled to start at 10 p.m.
Kilde, the World Cup leader, is dating American star Mikaela Shiffrin.
FIGURE SKATING
The U.S. leads the powerful Russians and third-place China so far in the team competition. Chen won the men's short program, and Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue did the same in the rhythm dance.
Up next are the women's short program and men's free skate. NBC is airing that part of the team event live in prime time.
“We have a really strong team, so we have a lot of chess pieces to play with,” Chen said. "Whatever is the strongest piece at that time is the strongest piece at that time.”
SNOWBOARDING
USA Network is showing men's and women's slopestyle live Saturday night. The final runs of the women's competition are followed by qualifying for the men. NBC will include encore coverage of the women's final on its late-night slate.
The U.S. swept slopestyle snowboarding in 2018, with Anderson and Red Gerard both winning.
The slopestyle course in Zhangjiakou includes a snow replica of the Great Wall that serves as a backdrop for the rails and jumps athletes will navigate.
NORWEGIAN STAR
Johaug won gold in a relay in 2010 and took two more cross-country skiing medals in 2014. She missed the 2018 Games following a doping ban, but the 14-time world champion is back now. The skiathlon — an event that includes both classical and freestyle techniques — is live on USA Network on Saturday morning with encore coverage on NBC in the afternoon.
ALSO OF NOTE
Of the 13 gold medals China has won at the Winter Games, 10 were in short track speedskating. The hosts have high hopes again in that sport, and the first short track medal will be awarded in the mixed team relay. USA Network is showing that final during its 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. time slot, and NBC will air it in prime time. ... Canada's Mikael Kingsbury is the defending champ in men's moguls. USA Network will show qualifying and the final live Saturday morning, and the final will also be shown as part of NBC's late-night coverage. ... The U.S. women's hockey team, which began defending its Olympic title with a win over Finland, faces the Russians live on USA Network at 8:10 a.m. That game will be shown again at 5 p.m. on the same channel.
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Follow Noah Trister at www.Twitter.com/noahtrister
___
More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Men-s-downhill-highlights-first-day-of-Olympic-16832057.php | 2022-02-04T18:51:42 | en | 0.966458 |
With the brutal omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation's death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000.
The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the U.S. stood at over 897,000 as of midday Friday, with deaths running at an average of more than 2,400 a day, back up to where they were last winter, when the vaccine drive was still getting started.
New cases per day have tanked by almost a half-million nationwide since mid-January, the curve trending downward in every state but Maine. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen 15% over that period to about 124,000.
Similarly, an early-warning program that looks for the virus in sewage found that COVID-19 infections are declining in the majority of participating U.S. communities, according to data posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Deaths are still on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
But the trends are giving public health officials hope that the worst of omicron is coming to an end, though they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge.
Los Angeles County may end outdoor mask requirements in a few weeks, Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. But that is unlikely to happen before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, which will draw as many as 100,000 people to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Ferrer said COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in California’s biggest county are falling, and deaths may start to drop as well.
“Post-surge does not imply that the pandemic is over or that transmission is low, or that there will not be unpredictable waves of surges in the future,” she warned.
Arizona has also seen its daily case and hospitalization numbers decline, though deaths are still on the rise, climbing from average of about 61 a day last week to almost 79 as of Tuesday.
“We have reason to be hopeful, but we are by no means out of the woods,” Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of epidemiology, said Thursday on Twitter.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she is calling an end to the state's coronavirus public health emergency, a move that will limit the release of health data. The step reflects her long-held belief that it is time to get past pandemic restrictions and move toward the point when COVID-19 becomes, like the flu, a manageable part of everyday life.
In Washington state, the Legislature is allowing double the number of senators on the chamber floor starting Monday.
Overall, new cases in the U.S. have plummeted from a record-obliterating average of more than 800,000 a day in mid-January to about 357,000.
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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Paul Davenport in Phoenix; Robert Jablon in Los Angeles; Michael Stobbe in New York; and Michelle Monroe in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/COVID-falling-in-49-of-50-states-as-deaths-near-16832008.php | 2022-02-04T18:51:45 | en | 0.962078 |
Dutch VJ manhandled during Olympic live shot
- Country:
- China
A correspondent in Beijing for Dutch national broadcaster NOS was manhandled away from his camera during a live news show shortly before the Winter Olympics opening ceremony.
Sjoerd den Daas, the NOS correspondent in China, was speaking to the camera when security officials pushed him away.
Den Daas remained calm and told the anchor in the Netherlands, “I fear we will have to come back to you later.” The broadcaster says in a tweet that “sadly, this is increasingly the daily reality for journalists in China.'' It adds that Den Daas is fine and was able to “complete his story a few minutes later.”
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
ALSO READ
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China daily local confirmed COVID cases fall to nearly two-month low | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/1910758-dutch-vj-manhandled-during-olympic-live-shot | 2022-02-04T18:51:45 | en | 0.963049 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A suspect was arrested in an altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan in a parking lot outside SoFi Stadium during last weekend’s NFC championship game between the 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams, authorities said Friday.
A 33-year-old man was arrested for investigation of assault by means to produce great bodily injury and was released on $30,000 bail, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. told a press conference.
Investigators traced the suspect through a vehicle at the scene and after the suspect declined to come in, they went to him and he voluntarily came to the police station where he was advised of his rights, Butts said.
The mayor said the case will be presented to prosecutors.
The 49ers fan, Daniel Luna, 40, had to be put into a medically induced coma after he was punched, fell and struck his head on the ground, according to Butts. The mayor said Friday that Luna's condition had neither improved nor degraded.
Butts said police sought the man who threw a punch in a brief fight based on a blurry video and the license plate of a car.
Luna, who owns a restaurant in Oakland, was mingling in a crowd of about 16 people at SoFi Stadium, most of them wearing what appeared to be 49ers jerseys, when he pushed a man wearing a Rams jersey from behind, Butts said Thursday after viewing the video.
Before that, Butts said, “there didn’t seem to be any hostilities.”
When Luna turned to walk away, the man pushed Luna back, the mayor said. When Luna turned, the man punched him in the mouth, causing Luna to fall to the ground and hit the back of his head, Butts said, estimating that the encounter lasted less than five seconds.
“It looked like a small altercation that went very bad,” he said. “From one punch and someone falling, hitting their head on the ground. It wasn’t like you had people ganging up on somebody and beating them.”
Luna’s face was fractured and he was placed in a medically induced coma to prevent internal bleeding from swelling his brain, Butts said.
The mayor said the video isn’t clear enough to provide a description of the suspect but he was seen talking to some people in a car. Security won’t be increased because of the incident, the mayor said.
“I’m very comfortable there was sufficient security” in the parking lot, he said. “There is plenty of security in the parking lot. You’re not going to stop every altercation, argument between fans. It’s just not going to happen.”
The Rams beat the 49ers on Sunday 20-17 to advance to the Super Bowl, where they will play the Cincinnati Bengals on Feb. 13.
The attack was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. | https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Police-Arrest-in-altercation-that-badly-injured-16831849.php | 2022-02-04T18:51:48 | en | 0.984675 |
New cases of a debilitating and often deadly type of stroke that causes bleeding in the brain have been increasing in the U.S., growing at an even faster rate among younger to middle-aged adults than older ones, new research shows.
The findings show an 11% increase over the past decade and a half in intracerebral hemorrhage strokes, referred to as ICH strokes. The research, being presented next week at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference, was published Thursday in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
"From a public health perspective, these results are troubling and indicate risk factors are not being well managed in young adults in the U.S.," said Dr. Karen Furie, chief of neurology at Rhode Island Hospital and chair of the department of neurology at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence. Furie was not involved in the research.
"Earlier onset of this disease is very alarming and indicates we need to be more aggressive with primary prevention," she said.
ICH strokes occur when blood vessels in the brain rupture and bleed. They are the second most common type, accounting for 10%-15% of the estimated 795,000 strokes each year in the U.S. Globally in 2020, 18.9 million people had an intracerebral hemorrhage, according to the AHA's most recent heart and stroke statistics report. They are more deadly and more likely to cause long-term disability than other types of stroke.
Smaller previous studies have reached conflicting conclusions about whether the rate of ICH has been rising or falling in the U.S.
In the new study, lead researcher Abdulaziz Bako, a postdoctoral fellow at Houston Methodist Hospital, and colleagues used aggregated nationwide data from 803,230 ICH hospitalizations. They calculated the rate of ICH over five consecutive three-year periods from 2004 to 2018. People were divided into four age groups: 18-44 years; 45-64 years; 65-74 years; and 75 years and older.
Overall, researchers found an 11% increase in the rate of ICH among U.S. adults over the 15-year study period. ICH increased at a faster rate for adults under age 65 compared to those 75 and older. The rate of increase also varied by region, climbing faster in the South, West and Midwest than it did in the Northeast. ICH stroke rates were 43% higher for men than women.
Among those who had ICH strokes, the percentage of people who had high blood pressure also rose, from 74.5% to 86.4% over the study period.
High blood pressure is a major risk factor for an ICH stroke, as is increasing age. The findings are alarming, Furie said, because they suggest blood pressure is so poorly controlled among younger adults that they risk losing the most productive years of their lives.
"ICH occurs after decades of vascular damage from unmanaged high blood pressure," she said. "It's terrible that this is occurring."
Failure to reverse the trend "could be devastating," Furie said. "We're talking about decades of disability that could be a burden for the individual, their family and society as a whole."
Bako said that's why future studies should really focus on these young age groups, "particularly because they are more likely to be economically productive, and an increase among this population in the long term might lead to much more burden to the comorbidity profile of the country than if the increase were among people who are much older."
Bako is part of a team also presenting findings at the stroke conference from a related study that found a disproportionate rate of ICH among Asian American and Pacific Islander adults, who are experiencing ICH strokes at a younger age than their white peers.
"We need to be teaching people to adopt a healthy diet, engage in regular physical activity, avoid heavy alcohol and drug use and monitor for vascular risk factors during young adulthood," Furie said. "This is the only way to ensure the problem does not become symptomatic by the time they reach their 40s and 50s."
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Google Photos new update breaks magic eraser feature on Pixel 6 phones
The latest Google Photos app update ((version 5.76.0.425427310) has broken the magic eraser feature on Pixel 6 phones.
- Country:
- United States
The latest Google Photos app update ((version 5.76.0.425427310) has broken the magic eraser feature on Pixel 6 phones. As per GSM Arena, the bug appears to be affecting plenty of Pixel 6 and 6 Pro owners and there's no way to fix it for now. Once a user goes into a photo and tries to use the magic eraser feature on the phone, the app crashes and shuts the home screen.
This bug is the latest among the network connectivity issues, unresponsive fingerprint scanners and several others in the long list of bugs and problems with the Pixel 6 line. There is no solution for the magic eraser bug currently so if any user has not updated the Photos app, GSM Arena advises to turn off auto-updates and stay put until Google issues a fix. (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/1910782-google-photos-new-update-breaks-magic-eraser-feature-on-pixel-6-phones | 2022-02-04T18:51:52 | en | 0.867825 |
BEIJING (AP) — The clock is ticking for American speedskater Casey Dawson to get to his first Olympics.
He tested positive for COVID-19 three weeks ago. Recently, Dawson had been testing negative and he believed that by producing two consecutive negative tests he would be cleared to join his teammates in Beijing.
"Everything was good until I received news that they now require four negative tests to even consider sending me over,” Dawson wrote in an Instagram post.
He's also had issues with testing centers in Utah that must be approved by the Chinese consulate.
“My expectation is that he'll get here,” Matt Kooreman, long track program director for US Speedskating, said Friday.
Kooreman said they’re targeting an arrival date of Monday for Dawson.
“He’s such a level-headed guy,” Kooreman said. “I’m more worried about the people around him freaking out than I am him freaking out.”
Dawson's first individual event is the 5,000 meters on Sunday. He would be replaced by Emery Lehman, a two-time Olympian. Dawson also qualified for the 1,500 on Tuesday, and could be replaced by Ethan Cepuran.
US Speedskating is eager to get Dawson to Beijing in time to join in the team pursuit. The quarterfinals are Feb. 13, with semifinals and the final two days later. The U.S. men are strong medal contenders in the event.
Dawson, a 21-year-old skater from Park City, Utah, has been training at the Utah Olympic Oval to stay sharp while his COVID-19 situation plays out. He is set to receive his U.S. Olympic clothing and gear this weekend.
“Now let's just pass this test," Kooreman said, "and get a plane ticket.”
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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Speedskater-Dawson-stuck-in-US-still-hopes-to-16832094.php | 2022-02-04T18:51:54 | en | 0.984258 |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The newest judge tapped to oversee the investigation into the killing of President Jovenel Moïse told The Associated Press on Friday that he has not decided whether to take the case amid concerns of putting his life in danger.
Judge Chavannes Étienne said his family is pressuring him not to accept the case because they fear for his life. If he were to accept, he would become the third judge to take over the case.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Étienne had to respond by a certain date. He previously oversaw the investigation into the November 2018 massacre of an estimated dozens of people at La Saline, a seaside slum in Haiti’s capital.
Magistrate Bernard Saint-Vil, dean of the Court of First Instance in Port-au-Prince, told AP that he had chosen Étienne but declined further comment as fears grow that the ongoing rotation of judges would delay the case.
Judge Garry Orélien had been overseeing the case but recently stepped down amid corruption accusations that he denied. He also had asked for more time to investigate the July 7 assassination, but Saint-Vil denied the request.
Orélien was appointed after another judge stepped down in August citing personal reasons, a move that came after one of his assistants died under unclear circumstances.
More than 40 people have been arrested in the killing of Moïse at his private residence, including several Haitian police officers, a former senator and 18 ex Colombian soldiers, the majority of whom the Colombian government says were duped.
Two other suspects were extradited recently to the U.S.: Rodolphe Jaar, a former U.S. government informant arrested in the Dominican Republic in January and Mario Palacios, an ex-Colombian soldier detained in Jamaica in October.
Palacios' attorney had requested an additional month to prepare his defense, and it was granted by a federal judge in Miami on Friday. The defense attorney said Palacios will plead not guilty in March. Meanwhile, a hearing for Jaar was postponed for later this month. He hasn't entered a plea and recently obtained a new defense attorney.
Jaar and Palacios have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States and with providing material support resulting in death, knowing or intending that such material support would be used to prepare for or carry out the conspiracy to kill or kidnap.
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Associated Press writer Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Gisela Solomón in Miami contributed. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Haiti-seeks-3rd-judge-to-oversee-case-of-slain-16832103.php | 2022-02-04T18:51:57 | en | 0.982631 |
With millions of dollars pouring into endorsements for college athletes, the latest battleground in the recruiting wars is the statehouse: A handful of states are already considering changing barely-dried rules to help their flagship schools land — or keep — top prospects.
Over the past three years, at least 25 states put laws or executive orders in place addressing name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes. All the measures make it clear that the NCAA can no longer limit this kind of revenue but some did set some ground rules.
It’s those restrictions, which vary from state to state, that are now getting a second look as competition to land the nation's top high school athletes heats up.
Alabama and Florida lawmakers are already considering repealing or making major changes to laws governing college athlete compensation less than a year after enacting them. Ohio State officials last week made it easier for their school to link athletes to big-dollar contracts.
The moves could be the start of a neverending effort to redefine the landscape for college recruiting where states try to constantly outdo each other, said Gabe Feldman, director of Tulane’s sports law program.
“If the latest state law is more permissive, then other states are going to have to follow suit, and will follow suit. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now," Feldman said. “Schools will do as much as they can do within the rules to compete. The only way to stay on a level playing field is to remove those state laws.”
In Alabama, a bill to repeal a 7-month-old college athlete compensation law sailed through the state House 97-1 and awaits action in the Senate.
“It may be the shortest-lived (bill) to stay in law ever,” said Alabama state Rep. Kyle South, the sponsor of both the law and the bill to dump it. “Pass it one year, repeal it the next.”
South said the two biggest schools in his state, Alabama and Auburn, support the repeal effort. Alabama has a 2022 recruiting class ranked among the best in the country and Auburn was top 20.
“They want to be able to go out on the recruiting trail and say, ’We’re playing by the same set of rules .... We’re on the same level playing field as Texas and Michigan,'” South said.
The rules mashup was created when court decisions and public opinion prompted a number of states, California first among them, to pass laws securing the right for athletes to earn endorsement money. With little choice, the NCAA on July 1 cleared the way for its athletes to start cashing in, laying down the barest of guidelines that bar pay-for-play and using endorsements as recruiting inducements.
Schools were told to create their own polices and follow any applicable state laws. And while many state laws share similar characteristics, they remain uneven. For example, states may have different rules regarding use of team logos in endorsements, or limit school involvement in connecting athletes to businesses. A few simply give wide latitude to their schools to write their own rules within the minimal guidelines of the NCAA.
“The simple fact is some states have a competitive advantage (for recruits) over others,” said South, the Alabama lawmaker.
Some Florida lawmakers want to eliminate the state’s ban on schools helping facilitate player endorsement deals. The change was proposed the same day Florida State lost a five-star recruit to tiny Jackson State; the sponsor of the measure insists the timing was a coincidence.
Florida state Rep. Chip LaMarca, author of the original law and the proposed change, said he is not interested in repealing the whole thing, just tweaking it to let schools get more directly involved in helping athletes make deals. LaMarca said he doesn’t want to eliminate other provisions, such as mandatory financial training designed to help athletes manage their contracts and earnings.
“Repealing the bill would not be about protecting the athletes,” LaMarca said.
His effort has struggled to gain traction, however. House Speaker Chris Sprowls this week called it a low priority while adding, "to a certain extent it’s like a race to bottom in college sports. Like, how many sports cars can we put in the hands of 18-year-olds?”
In Ohio, athlete compensation rules were set by an executive order from the governor. Buckeyes officials determined they could change their own rules to create a new program and have the school be a link between players and businesses.
“Our guidelines were initially created to be restrictive, but now that we have a better understanding of NIL, it’s clear that we can provide more assistance in connecting student-athletes with interested brands," Ohio State senior associate athletic director Carey Hoyt said. “Updating our NIL guidelines at this time is what we needed to do to stay competitive in this ultra-competitive landscape."
Buckeyes football coach Ryan Day welcomed the move. He described “uneasiness” among coaches and schools “because what one place can do maybe another place can’t, and trying to figure out what those norms are going to be because it’s so new. But we’re adapting fast.”
Being nimble is key amid the fierce competition. Supporters of major programs fight to stand out while giving a wink and a nod to the NCAA ban on using NIL deals as recruiting inducements. At more than a dozen major programs across the country, third-party “collectives” and nonprofits have formed to pool millions from businesses and donors to offer endorsement deals.
At Texas, for example, the Clark Field Collective said it had up to $10 million pledged to support NIL deals for Longhorns athletes. Days later, the nonprofit Horns with Heart launched with a promise of $50,000 annually to scholarship offensive linemen for NIL deals supporting charities.
Feldman cautioned that if a lot of states follow Alabama's effort to repeal rather than tweak their NIL laws, it would give the NCAA the chance to move in and create a new set of regulations.
“The states that are hamstrung are the ones with restrictions on school involvement and use of logos,” Feldman said. “I frankly think it would be a mistake to completely repeal as that would open up a space for the NCAA to step in.”
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AP Sports Writer Mitch Stacy contributed from Columbus, Ohio.
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More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25 | https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Statehouses-latest-front-in-college-athlete-16832007.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:00 | en | 0.967321 |
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Black man's argument that he was denied his right to an impartial jury because of a flawed process that excluded Black people and resulted in only white jurors.
It is the second time the state’s high court heard an appeal from Kenneth Lee Lilly, who was convicted for helping a relative rob a southeast Iowa bank in 2016. Lilly alleged that his right to an impartial jury under both the U.S. and Iowa constitutions was violated because neither his jury nor the group from which his jury was selected contained any Black people.
Lilly, 57, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for robbery with a mandatory 17 1/2 years to be served before parole eligibility. He was accused of driving Lafayette A. Evans, a relative from Nashville, Tennessee, to a branch of the Fort Madison Bank on June 29, 2016. Evans fired several shots in the bank and at a police officer. He ran away with $224,000 in a backpack but died after being shot by officers.
Lilly was tried in Lee County, where about 3% of the population of 33,000 is Black.
In the first appeal in 2019, the court returned Lilly's case to the district court for a hearing on whether his rights were violated by the jury selection process. The judge rejected his claims and Lilly again appealed.
The court upheld the lower court's decision that he failed to prove Black citizens are excluded from jury pools because they are underrepresented in the voter registration and driver's license lists from which names are drawn in Iowa.
Lawyers for the Iowa attorney general, Lilly and the NAACP, which wrote a friend of the court brief supporting a new trial for Lilly, did not immediately respond to messages.
Lilly claimed that low-income people tend to register to vote and to acquire driver’s licenses and nonoperator identification cards at a lower rate than other members of the community. He also said Black citizens make up a higher percentage of low-income people in Lee County. And he inferred that Black people are underrepresented in the lists from which jury pools are sourced.
In hearing his case the first time, the court established that such jury pool challenges must identify a practice that led to the underrepresentation, and it cannot be “run-of-the-mill” jury management practices.
Many states use voter registration and driver's license identification lists to construct a list from which to draw jury pools, Justice Matthew McDermott wrote for the court, which unanimously agreed. The lists are the only ones that Iowa law requires courts to use in drawing jury pools.
“Because he challenges a run-of-the-mill practice, and no other practices, Lilly cannot show a violation under the Sixth Amendment,” the court said. The court also concluded Lilly's challenge under the Iowa Constitution fails because he offered no evidence to establish that low-income people register to vote or get driver’s licenses or nonoperator identification cards at lower rates.
While all seven justices agreed with the outcome, Justice Edward Mansfield, joined in his opinion by Justice Brent Appel, left the door open to such challenges, saying if it is found that "a practice that leads to systematic underrepresentation of a distinctive group in jury pools can be identified and corrected, there is no reason to shield that practice from scrutiny just because it is relatively commonplace." He said Iowa lawyers are gathering data.
Justice Christopher McDonald, in a separate opinion joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Thomas Waterman, was more willing to block such challenges, saying allowing such cases to continue to surface “is undermining the administration of justice, rendering it incredibly difficult simply to have a jury trial without months of discovery, expensive motion practice, expensive expert witness testimony, and days of hearings.” | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Iowa-court-affirms-process-that-may-exclude-Black-16832125.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:03 | en | 0.974719 |
Across both Super Bowl rosters, there is a great divide.
The Rams are the team loaded with veterans and the Bengals are the new kids on the block. Los Angeles has the star power, which figures with Hollywood next door. Cincinnati has a bunch of relative no names outside of Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor worked for Rams boss Sean McVay — even though Taylor is more than two years older.
Both teams were No. 4 seeds after winning their divisions, so there are some similarities. It might be the differences that, well, make the difference on Feb. 13 at SoFi Stadium. Oh, yeah, that happens to be the Rams' new home.
WHEN THE BENGALS HAVE THE BALL:
Burrow (9) and Chase (1) are the Dynamic Duo for Cincinnati. They were at LSU and nothing changed when Chase, who sat out the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, was chosen fifth overall in last April's draft. His effect has been immense, scoring 13 times on 81 receptions for 1,455 yards in the regular season.
Of course, Burrow has been just as impactful. He went 2-7-1 in a rookie season cut short by a knee injury and made a sensational return, as accurate as any passer in the league. Cool as they come — yes, Joe Cool — he had 34 touchdown passes, and in the Bengals' three postseason victories after having none since 1991, Burrow has gone 75 for 109 for 842 yards and four TDs, showing scrambling skills as well.
The key for LA to slow down that combination lies with the pass rush; Cincinnati allowed a league-high 51 sacks during the season, 12 more in the postseason. So unanimous All-Pro DT Aaron Donald (99), LB Leonard Floyd (54) and revitalized Von Miller (40), the MVP of the 2016 Super Bowl, must be negated somewhat. If the Bengals' offensive line, from tackles Jonah Williams (73) and Isaiah Prince (71) to center Trey Hopkins (66) to guards Quinton Spain (67) and the rotation of Hakeem Adeniji (77) and rookie Jackson Carman (79) don't step up, Burrow will go down a bunch.
If he gets the protection that has been missing too often, Chase's matchups with All-Pro CB Jalen Ramsey (5) could be epic. But Ramsey won't always be on Chase, who can break free on any route, and he also has some potent partners in WRs Tyler Boyd (83) and Tee Higgins (85), their battles with the remainder of the secondary could be significant.
In his seventh pro season, TE C.J. Uzomah (87) has emerged as a threat, but he damaged a knee last week and his status is uncertain.
RB Joe Mixon (28), who ranked third with 1,205 rushing yards, can wear down defenses, but the Rams ranked sixth against the rush.
WHEN THE RAMS HAVE THE BALL:
Like with the trades that brought Miller and Ramsey on defense, the Rams have bolstered their offense immeasurably in recent years. They solidified left tackle five seasons back with Andrew Whitworth (77), who remains a stud at age 40.
Much more recently came QB Matthew Stafford (9), RB Sony Michel (25) and WR Odell Beckham Jr. (3). All of have been key contributors, though Stafford is by far the biggest upgrade.
Sure, the Rams made the 2019 Super Bowl with Jared Goff, but Stafford, finishing his 13th pro season, is a class above. After languishing in Detroit for a dozen years, he's been a main cog in the Rams getting this far.
No one is better against the blitz than Stafford, and while he can make some head-scratching throws and turn over the ball, he also makes some head-shaking passes that put you in awe.
And, like Burrow, he has one of the league's best targets in unanimous All-Pro WR Cooper Kupp (10). Opponents could put all 11 defenders on the guy and he'd still get free, as his triple crown of receiving shows: 145 receptions for 1,947 yards and 16 TDs. He's been just as unstoppable in the playoffs, and this could be a major mismatch. Bengals CBs Eli Apple (20), Chidobe Awuzie (22), Mike Hilton (21) and Tre Flowers (33) will be tests bigtime.
Cincinnati is stronger at safety with Vonn Bell (24), whose pick of Patrick Mahomes set up the winning field goal for the AFC title, and Jessie Bates III (30). The entire bunch also must account for Beckham, who seems to be re-energized in LA, and Van Jefferson (12).
Michel and Cam Akers (23), who came back quickly from a torn Achilles tendon, share backfield duties, but this is a throw-first team operating behind standouts such as Whitworth. The 16-year veteran figures to be challenged by Cincinnati's top pass rusher, Trey Hendrickson (91), and DE Sam Hubbard (94), who was terrific against the Chiefs.
The Bengals don't have a linebacker in Miller's class, but Logan Wilson (55) and Germaine Pratt (57) have made some key plays in the postseason.
SPECIAL TEAMS:
It's all about rookie Evan McPherson (2). The fifth-round draft choice — no, Cincinnati did not bungle a pick on a kicker here — the kid has hit all 12 of his field goals, including four in the wild-card round, then winners at Tennessee and Kansas City.
P Kevin Huber (10) did not have a particularly strong season, but he's a veteran who has kicked in the postseason before.
LA's Matt Gay (8) is steady enough, and he also has two straight winning field goals in the playoffs.
P Johnny Hekker (6) has been one of the league’s best punters for a decade, and is a threat on fake punts.
Neither team scares you on kick returns.
COACHING:
This is so juicy.
Taylor spent two years working for McVay and didn't even reach coordinator status when the Bengals came calling in 2019. He went 6-25-1 his first two seasons, but the Bengals were building their roster. His work in the past six weeks has been particularly exemplary.
McVay remains the poster child — OK, he's a wise old 36 — for hot-shot offensive minds. His game management has been questioned, but it's hard to argue with four playoff trips in five seasons, and a Super Bowl loss three years ago.
Two assistants worth high praise: Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who has done a lot with no real stars except Hendrickson, and Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O'Connell, who like Anarumo has gotten some head coaching interviews.
INTANGIBLES:
The Rams are built for now. They have been all-in on this season, using lots of draft capital — not to mention $$$ capital — on this roster.
They also have the bitter memory of a putrid performance against New England in the 2019 Super Bowl.
For those who think this is gravy for the surprising Bengals, remember they are 0-2 in Super Bowls, both losses to the dynastic 49ers, though in close contests. They also hadn't won a postseason game since 1991. What do they have to lose now?
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More AP Super Bowl coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Super-Bowl-Matchup-Veteran-Rams-versus-upstart-16832177.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:06 | en | 0.970538 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A Pima County jail inmate's death last month was due to a drug overdose and is now being investigated as a homicide, the Sheriff's Department said.
Pedro Xavier Martinez Palacios, 24, died Jan. 14 at a hospital where Palacios was taken Jan. 10 after he told a corrections officer that he required medical assistance, the office said.
No signs of trauma or suspicious circumstances were observed but that the county Medical Examiner's Office subsequently determined that Palacios' death was due to a fentanyl overdose, the office said late Thursday.
The office said the homicide investigation was ongoing, and no additional information was released.
Palacios was jailed on outstanding warrants in cases alleging drug paraphernalia and unlawful imprisonment. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Jail-inmate-death-due-to-overdose-homicide-probe-16832186.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:09 | en | 0.982875 |
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — USA Swimming canceled a meet in Iowa and is reviewing its calendar for the rest of 2022 after the world championships were pushed back another year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The TYR Pro Swim Series Des Moines, set for March 2-5 at the MidAmerican Energy Aquatic Center at the Wellmark YMCA, was to be a qualifying meet for the Phillips 66 International Team Trials in April.
But the decision by world governing body FINA to delay the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, for a second time has thrown the U.S. plans into turmoil.
The worlds were initially set for 2021, then pushed back to this May after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed a year. With the pandemic still raging, the championships are now set for July 14-30, 2023.
While that means three huge events in a one-year period — two world championships and the 2024 Paris Olympics — the powerhouse American team now has a huge gap in its schedule this year.
USA Swimming is “reviewing its domestic calendar to ensure it provides the best competitive opportunities at the most impactful times,” the organization said Friday in a statement.
A revised schedule will be released in the coming weeks.
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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.chron.com/sports/article/USA-Swimming-cancels-meet-reviews-plans-with-16832128.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:13 | en | 0.964651 |
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — A jury in South Carolina awarded $50 million in damages to a mayor in a defamation case against a longtime critic.
The Beaufort County jury decided Thursday that Skip Hoagland has to pay Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka $40 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages, The Island Packet reported.
Hoagland — who wasn’t in the courtroom throughout the trial or when the verdicts were read — laughed when the newspaper informed him of the outcome.
“That’s a joke, right? ... That’s insanity,” he said.
Sulka filed the lawsuit against Hoagland over emails he sent in 2015 and 2017 to several people including the state attorney general. The mayor claimed there were defamatory statements in the messages, such as accusations that she committed a crime and was unfit for office.
“An examination of the Defendant’s rambling and at times incoherent emails can lead to only one conclusion: the Defendant had every reason to know that his statements lacked veracity, yet he continued to publish them with vigor,” Sulka’s lawyers wrote in a 2019 court filing.
During the two-day trial, the mayor described the impacts these messages have had on her: “It really hits your psyche, it really affects you. I am his target now, personally.”
Hoagland has frequently and vocally critiqued the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, which some elected officials have spoken out against for its failure to share how it spends public money.
Daniel Henderson, one of the mayor’s attorneys, said Hoagland started a “crusade” against Sulka after the town helped the Chamber of Commerce with a membership drive in 2015. Her lawyers said in a filing that Hoagland believed the drive “unfairly benefitted” the Hilton Head chamber at the expense of the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.
“Mayor Sulka, I hope you fully understand the severity of this as a public official if this is true on using public funds to attempt to put one business out of business,” Hoagland wrote in a 2015 email to the mayor, town attorney, state attorney general, lawmakers and others.
The following year, he filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission against the mayor, claiming she voted in favor of land purchases that financially benefitted the real estate agency where she worked. The commission eventually cleared her of allegations that she violated the state ethics law.
Sulka’s lawyers argued in the lawsuit that the “defamatory statements” were published with malice and hurt the mayor’s reputation.
Hoagland — who represented himself in the case after firing a lawyer that his insurance company hired — shared his thoughts with the trial judge, the attorney general and others by email instead of participating in the proceedings in person.
“There is zero evidence I defamed anyone,” Hoagland wrote Wednesday night. “The first amendment allows me to exercise my free speech rights to criticize, and shed light on, public corruption.”
He told The Island Packet in a statement Thursday that he was actually happy with the trial’s outcome because it proved there’s “more corruption” in South Carolina.
“This case was all predetermined, a sham, Judicial Malfeasance ... I will now seek damages for violations to my First Amendment Rights caused by this lawless, filthy, frivolous defamation lawsuit to silence a critics voice,” he wrote. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Jury-awards-50-million-to-SC-mayor-in-defamation-16832210.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:16 | en | 0.974541 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pilots reported a record 9,723 incidents of lasers aimed at their aircraft last year, a 41% jump over the year before.
The Federal Aviation Administration released the figures Friday, just a week after four airline flights were hit by a laser near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. All four planes landed safely.
The FAA said it handed out $120,000 in fines for laser strikes in 2021. Fines can range up to $11,000 for one incident and up to $30,800 for multiple violations, and violators can face federal criminal charges.
Lasers aimed at planes and helicopters have been a safety concern for more than a decade despite jail sentences for people who get caught. Authorities have tried rewards for turning in perpetrators and legislation making it easier to prosecute them.
The FAA said pilots have reported 244 injuries from laser strikes since the agency began keeping figures in 2010.
The number of laser incidents topped 1,000 in 2009 and has been rising most years ever since. Authorities say the problem is made worse by the availability of cheap laser pointers and devices getting more powerful. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Laser-strikes-against-aircraft-hit-a-record-in-US-16832245.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:22 | en | 0.961553 |
NEW YORK (AP) — More than 50 years after Frank Serpico testified about endemic corruption in the New York Police Department, the department finally recognized his service and injury in the line of duty with an official certificate and inscribed medal of honor.
The former undercover detective, 85, received the honor in the mail Thursday, the New York Daily News reported.
Serpico testified in December 1971 to a panel appointed by Mayor John Lindsay to investigate police corruption, breaking the “blue wall of silence,” the protection that fellow officers sometimes give each other, such as refusing to testify.
Al Pacino went on to portray him in the hit 1973 movie “Serpico,” and his story is also relayed in a book by Peter Maas.
Current Daily News and former Associated Press reporter Larry McShane interviewed Serpico in December about the 50th anniversary of his appearance before the Knapp Commission.
"I felt that finally I was going to tell the world and nobody’s going to interrupt me,” Serpico told the newspaper, speaking from his home in upstate New York. “I thought, ‘I know the truth.’ ... Every single word was mine, and it came from the heart.”
Serpico was shot in the face during a drug arrest in Brooklyn in 1971 months before he testified and has maintained that the other officers he was with never made a call for an “officer down.”
While the department gave Serpico a medal recognizing his injury in 1972, it was handed over without ceremony or the accompanying certificate, he told the newspaper.
In recent years, the department has awarded medals to recipients at annual large public events.
Mayor Eric Adams responded to the coverage, saying Serpico's “bravery inspired my law enforcement career. Frank — we’re going to make sure you get your medal.”
On Thursday, Serpico tweeted a photo of the framed medal of honor and certificate that reads in part, “in recognition of an individual act of extraordinary bravery performed in the line of duty."
He has continued to speak out against corruption and abuse by the police since his retirement in 1972 and says he has supported and listened to other whistleblowers over the years, including those who testified about the now-terminated stop-and-frisk policy.
In 2017, he publicly supported quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who protested against racial injustice while playing in the NFL. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/NYPD-honors-whistleblower-Frank-Serpico-50-years-16832102.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:28 | en | 0.984211 |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska hospital system has announced it will begin resuming non-emergency surgeries and procedures that had been postponed last month due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Beginning Monday, Nebraska Medicine will move out of its “crisis standard of care” plan enacted on Jan. 13, the health system said in a statement Friday. The plan, which put a hold on most non-emergency procedures, was made as the omicron variant of the coronavirus saw a spike in demand for hospital beds and led to staff shortages as medical personnel themselves became infected or had to care for family members who were ill.
In the past week, there has been an overall decrease in COVID-19 admissions, Nebraska Medicine said, and the number of staff members in isolation and quarantine has also decreased significantly.
The system says it's now contacting those patients who saw procedures put on hold and is working to reschedule them. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Nebraska-hospital-system-to-resume-delayed-16832161.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:34 | en | 0.985229 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Forget mystery meat or cheese pizza. Instead, chickpea wraps and veggie tacos will be on the menu for New York City public school students as the nation's largest school district shifts to “Vegan Fridays” in school cafeterias.
The move was pushed by the city's new Mayor Eric Adams, who follows and promotes a plant-based diet that he credits for improving his health.
“I can’t tell people what to put on their grills on the weekend. But darn it, we should not be feeding the health care crisis in our prisons, our hospitals, and most importantly, in our schools, so we want to go in a more healthy direction,” Adams said in an interview on WNBC-TV on Friday.
Vegan options are already available in all of the city's public schools every day, but starting Friday and continuing weekly, the lunch offering will be vegan. Students can still request a non-vegan option, according to the city’s Department of Education, and milk, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hummus and pretzels will always be available to students.
New York City public schools, which have about 938,000 students, have been offering Meatless Mondays since 2019 and Meatless Fridays since April. Around the country, 14% of school districts offered vegan meals and 56% offered vegetarian meals in at least one of their schools, according to a 2018 survey from the School Nutrition Association, a trade group representing school nutrition programs and workers.
It's unclear whether any other districts around the country plan to go vegan one day a week like New York City schools.
New York City schools says its vegan meals have been tested and approved by small groups of students.
Friday's menu included “vegan veggie tacos,” with a tortilla and salsa, with broccoli, and a carrot and lemon salad on the side. Other planned offerings this month include a Mediterranean chickpea dish with rice or pasta, and a black bean and plantain rice bowl.
Adams, a former New York City police captain, has said he traded in a lifestyle with junk food for a plant-based diet that helped him overcome diabetes. He wrote a book about his diet, “Healthy at Last.”
Nearly 40% of New York City public school children in grades K-8 were overweight or obese, according to data cited by the city in 2019. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/New-York-City-school-lunch-menu-going-vegan-on-16832044.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:40 | en | 0.96783 |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — It's official: New York is now the largest sports betting market in America after just four weeks of taking mobile bets.
The Empire State blew past New Jersey in January to seize the market lead, taking over $1.6 billion worth of sports bets, according to figures released Friday by the New York State Gaming Commission. That's $300 million better than the best month that New Jersey ever had.
And those numbers are only going to go up. WynnBET just began taking bets in New York on Friday, and BallyBet has yet to begin operating in the state.
The new figures show that mobile sports betting brought in $1.62 billion in New York between its launch Jan. 9 and the week ending Jan. 30. In-person sports betting at four upstate casinos added close to another $15 million, bringing the monthly total to $1.64 billion.
New Jersey, which had led the nation in terms of the amount of sports bets its casinos and horse tracks took, had its best month in October 2021, when it took $1.3 billion in bets. New Jersey's figures for January 2022 will be released Feb. 16.
“This is great,” said New York state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr., one of his state's leading proponents of mobile sports betting. “Going back to the first week we started, we did as much in two days as we had in two years before that. And we're still not even firing on all cylinders.”
Kevin Hennessy, a spokesperson for FanDuel, said the company knew New York would be a strong market.
“Legal sports betting in New York has exceeded all of our expectations,” he said. “New York and New Jersey combined are practically the center of legal sports betting in the United States. We are thrilled with how many New York customers have signed up to the FanDuel Sportsbook, and we continue to see New Jersey as a growing market.”
He said the Buffalo Bills playoff run generated heavy interest, and noted that the Winter Olympics, the NHL All-Star Game and the Super Bowl are all imminent.
New York's mobile sports betting operators earned nearly $113 million in revenue on the $1.62 billion in bets they handled after paying off winners and other expenses. That revenue is taxed at 51% in New York.
Caesars is the early leader in New York, handling over $615 million worth of bets in its first four weeks and generating nearly $56 million in revenue. FanDuel took nearly $502 million in bets, generating $23.6 million in revenue.
DrafkKings took $367 million in bets, generating $27 million in revenue; BetMGM took $78 million in bets with $3.2 million in revenue; Rush Street Interactive took $32 million in bets and generated $837,035 in revenue; and PointsBet took $29 million in bets, generating $2.3 million in revenue.
That New York became the No. 1 market for sports betting once it allowed people to bet via cell phones or computers was not a surprise. New York's population of over 19 million people is much greater than New Jersey's population of under 9 million.
New York allowed New Jersey to race to an early lead in sports betting by its refusal to immediately allow mobile wagering. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for years insisted that allowing mobile betting would violate the state's constitution, but New York permitted it beginning Jan. 9 of this year.
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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at @WayneParryAC | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/New-York-blows-past-New-Jersey-for-top-sports-16832162.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:47 | en | 0.970015 |
The Gujarat High Court on Friday directed for the conditional release of a Chandola lake resident, who has been in detention since the nearly 19 past months by Ahmedabad police on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi citizen.
While the judgment was pronounced on Friday, the detailed verdict remains to be made public.
Amir Sidikbhai Shaikh, was detained by a special operations group (SOG) official on the afternoon of June 18, 2020, reportedly when he was on his way to work, on the ground that Amir was suspected to be a Bangladeshi national who was staying in India “without permission”.
Following Amir’s detention, his mother, Rashida, had approached Juhapura police station, furnishing voter’s ID card, Rashida and her husband’s Aadhaar cards along with Amir’s Aadhaar card and the family’s ration card, insisting for Amir’s release from detention, but to no avail.
In July 2020, Rashida moved the Gujarat HC with a habeas corpus petition, seeking the court’s direction to the SOG assistant police commissioner to produce Amir before the court and to release him from “illegal detention”.
Rashida, in her petition before the Gujarat HC, had submitted that she and her husband have been residing in Ahmedabad since “a very long time” with seven children, all seven born in Ahmedabad. At the time of Amir’s birth, Rashida was working at a construction site and Amir was born near the site and being illiterate, she was not aware of birth registration and thus had not registered his birth at the time.
The birth was registered years later and as per Amir’s Aadhar card, his birth year is reflected as 1984. At the time of detention, Amir was married and had three children of his own, all three born in Ahmedabad as well.
In an additional affidavit filed by Rashida before the Gujarat HC in August 2020, it was further pointed out that Amir was detained in the “absence of any FIR or any formal complaint and without any genuine efforts to actually identify the genuineness of their citizenship”.
She had also alleged that the “detention and witch hunt” of Amir by the SOG was done as “an attempt to partake functions of the Foreigners Tribunal established pursuant to Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964 envisaged under the Foreigners Act, 1946 and to determine issues of citizenship”, which the SOG was doing “illegally and unconstitutionally”, without “jurisdiction and authority”.
Appearing before the Gujarat HC in July 2020 pursuant to filing of the petition and upon instruction from the court, DCP of SOG Harshad Patel had submitted that the corpus (Amir) is “suspected of being Bangladeshi national and though inquired, no documents have been produced by him (corpus) for verification of certificate of birth or any other document, which may confirm his nationality and therefore, restriction order came to be passed against him on 30.06.2020.”
Patel had also submitted before the court that “along with four other Bangladeshis, who travelled to this Country two to four years back, the corpus has been placed under restriction order.”
The court at the time in its order, had recorded, “Considering the fact that there is no criminal antecedent… it has been urged that the man possibly travelled to this country from Bangladesh as a child aged 3 to 4 years.”
Rashida, represented by advocate Anand Yagnik, had submitted in an affidavit in August 2020 that “several people living in slums around the Chandola lake including the family of the detenu (Amir) because of their West Bengal origin have been hovering under the cloud of suspicion…and again the respondents (police authorities) detain them and then release them after a few days and at times after a few hours. The detenu (Amir) has been similarly detained once prior on the same grounds and then was released by the end of the day.”
The petitioner had also pointed out that as per Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, every person born in India on or after 26th Day of January, 1950 but before the 1st Day of July, 1987, shall be a citizen by birth, and thus by this reasoning itself, Amir being born prior to 1987, is a citizen of India by birth.
It was also clarified by Rashida that the suspicion of Amir being Bangladeshi was far removed from reality as Rashida and her husband have nothing to do with Bangladesh and “are basically people belonging to minority Muslim community and several years ago migrated from West Bengal to Gujarat and have been residing in the slums around Chandola Lake, Ahmedabad.”
It was also submitted by the petitioner in a July 2020 hearing that the corpus’ parents have PAN card and “other vital documents” and had emphasised that these documents were examined “at the time of allotment of a residential plot to the family in the post-Godhra incident period”.
In 2010, Gujarat government had decided to rehabilitate families identified as Indian nationals who suffered from the 2002 riots, following an order from the Gujarat HC to this effect. AMC had allotted a plot near Ganeshnagar Piplaj road and Rs 50,000 to Amir’s father in April 2010.
Rashida and her husband’s dwelling was set ablaze in 2002 riots, thus burning down several of their documents, as submitted in an affidavit by the petitioner.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/on-suspicion-of-being-bangladesh-citizen-gujarat-hc-directs-for-conditional-release-of-man-detained-for-20-months-7757581/ | 2022-02-04T18:52:50 | en | 0.987041 |
At 4:30 a.m. on a Monday morning last spring, Peter Denton got up in darkness, dressed and jumped in his pickup truck. The drive to his work site in Detroit took a little more than an hour.
As a construction foreman working on a new bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, Peter often clocked in six days a week, working up to 11 hours each shift.
The Friday before, he woke up with a runny nose, cough and chest pain. His wife, Kristy, insisted he go to urgent care. He was given a COVID-19 test, which was negative, and an electrocardiogram, which was normal. Nonetheless, the doctor told him there might be an underlying problem and said he should go straight to the emergency room if anything came up over the weekend.
All went well, even with Peter working an overnight shift, then spending Sunday clearing out fallen branches and brush around his home in Jackson, Michigan.
At noon Monday, he started his lunch break, eating a burger in the cab of his truck. With his window down, he chatted with a co-worker standing outside.
Suddenly, Peter felt nauseous. His vision blurred. He felt like he might pass out.
He remembered the doctor's advice. He also recalled there was a first aid station about a half mile away, on the job site.
"You need to take me to the medic," he told his friend. The man jumped into Peter's truck and started driving.
Halfway there, Peter felt like a knife was stabbing his heart over and over. He doubled over in pain.
An EKG explained what was happening.
"You're having a heart attack," a medic told him.
Peter waited for pain medicine to kick in and for an ambulance to arrive. Meanwhile, Kristy and Peter's father, Greg Denton Sr., who was working on the same job site, were notified.
As paramedics were taking Peter to the ambulance, his father rushed to his side. Trying to ease some of the tension, Greg joked, "We don't have time for this. We still have a lot of work to do here, son."
"It'll be all right, Dad," Peter answered.
At the hospital, doctors used two stents to open the blockages in his heart. Prompt action not only saved him, but it also put him on the road to a speedy recovery. He awoke without pain. Hours later, he was walking the halls of the hospital.
The next day, a cardiologist asked Peter about his lifestyle.
Did he smoke?
Did he chew tobacco?
Did he drink?
Peter answered every question with a "yes."
He readily acknowledges his lifestyle paved the way for a heart attack. At 45, he was 6-foot-1, 300-plus pounds. He'd been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
He'd tried changing his habits before. The most recent try was a few years earlier, following the diabetes diagnosis. It only lasted until his medicine ran out. He didn't refill it and stopped seeing his doctor.
After his heart attack, Peter tried again.
He immediately stopped smoking and cut way back on drinking. He's still trying to quit chewing tobacco.
Eight months after his heart attack, he was down to 237 pounds. His goal is 200.
He was motivated by his three children, Gabriela Denton, 14; Hunter Denton, 20; and David Phelps, 27. And, of course, Kristy.
"After the heart attack, she reiterated how much I meant to her and the kids," Peter said. "And this time she decided to jump in with me and eat better and lose weight."
On previous attempts to eat healthier, he'd make salads while Kristy would cook dinner for herself and their children. Looking back, she realizes that left him feeling isolated and made it tougher for him to stick with his diet.
Now they're a team. They're following a diet that focuses on protein and vegetables. They've also eliminated fast food and eating out.
Kristy, who is 4-foot-11, has shed 20 pounds and weighs 119.
She bought Peter a bike trainer so he could ride his bicycle inside during the winter, and he plans to pedal throughout the year. He's also walking more on the job site instead of jumping into his truck for short trips.
His efforts seem to be working. In addition to losing weight, his doctor recently told him he no longer needs medication for diabetes.
Obesity affects 1 in 4 U.S. construction workers, according to the Hard Hats with Heart initiative from the American Heart Association that focuses on heart health in the construction industry. The same amount – 25% – use tobacco.
As someone who used to be in both groups, Peter is trying to help his colleagues beat those odds. He gently spreads the word about heart health and regular checkups.
"If talking about my experience saves one person or encourages someone to go to the doctor," Peter said, "I'd feel blessed."
Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.
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The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Punjab co in-charge Raghav Chadha on Friday claimed that the nephew of Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi has admitted to the fact that the money seized during the raids had ties to the sand mafia and transfer-posting racket.
Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh on Friday, Chadha added that the VIP security provided to Channi’s nephew also proved the proximity between the two.
Chadha said that Chief Minister Channi had sworn at Darbar Sahib and said that no member of his family has anything to do with the sand mafia. “But the statements given by Channi’s nephew to ED proves that the CM and his family are not only involved with the sand mafia but have many other illegal businesses as well,” he said. Chadha added that Channi had insulted the Darbar Sahib by taking a false oath.
Delhi MLA Chadha, citing the income tax return of Channi’s nephew, said that from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, the annual turnover of his nephew was only Rs 1877000. After Channi became the Chief Minister, suddenly within a few days, there were crores in cash and property papers in the name of Channi’s nephew.
The AAP leader said that even if it were to be assumed that the ED raids at the house of Channi’s relative were politically influenced, the questions about the source of the Rs 10 crore cash, luxury vehicles, land property worth billions of rupees remained.
On the Congress’ complaint to EC against him, Chadha said that if the FIR is to be lodged then the Congress high command and Sunil Jakhar should be named in it because Jakhar himself has claimed that even after getting the support of 42 MLAs, the Congress did not appoint him as the Chief Minister because he was a Hindus. Chadha said that it is the nature of Congress to do divisive politics in the name of religion. “Congress has been following the policy of divide and rule since the beginning. The Aam Aadmi Party has always adhered to the policy of taking everyone along,” he said.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/charanjit-singh-channi-nephew-raghav-chadha-ed-7757577/ | 2022-02-04T18:52:56 | en | 0.986861 |
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The SeaWorld theme park in Orlando is opening new pools to care for Florida manatees that are dying from starvation due to poor water quality in their normal habitat.
The lovable, round-tailed marine mammals had their worst die-off last year, more than 1,100 of them, and there are federal and state efforts ongoing to save the threatened creatures. One of these efforts is to have a place like SeaWorld, with the marine assets it has, provide rehabilitation to those that can be rescued.
SeaWorld announced Friday that it has added five 40-foot (12-meter) pools to accomodate up to 20 manatees within two weeks. The theme park is one of five facilities in the U.S. taking care of sick and injured manatees. It had 28 manatees in its care as of Friday, according to a company release.
“We are bringing animals in that are skeletons. These animals need long-term care,” said Jon Peterson, chief of zoological operations at SeaWorld who chairs a manatee rescue partnership with government agencies.
"We’ve got the space. We will continue to use that space,” he added.
Manatees on the east coast of Florida, in particular, have suffered during winter months from a lack of food. They are large creatures that feed on sea grass, and poor water quality has reduced their natural food source, causing many to starve to death. It's mostly agricultural, urban and septic tank sources of pollution that are depriving them of food.
As of Jan. 28, 97 manatees have been found dead in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which has taken a leading role in the manatee rescue effort. Five of those were killed by boat strikes. Most of the rest are starving.
“That is the same pattern we had last winter, and these numbers will continue,” said Dr. Martine deWit, the veterinarian who examines dead manatees for the state of Florida.
The Fish and Wildlife Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have embarked on an experimental attempt to feed manatees with romaine lettuce at a Florida Power & Light plant on the east coast. The animals typically gather there in winter months because of the warm outflow waters and at a time when there is very little natural food.
Recently, wildlife officials said there were more than 700 manatees in that area, although it's hard to say how many were eating lettuce.
“They are going to go where the food is,” said Tom Reinert, South regional director at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. “We hope to make a difference." | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/SeaWorld-ramps-up-care-for-threatened-Florida-16832203.php | 2022-02-04T18:52:59 | en | 0.977126 |
Continuing to report a declining trend on new Covid-19 cases, Tamil Nadu on Friday saw the daily cases fall below the 10,000 mark with 9,916 infections, pushing the tally to 33,97,238, the health department said.
As many as 30 people succumbed to the virus during the last 24 hours, taking the toll to 37,696, a medical bulletin said here.
Recoveries outnumbered new cases with 21,435 people getting discharged in the last 24 hours, aggregating to 32,04,213 leaving 1,55,329 active infections.
Chennai and Coimbatore accounted for the majority of new infections with 1,475 and 1,224 cases, respectively while the remaining was spread across other districts.
Perambalur recorded the least with 29 cases getting reported in the last 24 hours.
Those who tested positive today included 16 returnees from domestic and overseas locations.
A total of 1,27,356 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined to 6,22,74,779, the bulletin said.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chennai/tamil-nadu-chennai-covid-cases-deaths-updates-7757476/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:02 | en | 0.95694 |
The Vermont House on Friday approved a constitutional amendment that would remove what supporters say is ambiguous language and make clear that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited in the state.
The constitutional amendment now goes before voters in November.
Vermont's constitution states that no person 21 or older should serve as a slave unless bound by their own consent or “by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” The amendment would remove that language and add that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are banned.
The current language is “harmful and threatening to Vermonters who experience the vestiges of slavery,” said Rep. Hal Colston of Winooski to his colleagues. “My truth as a descendent of slave advocates is that this current language gives the appearance that there may be an exception for the existence of slavery and indentured servitude. Language is powerful and the truth shall set us free.”
To amend the Vermont Constitution, the proposal must be approved by two consecutively elected Legislatures and then approved in a statewide referendum. The Vermont House unanimously approved the measure in 2020 and the state Senate passed the proposal in the previous session. The House vote on Friday was 139-3.
In 2018, voters in Colorado backed a measure to clarify language in the state Constitution to ban slavery and involuntary servitude under all circumstance. Since then, voters in Nebraska and Utah have approved initiatives amending their state constitutions to remove language that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.
Legislation was also introduced in Congress in June to end a loophole in the U.S. Constitution that allowed forced labor for those convicted of some crimes. The measure would revise the 13th Amendment, which bans enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Slavery-ban-amendment-approved-goes-to-voters-in-16832187.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:05 | en | 0.960278 |
The Surat police Friday arrested two college students for allegedly assaulting a classmate over an old dispute.
According to police, Limbayat resident Saiyed Sohelali and Umarwada resident Rahil Khan, both 18 years and first year B.Com students of Surat’s KP Commerce College, were arrested for beating up their classmate Sunny Pandey (18) following a quarrel over “unknown reasons” Friday afternoon.
Himanshu Dubey, another classmate who tried to save Sunny, too, was beaten up by the duo, said the police.
Later, Pandey lodged a complaint against Khan and Sohelali with the Umra police station. The police have registered charged both the arrested under IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with an intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506(2) (criminal intimidation).
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/surat/2-college-students-arrested-for-assaulting-classmate-in-surat-7757572/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:08 | en | 0.949404 |
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A judge has partially dismissed two lawsuits alleging abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center, saying one complaint “consists of nothing more than invective and bald conclusions.” But attorneys who have filed hundreds of similar cases say they will fill in the details soon.
Nearly 450 men and women have sued the state alleging they were abused as children at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly the Youth Development Center. Their allegations span six decades and involve more than 150 staffers at the Manchester facility, but most of the lawsuits are nearly identical and include few specifics.
Since late December, the state has filed motions seeking to have claims against the state and the agency that oversees the center dismissed in more than 40 cases. Judge Andrew Schulman agreed in two cases this week, leaving intact claims against individual former employees of the center.
“The complaint does not describe the facts that constitute any of these categories of harm. What was the physical abuse? What excessive restraints were used?” he wrote. “If there was sexual abuse, what happened? The plaintiff did not say anything about what he specifically experienced.”
The plaintiff in that case is Michael Gilpatrick, who also is suing five of the 11 men who were arrested in April and charged with either sexually assaulting or acting as accomplices to the assaults of more than a dozen teenagers. Two of them are charged with restraining Gilpatrick while he was sexually assaulted by two of the others.
The Associated Press typically does not name victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly as Gilpatrick has done.
Gilpatrick, who spent three years at the center in the 1990s, wouldn’t discuss that episode in an interview with The Associated Press in September. But he said in addition to being subject to physical and sexual abuse, he was held in solitary confinement for as long as three months.
“There was nobody you could go to at YDC to talk to. You were literally stuck in your own thoughts, in your own fear every single day,” he said.
The judge’s order in the second case wasn’t available Friday, but he also dismissed claims against the state in another case brought by an anonymous plaintiff, according to the attorney general’s office.
State officials have said that filing the dismissal requests should not be considered a lack of support for crime victims, but the plaintiffs' attorney disagreed. Rus Rilee, said Friday he plans to amend all 450 lawsuits in the next 60 days but that there is no “legal or other need to force the victims to disclose all the details of their painful abuse in public.”
“This is nothing more than a continued effort by the State to try to silence these crime victims and deter others from coming forward in order to avoid accountability for decades of systemic governmental child abuse," he said. "It is becoming clear that the State doesn’t really sympathize with or care about these child crime victims - it just wants them to shut up and go away.” | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Some-claims-against-state-tossed-in-youth-center-16832109.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:11 | en | 0.982827 |
Ruling the principles of secularism enshrined in the Constitution mandate that educational institutions run by state funds should not impart religious teachings, the Gauhati High Court on Friday upheld a 2020 Assam law converting all state-run madrasas into “regular schools”.
In December 2020, when Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was the education minister, the Assam government had passed a law repealing the Assam Madrassa Education (Provincialization) Act and the Assam Madrassa Education (Provincialisation of Services of Employees and Re-organisation of Madrassa Educational Institutions) Act, 2018, in a bid to abolish all state-run madrasas as well as initiate a change in curricula by dropping Islamic subjects. Sarma had then said it was done to “reform the education system to make it secular”.
Reacting to the development, the chief minister tweeted in the evening: “Division Bench of Honble Gauhati High Court in a landmark judgment delivered today upheld the Act of 2020 to repeal Madrassa Education Procincialisation Acts and also upheld all other notifications to convert 397 provincialised madrrassas to general educational institutions.”
Thirteen petitioners —who were either donors or presidents of managing committees of land on which madrasas were built —moved the high court saying the law violated the fundamental rights under Articles 25, 26, 29 and 30 of the Constitution, among other rights.
After hearing both sides, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Soumitra Saikia dismissed the petition, while saying that secularism was a “basic structure of the constitution”, and that as per Article 28 (1), this secular nature “mandates that no religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of state funds”.
Recapping the history of madrasas in the state, the court said that they had begun as community schools, following which they were made into “venture” madrasas receiving government money. In 1995 they were provincialised under 1995 Provincialisation Act and brought wholly under state funding. Under the 2018 Provincialisation Act, still more madrasas were provincialised.
During the hearing, Advocate General Devajit Lon Saikia had clarified that the government’s law was applicable to “provincialised” or government madrasas alone, and not “community (qawmi) madrasas”, or “maktabs”, which continue to function in Assam.
Senior advocate Sanjay Hegde argued that the petitioners could, “under Article 30(1) to ‘establish’ and ‘administer’ educational institutions of their ‘choice’, which gives them a right, inter alia, to decide their own curriculum, which is based on their perception to preserve their religion or culture.”
But Saikia argued that “all the state has done is that it has removed religious teachings from government schools”. “The schools from where these teachings have now been stopped are not private institutions, leave aside minority institutions. They were provincialised way back in the year 1995-96 and since then they have lost their minority status,” he said.
The court observed that Clause (1) of Article 28 was extremely important. “It states in clear and unambiguous terms that no religious instructions shall be imparted in any educational institution which is wholly maintained out of state funds. There is another restriction in Clause (3), which is that in an educational institution which is receiving aid out of state funds (it may not be fully funded), religious instructions or religious worship cannot be forced upon the students,” the judges said.
They added that the madrasas in question were “fully under control of the government”. “Consequently, the claim of the petitioners that these madrasas are minority institutions and were established and administered by the minority is a claim which has no foundation and is hence not acceptable,” the judges observed.
On the matter of the government placing those teaching at Arabic colleges and “title madrasas” under the board of secondary education, the judges said they could be brought to the university level “subject to a representation being made by such teachers” before the commissioner and secretary of the secondary education department, “which shall then be considered in terms of our observations, by passing a speaking order”.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/assam/gauhati-hc-cites-secularism-to-uphold-assam-law-abolishing-state-funded-madrasas-7757533/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:14 | en | 0.969781 |
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man is behind bars after a fight with his father left the man dead, authorities said.
Henry Kevin Edwards, 40, of Lucedale, is being held at the George County jail on one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Henry Cornelius Edwards, 80, the sheriff's office said Thursday. It was unknown if Edwards has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Investigators discovered Edwards’ body in a vehicle outside of a residence in Lucedale at 4 p.m. Wednesday, news outlets reported. Police determined there had been a physical altercation between the father and son, and the elderly man died from injuries sustained in the fight. Authorities have not said what sparked the fight. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Son-arrested-after-fight-leaves-his-father-dead-16832226.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:18 | en | 0.981938 |
The Congress today came out with its list of star campaigners for Punjab but former Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and Punjab MP Manish Tewari don’t figure in the list of 30.
Azad’s name had figured in the list of star campaigners for Punjab, released by the party last month. His omission in the Punjab list was curious since he had a long association with the state.
In the 1980s, he had quit as minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government and went to Punjab as AICC general secretary in charge. Tewari’s omission was more striking as he is only Hindu MP from the state. Both of them are signatories to a letter 23 senior leaders had written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2020 seeking sweeping changes in the party and its functioning.
But the list includes the names of senior leaders Anand Sharma and Bhupinder Singh Hooda, members of the G 23 grouping, as the letter writers have come to be known as. Some of the G 23 leaders argued Tewari’s omission could be deliberate.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, senior leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, PPCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi are on the star campaigners list.
Interestingly, the name of Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who has been a star campaigner in the past, also did not figure in the list.
Former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, AICC general secretary Ajay Maken and party in charge of Punjab affairs Harish Chaudhary are also among the star campaigners.
Others include Kumari Selja, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Rajeev Shukla, Sachin Pilot, Deepender Singh Hooda, Ranjeet Ranjan, Netta D’Souza, BV Srinivas, Imran Pratapgarhi, Amrita Dhawan, and Tejinder Singh Bittu.
Congress sitting MLA from Jalalabad, Raminder Awla, who has been dropped from the candidates list appears on star campaigners. Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu, Cabinet minister Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, campaign committee president Sunil Jakhar have also appeared on the list. Besides, Congress Rajya Sabha members from Punjab Ambika Soni and Partap Singh Bajwa are also included.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/elections/azad-manish-tewari-not-in-cong-punjab-star-campaigner-list-7757584/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:20 | en | 0.961796 |
HASSAKEH, Syria (AP) — Weeks after the long, furious battle with militants from the Islamic State group over a prison in northwestern Syria, the mangled wreckage of a car used by suicide bombers still sat outside its perimeter. Cranes put in place new cement blast walls to close off the entrance.
Gaping holes remained in the prison’s outer wall, an ominous reminder of the IS inmates who escaped during the fighting.
The battle for Gweiran Prison is over; it took 10 days, but U.S.-backed, Syrian Kurdish-led forces finally defeated the militants who attacked the facility in the city of Hassakeh, aiming to break free their comrades jailed inside, in the group’s largest and most stunning operation in years.
But the impact continues to reverberate. Residents in neighboring districts are locked down as Kurdish fighters hunt for fugitive militants hiding among them.
“Ask everyone here, they will tell you the same: We are terrified,” said Muna Farid, a mother of five who lives in the Gweiran neighborhood, which gives the prison its name — echoing the worries of dozens of residents over hidden IS fighters.
The region’s Kurdish administrators say the attack shows what they have long been saying: They are not getting enough help to face the Islamic State group as it regains strength.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say the Jan. 20 prison attack was not a surprise to them. Local intelligence sources had been showing a growing number of IS sleeper cells in the area. But they say they were hampered in acting because of multiple pressures, including conflicts with Turkey, insufficient international help and Syria’s economic crisis.
“The main reason that IS sleeper cells got enhanced and strong is because of international silence and weak support (for SDF) to stand against terrorism,” said Haval Qortay, head of the commando unit that fought IS at the prison, using his nom de guerre. “We are relying on resources that are not enough to fight.”
IS suffered a blow with the U.S. raid Thursday in northwest Syria that killed the group’s leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. But it is unlikely to derail the group’s persistent insurgency in Iraq and Syria since its command became much more decentralized after the group's territorial defeat two years ago.
“For some time now ISIS top leadership have been providing broad, strategic guidance to the global organization, but not day-to-day command and control,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “ISIS’s various elements will continue implementing their local insurgencies until the new successor is named.”
Since IS lost its last hold on any territory in 2019, its militants have gone underground in cells that have been carrying out low-level hit-and-run attacks in Syria and Iraq, mainly targeting security forces. Those attacks have been growing, raising fears the group is gaining momentum.
In northeast Syria, governed by a Kurdish-dominated administration, the SDF has been the main force trying to suppress IS, with the backing of several hundred U.S. troops.
At the same time, the SDF has to watch over some 10,000 captured IS fighters in around two dozen detention facilities — including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them. It also oversees some 62,000 family members of IS fighters, mostly women and children in al-Hol camp. Many of those family members remain die-hard IS supporters, and the camp has seen bouts of militant violence.
Khalifa said the SDF has done a “remarkable job” in fighting IS and in stabilizing the areas it captured from the group during the long campaign that brought down the “caliphate.”
But she said it is also hampered on multiple fronts. Particularly, its frequent clashes with Turkey, which views the Kurdish faction running eastern Syria as a terrorist group, undermine the anti-IS fight. Also, many Arab residents of the region don’t trust that the SDF will remain, fearing the Americans will pull out or the Damascus government will regain control of the area — so they are reluctant to endanger themselves by providing intelligence against militants.
Gweiran Prison, the biggest of the SDF-run prisons, was set up in a school campus, underscoring how the SDF has had to cobble together detention centers for the militants.
On Jan. 20, around 200 militants attacked the prison, in coordination with a riot by inmates inside. The attackers broke in, freed some prisoners, took guards hostage, and held out against SDF fighters for days, even as aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition struck their positions repeatedly.
At least 121 SDF fighters and prison guards and more than 380 militants killed before the SDF finally restored full control.
The commando chief Qortay said the SDF had long been aware the prison would be an IS target and had been receiving intelligence of a growing number of IS sleeper cells in the area. Some militants seamlessly pass for civilians at checkpoints, he said. Others move into towns, rent apartments and maintain a low profile.
When the attack erupted, Qortay’s units formed a belt around the prison and the nearby residential neighborhoods. During the fighting, some IS members hid in civilian homes, slowing the SDF as it tried to avoid civilian casualties, Qortay said.
Now the prison is fully under SDF control, he said, but he expects more attacks. Militants remain hidden, literally, across the street. SDF troops are still conducting raids to find sleeper cells, relying on intelligence from residents.
One resident of Gweiran neighborhood told The Associated Press how he informs the local authorities whenever he sees a stranger on his street. He has told them of at least eight since the prison break, including one hiding in a water tank.
“I know everyone in this area, if I see a new face I report them directly,” he said. The AP is not identifying him for his safety.
But residents are also angered by the SDF’s clampdown on three neighborhoods near the prison. With guns slung, SDF soldiers at the districts’ entrances forbid locals from leaving until their areas are cleared of militants.
Supplies are allowed in, but residents say it’s not enough. Dozens complained of shortages in food and drinking water. Mothers said they didn’t have enough milk for their babies or food to feed their families.
Fatma al-Khodr sat on the steps outside her home on the phone, begging a neighbor for any leftover bread.
“We are the ones who are suffering the most after this attack. ... We fear Daesh, but we also need water,” she said, using the Arabic name for IS.
The militants’ ability to carry out such a major attack even amid intelligence warnings was a stinging blow to the SDF. The force is hoping it will show world powers that it needs more support, after long complaining it is left largely on its own to prevent the group’s revival in Syria.
On a recent day, the clouds hung low at a funeral for 23 of the SDF soldiers killed in the prison battle. Thousands came to pay their respects. Among them, Ibrahim Ismail, a merchant from the area.
“Their deaths were a shock to us all,” he said.
Then the crowd fell silent in remembrance. Portraits of the dead were held high as coffins draped in the region's Kurdish colors passed along the sea of human bodies.
A loudspeaker blared a verse from the Quran, “Do not think those who die in God’s path are dead.” Ismail completed the verse in a whisper to himself, “They are alive, with their Lord, prospering.” | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Stung-by-prison-battle-Kurds-say-they-need-help-16832236.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:24 | en | 0.970794 |
A cavalcade of about 15 cars stops in a narrow lane in a Dalit colony in Agra’s Brahm Nagar. It is a day of hectic campaigning for Baby Rani Maurya. She steps out of a vehicle, garlands some local residents and politely seeks their votes. Within minutes, the cars, adorned with the BJP flags, start rolling on the dirt road to make it in time for a public gathering in Akbarpur.
Former Uttarakhand governor and prominent Dalit leader, Maurya is the ruling BJP’s candidate in Agra Rural, where the party dropped its sitting MLA Hemlata Diwakar to make way for her. She exudes confidence about her electoral prospects.
Maurya, 65, has been associated with the saffron party for three decades. In 1995, she was elected as Agra’s first woman mayor on the BJP’s ticket. She went on to work under then BJP leader Ram Nath Kovind in the party’s SC wing. She became a member of the UP Social Welfare Board and also served as a National Commission For Women (NCW) member.
Her elevation in the BJP dispensation continued as she was appointed the Uttarakhand governor in 2018. And days after her resignation from this position in September last year, she was appointed the BJP national vice president.
Maurya is from the Dalit community’s dominant Jatav sub-caste, to which BSP supremo Mayawati also belongs. Seeking to wrest the SC votes, especially Jatav votes, from the BSP, the BJP has projected Maurya as its Jatav face in its campaign for the upcoming UP Assembly elections. She had contested from Etmadpur in the 2007 polls but lost to a BSP candidate though.
“I was governor for a brief period, but I have been active on the ground since the beginning. I became the Agra mayor and have been working for people since then. The BJP is dedicated to the cause of Dalits and other backward sections. Our slogan ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ represents this idea. I am confident people here will repose their faith in us,” said Maurya.
Her supporters and campaign workers feel the BJP has “bigger plans” for her. They believe that she might be appointed the Deputy Chief Minister if the party retains power. Such a buzz around her has attracted people from other parties to her camp.
Kali Charan Suman, the ex-BSP MLA and runner-up from Agra Rural in the 2017 polls, is actively campaigning for her. “We have no doubt that Baby Rani will emerge as the winner… She is one of us and has always worked for the community. We hope to see her as the next Deputy CM. It is our sankalp (resolve) to see her victorious,” he said.
However, the loyalties of this belt’s Dalit residents seem to be divided between the BSP and the BJP, as they point out that for them this election will also be about their identity, security and future. The BJP has been seeking to convince them that they should vote for a party that will form government. But they are still not ready to leave the BSP.
“A party might provide us shade like a tree, but our roots are with Mayawati. She gave us an identity and we find ourselves linked to her in many ways. We got a lot of ration during Covid wave and it is possible that the BJP might also have good policies in future. But this is a decision we will have to think about. Whatever one might say of Mayawati, for us Jatavs, she is more than a politician,” said Bhagwanti, a resident of Brahm Nagar.
The BSP has pitted a local leader Kiran Kesri against Maurya, while the SP-RLD alliance has fielded Mahesh Kumar Jatav here. With Mayawati kicking off the BSP’s UP campaign from Agra, winning this seat has become a matter of prestige for the party.
The Opposition parties’ campaign has targeted the BJP over the 2020 Hathras incident, in which a Dalit woman was gangraped and murdered, and other issues.
Maurya, however, said, “No one talks about Dalit atrocities in Rajasthan. We are committed to making UP a safe place for Dalits. In the Hathras case, action was taken against the accused and rule of law prevailed. Both CM Yogi and PM Modi have transformed this state as criminals have not been given any free hand. The sense of security will continue.”
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/elections/baby-rani-invokes-sabka-saath-sabka-vikas-as-ascendancy-buzz-grows-about-up-bjp-jatav-face-7757565/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:26 | en | 0.982291 |
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected Republican gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch's request that it take over an absentee ballot box challenge in Wisconsin, in a ruling Friday.
Kleefisch, a former lieutenant governor, asked the conservative-controlled Supreme Court to take directly to take the case directly after a lower court's ruling that kept current law in place.
A Waukesha County judge on Jan. 13 ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes cannot be located anywhere other than at offices of local clerks and that no one other than the voter may return such a ballot.
An appeals court’s ruling put the lower court order on hold only until after the primary when the court was then going to consider the merits of the entire case.
Kleefisch's request is similar to one filed last month by a conservative group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
Judge Patience Roggensack was among three dissenting judges on Kleefisch's request.
“Because Wisconsin voters deserve elections conducted in a manner that we have reviewed and approved, I would grant Kleefisch’s petition to commence an original action. Because the majority sidesteps its obligation to hear the continuing cry of Wisconsin voters and address absentee ballot issues, I respectfully dissent,” she wrote.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has advised that local clerks can put drop boxes wherever they want.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers last year vetoed Republican bills that would have limited the location of absentee ballot drop boxes and who could return the ballots. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Supreme-Court-won-t-take-challenge-to-absentee-16832127.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:30 | en | 0.949904 |
Manipur Speaker Y Khemchand Singh, who is contesting from the Singjamei constituency, Friday declared assets worth over Rs 2.23 crore in his poll affidavits.
The 58-year-old politician filed his nomination papers on Friday on BJP ticket for the first phase of the Manipur assembly polls slated to be held on February 27.
As per the affidavits, Singh’s total assets are worth Rs 2,23,97,894 including cash in hand, banks, movable and immovable assets. Singh’s total movable assets are worth Rs. 1,71,32,611.32 as per the affidavits, which include Rs. 1,50,000 cash in hand and a total of Rs 72,95,724.32 in his bank account. He owns three cars registered under his name — a Tata Zest worth over Rs 4 lakh, a Mahindra Scorpio worth over Rs 11 lakh, and a Range Rover worth over Rs 70 lakh, and jewelry.
The Manipur Speaker ownes a non-agricultural land of 5,220 sq.ft., worth Rs. 52,65,283, which is an inherited property jointly owned with five members of his family. He has a total liability of Rs 59,00,002 as loans from banks.
Singh’s total income as shown in the income-tax returns for the last five financial years till March 31, 2021, was Rs. 30,68,109 and he has no pending criminal record.
Y Khemchand Singh was first elected from the Singjamei constituency, Imphal West district, in the last Assembly election held in 2017 and went on to become the Speaker of Manipur.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/elections/manipur-polls-speaker-y-khemchand-declares-assets-7757554/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:32 | en | 0.976377 |
ATLANTA (AP) — A Texas man accused of posting a message on Craigslist after the 2020 election calling on “patriots” in Georgia to “put a bullet” in three government officials has pleaded not guilty to a criminal charge.
Chad Stark and his attorney appeared briefly by video Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Russell Vineyard in Atlanta. Stark, 54, pleaded not guilty to one count of communicating interstate threats. He remains free on bond.
The Justice Department has said Stark's prosecution was the first criminal case brought by its new Election Threats Task Force that was created last summer. According to prosecutors, Stark posted a message on Jan. 5, 2021, titled: “Georgia Patriots it’s time to kill (Official A) the Chinese agent - $10,000."
The message stated, “Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors.” It goes on to urge Georgia residents to “militia up” and calls for shooting the three officials as well as “corrupt” local and federal judges.
Prosecutors did not name the officials in documents filed in federal court in Georgia.
Former President Donald Trump has made repeated false claims that widespread fraud cost him the election, and some of his supporters have targeted election officials and workers in Georgia and elsewhere, making violent threats against them. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Texas-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-making-threats-16832006.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:36 | en | 0.965023 |
Guess what is the secret of SAD patron Parkash Singh Badal’s longevity and good health. Well, he says it’s all due to his simple diet of daal-roti and exercise. Yes, all you out there who are inspired by the large number of very prosperous looking people during the polls, guzzling copious cups of chai with bread pakoras, please take note. Exercise is non negotiable. And on most days before Covid, Badal saab would do it at least an hour a day. Match that.
The ‘kaale kanoon’
If there is one thing that farmer unions have done without meaning to is to change the nomenclature of the now repealed three farm laws. Once upon a time where they were passed and lived their short life, they had long titles but in the poll-bound Punjab, all three are clubbed into one catch-all term “kaale kanoon”. Be it young or old, men or women, traders or farmers, doctors or engineers, supporters or detractors, the entire Punjab calls them “kaale kanoon”. That may well explain why they were repealed. What’s not in a name.
A for accessibility
A round of Punjab in the election mode is a must for anyone with any kind of political aspiration. One thing that you will glean very quickly is that accessibility is the key to being a good politician. It’s one lesson that one voter after the other drives home endlessly. So in Kotkapura, Congress candidate Ajaypal Singh Sandhu is “har man pyaare” because he is available to the people of his constituency. There are others who came, who won and who disappeared. Voters tend to be chary of such persons. But even a good politician’s career hangs by a thread as fickle voters can often get swayed by a bigger leader or a party.
Baljinder and Brar with hands folded
Folded hands. That is one mudra common to many a poll poster in Punjab. It cuts across party and gender lines. Every leader in these posters has to look you in the eye, with a humble appeal. The folded hands are an entreaty, a quietly desperate plea. But not everyone can do this with elan. Which is why the award for keeping hands folded well goes to AAP’s Baljinder Kaur from Talwandi Sabo and Akali Dal’s Mantar Brar from Kot Kapura. If you want to find out the real reason why, ask their voters.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards. | https://indianexpress.com/elections/punjab-assembly-polls-parkash-singh-badal-sad-7757568/ | 2022-02-04T18:53:38 | en | 0.973798 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — UCLA men's basketball player Mac Etienne was arrested and cited on suspicion of misdemeanor assault after appearing to spit toward a fan after the Bruins lost a road game to Pac-12 rival Arizona, a University of Arizona police spokesman said Friday.
The alleged incident occurred Thursday night as UCLA players left the McKale Center playing floor and entered a tunnel to go to their locker room, said the spokesman, Officer Jesus Aguilar.
Etienne was allowed to go to the locker room and was then arrested, cited and released, Aguilar said.
Local media outlets reported that fans jeered UCLA players when the incident occurred. The Wildcats beat the Bruins 76-66.
UCLA officials knew of the incident and were reviewing it, university spokesman Scott Markley said in a statement.
“UCLA Athletics is committed to and expects the highest level of sportsmanship," the statement said.
Etienne, a redshirt freshman, was not in uniform and did not play in the game.
It wasn't immediately clear whether saliva landed on any fans but the misdemeanor assault charge alleges intent, Aguilar said.
“We did have a willing victim who did want to press charges," he said.
Etienne wasn't taken into custody or booked into jail but he will be expected to either appear in court on a future date or make alternative arrangements with court officials, Aguilar said.
“We had no reason to take him into custody," he said. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/UCLA-player-arrested-after-allegedly-spitting-at-16831781.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:43 | en | 0.982779 |
Joe Burrow knew Evan McPherson must be a special kicker if the Cincinnati Bengals were willing to spend a fifth-round pick on a position usually filled by undrafted players and journeyman.
But the Bengals targeted McPherson and made him the only kicker taken in the 2021 draft, a decision that has been validated by one of the NFL's greatest postseason kicking runs.
“Obviously kickers aren’t usually drafted that high, but I figured if we’re drafting a kicker, he’s going to be really good for us,” Burrow said this week. “Then I met Evan and you kind of know how a kicker is going to perform based on how he reacts and interacts with people in the locker room. All the kickers can kick it and put it through the uprights, but it’s really how you handle the intense situations that’s going to really make or break your reputation as a kicker.”
McPherson survived the friendly ribbing from his new teammates and dished it back himself, showing the Bengals he was ready for the NFL. But nothing has been more intense — and no performance has been better than McPherson has done so far in the playoffs.
He has been perfect on kicks through three games, making four field goals in each win and delivering walk-off kicks on the road the past two weeks to beat Tennessee and Kansas City and send Cincinnati to the Super Bowl.
“He’s been everything that we expected him to be and and then some,” special teams coach Darrin Simmons said. “But his mental makeup is fantastic. It’s exactly what you’re looking for in that position.”
McPherson's 12 field goals so far are two shy of Adam Vinatieri's record from the 2006 postseason and he already has as many four field-goal games in the playoffs as any player ever, tying the record Vinatieri set in his 24-year career.
McPherson's 12 field goals from at least 50 yards are the most in a single regular season and playoffs combined, and his three makes from long range in the playoffs are two shy of Vinatieri's record.
Longtime NFL kicker and CBS kicking analyst Jay Feely said the only postseason he would put ahead of McPherson's is what Vinatieri did in the 2001 season when he made “the greatest kick of all time,” a 45-yarder in the snow to force overtime against the Raiders. Vinatieri then made a 23-yarder to win that game, and a walk-off 48-yarder to beat the Rams in the Super Bowl.
But McPherson is doing this as a rookie under the bright playoff lights.
“A little bit of it is he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” Feely said. “So he’s just out there having fun. He hasn’t had the big misses. He did have the one game against Green Bay where he missed, but he was able to overcome that. That’s what defines great NFL kickers is their ability to overcome failure, to not allow it deter him. That’s the point this season where your entire rookie year could go off the rails and it could make you not be confident in yourself and your swing starts to change, especially when you’re a draft pick.”
McPherson missed three field goals in his first five games, including two in an OT loss to Green Bay in Week 5. He even memorably celebrated one of those misses as if he had made a game-winner.
But he has nailed 35 of 37 field goals since then, validating the scouting report Simmons got from his former kicker Shayne Graham, who coached McPherson in college at Florida.
“He talked to me a lot about what Evan’s makeup was and how confident he was without being cocky, and that’s an important differentiation to make,” Simmons said. “You want these guys to have short-term memory that if good or bad, that they live to perform in the next kick. The most important kick is not the last kick, it’s the next kick.”
The Bengals have marked McPherson's winning kicks the past two weeks with Tweets, saying “THAT’S WHY YOU DRAFT A KICKER!”
But Feely said he doesn't expect McPherson's success to lead to a run on kickers going in the draft. He said determining which kickers have the fortitude to succeed like McPherson and which ones will flame out like Tampa Bay 2016 second-round pick Roberto Aguayo is nearly impossible to know.
“I think it’s really hard to draft a kicker and be successful," Feely said. “I think it’s difficult for a personnel department to be able to look at a guy no matter where he played, no matter what level, and determine if he has the ability mentally and the mental makeup to come into the NFL to succeed.”
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More AP Super Bowl coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Bengals-rookie-kicker-McPherson-on-record-playoff-16832169.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:49 | en | 0.983387 |
BEIJING (AP) — Brittany Bowe was having quite an Olympics — before she even hit the ice.
First, she claimed another speedskating race in Beijing — or, more appropriately, reclaimed it — when a third spot opened up for the Americans in the 500 meters.
Then, Bowe was selected to be one of the U.S. flagbearers in Friday night's opening ceremony at the Bird's Nest stadium after the original choice, bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor, was forced into isolation by a positive COVID-19 test.
“It's a shame that Elana can't do it because we all felt she was the deserving front-runner to have that honor,” U.S. speedskating coach Ryan Shimabukuro said after Friday's training session at the Ice Ribbon oval, which Bowe skipped to rest up for her evening duties.
"But Brittany is obviously taking that responsibility seriously and she's going to lead that delegation like the champion she is. I think there's no better runner-up than Brittany to do that."
Bowe, a six-time world champion and bronze medalist at the 2018 Winter Games, finished first in the 500 at the U.S. trials last month. But she gave up her Olympic spot after event favorite Erin Jackson slipped in her heat and shockingly finished third overall.
At the time, the Americans only had two guaranteed spots in the event, so Bowe withdrew to ensure that Jackson got a chance to skate in Beijing.
However, the U.S. picked up a third skater after the International Skating Union recently issued its final allotments.
So Bowe is back in, joining Jackson and Kimi Goetz.
Jackson, the first Back woman to win a World Cup race, is one of the gold-medal favorites in the 500.
Bowe's best races are the 1,000 and 1,500, both of which are considered strong medal possibilities for the 33-year-old Floridian.
But she's no slouch in the 500, which made her original withdrawal all the more poignant to Jackson and Bowe's other teammates.
“All things considered, to give up an opportunity for a medal is insane,” Joey Mantia said with a smile after his training session. ”What she did was absolutely crazy. I think it’s an amazing gesture that she was able to bring herself to do, and not knowing for sure if she was going to get that spot or not because our criteria for how we get spots is a little open-ended up until the last minute.”
To Mantia, that made it all the more fitting that Bowe got a chance to carry the U.S. flag along with curler John Shuster.
“She definitely deserves it,” Mantia said. “We were pushing hard for her, so it was really nice to see that.”
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Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963 and find his work at https://apnews.com/search/paulnewberry
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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Bowe-having-quite-an-Olympics-before-she-even-16832095.php | 2022-02-04T18:53:55 | en | 0.978751 |
GENEVA (AP) — The dissident Chinese architect behind the Beijing stadium hosting Friday’s opening ceremony of the Winter Games has scoffed at the head of the U.N. health agency, saying China should award him “a gold medal” for not asking hard questions about its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ai Weiwei, possibly China’s best-known dissident, aired criticism of Beijing’s human rights record and response to the pandemic, in an interview with The Associated Press Friday, in which he also took aim at World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Ai also accused governments of showing too much deference to China for business or political interests.
He chuckled derisively after hearing that Tedros had posted a photo on Twitter showing himself in a red-and-white “Beijing 2022” winter track suit and matching wool cap as he carried the Olympic flame during the torch relay in China.
“My God. He should get a gold medal from China because he never asked the right question,” Ai said in a video conversation. “Where is his conscience, this guy? You know, all those people who are supposed to defend the human health and give the right information, but never ask the right question and (are) always on the side of the propaganda.”
“They’re so ridiculous.”
Under Tedros, the WHO came in for severe criticism from then U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in 2020 for its alleged missteps and excessive deference to, and praise for, China when the COVID-19 pandemic first appeared in the city of Wuhan some two years ago.
Tedros, in his tweet on Friday, wrote that he was “humbled” to participate in the torch relay.
“The Olympic Games are about hope & I wish for this flame to bring hope to people around the world that we can end #COVID19 together,” he wrote, while thanking the IOC president for the invitation.
Above all, Ai highlighted the Chinese government’s poor human rights record, saying hopes that it might have improved since Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Games have gone unfulfilled.
“I think it’s really, really unbelievable after 14 years of this — this game, same game — we turn to the same country, a country (that has) not developed an inch towards better human rights and the better freedom of speech conditions, but rather become very arrogant,” Ai said.
He said the Chinese Communist Party’s government has brainwashed fellow citizens of his homeland who “kind of show their patriotic support for the party,” and said any comments that stray from that on social media like China’s Weibo “will disappear.”
Ai also took aim at the International Olympic Committee, saying the Games means “big business for them.” He said the IOC “never protected” human rights and has shown itself to “always defend … whatever China is doing — which is a pity.”
Ai didn’t give a pass to other countries either — both those like Russia, which were represented at the highest official levels, and some Western countries which boycotted the Games or decided to stay away for reasons like COVID-19 concerns. He faulted them for a double standard.
“They very, like, softly say, ‘we are not officially attending.’ For me, that is like a joke,” AI said. “So the West, the problem is, cannot find a better strategy, but to use that as like a smoke gun to say, ‘O.K., we’re defending those principles.’”
“But in the reality, they are not: They are business as normal,” he added. “Many countries are hypocritical.”
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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Chinese-dissident-Ai-voices-criticism-as-Winter-16832185.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:01 | en | 0.971563 |
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday and will miss the Hawkeyes' home game against Minnesota on Sunday.
Assistant Billy Taylor will serve as the acting head coach in McCaffery’s absence.
Iowa (14-7, 4-6 Big Ten) has lost three of its last four games. The Hawkeyes' game at Ohio State that was scheduled for Thursday was postponed because of inclement weather.
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More AP college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25 | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Iowa-s-Fran-McCaffery-will-miss-Sunday-game-with-16832034.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:07 | en | 0.968002 |
BEIJING (AP) — The first day of medals at the Beijing Olympics could be the start of another Norwegian gold rush.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde is among the favorites in the men's downhill — one of the marquee events of NBC's prime-time coverage Saturday — and fellow Norwegian Therese Johaug looks poised to add to the three Olympic medals she's already won in cross-country skiing. Norway led all nations with 39 medals at Pyeongchang four years ago, including 14 golds.
The U.S., of course, has its share of contenders. Snowboarder Jamie Anderson is trying for a third straight slopestyle gold, and the final is Saturday night. The team figure skating competition resumes that evening, too. The Americans lead that after a strong start by Nathan Chen and Co.
Here are some things to watch (all times Eastern):
ALPINE SKIING
The world's top downhill racers had little time to familiarize themselves with the Rock course after test events were canceled because of the pandemic.
“For everybody it is new, us athletes as well as the coaches," Switzerland's Marco Odermatt said. “It’s a big challenge for the whole team to find a perfect setup.”
The downhill will be shown live on NBC and Peacock. It’s scheduled to start at 10 p.m.
Kilde, the World Cup leader, is dating American star Mikaela Shiffrin.
FIGURE SKATING
The U.S. leads the powerful Russians and third-place China so far in the team competition. Chen won the men's short program, and Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue did the same in the rhythm dance.
Up next are the women's short program and men's free skate. NBC is airing that part of the team event live in prime time.
“We have a really strong team, so we have a lot of chess pieces to play with,” Chen said. "Whatever is the strongest piece at that time is the strongest piece at that time.”
SNOWBOARDING
USA Network is showing men's and women's slopestyle live Saturday night. The final runs of the women's competition are followed by qualifying for the men. NBC will include encore coverage of the women's final on its late-night slate.
The U.S. swept slopestyle snowboarding in 2018, with Anderson and Red Gerard both winning.
The slopestyle course in Zhangjiakou includes a snow replica of the Great Wall that serves as a backdrop for the rails and jumps athletes will navigate.
NORWEGIAN STAR
Johaug won gold in a relay in 2010 and took two more cross-country skiing medals in 2014. She missed the 2018 Games following a doping ban, but the 14-time world champion is back now. The skiathlon — an event that includes both classical and freestyle techniques — is live on USA Network on Saturday morning with encore coverage on NBC in the afternoon.
ALSO OF NOTE
Of the 13 gold medals China has won at the Winter Games, 10 were in short track speedskating. The hosts have high hopes again in that sport, and the first short track medal will be awarded in the mixed team relay. USA Network is showing that final during its 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. time slot, and NBC will air it in prime time. ... Canada's Mikael Kingsbury is the defending champ in men's moguls. USA Network will show qualifying and the final live Saturday morning, and the final will also be shown as part of NBC's late-night coverage. ... The U.S. women's hockey team, which began defending its Olympic title with a win over Finland, faces the Russians live on USA Network at 8:10 a.m. That game will be shown again at 5 p.m. on the same channel.
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Follow Noah Trister at www.Twitter.com/noahtrister
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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Men-s-downhill-highlights-first-day-of-Olympic-16832057.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:14 | en | 0.966458 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A suspect was arrested in an altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan in a parking lot outside SoFi Stadium during last weekend’s NFC championship game between the 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams, authorities said Friday.
A 33-year-old man was arrested for investigation of assault by means to produce great bodily injury and was released on $30,000 bail, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. told a press conference.
Investigators traced the suspect through a vehicle at the scene and after the suspect declined to come in, they went to him and he voluntarily came to the police station where he was advised of his rights, Butts said.
The mayor said the case will be presented to prosecutors.
The 49ers fan, Daniel Luna, 40, had to be put into a medically induced coma after he was punched, fell and struck his head on the ground, according to Butts. The mayor said Friday that Luna's condition had neither improved nor degraded.
Butts said police sought the man who threw a punch in a brief fight based on a blurry video and the license plate of a car.
Luna, who owns a restaurant in Oakland, was mingling in a crowd of about 16 people at SoFi Stadium, most of them wearing what appeared to be 49ers jerseys, when he pushed a man wearing a Rams jersey from behind, Butts said Thursday after viewing the video.
Before that, Butts said, “there didn’t seem to be any hostilities.”
When Luna turned to walk away, the man pushed Luna back, the mayor said. When Luna turned, the man punched him in the mouth, causing Luna to fall to the ground and hit the back of his head, Butts said, estimating that the encounter lasted less than five seconds.
“It looked like a small altercation that went very bad,” he said. “From one punch and someone falling, hitting their head on the ground. It wasn’t like you had people ganging up on somebody and beating them.”
Luna’s face was fractured and he was placed in a medically induced coma to prevent internal bleeding from swelling his brain, Butts said.
The mayor said the video isn’t clear enough to provide a description of the suspect but he was seen talking to some people in a car. Security won’t be increased because of the incident, the mayor said.
“I’m very comfortable there was sufficient security” in the parking lot, he said. “There is plenty of security in the parking lot. You’re not going to stop every altercation, argument between fans. It’s just not going to happen.”
The Rams beat the 49ers on Sunday 20-17 to advance to the Super Bowl, where they will play the Cincinnati Bengals on Feb. 13.
The attack was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Police-Arrest-in-altercation-that-badly-injured-16831849.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:20 | en | 0.984675 |
BEIJING (AP) — The clock is ticking for American speedskater Casey Dawson to get to his first Olympics.
He tested positive for COVID-19 three weeks ago. Recently, Dawson had been testing negative and he believed that by producing two consecutive negative tests he would be cleared to join his teammates in Beijing.
"Everything was good until I received news that they now require four negative tests to even consider sending me over,” Dawson wrote in an Instagram post.
He's also had issues with testing centers in Utah that must be approved by the Chinese consulate.
“My expectation is that he'll get here,” Matt Kooreman, long track program director for US Speedskating, said Friday.
Kooreman said they’re targeting an arrival date of Monday for Dawson.
“He’s such a level-headed guy,” Kooreman said. “I’m more worried about the people around him freaking out than I am him freaking out.”
Dawson's first individual event is the 5,000 meters on Sunday. He would be replaced by Emery Lehman, a two-time Olympian. Dawson also qualified for the 1,500 on Tuesday, and could be replaced by Ethan Cepuran.
US Speedskating is eager to get Dawson to Beijing in time to join in the team pursuit. The quarterfinals are Feb. 13, with semifinals and the final two days later. The U.S. men are strong medal contenders in the event.
Dawson, a 21-year-old skater from Park City, Utah, has been training at the Utah Olympic Oval to stay sharp while his COVID-19 situation plays out. He is set to receive his U.S. Olympic clothing and gear this weekend.
“Now let's just pass this test," Kooreman said, "and get a plane ticket.”
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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Speedskater-Dawson-stuck-in-US-still-hopes-to-16832094.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:26 | en | 0.984258 |
With millions of dollars pouring into endorsements for college athletes, the latest battleground in the recruiting wars is the statehouse: A handful of states are already considering changing barely-dried rules to help their flagship schools land — or keep — top prospects.
Over the past three years, at least 25 states put laws or executive orders in place addressing name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes. All the measures make it clear that the NCAA can no longer limit this kind of revenue but some did set some ground rules.
It’s those restrictions, which vary from state to state, that are now getting a second look as competition to land the nation's top high school athletes heats up.
Alabama and Florida lawmakers are already considering repealing or making major changes to laws governing college athlete compensation less than a year after enacting them. Ohio State officials last week made it easier for their school to link athletes to big-dollar contracts.
The moves could be the start of a neverending effort to redefine the landscape for college recruiting where states try to constantly outdo each other, said Gabe Feldman, director of Tulane’s sports law program.
“If the latest state law is more permissive, then other states are going to have to follow suit, and will follow suit. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now," Feldman said. “Schools will do as much as they can do within the rules to compete. The only way to stay on a level playing field is to remove those state laws.”
In Alabama, a bill to repeal a 7-month-old college athlete compensation law sailed through the state House 97-1 and awaits action in the Senate.
“It may be the shortest-lived (bill) to stay in law ever,” said Alabama state Rep. Kyle South, the sponsor of both the law and the bill to dump it. “Pass it one year, repeal it the next.”
South said the two biggest schools in his state, Alabama and Auburn, support the repeal effort. Alabama has a 2022 recruiting class ranked among the best in the country and Auburn was top 20.
“They want to be able to go out on the recruiting trail and say, ’We’re playing by the same set of rules .... We’re on the same level playing field as Texas and Michigan,'” South said.
The rules mashup was created when court decisions and public opinion prompted a number of states, California first among them, to pass laws securing the right for athletes to earn endorsement money. With little choice, the NCAA on July 1 cleared the way for its athletes to start cashing in, laying down the barest of guidelines that bar pay-for-play and using endorsements as recruiting inducements.
Schools were told to create their own polices and follow any applicable state laws. And while many state laws share similar characteristics, they remain uneven. For example, states may have different rules regarding use of team logos in endorsements, or limit school involvement in connecting athletes to businesses. A few simply give wide latitude to their schools to write their own rules within the minimal guidelines of the NCAA.
“The simple fact is some states have a competitive advantage (for recruits) over others,” said South, the Alabama lawmaker.
Some Florida lawmakers want to eliminate the state’s ban on schools helping facilitate player endorsement deals. The change was proposed the same day Florida State lost a five-star recruit to tiny Jackson State; the sponsor of the measure insists the timing was a coincidence.
Florida state Rep. Chip LaMarca, author of the original law and the proposed change, said he is not interested in repealing the whole thing, just tweaking it to let schools get more directly involved in helping athletes make deals. LaMarca said he doesn’t want to eliminate other provisions, such as mandatory financial training designed to help athletes manage their contracts and earnings.
“Repealing the bill would not be about protecting the athletes,” LaMarca said.
His effort has struggled to gain traction, however. House Speaker Chris Sprowls this week called it a low priority while adding, "to a certain extent it’s like a race to bottom in college sports. Like, how many sports cars can we put in the hands of 18-year-olds?”
In Ohio, athlete compensation rules were set by an executive order from the governor. Buckeyes officials determined they could change their own rules to create a new program and have the school be a link between players and businesses.
“Our guidelines were initially created to be restrictive, but now that we have a better understanding of NIL, it’s clear that we can provide more assistance in connecting student-athletes with interested brands," Ohio State senior associate athletic director Carey Hoyt said. “Updating our NIL guidelines at this time is what we needed to do to stay competitive in this ultra-competitive landscape."
Buckeyes football coach Ryan Day welcomed the move. He described “uneasiness” among coaches and schools “because what one place can do maybe another place can’t, and trying to figure out what those norms are going to be because it’s so new. But we’re adapting fast.”
Being nimble is key amid the fierce competition. Supporters of major programs fight to stand out while giving a wink and a nod to the NCAA ban on using NIL deals as recruiting inducements. At more than a dozen major programs across the country, third-party “collectives” and nonprofits have formed to pool millions from businesses and donors to offer endorsement deals.
At Texas, for example, the Clark Field Collective said it had up to $10 million pledged to support NIL deals for Longhorns athletes. Days later, the nonprofit Horns with Heart launched with a promise of $50,000 annually to scholarship offensive linemen for NIL deals supporting charities.
Feldman cautioned that if a lot of states follow Alabama's effort to repeal rather than tweak their NIL laws, it would give the NCAA the chance to move in and create a new set of regulations.
“The states that are hamstrung are the ones with restrictions on school involvement and use of logos,” Feldman said. “I frankly think it would be a mistake to completely repeal as that would open up a space for the NCAA to step in.”
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AP Sports Writer Mitch Stacy contributed from Columbus, Ohio.
___
More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25 | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Statehouses-latest-front-in-college-athlete-16832007.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:32 | en | 0.967321 |
Across both Super Bowl rosters, there is a great divide.
The Rams are the team loaded with veterans and the Bengals are the new kids on the block. Los Angeles has the star power, which figures with Hollywood next door. Cincinnati has a bunch of relative no names outside of Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor worked for Rams boss Sean McVay — even though Taylor is more than two years older.
Both teams were No. 4 seeds after winning their divisions, so there are some similarities. It might be the differences that, well, make the difference on Feb. 13 at SoFi Stadium. Oh, yeah, that happens to be the Rams' new home.
WHEN THE BENGALS HAVE THE BALL:
Burrow (9) and Chase (1) are the Dynamic Duo for Cincinnati. They were at LSU and nothing changed when Chase, who sat out the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, was chosen fifth overall in last April's draft. His effect has been immense, scoring 13 times on 81 receptions for 1,455 yards in the regular season.
Of course, Burrow has been just as impactful. He went 2-7-1 in a rookie season cut short by a knee injury and made a sensational return, as accurate as any passer in the league. Cool as they come — yes, Joe Cool — he had 34 touchdown passes, and in the Bengals' three postseason victories after having none since 1991, Burrow has gone 75 for 109 for 842 yards and four TDs, showing scrambling skills as well.
The key for LA to slow down that combination lies with the pass rush; Cincinnati allowed a league-high 51 sacks during the season, 12 more in the postseason. So unanimous All-Pro DT Aaron Donald (99), LB Leonard Floyd (54) and revitalized Von Miller (40), the MVP of the 2016 Super Bowl, must be negated somewhat. If the Bengals' offensive line, from tackles Jonah Williams (73) and Isaiah Prince (71) to center Trey Hopkins (66) to guards Quinton Spain (67) and the rotation of Hakeem Adeniji (77) and rookie Jackson Carman (79) don't step up, Burrow will go down a bunch.
If he gets the protection that has been missing too often, Chase's matchups with All-Pro CB Jalen Ramsey (5) could be epic. But Ramsey won't always be on Chase, who can break free on any route, and he also has some potent partners in WRs Tyler Boyd (83) and Tee Higgins (85), their battles with the remainder of the secondary could be significant.
In his seventh pro season, TE C.J. Uzomah (87) has emerged as a threat, but he damaged a knee last week and his status is uncertain.
RB Joe Mixon (28), who ranked third with 1,205 rushing yards, can wear down defenses, but the Rams ranked sixth against the rush.
WHEN THE RAMS HAVE THE BALL:
Like with the trades that brought Miller and Ramsey on defense, the Rams have bolstered their offense immeasurably in recent years. They solidified left tackle five seasons back with Andrew Whitworth (77), who remains a stud at age 40.
Much more recently came QB Matthew Stafford (9), RB Sony Michel (25) and WR Odell Beckham Jr. (3). All of have been key contributors, though Stafford is by far the biggest upgrade.
Sure, the Rams made the 2019 Super Bowl with Jared Goff, but Stafford, finishing his 13th pro season, is a class above. After languishing in Detroit for a dozen years, he's been a main cog in the Rams getting this far.
No one is better against the blitz than Stafford, and while he can make some head-scratching throws and turn over the ball, he also makes some head-shaking passes that put you in awe.
And, like Burrow, he has one of the league's best targets in unanimous All-Pro WR Cooper Kupp (10). Opponents could put all 11 defenders on the guy and he'd still get free, as his triple crown of receiving shows: 145 receptions for 1,947 yards and 16 TDs. He's been just as unstoppable in the playoffs, and this could be a major mismatch. Bengals CBs Eli Apple (20), Chidobe Awuzie (22), Mike Hilton (21) and Tre Flowers (33) will be tests bigtime.
Cincinnati is stronger at safety with Vonn Bell (24), whose pick of Patrick Mahomes set up the winning field goal for the AFC title, and Jessie Bates III (30). The entire bunch also must account for Beckham, who seems to be re-energized in LA, and Van Jefferson (12).
Michel and Cam Akers (23), who came back quickly from a torn Achilles tendon, share backfield duties, but this is a throw-first team operating behind standouts such as Whitworth. The 16-year veteran figures to be challenged by Cincinnati's top pass rusher, Trey Hendrickson (91), and DE Sam Hubbard (94), who was terrific against the Chiefs.
The Bengals don't have a linebacker in Miller's class, but Logan Wilson (55) and Germaine Pratt (57) have made some key plays in the postseason.
SPECIAL TEAMS:
It's all about rookie Evan McPherson (2). The fifth-round draft choice — no, Cincinnati did not bungle a pick on a kicker here — the kid has hit all 12 of his field goals, including four in the wild-card round, then winners at Tennessee and Kansas City.
P Kevin Huber (10) did not have a particularly strong season, but he's a veteran who has kicked in the postseason before.
LA's Matt Gay (8) is steady enough, and he also has two straight winning field goals in the playoffs.
P Johnny Hekker (6) has been one of the league’s best punters for a decade, and is a threat on fake punts.
Neither team scares you on kick returns.
COACHING:
This is so juicy.
Taylor spent two years working for McVay and didn't even reach coordinator status when the Bengals came calling in 2019. He went 6-25-1 his first two seasons, but the Bengals were building their roster. His work in the past six weeks has been particularly exemplary.
McVay remains the poster child — OK, he's a wise old 36 — for hot-shot offensive minds. His game management has been questioned, but it's hard to argue with four playoff trips in five seasons, and a Super Bowl loss three years ago.
Two assistants worth high praise: Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who has done a lot with no real stars except Hendrickson, and Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O'Connell, who like Anarumo has gotten some head coaching interviews.
INTANGIBLES:
The Rams are built for now. They have been all-in on this season, using lots of draft capital — not to mention $$$ capital — on this roster.
They also have the bitter memory of a putrid performance against New England in the 2019 Super Bowl.
For those who think this is gravy for the surprising Bengals, remember they are 0-2 in Super Bowls, both losses to the dynastic 49ers, though in close contests. They also hadn't won a postseason game since 1991. What do they have to lose now?
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More AP Super Bowl coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/Super-Bowl-Matchup-Veteran-Rams-versus-upstart-16832177.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:38 | en | 0.970538 |
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — USA Swimming canceled a meet in Iowa and is reviewing its calendar for the rest of 2022 after the world championships were pushed back another year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The TYR Pro Swim Series Des Moines, set for March 2-5 at the MidAmerican Energy Aquatic Center at the Wellmark YMCA, was to be a qualifying meet for the Phillips 66 International Team Trials in April.
But the decision by world governing body FINA to delay the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, for a second time has thrown the U.S. plans into turmoil.
The worlds were initially set for 2021, then pushed back to this May after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed a year. With the pandemic still raging, the championships are now set for July 14-30, 2023.
While that means three huge events in a one-year period — two world championships and the 2024 Paris Olympics — the powerhouse American team now has a huge gap in its schedule this year.
USA Swimming is “reviewing its domestic calendar to ensure it provides the best competitive opportunities at the most impactful times,” the organization said Friday in a statement.
A revised schedule will be released in the coming weeks.
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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.lakecountystar.com/sports/article/USA-Swimming-cancels-meet-reviews-plans-with-16832128.php | 2022-02-04T18:54:45 | en | 0.964651 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday extended tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on most solar panels imported from China and other countries. But in a nod to his efforts to combat climate change and boost clean energy, Biden excluded tariffs on some panels used in large-scale utility projects.
Biden said he will continue for four more years tariffs imposed by Trump on imported solar cells and panels, but he exempted so-called bifacial solar panels that can generate electricity on both sides and are now used in many large solar projects. The technology was still emerging when the tariffs were first imposed by Trump.
“By excluding bifacial panels, we will ensure that solar deployment continues at the pace and scale needed to meet the president’s ambitious climate and clean energy targets and create good jobs at home,'' Biden said in a statement. Along with clean-energy provisions in his still-stalled ”Build Back Better" initiative, the actions on solar power "will enable us to rebuild a sustainable, competitive, and technologically-advanced domestic solar industry,'' Biden said.
Biden also doubled an import quota on solar cells — the main components of panels that go on rooftops and utility sites — to 5 gigawatts, allowing a greater number of imported cells used by domestic manufacturers. The U.S. does not currently produce solar cells, and the administration wants to make sure domestic suppliers "do not have to pay a tariff on a key input for their manufacturing process,'' a senior administration official said Friday.
The cells come from places like Vietnam or Malaysia — not China, the official said. "There is no reason to think that making the (import quota) larger will somehow help China,'' the official said, a claim that some U.S. solar manufacturers disputed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden faced a choice among competing constituencies on solar power, a key part of his climate and clean-energy agenda. Labor unions support import restrictions to protect domestic jobs, while the solar industry relies in large part on cheap panels imported from China and other countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.
The American Clean Power Association, a renewable energy group representing both installers and manufacturers, praised the administration’s decision, calling it “a win for jobs and a win for the President’s climate agenda.”
Biden's decision to extend the tariffs on monofacial solar cells and modules "gives the domestic solar manufacturing industry four more years to adjust to import competition as intended by the statute,” said Heather Zichal, the group's CEO. She is a former energy adviser to President Barack Obama.
Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents solar installers, said she was disappointed with the decision to extend the tariffs on imported solar cells and panels, but said Biden “arrived at a balanced solution in upholding the exclusion for bifacial panels and increasing the tariff rate quota for cells.”
"Today’s decision recognizes the importance of this innovative technology in helping to improve power output and lower costs in the utility segment. It is a massive step forward in producing clean energy in America and in tackling climate change,'' Hopper said.
Trump approved tariffs on imported solar-energy components in 2018, saying his administration would always defend American workers and businesses from unfair competition. The tariffs were initially set at 30% and later cut to 18% and then 15%. They were set to expire on Sunday without action by Biden.
Under Biden's decision, tariffs will be set at 14.75% and gradually be reduced to 14%.
Since the tariffs were imposed, solar-panel production in the U.S. has tripled. A Chinese company and a Korean company set up factories in the United States and an American firm, First Solar Inc., expanded domestic production.
Mark Widmar, chief executive of Arizona-based First Solar, said his company was “deeply disappointed” at Biden's decision to exclude bifacial panels from tariffs.
The exclusion tilts the playing field to China and other large producers “by providing unlawfully subsidized bifacial panels an instant, artificial advantage over other panel types,'' Widmar said. The advantage given to bifacial panels is not based "on real-world performance or true competitiveness, but merely on distinguishing where the cells happen to be located on the panel,'' he said.
Since China dominates bifacial panel production, "this decision effectively allows China to outflank American efforts to grow self-reliant solar supply chains,'' Widmar said.
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Associated Press reporter Josh Boak contributed to this report. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/business/article/Biden-extends-Trump-era-solar-tariffs-but-16831909.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:07 | en | 0.95276 |
SAN ANTONIO — Jamie Kennedy joins the GDSA Comedy Club, after talking to Justin Calderon about his film career throughout the years.
Actor, Jamie Kennedy, reveals what it was like to be a part of the Scream franchise | Great Day SA
Comedian and Actor, Jamie Kennedy, is making a stop at the LOL Comedy Club | https://www.kens5.com/article/entertainment/television/great-day-sa/actor-jamie-kennedy-reveals-what-it-was-like-to-be-a-part-of-the-scream-franchise-great-day-sa/273-a21cbbf4-761a-4dc7-ad30-672a034c0578 | 2022-02-04T18:55:07 | en | 0.961937 |
SAN ANTONIO — Clarke Finney, is sharing how San Antonio Alamo College is changing the way students will acquire books for the upcoming spring semester.
A new college program will keep more money in student's pockets | Great Day SA
Alamo College is testing out a new way to pay for student's book fees | https://www.kens5.com/article/entertainment/television/great-day-sa/college-program-keep-money-students-pockets-great-day-sa/273-8af7841a-9ddd-4e64-b2ae-081686e4d84b | 2022-02-04T18:55:07 | en | 0.903197 |
SAN ANTONIO — How to make sure the inside and outside of your home can withstand freezing temperatures this winter.
For more information: jonwayne.com
SAN ANTONIO — How to make sure the inside and outside of your home can withstand freezing temperatures this winter.
For more information: jonwayne.com | https://www.kens5.com/article/entertainment/television/great-day-sa/how-to-prepare-your-home-for-freezing-temperatures-great-day-sa/273-733fd0e0-bf49-4372-b75d-cb1180c1e4fa | 2022-02-04T18:55:08 | en | 0.8278 |
The Republican National Committee has voted to censure Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, for their involvement on the Democrat-led select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, according to CNN and The Washington Post.
The vote took place Friday at the RNC's winter meetings in Salt Lake City.
It comes after an RNC committee chose to re-write the resolution to simply censure the lawmakers instead of expelling them from the Republican House conference altogether. The resolution to censure Cheney and Kinzinger passed the committee vote unanimously on Thursday night.
Cheney and Kinzinger have been two of the most vocal Republicans in their opposition to former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The House Select Jan. 6 Committee is being led by Democrats after Republican Senators last summer halted an effort to establish a bipartisan and bicameral Sept. 11-style committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riots.
This story is breaking and will be updated. | https://www.fox13now.com/news/national-politics/rnc-votes-to-censure-cheney-kinzinger-for-their-involvement-on-jan-6-committee | 2022-02-04T18:55:09 | en | 0.95331 |
HOUSTON — METRO is honoring the legacy and courage of civil rights icon Rosa Parks with commemorative seats at the front of some transit vehicles.
Parks challenged segregation and changed the course of history in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. It was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.
Parks' arrest galvanized the Montgomery Bus Boycott and led to the United States Supreme Court decision that declared segregation on buses unconstitutional.
The seats that honor Parks have a bright yellow cover that reads, "Dedicated to the Memory of Rosa Parks."
The special seats will be included in some local buses, METRORapid, METRORail and METROLift.
The tribute was officially launched today, which is Transit Equity Day and it would have been Parks' 109th birthday.
WATCH: Cultural Conversations: Rosa Parks | https://www.kens5.com/article/life/people/rosa-parks-honored-houston-metro-buses/285-2fc2235d-74a9-4839-a6eb-b9e9f6199115 | 2022-02-04T18:55:10 | en | 0.959442 |
MOORE COUNTY, N.C. — A North Carolina couple is on a heartfelt mission to turn grief into good – in their son’s honor – as COVID-19 cruelly targets pregnant women and their babies.
THE IMPACT
Thirty-one-year-old pharmacist Jenny Gooch and her husband, Garrett, were thrilled about their second child – another son – due in August 2020.
However, in the spring, the world started changing, and Jenny Gooch learned of a workplace exposure to COVID-19.
“It was all kind of, honestly, a blur – a lot of panic. Everyone was nervous,” she recalled.
Soon afterward, she started feeling ‘off.’
“I was waiting on my (test) result. I started feeling like I wanted to put a sweatshirt on in the house,” she said.
Her husband thought it was peculiar when she woke up from a nap and mentioned she couldn’t taste her coffee.
Just shy of 24 weeks pregnant, she became FirstHealth of the Carolinas’ first confirmed COVID-positive pregnant patient, and her concerns immediately centered on her unborn baby.
“Prematurity at that age is very, very risky,” explained FirstHealth obstetric gynecologist John Byron, MD.
Byron was her doctor – and, later, a trusted confidante.
“She had COVID, she was in isolation, it was early on (in the pregnancy), so it was already high-stress for her, and a lot of the people taking care of her, too, because at that point in time, everyone was fearful of contracting COVID, themselves,” he said.
Byron had volunteered to take her case, having just recovered from his own infection – the first confirmed case in Moore County. He knew, despite Gooch’s good health and smooth pregnancy thus far, the COVID risks were grave.
“Definitely, if she had not had COVID, I do not think that would have happened,” he said.
What happened was the beginning of a nightmare.
“The contractions just kept coming, and they started more frequently. I was just laying in bed praying they would stop, and I realized they weren’t going to,” Gooch remembered.
She drove herself back to the hospital that had just discharged her.
“Everyone who was there was like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’” she said.
With no family allowed and no time to think, she delivered her son, Grady. Swiftly, a NICU team took him away to airlift to the NICU at UNC Children’s Hospital.
“I tried to get four quick pictures of him going through the exit to the helicopter,” remembered Garrett Gooch.
Only Dad could follow (once testing negative) and give updates. His wife was still positive for COVID-19 – 12 days after her initial test.
“Because this test we were using was this PCR test and was so sensitive, people would be positive for months,” explained Gretchen Arnoczy, MD.
Arnoczy was Jenny Gooch’s infectious diseases physician and, coincidentally, a friend. Thus began her mission to help change UNC Hospital’s COVID testing rules for mothers.
“We knew she wasn’t contagious. The (PCR) tests and what they pick up (later in the infection) is some dead virus particles…but we didn't know that at the time – it was so early (in the pandemic),” she said.
Two and a half weeks after Grady’s birth, Jenny Gooch finally held her son for the first time.
“The day she was able to go and see Grady was truly a gift,” cried Arnoczy.
It was a gift that came just in time. Suddenly, Grady’s good progress took a turn, when he contracted a non-COVID infection his tiny body just couldn’t fight.
“They (the doctors) said, ‘We just want to let you guys know that we think – we think this is gonna be the time to say goodbye,’” his mother recalled.
Painfully, she remembered the final moments.
“All the physicians were there that day that had been taking care of him – because everyone was so invested in making sure Grady got home – everyone came and surrounded us, surrounded him, as he left,” she cried.
One day shy of one month old, Grady died in his mother’s arms – an outcome completely out of their control, but one they grapple with every day.
“It’s been – I guess I don’t talk about it much,” admitted Garrett Gooch tearfully.
His wife often wonders, "What, if?”
“I will always blame COVID for his very early birth, and had I not caught COVID when I did during pregnancy, I do feel as though Grady would be here with us,” she said.
THE RISKS
Tragically, their COVID pregnancy story is one of many.
“In recent months, with the surge of the Delta mutation, we have had several pregnant ladies unvaccinated with severe COVID pneumonia. Unfortunately, in October, we had one pass away,” said Walda Pinn, MD.
Pinn is an obstetric gynecologist with Central Carolina OB/GYN and delivers babies at Cone Health. She explained pregnancy decreases a woman’s immune system, increasing her chances of severe complications if she contracts COVID. The virus ups the risks for pre-term labor, cesarean delivery, maternal death and stillbirth – consequences that, now, are largely preventable.
“They’re all unvaccinated,” Pinn said of the pregnant patients she has seen hospitalized with the most severe COVID outcomes.
“I implore my patients to please get the vaccine,” she said.
THE VACCINE
In summer 2021, the leading OB-GYN organizations – American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) – and CDC formally recommended the COVID vaccine for pregnancy.
Even still, available data shows only 40% of expecting women are vaccinated, and half of them got the vaccine prior to pregnancy.
“There is still a huge amount of hesitancy. A lot of that is because of misinformation and disinformation,” Arnoczy acknowledged.
Perhaps the biggest source of hesitation is false information about the vaccine’s tie to infertility. Research continues to disprove any link between the two, and a study at an IVF clinic in Israel even showed a slight increase in pregnancy success after vaccination.
Arnoczy added, “We do think fertility is more affected by a COVID infection than by the vaccination. Knowing that pregnancy does put you at higher risk of severe COVID and getting put into the hospital, ICU, vaccination for pregnant women is certainly the best thing.”
Pinn explained, "Though women can still get coronavirus when they’re vaccinated...the symptomology is much milder – if not asymptomatic – so we know vaccination is a good way to prevent these ICU admissions and potential intubation, potential pre-term delivery..."
Both Pinn and Arnoczy emphasized the vaccine (including the booster dose) is safe in any trimester of pregnancy. The shot also has indirect benefits for unborn and infant babies.
“When a woman is pregnant, and she gets vaccinated or boosted, some of the antibodies pass to the babies,” Arnoczy explained.
The same is true for breastfeeding infants.
However, for Jenny Gooch, the vaccine came months too late.
“If Jenny could go back to being Jenny in that (isolation) room in May 2020 and spending a month away from her family and losing her son, I would just want to say I would have prayed for a vaccine and anything that could protect us,” she said.
THE MESSAGE
In 2021, the Gooch family found answers to those prayers. Jenny Gooch got the shot and a much bigger dose of faith – a baby girl, whom they know was Heaven-sent.
“Now, we have a healthy seven-month-old attempting to crawl around. Keeps us on our toes, for sure,” smiled Dad.
Yet, even amidst great joy, the grief can resurface.
“Sometimes, I still can’t believe that happened to us, and I can’t believe I had to watch a child take his last breath on earth in my arms,” Jenny Gooch said, tearfully.
The Gooches hope Grady’s lasting legacy – his impact – will be to save lives.
“His short life mattered a lot, and his story can help prevent what happened to us from happening to other people, just by letting people know how dangerous COVID can be, how COVID forced him into the world so premature,” Jenny Gooch explained.
That, she said, is her reason for sharing their pain.
“I just want his story to reach as many people as possible and to help save other pregnancies and other babies from enduring the same,” she said.
They also want to help other bereaved parents know this: after a storm, there is, sometimes, a rainbow – a silver lining of love and hearts full of hope, beating forward.
THE SUPPORT
The Gooches, like so many families affected directly by COVID-19, thank the healthcare heroes and communities who helped them navigate the unknowns, residual trauma and healing.
Jenny Gooch emphasized, “I just wanted to say how much we appreciated everyone in our community, how much we appreciated everyone in our friends’ communities – so many people who reached out and sent help and gave us love… We’ve been able to help other NICU families with donations and things we received for Grady, and we’re going to continue to be able to do that.” | https://www.kens5.com/article/news/local/covid-and-pregnant-nc-mom-lost-newborn-son-before-vaccine-was-available/83-bc2b9689-26d7-4060-a229-e7693a91a902 | 2022-02-04T18:55:11 | en | 0.983243 |
PARIS (AP) — France’s broadcast watchdog has opened an inquiry into news coverage by Russian state TV channel RT France, after the regulator was alerted to concerns about some of its programs.
The regulator, called Arcom, confirmed the inquiry Friday. It did not elaborate on reasons for the move, but noted that it regularly investigates concerns about channels that broadcast in France. RT France, which launched in 2017, is part of the global RT TV network.
Many in France see RT as a Russian government propaganda tool that amplifies far-right or populist politics. It has repeatedly come under criticism from centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
While the inquiry is just an inquiry at this stage and doesn’t involve any restrictions on the channel’s programming, RT France director Xenia Fedorova tweeted: “Welcome to the new world of censorship” and sarcastically called it “perfect timing” after RT’s recent difficulties in Germany.
A German media regulator ruled Tuesday that RT lacks the necessary permission to broadcast its German-language programs in the country. RT DE started broadcasting in mid-December using a Serbian license.
In retaliation, Russia on Thursday announced that it is shutting down the Moscow office of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle and withdrawing its staff’s accreditations. It was the latest move by Russia's government against foreign or independent journalists.
The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that it “deplores” Moscow’s decision to shut down Deutsche Welle’s activities. “The freedom to inform is a fundamental right that should be protected everywhere,” it said. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/entertainment/article/French-regulator-investigates-Russian-broadcaster-16832208.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:13 | en | 0.962307 |
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Valentine's Day means romantic comedies, and romantic comedies — often enough — mean Jennifer Lopez. The rom-com mainstay of “Maid in Manhattan" and “The Wedding Planner” returns to the genre in “Marry Me,” which opens Friday in theaters and on Peacock. In it, she plays a J-Lo-like pop star who learns her fiancé has been cheating on her just before their wedding is to be televised. Heartbroken and distraught, she pulls a random fan (Owen Wilson) out of the audience who happens to be holding a “Marry Me” sign. The movie, which Lopez produced and performs songs in, will surely strike some as reflecting the star's own closely followed, always-in-the-spotlight romantic life. It's also her first lead role in a movie since 2019's acclaimed “Hustlers.”
— Amazon Studios, too, has its own prominent rom-com offering, starring Charlie Day and Jenny Slate. In “I Want You Back,” they play a pair of dumped 30-somethings stewing over their breakups. The two friends conspire to ruin their ex's new relationships to win them back. The film, which debuts Friday on Amazon Prime Video, is directed by Jason Orley, who helmed the charming 2019 Pete Davidson film “Big Time Adolescence.” Davidson also makes an appearance in “I Want You Back.”
— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle
MUSIC
— Mary J. Blige may have just said goodbye to viewers in the season finale of her Starz series “Power Book II: Ghost” but she's not going away: Blige pops up in a big way this week with a new album out Friday, Feb. 11, and a spot in the Super Bowl halftime show. The 13-track album, called “Good Morning Gorgeous,” features Anderson .Paak, Usher, DJ Khaled, Dave East and Fivio Foreign. The title track is an affirmation: “Sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and say/'Good morning gorgeous'/No one else can make me feel this way.”
— Spoon roar back with the 10-track, stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll album “Lucifer on the Sofa” out Friday, Feb. 11. It marks the quintet's first set of songs recorded in its hometown of Austin, Texas, in more than a decade, kicked off by the single “Wild.” “We wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll record, a great rock ‘n’ roll record. I just don’t feel like there’s enough great rock ‘n’ roll records being made these days,” frontman Britt Daniel recently told The AP. He also revealed that the title song refers to himself, saying that's “the character that I can become when I’m at my worst.”
— AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy
TELEVISION
— Joseph Sikora’s Tommy Egan is at the center of “Power Book IV: Force,” as is Chicago. It’s where Tommy ends up after ditching the familiar turf of New York, and executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson says the Windy City is both a character and a means of approaching the third “Power Book” spinoff with a clean slate and new tone. For Tommy, what was intended as a quick stop ends up plunging him into the city’s drug game and scheming to become its kingpin. Isaac Keys, Lili Simmons, Gabrielle Ryan and Shane Harper are among the cast members in the drama debuting Sunday, Feb. 6, on Starz.
— Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo star in HBO Max’s “The Girl Before,” adapted from novelist JP Delaney’s best-selling psychological thriller of the same name. Mbatha-Raw’s Jane is delighted to move into an impressively sleek, modern house, the work of an architect (Oyelowo) who requires occupants to follow his demanding rules. When Jane begins to discover parallels between her experience and that of previous tenant Emma (Jessica Plummer), the posh digs start to look far less appealing. The drama’s four episodes are out Thursday.
— All together now: Awww, Puppy Bowl is back! The event rides the coattails of that other, puppy-less bowl game and for the good cause of showcasing animal shelters, their dedicated staffers and the furry residents in need of homes. When Team Ruff and Team Fluff and coaches Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg meet in “Puppy Bowl XVIII,” more pups will take the field than ever before. The three-hour event, on discovery+ and Animal Planet at 2 p.m. EST Sunday, Feb. 13, features 118 adoptable players from 33 states. Among them: Benny, a wheelchair-using Labradoodle, and Pongo, a deaf Dalmatian.
— AP Television Writer Lynn Elber
___
Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/entertainment/article/New-this-week-Mary-J-Blige-Jennifer-Lopez-and-16832159.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:25 | en | 0.941029 |
SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio Independent School District will be providing curbside meals to some students on Friday, the school district said.
The meals will be provided from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. or while supplies last. The school said a breakfast and lunch bundle will be given to students who are 18-year-old and younger.
The district said children do not need to be enrolled in SAISD to receive a meal. If you do not have a child present during pick-up, SAISD said you will need the following:
- Official letter/email from the school listing children enrolled
- Individual student report cards
- Attendance record from parent portal on school website
- Birth certificate for children
- Student ID cards
Here are the following curbside locations:
- Jefferson HS: 723 Donaldson Ave, 78201
- Lanier HS: 1514 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd, 78207
- Edison HS: 701 Santa Monica Drive, 78212
- Sam Houston HS: 4635 E. Houston St, 78220
- Highlands HS: 3118 Elgin Ave, 78210
- Rhodes MS: 3000 Tampico St, 78207
- Poe MS: 814 Aransas Ave, 78210
- Beacon Hill ES: 1411 W. Ashby Place, 78201
- Washington ES: 1823 Nolan St, 78202
- Graebner ES: 530 Graebner Ave, 78225
- Schenck ES: 101 Kate Schenck Ave, 78223
- Japhet Academy: 314 Astor St, 78210
- ML King Academy: 3501 M.L. King Drive, 78220 | https://www.kens5.com/article/news/local/texas/saisd-to-provide-curbside-meals-for-students-friday/273-8926aca4-f95a-438d-b405-80787ba7eee4 | 2022-02-04T18:55:27 | en | 0.858774 |
SAN ANTONIO — On this episode of Locked On Spurs, host Jeff Garcia welcomes KENS 5 sports anchor Casey Viera to ask if San Antonio's small market might be a hindrance for the franchise's rebuild in today's NBA and quickly preview tonight's Spurs-Rockets matchup.
All this and more on this new episode of Locked On Spurs.
Subscribe to Locked On Spurs wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
Twitter: @KENS5, @JeffGSpursKENS5 | https://www.kens5.com/article/sports/locked-on/nba-podcast/spurs-show/spurs-rockets-preview-locked-on-spurs-nba-san-antonio/273-c021d4c7-0704-4bc1-bba3-85e04282e558 | 2022-02-04T18:55:33 | en | 0.811704 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo only needed one album to earn her the title of Billboard's 2022 Woman of the Year, landing her in the same company as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
The former teen actor turned pop star will be honored as the 2022 Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards on March 2. Previous honorees also include Cardi B, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.
Rodrigo became 2021′s biggest breakout star with her confessional debut album, breaking chart records and racking up awards and nominations. Rodrigo's exploration of heartache, jealousy and insecurity on “SOUR” broke streaming records and led to all 11 tracks landing in the top 30 of Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the first female artist to achieve the feat.
“Olivia’s trajectory to superstardom is the stuff of pop music legend,” said Hannah Karp, Billboard’s Editorial Director, in a statement. “Her talents as a storyteller and songwriter have made Olivia one of the most authentic and exciting new artists to explode onto the scene in years."
Other award recipients at the Billboard Women in Music Awards include Gabby Barrett, Phoebe Bridgers, Doja Cat, Karol G, Bonnie Raitt, Saweetie and Summer Walker.
The awards show will be held at the YouTube Theater at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, hosted by Ciara. Fans will be able to purchase tickets this year for the first time at billboardwomeninmusic.com. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/entertainment/article/Olivia-Rodrigo-named-Woman-of-the-Year-by-16832051.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:37 | en | 0.921187 |
SAN ANTONIO — If you're looking for a week to explain the season the San Antonio Spurs are having, look no further.
The young guns put together one of their best games of the season to beat DeMar DeRozan and Chicago, fought until the end in Phoenix despite key injuries, and fell apart against a depleted Warriors squad at home. The three-game run exemplifies the growth and growing pains for the Spurs, and the whiplash between the two.
San Antonio has enough wins to compete for a play-in spot, and enough losses to wind up with a wonderful draft pick if it doesn't work out. That's an interesting place to be a week before the trade deadline. The biggest question is what will happen with Thad Young, who got a surprise start against the Heat.
Let's take a look at how they got here, and what comes next.
No Bull
DeMar DeRozan returned to the AT&T Center for the first time as a Chicago Bull, and the young Spurs team that he helped guide welcomed him with one of their best performances in a new era for the team.
Fans gave a warm standing ovation after a beautiful tribute video for the man who spent three seasons as a veteran leader in Silver and Black. Many of those fans wore red and continued to cheer for DeRozan, an All-Star starter this year after being snubbed last season as a Spur. He put up 32 points and 8 assists, and he's never looked more like Michael Jordan with hair than he does this year in that scarlet uniform.
DeRozan deserved to be an All-Star for the Spurs last season, but he's taken a definite leap with Chicago. He's putting up 26.5 points, 5 assists and 5 rebounds per game, the second highest scoring average of his career. He's also hitting a better percentage from three, and on more attempts, than any of his years in San Antonio.
DeMar didn't attempt a shot against his former team for the first six minutes before punishing Keldon Johnson with a back cut. Johnson spent the rest of the contest draped over him, but it didn't seem to matter much. He started 8-for-10 from the floor, posting up, stepping back, fading away and displaying some of the best footwork you've ever seen.
When the Spurs traded Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green for DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and the pick that became Keldon Johnson, they did it because they felt it was the best way to remain somewhat competitive after that whole... thing. DeRozan wanted to be a Raptor for life and was heartbroken and surprised by the trade, but nonetheless, he came into his new situation a complete professional.
DeRozan averaged 21.6 points and 6.2 assists in his three seasons in San Antonio, played the closer role, and mentored the young core on and off the court. When his contract came to an end after the Spurs missed the playoffs for the second year in a row, the writing was on the wall. He was a win-now player in a rebuild situation, and finding a sign-and-trade was best for all parties involved.
San Antonio signed and traded DeRozan to the Bulls for a first-round pick, a second-round pick, Al-Farouq Aminu, who was waived before the season, and Thad Young, a quality veteran who has ridden the bench as the Spurs work to trade him before the deadline on February 10.
The move helped DeRozan get to a team with aspirations of a deep playoff run, and San Antonio got assets back for a guy who could have just walked away. It also gave them an opportunity to see what members of the young core step up into the void of offensive creation and leadership.
The Bulls came into the game 30-17 with a pair of sure All-Stars and another guy who made the game last year. The Spurs entered 18-31, leading the league in hard-fought losses and teachable moments as everyone takes on additional responsibility.
Despite the divergent directions of these teams, the Spurs dug in and competed on Friday night. They were down just 5 at halftime, and outscored Chicago 35-23 in the third to surge into the lead.
Dejounte Murray has answered that question of who would step up. He averaged nearly 23 points, 10 assists, 8.6 rebounds, and 2.1 steals in the month of January, and nearly had a 30-point triple double facing off against DeRozan, who he calls a brother.
RELATED: 'He's playing some great basketball' | DeRozan says Spurs' Dejounte Murray should be an NBA All-Star
Little brother doesn't have as much of a post-up game, but he can finish at the cup reliably and stop his drive at any time for a pull-up jumper. Dejounte's passing, much like his scoring, is both simple and effective. Most of his dimes travel just a few feet, and most of his offense relies on making simple reads in pick and roll. He colors within the lines, and not in a bad way.
Dejounte wasn't selected to the All Star game, but still has a chance to make it as an injury replacement.
RELATED: Spurs' Murray not selected to 2022 West All-Star reserves, but there's still hope he'll be added
He ripped his friend Zach LaVine at the top and took it coast to coast, but missed at the rim. When Nikola Vucevic got the board, Murray swiped it from him, briefly surveyed the court, and busted out the Dirk fade.
Murray hit a pair of catch-and-shoot threes as well, and showed patience, poise and control throughout the game. He notched a dozen assists, and helped fuel 20-point performances from the other two guys who came over in the DeRozan deal.
Jakob Poeltl's pick-and-roll chemistry with Murray has been the centerpiece of San Antonio's offense this year, and Poeltl has been upping his game along with him. He averaged about 15 points, 10 boards, 3 assists, 2 blocks and a steal in the month of January, and the Spurs are looking for him in the post where he hit a deep hook shot over Vuc.
Poeltl is still at his best setting screens, finding open space for layups and cleaning the glass, and that was his primary impact in the game against the guy who was his main pick-and-roll partner for the first five seasons of his career.
Keldon Johnson was the last piece of that trade, and the gold medalist/ball of manic childlike energy has learned how to be dangerous while standing perfectly still in his third NBA season.
Johnson is hitting 44% of his three-point shots, and the only player in the NBA shooting more attempts at a higher clip is Eric Gordon. Of Johnson's 201 attempts from deep, 180 have been of the catch-and-shoot variety. He hit over 47% of them, shooting with a deliberate, mechanical release and a lot of confidence. He's hit 28-50 from the corners, making him the most accurate shooter in the league there.
He shot 4-8 from deep against Chicago while hardly moving, and showed that there's a bit more nuance to his downhill game than just barreling through the defense. He popped a nasty spin move on DeMar, then hit it again later. He operated a bit as a screen and roll/pop piece, then drove in pick and rolls and dribble handoffs and showed an array of finishes. 23 points, 8 boards, and the defense on DeRozan made it one of the most complete games of his season.
Derrick White had 14 points and 9 assists with some special passes. He helped limit Zach LaVine, who scored 30, but shot just 2-10 from deep.
Devin Vassell finished all over the floor with catch-and-fire threes, and that opened up the rest of his game as he went from pump fakes at the arc to pull-ups in the mid-range. He even got all the way to the rack and used his long arms to place a gentle dunk in.
Lonnie Walker IV was aggressive to the basket and ready to shoot. McDermott did his job with three triples, and rookie Josh Primo joined the three-point party and played will in 12 minutes off the pine.
Put all those contributions together, and San Antonio carried a seven-point lead into the final frame that everyone in the building would come down to a duel between DeMar and Dejounte.
Johnson played his best defense of the game down the stretch, forcing DeRozan into long shots with physical play. White dished four dimes in the final quarter, Murray scored 9, and Poeltl matched him on a clutch push shot late in the guts of a close game.
San Antonio pulled away late and won 131-122 for one of their most impressive victories of the season, which has had a few big ones despite the record. The Spurs have beaten the Bulls, Jazz, Bucks and Warriors this year, showing that at their best, they can compete with anyone.
Good Loss/Bad Loss
The other two types of results for this team are less enjoyable. There's the one where they fight really hard against a good opponent and their best just isn't good enough, then there's the one where they face a depleted foe and can't close the deal. In the two games after their statement win over Chicago, they got those other two results.
Popovich left Murray, Poeltl and White home for a one-game trip to Phoenix to take on the best team in the NBA this year. Nobody who played seemed to care about the circumstances at all, and after three quarters San Antonio's complimentary players had built a 12-point lead.
Tre Jones started and had one of the best games of his career, McDermott hit 6 triples, Walker sparked things off the bench, and Keldon had another solid showing.
But in the first few minutes of the fourth, Phoenix outscored the Spurs 17-2 to rip away control of the game. Chris Paul had 8 of his 19 (!!!) assists in the fourth quarter, and the Suns escaped with a 115-110 win.
“I thought we were great," Popovich said after the game. "Couldn’t ask for more. Down the stretch, their experience showed and Chris (Paul), Devin (Booker), Mikal (Bridges), everybody, they showed why they got the best record in the league. I’m thrilled with how we played. We just did a little bit of film, watched our mistakes down the stretch that a young team is going to make, in an effort to get smarter and understand what goes on in those situations, but I thought our guys were spectacular.”
The next game came against Golden State, but a matchup that would usually be quite daunting was made much less scary when the injury report came out. Steve Kerr did an ode to load management on the second night of a back-to-back, with all the stars out for one reason or another. San Antonio got their three best guys back, and fans started writing in a W on the schedule.
Jakob Poeltl and Jock Landale sat the second half after each taking hits to the head, and the Warriors kept things interesting behind guys like Jordan Poole, Damion Lee, and Moses Moody, but trailed by 15 heading to the fourth. San Antonio shot 15-25 from three in the first three quarters.
With 7:14 left in the game, a dunk by Keita Bates-Diop put the Spurs in front 112-102. In the next five minutes, Golden State went on a crushing 15-2 run with Steph Curry watching from the bench in a velour tracksuit and no other All Star on the floor.
Dejounte Murray shot 3-5 and was the only Spur to hit a field goal in the final seven minutes. He wasn't infallible as he turned it over three times in that stretch, more than his per-game average for the year. He acknowledged after the game that it was unacceptable for him to have six turnovers.
San Antonio got outrebounded 11-4 down the stretch and gave up extra chances that the less-famous Warriors capitalized on. Murray passed to Vassell for three and the lead late, but he missed for the third time in a cold fourth quarter.
Golden State won the fourth quarter 35-16, making this one of the more embarrassing and deflating losses for the Spurs this season. Like stinkers against the skeleton crew Kings, Hornets, Thunder, Rockets and Pistons, the minimal bright side is that the coaching staff got tape on what not to do, and the team managed to improve their draft odds on a night where that looked unlikely at the jump.
The Spurs have caught a lot of justified criticism for failing to come out of the gate strong in these most distressing losses, but that's not what bit them against the Dubs. They didn't play good enough defense in the final quarter to win, and they still would have won if they just found a way to score late.
Letting this win slip away will hurt, especially after the way this same team played in the two games prior. It should lead to some soul searching, and motivate the young guys to make it right the next time out.
Maybe they're getting too high after wins, or not treating banged-up opponents with appropriate fear. Or maybe we're just trying to find an explanation for the volatile swings in competence from a team full of talented young players learning on the go.
After all, bad losses happen for every team, maybe even more this season. On Wednesday night, the Mavs followed up a loss to the league-worst Magic by losing to a Thunder team missing SGA. Embiid's Sixers fell to a Wizards team without Bradley Beal, and Brooklyn suffered their sixth loss in a row, in Sacramento.
Maybe it's less about whatever team is on the other end of the court, and more about what version of the Spurs shows up to the arena that day. Consistent winning can only happen as a result of consistent effort and execution, and that's still a messy work in progress for San Antonio on a night-to-night and minute-to-minute basis.
The last week has contained some of the highest highs and lowest lows of a Spurs season full of those extremes. They've proven that their best can be enough to beat anyone, but anything less can result in a humbling loss.
Deadline Decisions
San Antonio has offered glimpses of their best through the growing pains. They're 19-33 with a win total better than only four teams in the league, but still just two games back of the play-in out West.
What does that mean for the Spurs a week before the trade deadline? There seems to be interest in Murray, White and Poeltl, though there's no indication San Antonio wants to part with any of them. They won't be looking for short-term win-now veterans either; in fact, they're trying to find a trade destination for a guy like that.
Thad Young has been kept in bubble wrap for most of the season, and he could have certainly helped San Antonio with their big-man depth. The Spurs haven't kept him on ice because they want to lose games, they've done it because if he gets seriously hurt out there, it would be devastating for all parties involved.
Pop kept him on the bench as the Spurs got hammered on the boards by the Warriors, but started him in the next game against the Heat with Poeltl, Landale, and Bates-Diop all out. He had played in just three of the 25 games leading up to his first start of the season, and put up 7 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals in the shorthanded loss.
"He's one of the consummate pros, if he wants to coach some day, he'll definitely be a coach," Popovich said. "He understands the game, he's a good teacher and helps all our young guys, and stays in shape. He works, he stays after practice when he doesn't play, and he's ready to go."
"He's definitely someone I've been able to lean on a lot," Tre Jones said. "He thinks the game so highly, so being able to sit on the sideline and pick his brain every single game, being able to learn so many things from him, helps myself a lot and the whole team. And obviously when he's out there, he can produce the same way still, so I love him as a vet for sure."
"He wants to see everybody in here be successful," Jones continued. "He's in there on the off days working with us, trying to help us get better, competing in the gym with us, I think that speaks to the person and teammate that he is."
The expectation remains the same as it has since Young arrived in San Antonio: that GM Brian Wright will find a dancing partner before his valuable trade chip turns into a pumpkin that he has to buy out at midnight. With February 10 about a week away, there hasn't been a lot of action yet across the league. It makes sense to hold on and see what the best deal is when things really heat up.
But if the day passes and Young is still on the roster, it will be a stunning failure orders of magnitude worse than the fourth quarter implosion against some of the Warriors.
Even if Phoenix is less likely now given how well Bismack Biyombo is playing, Young presents value to many contending teams. His expiring contract can also help any GM trying to free up cap space in the near future. It's a seller's market, and the Spurs should be able to move him in a deal that helps them get what they want, whatever it may be.
Picks are always a plus for a rebuilding team, but if they're more interested in adding a rising star on a long-term deal, Young would almost certainly need to be a part of the trade.
If the Hawks really are looking to get John Collins' new deal off the books, trading for Young's expiring contract would help extricate them from salary cap hell. Atlanta has reportedly made inquiries about Derrick White as well.
A splashy mid-season trade always seems unlikely for San Antonio, but there should be several options on the table that offer some sort of future-focused assets for Young if he isn't part of a bigger trade.
Whatever moves are made, a radical change to the on-court product seems unlikely, in either direction. A flash sale on their best players doesn't fit a team that has been slowly building for a long time and values continuity, and blowing it up at this point would send a rough message to the next young men up. An all-in move to be more competitive this season would make even less sense for a team that clearly isn't competing for a title.
If the Spurs surge into the play-in or stumble into fantastic draft lottery odds, it won't be the result of any phone calls made by the general manager this week. Their fate will be decided by how well these players execute, down the stretch in games, down the stretch run of the season.
How many heart-pounding upset triumphs? How many moral victories that increase the number of ping pong balls? How many failures that leave them feeling hollow? Most importantly, how regularly can they take care of business?
Dejounte Murray and the rest of the young Spurs are responsible for how the rest shakes out, and for better and for worse, that's how this season was always supposed to be. | https://www.kens5.com/article/sports/nba/spurs/san-antonio-spurs-analysis-statement-win-moral-victory-loss-trade-deadline/273-796f0e22-dcc3-4823-8cc6-1304cbd480e5 | 2022-02-04T18:55:39 | en | 0.983445 |
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "All or Nothing Day" game were:
05-06-09-13-14-16-18-19-20-21-23-24
(five, six, nine, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-four) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-All-or-Nothing-Day-game-16832296.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:44 | en | 0.829777 |
HOUSTON — The latest blast of frigid winter weather is upon us and temperatures are expected to drop into the 20s Thursday night and Friday.
Across the state
RELATED: North Texas updates: Ice and snow cause power outages and traffic issues across North Texas
Road conditions
Real-time updates
Friday
11 a.m.
Gov. Greg Abbott gave an update on the power grid and the state's response to the winter storm.
He said the state has 15 percent more power capacity as a result of winterization. However, despite this, there remains about 20,000 homes without power.
"Roads throughout the state continue to be icy. We’re working to fully address problem spots. We’re continuing to deal with, in particular, some heavy areas of icing and really stubborn ice," TxDOT Exec. Director Mark Williams
8:50 a.m.
The overpasses leading to Hobby Airport are free of ice and have reopened, according to airport officials.
5:54 a.m.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez reports that the main pipes going to the water tower at the I-10 East Freeway and Sheldon Road have burst due to freezing and are flooding the roadway.
This is in the Channelview area.
5:23 a.m.
The Southwest Freeway has reopened in both directions following a 12-car pile up Thursday night. Fortunately, no injuries were reported in the incident.
4:12 a.m.
The southbound lanes on the Southwest Freeway have been reopened in Sugar Land after a multi-vehicle crash completely closed the roadway for several hours.
The city of Sugar Land says crews from the Texas Department of Transportation have treated the roadway for ice and is in the process of reopening the northbound lanes Friday morning.
However, they still advise avoiding traveling through the area and for motorists to delay their morning commute.
Thursday
10:37 p.m.
Six vehicles were involved in a crash on the East Loop at the Ship Channel just after 10 p.m. Thursday.
There's no word on injuries.
10:15 p.m.
A deputy was involved in a crash at the North Loop and the Hardy Toll Road. She was alert and talking but was taken to an area hospital as a precaution.
The roadway was later shut down due to ice.
9:51 p.m.
Sugar Land police said a 12-car pileup could be the result of ice on the roadway on US 59 southbound over 90A.
9 p.m.
If you're flying out of Hobby Airport or picking someone up, you'll need to know about this closure.
8:16 p.m.
About 10 vehicles were involved in a crash on the Westpark Tollway at FM 1464.
It's unknown if anyone was injured.
7:38 p.m.
Fort Bend authorities said SH 99 over FM 1093 as well as the flyover connectors to the Westpark Tollway are closed due to ice.
6:51 p.m.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said callers reported ice on the road in a couple of locations:
6:40 p.m.
Mayor Sylvester Turner said public works crews are sanding 42 overpasses and bridges in north and west Houston.
6:24 p.m.
Houston airports are asking passengers to check with their airline for updates, delays or cancellations before going to Bush Intercontinental Airport or Hobby Airport.
"As of now there is no need to treat the airfield with de-icing agents but operations and maintenance teams are ready to respond appropriately and are consistently monitoring conditions," airport officials said.
5:30 p.m.
Houston ISD canceled classes on Friday due to the weather. Classes will resume on Monday.
4:57 p.m.
The Houston Police Department is asking drivers to be off the roads by 10 p.m. Thursday due to driving conditions.
4:15 p.m.
H-E-B stores are closing early in the San Antonio area and a little earlier in the College Station area. No word on Houston stores closing early.
4 p.m.
With freezing temperatures heading to the Houston area, Covenant House Texas' doors are open for homeless youth ages 18-24 to ensure they have a warm, safe space to stay during the inclement weather. Covenant House Texas anticipates an increased number of youth seeking services, and has made extra preparations to shelter and serve the increased number of youth.
3:30 p.m.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo asked the county's emergency operations center at Transtar to go to Level III to provide enhanced monitoring of the weather. Level III is a partial activation that provides enhanced monitoring and should things get worse, allow for partners to be ready to do more to respond. Level I is the highest level.
While Hidalgo said this is nothing like we had last February, we could see ice on overpasses and bridges later Thursday night through Friday morning.
“We don’t anticipate hard-freeze conditions. We do expect light, freezing rain. Eventually, it’s gonna get cold enough that that light, freezing rain might cause a layer of ice, particularly on our elevated highways and on our bridges,” Hidalgo said.
Hidalgo said anyone in need of shelter should call 211.
"911 is for emergencies only. Do not call 911 with a question or if it's not an emergency," Hidalgo said. | https://www.kens5.com/article/weather/winter-weather-updates-houston-harris-county/285-25083b43-fcfa-402e-b0e8-703e44654717 | 2022-02-04T18:55:45 | en | 0.970715 |
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Daily 4 Day" game were:
6-6-8-2, FIREBALL: 7
(six, six, eight, two; FIREBALL: seven)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Daily 4 Day" game were:
6-6-8-2, FIREBALL: 7
(six, six, eight, two; FIREBALL: seven) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Daily-4-Day-game-16832293.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:50 | en | 0.852265 |
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Daily Four-Midday" game were:
6-9-0-3, SB:
(six, nine, zero, three; SB: zero)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Daily Four-Midday" game were:
6-9-0-3, SB:
(six, nine, zero, three; SB: zero) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Daily-Four-Midday-game-16832252.php | 2022-02-04T18:55:56 | en | 0.872649 |
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 3" game were:
7-2-5
(seven, two, five)
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 3" game were:
7-2-5
(seven, two, five) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Midday-Daily-3-game-16832234.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:02 | en | 0.92916 |
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 4" game were:
5-2-1-5
(five, two, one, five)
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 4" game were:
5-2-1-5
(five, two, one, five) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Midday-Daily-4-game-16832233.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:08 | en | 0.941492 |
BRAINTREE, Mass. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Massachusetts Lottery's "Numbers Midday" game were:
2-6-4-6
(two, six, four, six)
BRAINTREE, Mass. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Massachusetts Lottery's "Numbers Midday" game were:
2-6-4-6
(two, six, four, six) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Numbers-Midday-game-16832129.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:14 | en | 0.902844 |
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Pick 3 Day" game were:
5-7-6, FIREBALL: 8
(five, seven, six; FIREBALL: eight)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Pick 3 Day" game were:
5-7-6, FIREBALL: 8
(five, seven, six; FIREBALL: eight) | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Pick-3-Day-game-16832294.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:20 | en | 0.875302 |
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Three people have been apprehended and two additional people are being sought in connection with the fatal shooting of a Maine man in Providence last month, police said Friday.
A teenager from Fall River, Massachusetts, who is now 18 but was 17 at the time of the Jan. 16 shooting, is suspected of being the gunman and faces murder and other charges, Providence police Maj. David Lapatin said.
A 25-year-old Fall River man and a 23-year-old Attleboro, Massachusetts man face accessory charges, he said. The two people still at large face murder and conspiracy charges.
The victim was previously identified as Biniam Tsegai, 35, of Portland, Maine. His companion, Merhawi Berhe, 28, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was also shot and remains in the hospital, Lapatin said.
The victims had just left an illegal after-hours nightclub at about 3 a.m. when they encountered the suspects and a physical altercation ensued before the gunfire broke out, police said. It's unclear what sparked the altercation.
The suspects fled but were identified through surveillance video.
There is no known connection between the victims and the suspects and Detective Capt. Tim O’Hara described it as a random shooting.
Tsegai's death was the city's first homicide of 2022. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/3-face-charges-in-Providence-homicide-2-others-16832035.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:26 | en | 0.976469 |
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Authorities say no one was injured when an aircraft bound from Las Vegas to Minneapolis returned early Friday for a “hard landing” with a landing gear malfunction at Harry Reid International Airport.
Airport, airline and Federal Aviation Administration officials said the right main landing gear of Sun Country Airlines flight 110 collapsed when the Boeing 737 landed about 1:20 a.m. with 50 passengers and six crew members aboard.
Everyone deplaned by stairs and returned by bus to the airport terminal.
Sun Country CEO Jude Bricker said passengers were being assisted by airline personnel.
The aircraft remained on a runway for several hours while crews removed fuel to allow it to be towed to a parking area, airport spokeswoman Melissa DeFrank said.
Other airport operations were not affected.
A National Transportation Safety Board spokesman said the agency was monitoring the incident but did not immediately begin an investigation. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Aircraft-to-Minneapolis-returns-to-Vegas-for-16832244.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:33 | en | 0.963008 |
TIRANA, Albania (AP) — An Albanian court on Friday sentenced a former interior minister to more than three years in prison for abuse of office over ties to a criminal drug trafficking network.
Saimir Tahiri was sentenced three years and four months imprisonment.
Judge Engert Pellumbi of the Special Appeals Court for Corruption and Organized Crime said that Tahiri had benefited from "unfair services and gain and at the same time, with his abuse of post, he has abused legal interests.”
Tahiri said after the sentencing that he was innocent.
“I am morally calm. I have not violated the law. I have loved every day of my job,” he said on Facebook. “I am happy I have committed my job in the best possible way. It is simply injustice.”
Prosecutors had tied Tahiri’s case to two brothers who were related to Tahiri. They were arrested or jailed for drug trafficking in Italy and Albania.
Pellumbi said the prosecutors proved their case with documented evidence. Tahiri was ordered to start serving his jail term.
Tahiri didn't react to the journalists in the courtroom, only rushing to make a phone call.
Tahiri’s lawyer, Maksim Haxhiaj, said they would appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court, considering it as a “juridical nonsense.”
“The verdict was just to stain Tahiri,” he said.
In September 2019, Tahiri was sentenced to three years of probation for abuse of office and was acquitted of charges of involvement in drug trafficking.
Last year, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial because of irregular procedures taken by judges and prosecutors.
Tahiri, who served as interior minister during 2013-2017, resigned as a lawmaker with the governing Socialist Party in May 2018 and was briefly held under house arrest.
Albania was once known as a European crossroads for marijuana trafficking, but there are now more cases involving the trafficking of heroin and cocaine to other European countries.
Fighting corruption has been a major problem in post-communist Albania, strongly affecting the country’s democratic, economic and social development.
“We urge judicial institutions to continue to demonstrate that no one — regardless of party, position, or wealth — is above the law. No more impunity,” U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim tweeted.
The embassy had closely followed the trial.
___
Follow Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Albanian-ex-minister-jailed-for-assisting-drug-16832136.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:39 | en | 0.981235 |
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Police say there's been an arrest in the altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan at SoFi Stadium.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Police say there's been an arrest in the altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan at SoFi Stadium. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Alert-Police-say-there-s-been-an-arrest-in-the-16831839.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:45 | en | 0.935542 |
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — For the second time in as many weeks a federal appeals court threw out a permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline on Thursday.
In a written opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found “serious errors” with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s conclusion that building the pipeline across rugged mountainsides wouldn’t jeopardize endangered species in its path — specifically the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter, The Roanoke Times reported.
Last week, the same three-judge panel shot down a permit that would have allowed the pipeline to pass through a 3.5 mile (5.6 kilometer) section of the Jefferson National Forest. In both cases, the judges faulted the U.S. Forest Service and the wildlife agency for failing to adequately assess the pipeline's environmental impact. The 303-mile (487-kilometer) pipeline would transport natural gas drilled from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations through West Virginia and Virginia.
“We recognize that this decision will further delay the completion of an already mostly finished pipeline, but the Endangered Species Act’s directive to federal agencies could not be clearer: halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost,” the 40-page opinion concluded.
Mountain Valley said it is reviewing the court’s decision and evaluating its next steps. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Appeals-court-throws-out-another-pipeline-permit-16832192.php | 2022-02-04T18:56:51 | en | 0.939071 |
NEW YORK (AP) — The jury considering the fate of California lawyer Michael Avenatti on charges that he cheated his prized client Stormy Daniels out of a large chunk of her book proceeds said Friday that one juror was refusing to look at evidence and was deciding the case based on her feelings and emotions.
In the note, the jury foreperson told U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman that the juror was “not going on evidence” but was basing her conclusions instead on “all emotions.”
The note began: “We have one juror who is refusing to look at evidence and is acting on a feeling.”
The note came early in the second full day of deliberations.
Furman rejected a request by Avenatti, who is representing himself, that he call an immediate mistrial. Instead, Furman told the jury that it must follow its pledge to base any decision on the evidence.
The jury is deciding whether prosecutors proved that Avenatti committed wire fraud and aggravated identity theft by taking nearly $300,000 of the $800,000 advance his client received for her autobiography. Avenatti has insisted that he had a good faith reason to pocket some of the money.
The deliberations are occurring at the end of the second week of a trial that featured two days of testimony by Daniels, a porn actor whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Avenatti appeared frequently on cable television news programs in 2018 as he represented Daniels in lawsuits against former President Donald Trump. The lawsuits were aimed at freeing Daniels from the terms of a $130,000 payout she received days before the 2016 presidential election to silence her about claims that she had had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Avenatti, 50, was considering running for president himself when his rise in popularity in Democratic circles was interrupted by his March 2019 arrest on charges that he tried to extort up to $25 million from Nike with threats to spoil its reputation if the sportswear giant did not meet his demands.
The same day, he was charged in federal court in California with cheating clients and others out of millions of dollars. The Daniels case was brought weeks later.
In early 2020, Avenatti was convicted in the Nike case and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. He has not yet served that sentence. Last year, a trial on the California charges ended in a mistrial. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Avenatti-Stormy-Daniels-talks-stalled-by-1-16832059.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:10 | en | 0.989032 |
With the brutal omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation's death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000.
The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the U.S. stood at over 897,000 as of midday Friday, with deaths running at an average of more than 2,400 a day, back up to where they were last winter, when the vaccine drive was still getting started.
New cases per day have tanked by almost a half-million nationwide since mid-January, the curve trending downward in every state but Maine. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen 15% over that period to about 124,000.
Similarly, an early-warning program that looks for the virus in sewage found that COVID-19 infections are declining in the majority of participating U.S. communities, according to data posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Deaths are still on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
But the trends are giving public health officials hope that the worst of omicron is coming to an end, though they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge.
Los Angeles County may end outdoor mask requirements in a few weeks, Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. But that is unlikely to happen before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, which will draw as many as 100,000 people to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Ferrer said COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in California’s biggest county are falling, and deaths may start to drop as well.
“Post-surge does not imply that the pandemic is over or that transmission is low, or that there will not be unpredictable waves of surges in the future,” she warned.
Arizona has also seen its daily case and hospitalization numbers decline, though deaths are still on the rise, climbing from average of about 61 a day last week to almost 79 as of Tuesday.
“We have reason to be hopeful, but we are by no means out of the woods,” Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of epidemiology, said Thursday on Twitter.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she is calling an end to the state's coronavirus public health emergency, a move that will limit the release of health data. The step reflects her long-held belief that it is time to get past pandemic restrictions and move toward the point when COVID-19 becomes, like the flu, a manageable part of everyday life.
In Washington state, the Legislature is allowing double the number of senators on the chamber floor starting Monday.
Overall, new cases in the U.S. have plummeted from a record-obliterating average of more than 800,000 a day in mid-January to about 357,000.
____
Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Paul Davenport in Phoenix; Robert Jablon in Los Angeles; Michael Stobbe in New York; and Michelle Monroe in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/COVID-falling-in-49-of-50-states-as-deaths-near-16832008.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:16 | en | 0.962078 |
New cases of a debilitating and often deadly type of stroke that causes bleeding in the brain have been increasing in the U.S., growing at an even faster rate among younger to middle-aged adults than older ones, new research shows.
The findings show an 11% increase over the past decade and a half in intracerebral hemorrhage strokes, referred to as ICH strokes. The research, being presented next week at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference, was published Thursday in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
"From a public health perspective, these results are troubling and indicate risk factors are not being well managed in young adults in the U.S.," said Dr. Karen Furie, chief of neurology at Rhode Island Hospital and chair of the department of neurology at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence. Furie was not involved in the research.
"Earlier onset of this disease is very alarming and indicates we need to be more aggressive with primary prevention," she said.
ICH strokes occur when blood vessels in the brain rupture and bleed. They are the second most common type, accounting for 10%-15% of the estimated 795,000 strokes each year in the U.S. Globally in 2020, 18.9 million people had an intracerebral hemorrhage, according to the AHA's most recent heart and stroke statistics report. They are more deadly and more likely to cause long-term disability than other types of stroke.
Smaller previous studies have reached conflicting conclusions about whether the rate of ICH has been rising or falling in the U.S.
In the new study, lead researcher Abdulaziz Bako, a postdoctoral fellow at Houston Methodist Hospital, and colleagues used aggregated nationwide data from 803,230 ICH hospitalizations. They calculated the rate of ICH over five consecutive three-year periods from 2004 to 2018. People were divided into four age groups: 18-44 years; 45-64 years; 65-74 years; and 75 years and older.
Overall, researchers found an 11% increase in the rate of ICH among U.S. adults over the 15-year study period. ICH increased at a faster rate for adults under age 65 compared to those 75 and older. The rate of increase also varied by region, climbing faster in the South, West and Midwest than it did in the Northeast. ICH stroke rates were 43% higher for men than women.
Among those who had ICH strokes, the percentage of people who had high blood pressure also rose, from 74.5% to 86.4% over the study period.
High blood pressure is a major risk factor for an ICH stroke, as is increasing age. The findings are alarming, Furie said, because they suggest blood pressure is so poorly controlled among younger adults that they risk losing the most productive years of their lives.
"ICH occurs after decades of vascular damage from unmanaged high blood pressure," she said. "It's terrible that this is occurring."
Failure to reverse the trend "could be devastating," Furie said. "We're talking about decades of disability that could be a burden for the individual, their family and society as a whole."
Bako said that's why future studies should really focus on these young age groups, "particularly because they are more likely to be economically productive, and an increase among this population in the long term might lead to much more burden to the comorbidity profile of the country than if the increase were among people who are much older."
Bako is part of a team also presenting findings at the stroke conference from a related study that found a disproportionate rate of ICH among Asian American and Pacific Islander adults, who are experiencing ICH strokes at a younger age than their white peers.
"We need to be teaching people to adopt a healthy diet, engage in regular physical activity, avoid heavy alcohol and drug use and monitor for vascular risk factors during young adulthood," Furie said. "This is the only way to ensure the problem does not become symptomatic by the time they reach their 40s and 50s."
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The message the U.S. jobs report sent Friday was a surprising one: Despite a surge in viral cases in January, the labor market is so healthy that employers kept hiring last month at a pace that far surpassed anyone's expectations.
Before Friday, the widespread view was that COVID-19’s highly transmissible omicron variant had kept people home and held down hiring in January. Some economists even predicted a job loss for the month. Instead, employers added 467,000 jobs.
At the same time, though, the sizzling job market means that inflation will likely keep simmering, all but ensuring that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates several times this year to try to slow the steep price increases — for food, gas, rent, cars and many other items — that have squeezed millions of households.
Yet the jobs picture seems to be steadily brightening, with wages up, layoffs down and many employers eager to fill jobs. In its report Friday, the government sharply upgraded its estimates of job growth for November and December, too.
“What we’re really seeing here is businesses learning how to live with the virus and operate with the virus,’’ Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said.
He noted that the proportion of Americans who teleworked rose from 11.1% in December to 15.4% last month, suggesting that many employees were able to work from home even as omicron cases surged.
Over the past year, the economy has added more than 550,000 jobs a month, extending its steady rebound from 2020’s deep two-month recession. Still, the United States remains 2.9 million jobs short of the number it had in the pre-pandemic month of February 2020.
Here are five takeaways from the January jobs report:
___
BETTER THAN WE THOUGHT
Not only were the January jobs numbers unexpectedly large, but the Labor Department reported that hiring late last year was much stronger than it had originally thought. It revised up its estimate of the number of jobs employers added in November and December by a combined 709,000.
Andrew Flowers, labor economist at the recruiting firm Appcast, suggested that the upgraded revisions for job growth “radically changed our understanding of the labor market’s trajectory. Instead of a slowing trend from last summer, job growth looks to be trending upward.’’
___
HELP WANTED AT RESTAURANTS AND HOTELS
Among the most surprising figures in Friday's jobs report was that hiring at restaurants and hotels — the kinds of employers that would presumably delay hiring during a wave of viral cases — rose sharply in January despite the omicron surge. The hiring gains in that sector suggested that many Americans have learned to live with the virus and are continuing to go out to eat and take trips. Restaurants and bars added more than 108,000 jobs last month, hotels nearly 23,000.
“It confirms that each successive wave of the virus is having a smaller and smaller impact on activity and labor demand,’’ said Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings.
___
OFF THE SIDELINES
The unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% in December to a still-low 4% in January. But it did so, at least in part, for an encouraging reason: Many Americans came off the sidelines of the workforce and started looking for a job, and not all of them found one right away. As a result, they were counted as unemployed.
The percentage of people working or looking for work — the so-called labor force participation rate — rose last month to 62.2%. That was the highest such rate since March 2020, though still below pre-pandemic levels of more than 63%.
The influx of workers could help ease the labor shortages that have left many companies struggling to keep up with surging consumer demand.
“There are financial reasons to return to the workforce,’’ said Bernard Baumohl, chief economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “Washington is no longer mailing out emergency checks to households, and inflation continues to erode the purchasing power of consumers.’’
___
RISING PAY
Because the economy’s unexpectedly swift rebound has left employers scrambling to find workers, many have responded by jacking up wages. Hourly pay rose last month by a strong 5.7% for all workers and 13% for those who work for hotels, restaurants and other leisure and hospitality companies.
Still, pay overall hasn’t been keeping up with inflation, which in December was running at the fastest year-over-year rate since 1982. In December, average hourly wages were actually down 2% from a year earlier after adjusting for higher prices.
___
A GREENLIGHT FOR THE FED
The strength of the jobs report helps clears the way for the Federal Reserve to reverse its policy of keeping interest rates super-low to protect the economy from coronavirus fallout. The central bank has indicated that it will start raising its benchmark rate, now near zero, several times beginning in March to try to combat high inflation.
“The (jobs) report in its totality still points to a robust labor market, characterized by low unemployment and strong job creation, that managed to successfully push through the disruptions created by the omicron variant,’’ said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors. “Not that the Fed needed another reason to tighten in the near term, but they just got it.’’ | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/EXPLAINER-5-key-takeaways-from-the-January-jobs-16832259.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:28 | en | 0.973617 |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The newest judge tapped to oversee the investigation into the killing of President Jovenel Moïse told The Associated Press on Friday that he has not decided whether to take the case amid concerns of putting his life in danger.
Judge Chavannes Étienne said his family is pressuring him not to accept the case because they fear for his life. If he were to accept, he would become the third judge to take over the case.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Étienne had to respond by a certain date. He previously oversaw the investigation into the November 2018 massacre of an estimated dozens of people at La Saline, a seaside slum in Haiti’s capital.
Magistrate Bernard Saint-Vil, dean of the Court of First Instance in Port-au-Prince, told AP that he had chosen Étienne but declined further comment as fears grow that the ongoing rotation of judges would delay the case.
Judge Garry Orélien had been overseeing the case but recently stepped down amid corruption accusations that he denied. He also had asked for more time to investigate the July 7 assassination, but Saint-Vil denied the request.
Orélien was appointed after another judge stepped down in August citing personal reasons, a move that came after one of his assistants died under unclear circumstances.
More than 40 people have been arrested in the killing of Moïse at his private residence, including several Haitian police officers, a former senator and 18 ex Colombian soldiers, the majority of whom the Colombian government says were duped.
Two other suspects were extradited recently to the U.S.: Rodolphe Jaar, a former U.S. government informant arrested in the Dominican Republic in January and Mario Palacios, an ex-Colombian soldier detained in Jamaica in October.
Palacios' attorney had requested an additional month to prepare his defense, and it was granted by a federal judge in Miami on Friday. The defense attorney said Palacios will plead not guilty in March. Meanwhile, a hearing for Jaar was postponed for later this month. He hasn't entered a plea and recently obtained a new defense attorney.
Jaar and Palacios have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States and with providing material support resulting in death, knowing or intending that such material support would be used to prepare for or carry out the conspiracy to kill or kidnap.
___
Associated Press writer Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Gisela Solomón in Miami contributed. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Haiti-seeks-3rd-judge-to-oversee-case-of-slain-16832103.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:40 | en | 0.982631 |
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Black man's argument that he was denied his right to an impartial jury because of a flawed process that excluded Black people and resulted in only white jurors.
It is the second time the state’s high court heard an appeal from Kenneth Lee Lilly, who was convicted for helping a relative rob a southeast Iowa bank in 2016. Lilly alleged that his right to an impartial jury under both the U.S. and Iowa constitutions was violated because neither his jury nor the group from which his jury was selected contained any Black people.
Lilly, 57, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for robbery with a mandatory 17 1/2 years to be served before parole eligibility. He was accused of driving Lafayette A. Evans, a relative from Nashville, Tennessee, to a branch of the Fort Madison Bank on June 29, 2016. Evans fired several shots in the bank and at a police officer. He ran away with $224,000 in a backpack but died after being shot by officers.
Lilly was tried in Lee County, where about 3% of the population of 33,000 is Black.
In the first appeal in 2019, the court returned Lilly's case to the district court for a hearing on whether his rights were violated by the jury selection process. The judge rejected his claims and Lilly again appealed.
The court upheld the lower court's decision that he failed to prove Black citizens are excluded from jury pools because they are underrepresented in the voter registration and driver's license lists from which names are drawn in Iowa.
Lawyers for the Iowa attorney general, Lilly and the NAACP, which wrote a friend of the court brief supporting a new trial for Lilly, did not immediately respond to messages.
Lilly claimed that low-income people tend to register to vote and to acquire driver’s licenses and nonoperator identification cards at a lower rate than other members of the community. He also said Black citizens make up a higher percentage of low-income people in Lee County. And he inferred that Black people are underrepresented in the lists from which jury pools are sourced.
In hearing his case the first time, the court established that such jury pool challenges must identify a practice that led to the underrepresentation, and it cannot be “run-of-the-mill” jury management practices.
Many states use voter registration and driver's license identification lists to construct a list from which to draw jury pools, Justice Matthew McDermott wrote for the court, which unanimously agreed. The lists are the only ones that Iowa law requires courts to use in drawing jury pools.
“Because he challenges a run-of-the-mill practice, and no other practices, Lilly cannot show a violation under the Sixth Amendment,” the court said. The court also concluded Lilly's challenge under the Iowa Constitution fails because he offered no evidence to establish that low-income people register to vote or get driver’s licenses or nonoperator identification cards at lower rates.
While all seven justices agreed with the outcome, Justice Edward Mansfield, joined in his opinion by Justice Brent Appel, left the door open to such challenges, saying if it is found that "a practice that leads to systematic underrepresentation of a distinctive group in jury pools can be identified and corrected, there is no reason to shield that practice from scrutiny just because it is relatively commonplace." He said Iowa lawyers are gathering data.
Justice Christopher McDonald, in a separate opinion joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Thomas Waterman, was more willing to block such challenges, saying allowing such cases to continue to surface “is undermining the administration of justice, rendering it incredibly difficult simply to have a jury trial without months of discovery, expensive motion practice, expensive expert witness testimony, and days of hearings.” | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Iowa-court-affirms-process-that-may-exclude-Black-16832125.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:47 | en | 0.974719 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A Pima County jail inmate's death last month was due to a drug overdose and is now being investigated as a homicide, the Sheriff's Department said.
Pedro Xavier Martinez Palacios, 24, died Jan. 14 at a hospital where Palacios was taken Jan. 10 after he told a corrections officer that he required medical assistance, the office said.
No signs of trauma or suspicious circumstances were observed but that the county Medical Examiner's Office subsequently determined that Palacios' death was due to a fentanyl overdose, the office said late Thursday.
The office said the homicide investigation was ongoing, and no additional information was released.
Palacios was jailed on outstanding warrants in cases alleging drug paraphernalia and unlawful imprisonment. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Jail-inmate-death-due-to-overdose-homicide-probe-16832186.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:53 | en | 0.982875 |
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — A jury in South Carolina awarded $50 million in damages to a mayor in a defamation case against a longtime critic.
The Beaufort County jury decided Thursday that Skip Hoagland has to pay Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka $40 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages, The Island Packet reported.
Hoagland — who wasn’t in the courtroom throughout the trial or when the verdicts were read — laughed when the newspaper informed him of the outcome.
“That’s a joke, right? ... That’s insanity,” he said.
Sulka filed the lawsuit against Hoagland over emails he sent in 2015 and 2017 to several people including the state attorney general. The mayor claimed there were defamatory statements in the messages, such as accusations that she committed a crime and was unfit for office.
“An examination of the Defendant’s rambling and at times incoherent emails can lead to only one conclusion: the Defendant had every reason to know that his statements lacked veracity, yet he continued to publish them with vigor,” Sulka’s lawyers wrote in a 2019 court filing.
During the two-day trial, the mayor described the impacts these messages have had on her: “It really hits your psyche, it really affects you. I am his target now, personally.”
Hoagland has frequently and vocally critiqued the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, which some elected officials have spoken out against for its failure to share how it spends public money.
Daniel Henderson, one of the mayor’s attorneys, said Hoagland started a “crusade” against Sulka after the town helped the Chamber of Commerce with a membership drive in 2015. Her lawyers said in a filing that Hoagland believed the drive “unfairly benefitted” the Hilton Head chamber at the expense of the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.
“Mayor Sulka, I hope you fully understand the severity of this as a public official if this is true on using public funds to attempt to put one business out of business,” Hoagland wrote in a 2015 email to the mayor, town attorney, state attorney general, lawmakers and others.
The following year, he filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission against the mayor, claiming she voted in favor of land purchases that financially benefitted the real estate agency where she worked. The commission eventually cleared her of allegations that she violated the state ethics law.
Sulka’s lawyers argued in the lawsuit that the “defamatory statements” were published with malice and hurt the mayor’s reputation.
Hoagland — who represented himself in the case after firing a lawyer that his insurance company hired — shared his thoughts with the trial judge, the attorney general and others by email instead of participating in the proceedings in person.
“There is zero evidence I defamed anyone,” Hoagland wrote Wednesday night. “The first amendment allows me to exercise my free speech rights to criticize, and shed light on, public corruption.”
He told The Island Packet in a statement Thursday that he was actually happy with the trial’s outcome because it proved there’s “more corruption” in South Carolina.
“This case was all predetermined, a sham, Judicial Malfeasance ... I will now seek damages for violations to my First Amendment Rights caused by this lawless, filthy, frivolous defamation lawsuit to silence a critics voice,” he wrote. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Jury-awards-50-million-to-SC-mayor-in-defamation-16832210.php | 2022-02-04T18:57:59 | en | 0.974541 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pilots reported a record 9,723 incidents of lasers aimed at their aircraft last year, a 41% jump over the year before.
The Federal Aviation Administration released the figures Friday, just a week after four airline flights were hit by a laser near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. All four planes landed safely.
The FAA said it handed out $120,000 in fines for laser strikes in 2021. Fines can range up to $11,000 for one incident and up to $30,800 for multiple violations, and violators can face federal criminal charges.
Lasers aimed at planes and helicopters have been a safety concern for more than a decade despite jail sentences for people who get caught. Authorities have tried rewards for turning in perpetrators and legislation making it easier to prosecute them.
The FAA said pilots have reported 244 injuries from laser strikes since the agency began keeping figures in 2010.
The number of laser incidents topped 1,000 in 2009 and has been rising most years ever since. Authorities say the problem is made worse by the availability of cheap laser pointers and devices getting more powerful. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Laser-strikes-against-aircraft-hit-a-record-in-US-16832245.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:05 | en | 0.961553 |
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Days after Mississippi became the 37th state to legalize medical marijuana, the state Health Department said Friday it is working to develop its part of the program.
The department said in a news release that by June, it plans to start accepting applications online for licenses for patients, medical practitioners, cannabis cultivation facilities and others. Because of the time needed to establish the licensing system, the first dispensaries are months from being open.
“The goal is to provide a safe and accessible program that meets the needs of patients and the public health and safety of all Mississippi residents,” the release said.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday signed a new law to allow the medical use of marijuana for people with debilitating conditions such as cancer, AIDS and sickle cell disease.
The new law will allow patients to buy up to to 3.5 grams of cannabis per day, up to six days a week. That is about 3 ounces per month. It sets taxes on production and sale of cannabis, and it specifies that plants must be grown indoors under controlled conditions.
The law gives cities and counties 90 days to opt out of allowing medical marijuana facilities, for growing or selling. But people in those communities could petition for an election to overrule local officials’ decisions and allow them.
A majority of Mississippi voters approved a medical marijuana initiative in November 2020, and it would have allowed people to buy up to 5 ounces a month. The state Supreme Court invalidated it six months later by ruling that the state’s initiative process was outdated and the measure was not put properly on the ballot. The Mississippi Legislature spent months negotiating the bill that the governor signed.
Reeves pushed legislators to reduce the amount of cannabis people could obtain each month, saying he did not want a medical program leading to widespread recreational use of the drug.
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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Mississippi-medical-marijuana-licensing-set-to-16832269.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:17 | en | 0.962229 |
NEW YORK (AP) — More than 50 years after Frank Serpico testified about endemic corruption in the New York Police Department, the department finally recognized his service and injury in the line of duty with an official certificate and inscribed medal of honor.
The former undercover detective, 85, received the honor in the mail Thursday, the New York Daily News reported.
Serpico testified in December 1971 to a panel appointed by Mayor John Lindsay to investigate police corruption, breaking the “blue wall of silence,” the protection that fellow officers sometimes give each other, such as refusing to testify.
Al Pacino went on to portray him in the hit 1973 movie “Serpico,” and his story is also relayed in a book by Peter Maas.
Current Daily News and former Associated Press reporter Larry McShane interviewed Serpico in December about the 50th anniversary of his appearance before the Knapp Commission.
"I felt that finally I was going to tell the world and nobody’s going to interrupt me,” Serpico told the newspaper, speaking from his home in upstate New York. “I thought, ‘I know the truth.’ ... Every single word was mine, and it came from the heart.”
Serpico was shot in the face during a drug arrest in Brooklyn in 1971 months before he testified and has maintained that the other officers he was with never made a call for an “officer down.”
While the department gave Serpico a medal recognizing his injury in 1972, it was handed over without ceremony or the accompanying certificate, he told the newspaper.
In recent years, the department has awarded medals to recipients at annual large public events.
Mayor Eric Adams responded to the coverage, saying Serpico's “bravery inspired my law enforcement career. Frank — we’re going to make sure you get your medal.”
On Thursday, Serpico tweeted a photo of the framed medal of honor and certificate that reads in part, “in recognition of an individual act of extraordinary bravery performed in the line of duty."
He has continued to speak out against corruption and abuse by the police since his retirement in 1972 and says he has supported and listened to other whistleblowers over the years, including those who testified about the now-terminated stop-and-frisk policy.
In 2017, he publicly supported quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who protested against racial injustice while playing in the NFL. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/NYPD-honors-whistleblower-Frank-Serpico-50-years-16832102.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:23 | en | 0.984211 |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska hospital system has announced it will begin resuming non-emergency surgeries and procedures that had been postponed last month due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Beginning Monday, Nebraska Medicine will move out of its “crisis standard of care” plan enacted on Jan. 13, the health system said in a statement Friday. The plan, which put a hold on most non-emergency procedures, was made as the omicron variant of the coronavirus saw a spike in demand for hospital beds and led to staff shortages as medical personnel themselves became infected or had to care for family members who were ill.
In the past week, there has been an overall decrease in COVID-19 admissions, Nebraska Medicine said, and the number of staff members in isolation and quarantine has also decreased significantly.
The system says it's now contacting those patients who saw procedures put on hold and is working to reschedule them. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Nebraska-hospital-system-to-resume-delayed-16832161.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:29 | en | 0.985229 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Forget mystery meat or cheese pizza. Instead, chickpea wraps and veggie tacos will be on the menu for New York City public school students as the nation's largest school district shifts to “Vegan Fridays” in school cafeterias.
The move was pushed by the city's new Mayor Eric Adams, who follows and promotes a plant-based diet that he credits for improving his health.
“I can’t tell people what to put on their grills on the weekend. But darn it, we should not be feeding the health care crisis in our prisons, our hospitals, and most importantly, in our schools, so we want to go in a more healthy direction,” Adams said in an interview on WNBC-TV on Friday.
Vegan options are already available in all of the city's public schools every day, but starting Friday and continuing weekly, the lunch offering will be vegan. Students can still request a non-vegan option, according to the city’s Department of Education, and milk, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hummus and pretzels will always be available to students.
New York City public schools, which have about 938,000 students, have been offering Meatless Mondays since 2019 and Meatless Fridays since April. Around the country, 14% of school districts offered vegan meals and 56% offered vegetarian meals in at least one of their schools, according to a 2018 survey from the School Nutrition Association, a trade group representing school nutrition programs and workers.
It's unclear whether any other districts around the country plan to go vegan one day a week like New York City schools.
New York City schools says its vegan meals have been tested and approved by small groups of students.
Friday's menu included “vegan veggie tacos,” with a tortilla and salsa, with broccoli, and a carrot and lemon salad on the side. Other planned offerings this month include a Mediterranean chickpea dish with rice or pasta, and a black bean and plantain rice bowl.
Adams, a former New York City police captain, has said he traded in a lifestyle with junk food for a plant-based diet that helped him overcome diabetes. He wrote a book about his diet, “Healthy at Last.”
Nearly 40% of New York City public school children in grades K-8 were overweight or obese, according to data cited by the city in 2019. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/New-York-City-school-lunch-menu-going-vegan-on-16832044.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:36 | en | 0.96783 |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — It's official: New York is now the largest sports betting market in America after just four weeks of taking mobile bets.
The Empire State blew past New Jersey in January to seize the market lead, taking over $1.6 billion worth of sports bets, according to figures released Friday by the New York State Gaming Commission. That's $300 million better than the best month that New Jersey ever had.
And those numbers are only going to go up. WynnBET just began taking bets in New York on Friday, and BallyBet has yet to begin operating in the state.
The new figures show that mobile sports betting brought in $1.62 billion in New York between its launch Jan. 9 and the week ending Jan. 30. In-person sports betting at four upstate casinos added close to another $15 million, bringing the monthly total to $1.64 billion.
New Jersey, which had led the nation in terms of the amount of sports bets its casinos and horse tracks took, had its best month in October 2021, when it took $1.3 billion in bets. New Jersey's figures for January 2022 will be released Feb. 16.
“This is great,” said New York state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr., one of his state's leading proponents of mobile sports betting. “Going back to the first week we started, we did as much in two days as we had in two years before that. And we're still not even firing on all cylinders.”
Kevin Hennessy, a spokesperson for FanDuel, said the company knew New York would be a strong market.
“Legal sports betting in New York has exceeded all of our expectations,” he said. “New York and New Jersey combined are practically the center of legal sports betting in the United States. We are thrilled with how many New York customers have signed up to the FanDuel Sportsbook, and we continue to see New Jersey as a growing market.”
He said the Buffalo Bills playoff run generated heavy interest, and noted that the Winter Olympics, the NHL All-Star Game and the Super Bowl are all imminent.
New York's mobile sports betting operators earned nearly $113 million in revenue on the $1.62 billion in bets they handled after paying off winners and other expenses. That revenue is taxed at 51% in New York.
Caesars is the early leader in New York, handling over $615 million worth of bets in its first four weeks and generating nearly $56 million in revenue. FanDuel took nearly $502 million in bets, generating $23.6 million in revenue.
DrafkKings took $367 million in bets, generating $27 million in revenue; BetMGM took $78 million in bets with $3.2 million in revenue; Rush Street Interactive took $32 million in bets and generated $837,035 in revenue; and PointsBet took $29 million in bets, generating $2.3 million in revenue.
That New York became the No. 1 market for sports betting once it allowed people to bet via cell phones or computers was not a surprise. New York's population of over 19 million people is much greater than New Jersey's population of under 9 million.
New York allowed New Jersey to race to an early lead in sports betting by its refusal to immediately allow mobile wagering. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for years insisted that allowing mobile betting would violate the state's constitution, but New York permitted it beginning Jan. 9 of this year.
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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at @WayneParryAC | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/New-York-blows-past-New-Jersey-for-top-sports-16832162.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:42 | en | 0.970015 |
SMITHFIELD, R.I. (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest from Rhode Island has been placed on administrative leave in response to a recently disclosed allegation that he sexually abused a minor about 40 years ago, the Diocese of Providence said in a statement.
The Rev. Francis C. Santilli, who has been the pastor of St. Philip Parish in the Greenville neighborhood of Smithfield since 2010, cannot perform public ministry or live on church property pending the outcome of an investigation. Bishop Thomas Tobin has accepted Santilli's resignation, the statement said.
“Allegations of sexual abuse by clergy, even if they occurred decades ago, always must be taken seriously. I will be praying for all who are involved and affected by this difficult news,” Tobin said.
Santilli was ordained in 1980.
The diocese is cooperating with law enforcement, but the state attorney general's office in a statement said prosecution isn’t possible because the relevant statute of limitations has expired. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Priest-on-leave-over-decades-old-child-abuse-16832282.php | 2022-02-04T18:58:54 | en | 0.970026 |
At 4:30 a.m. on a Monday morning last spring, Peter Denton got up in darkness, dressed and jumped in his pickup truck. The drive to his work site in Detroit took a little more than an hour.
As a construction foreman working on a new bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, Peter often clocked in six days a week, working up to 11 hours each shift.
The Friday before, he woke up with a runny nose, cough and chest pain. His wife, Kristy, insisted he go to urgent care. He was given a COVID-19 test, which was negative, and an electrocardiogram, which was normal. Nonetheless, the doctor told him there might be an underlying problem and said he should go straight to the emergency room if anything came up over the weekend.
All went well, even with Peter working an overnight shift, then spending Sunday clearing out fallen branches and brush around his home in Jackson, Michigan.
At noon Monday, he started his lunch break, eating a burger in the cab of his truck. With his window down, he chatted with a co-worker standing outside.
Suddenly, Peter felt nauseous. His vision blurred. He felt like he might pass out.
He remembered the doctor's advice. He also recalled there was a first aid station about a half mile away, on the job site.
"You need to take me to the medic," he told his friend. The man jumped into Peter's truck and started driving.
Halfway there, Peter felt like a knife was stabbing his heart over and over. He doubled over in pain.
An EKG explained what was happening.
"You're having a heart attack," a medic told him.
Peter waited for pain medicine to kick in and for an ambulance to arrive. Meanwhile, Kristy and Peter's father, Greg Denton Sr., who was working on the same job site, were notified.
As paramedics were taking Peter to the ambulance, his father rushed to his side. Trying to ease some of the tension, Greg joked, "We don't have time for this. We still have a lot of work to do here, son."
"It'll be all right, Dad," Peter answered.
At the hospital, doctors used two stents to open the blockages in his heart. Prompt action not only saved him, but it also put him on the road to a speedy recovery. He awoke without pain. Hours later, he was walking the halls of the hospital.
The next day, a cardiologist asked Peter about his lifestyle.
Did he smoke?
Did he chew tobacco?
Did he drink?
Peter answered every question with a "yes."
He readily acknowledges his lifestyle paved the way for a heart attack. At 45, he was 6-foot-1, 300-plus pounds. He'd been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
He'd tried changing his habits before. The most recent try was a few years earlier, following the diabetes diagnosis. It only lasted until his medicine ran out. He didn't refill it and stopped seeing his doctor.
After his heart attack, Peter tried again.
He immediately stopped smoking and cut way back on drinking. He's still trying to quit chewing tobacco.
Eight months after his heart attack, he was down to 237 pounds. His goal is 200.
He was motivated by his three children, Gabriela Denton, 14; Hunter Denton, 20; and David Phelps, 27. And, of course, Kristy.
"After the heart attack, she reiterated how much I meant to her and the kids," Peter said. "And this time she decided to jump in with me and eat better and lose weight."
On previous attempts to eat healthier, he'd make salads while Kristy would cook dinner for herself and their children. Looking back, she realizes that left him feeling isolated and made it tougher for him to stick with his diet.
Now they're a team. They're following a diet that focuses on protein and vegetables. They've also eliminated fast food and eating out.
Kristy, who is 4-foot-11, has shed 20 pounds and weighs 119.
She bought Peter a bike trainer so he could ride his bicycle inside during the winter, and he plans to pedal throughout the year. He's also walking more on the job site instead of jumping into his truck for short trips.
His efforts seem to be working. In addition to losing weight, his doctor recently told him he no longer needs medication for diabetes.
Obesity affects 1 in 4 U.S. construction workers, according to the Hard Hats with Heart initiative from the American Heart Association that focuses on heart health in the construction industry. The same amount – 25% – use tobacco.
As someone who used to be in both groups, Peter is trying to help his colleagues beat those odds. He gently spreads the word about heart health and regular checkups.
"If talking about my experience saves one person or encourages someone to go to the doctor," Peter said, "I'd feel blessed."
Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.
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HEALTH CARE DISCLAIMER: This site and its services do not constitute the practice of medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always talk to your health care provider for diagnosis and treatment, including your specific medical needs. If you have or suspect that you have a medical problem or condition, please contact a qualified health care professional immediately. If you are in the United States and experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or call for emergency medical help immediately. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Quick-attention-saved-construction-foreman-during-16832123.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:00 | en | 0.986326 |
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The SeaWorld theme park in Orlando is opening new pools to care for Florida manatees that are dying from starvation due to poor water quality in their normal habitat.
The lovable, round-tailed marine mammals had their worst die-off last year, more than 1,100 of them, and there are federal and state efforts ongoing to save the threatened creatures. One of these efforts is to have a place like SeaWorld, with the marine assets it has, provide rehabilitation to those that can be rescued.
SeaWorld announced Friday that it has added five 40-foot (12-meter) pools to accomodate up to 20 manatees within two weeks. The theme park is one of five facilities in the U.S. taking care of sick and injured manatees. It had 28 manatees in its care as of Friday, according to a company release.
“We are bringing animals in that are skeletons. These animals need long-term care,” said Jon Peterson, chief of zoological operations at SeaWorld who chairs a manatee rescue partnership with government agencies.
"We’ve got the space. We will continue to use that space,” he added.
Manatees on the east coast of Florida, in particular, have suffered during winter months from a lack of food. They are large creatures that feed on sea grass, and poor water quality has reduced their natural food source, causing many to starve to death. It's mostly agricultural, urban and septic tank sources of pollution that are depriving them of food.
As of Jan. 28, 97 manatees have been found dead in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which has taken a leading role in the manatee rescue effort. Five of those were killed by boat strikes. Most of the rest are starving.
“That is the same pattern we had last winter, and these numbers will continue,” said Dr. Martine deWit, the veterinarian who examines dead manatees for the state of Florida.
The Fish and Wildlife Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have embarked on an experimental attempt to feed manatees with romaine lettuce at a Florida Power & Light plant on the east coast. The animals typically gather there in winter months because of the warm outflow waters and at a time when there is very little natural food.
Recently, wildlife officials said there were more than 700 manatees in that area, although it's hard to say how many were eating lettuce.
“They are going to go where the food is,” said Tom Reinert, South regional director at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. “We hope to make a difference." | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/SeaWorld-ramps-up-care-for-threatened-Florida-16832203.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:06 | en | 0.977126 |
The Vermont House on Friday approved a constitutional amendment that would remove what supporters say is ambiguous language and make clear that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited in the state.
The constitutional amendment now goes before voters in November.
Vermont's constitution states that no person 21 or older should serve as a slave unless bound by their own consent or “by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” The amendment would remove that language and add that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are banned.
The current language is “harmful and threatening to Vermonters who experience the vestiges of slavery,” said Rep. Hal Colston of Winooski to his colleagues. “My truth as a descendent of slave advocates is that this current language gives the appearance that there may be an exception for the existence of slavery and indentured servitude. Language is powerful and the truth shall set us free.”
To amend the Vermont Constitution, the proposal must be approved by two consecutively elected Legislatures and then approved in a statewide referendum. The Vermont House unanimously approved the measure in 2020 and the state Senate passed the proposal in the previous session. The House vote on Friday was 139-3.
In 2018, voters in Colorado backed a measure to clarify language in the state Constitution to ban slavery and involuntary servitude under all circumstance. Since then, voters in Nebraska and Utah have approved initiatives amending their state constitutions to remove language that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.
Legislation was also introduced in Congress in June to end a loophole in the U.S. Constitution that allowed forced labor for those convicted of some crimes. The measure would revise the 13th Amendment, which bans enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Slavery-ban-amendment-approved-goes-to-voters-in-16832187.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:12 | en | 0.960278 |
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A judge has partially dismissed two lawsuits alleging abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center, saying one complaint “consists of nothing more than invective and bald conclusions.” But attorneys who have filed hundreds of similar cases say they will fill in the details soon.
Nearly 450 men and women have sued the state alleging they were abused as children at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly the Youth Development Center. Their allegations span six decades and involve more than 150 staffers at the Manchester facility, but most of the lawsuits are nearly identical and include few specifics.
Since late December, the state has filed motions seeking to have claims against the state and the agency that oversees the center dismissed in more than 40 cases. Judge Andrew Schulman agreed in two cases this week, leaving intact claims against individual former employees of the center.
“The complaint does not describe the facts that constitute any of these categories of harm. What was the physical abuse? What excessive restraints were used?” he wrote. “If there was sexual abuse, what happened? The plaintiff did not say anything about what he specifically experienced.”
The plaintiff in that case is Michael Gilpatrick, who also is suing five of the 11 men who were arrested in April and charged with either sexually assaulting or acting as accomplices to the assaults of more than a dozen teenagers. Two of them are charged with restraining Gilpatrick while he was sexually assaulted by two of the others.
The Associated Press typically does not name victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly as Gilpatrick has done.
Gilpatrick, who spent three years at the center in the 1990s, wouldn’t discuss that episode in an interview with The Associated Press in September. But he said in addition to being subject to physical and sexual abuse, he was held in solitary confinement for as long as three months.
“There was nobody you could go to at YDC to talk to. You were literally stuck in your own thoughts, in your own fear every single day,” he said.
The judge’s order in the second case wasn’t available Friday, but he also dismissed claims against the state in another case brought by an anonymous plaintiff, according to the attorney general’s office.
State officials have said that filing the dismissal requests should not be considered a lack of support for crime victims, but the plaintiffs' attorney disagreed. Rus Rilee, said Friday he plans to amend all 450 lawsuits in the next 60 days but that there is no “legal or other need to force the victims to disclose all the details of their painful abuse in public.”
“This is nothing more than a continued effort by the State to try to silence these crime victims and deter others from coming forward in order to avoid accountability for decades of systemic governmental child abuse," he said. "It is becoming clear that the State doesn’t really sympathize with or care about these child crime victims - it just wants them to shut up and go away.” | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Some-claims-against-state-tossed-in-youth-center-16832109.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:19 | en | 0.982827 |
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man is behind bars after a fight with his father left the man dead, authorities said.
Henry Kevin Edwards, 40, of Lucedale, is being held at the George County jail on one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Henry Cornelius Edwards, 80, the sheriff's office said Thursday. It was unknown if Edwards has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Investigators discovered Edwards’ body in a vehicle outside of a residence in Lucedale at 4 p.m. Wednesday, news outlets reported. Police determined there had been a physical altercation between the father and son, and the elderly man died from injuries sustained in the fight. Authorities have not said what sparked the fight. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Son-arrested-after-fight-leaves-his-father-dead-16832226.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:25 | en | 0.981938 |
HASSAKEH, Syria (AP) — Weeks after the long, furious battle with militants from the Islamic State group over a prison in northwestern Syria, the mangled wreckage of a car used by suicide bombers still sat outside its perimeter. Cranes put in place new cement blast walls to close off the entrance.
Gaping holes remained in the prison’s outer wall, an ominous reminder of the IS inmates who escaped during the fighting.
The battle for Gweiran Prison is over; it took 10 days, but U.S.-backed, Syrian Kurdish-led forces finally defeated the militants who attacked the facility in the city of Hassakeh, aiming to break free their comrades jailed inside, in the group’s largest and most stunning operation in years.
But the impact continues to reverberate. Residents in neighboring districts are locked down as Kurdish fighters hunt for fugitive militants hiding among them.
“Ask everyone here, they will tell you the same: We are terrified,” said Muna Farid, a mother of five who lives in the Gweiran neighborhood, which gives the prison its name — echoing the worries of dozens of residents over hidden IS fighters.
The region’s Kurdish administrators say the attack shows what they have long been saying: They are not getting enough help to face the Islamic State group as it regains strength.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say the Jan. 20 prison attack was not a surprise to them. Local intelligence sources had been showing a growing number of IS sleeper cells in the area. But they say they were hampered in acting because of multiple pressures, including conflicts with Turkey, insufficient international help and Syria’s economic crisis.
“The main reason that IS sleeper cells got enhanced and strong is because of international silence and weak support (for SDF) to stand against terrorism,” said Haval Qortay, head of the commando unit that fought IS at the prison, using his nom de guerre. “We are relying on resources that are not enough to fight.”
IS suffered a blow with the U.S. raid Thursday in northwest Syria that killed the group’s leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. But it is unlikely to derail the group’s persistent insurgency in Iraq and Syria since its command became much more decentralized after the group's territorial defeat two years ago.
“For some time now ISIS top leadership have been providing broad, strategic guidance to the global organization, but not day-to-day command and control,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “ISIS’s various elements will continue implementing their local insurgencies until the new successor is named.”
Since IS lost its last hold on any territory in 2019, its militants have gone underground in cells that have been carrying out low-level hit-and-run attacks in Syria and Iraq, mainly targeting security forces. Those attacks have been growing, raising fears the group is gaining momentum.
In northeast Syria, governed by a Kurdish-dominated administration, the SDF has been the main force trying to suppress IS, with the backing of several hundred U.S. troops.
At the same time, the SDF has to watch over some 10,000 captured IS fighters in around two dozen detention facilities — including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them. It also oversees some 62,000 family members of IS fighters, mostly women and children in al-Hol camp. Many of those family members remain die-hard IS supporters, and the camp has seen bouts of militant violence.
Khalifa said the SDF has done a “remarkable job” in fighting IS and in stabilizing the areas it captured from the group during the long campaign that brought down the “caliphate.”
But she said it is also hampered on multiple fronts. Particularly, its frequent clashes with Turkey, which views the Kurdish faction running eastern Syria as a terrorist group, undermine the anti-IS fight. Also, many Arab residents of the region don’t trust that the SDF will remain, fearing the Americans will pull out or the Damascus government will regain control of the area — so they are reluctant to endanger themselves by providing intelligence against militants.
Gweiran Prison, the biggest of the SDF-run prisons, was set up in a school campus, underscoring how the SDF has had to cobble together detention centers for the militants.
On Jan. 20, around 200 militants attacked the prison, in coordination with a riot by inmates inside. The attackers broke in, freed some prisoners, took guards hostage, and held out against SDF fighters for days, even as aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition struck their positions repeatedly.
At least 121 SDF fighters and prison guards and more than 380 militants killed before the SDF finally restored full control.
The commando chief Qortay said the SDF had long been aware the prison would be an IS target and had been receiving intelligence of a growing number of IS sleeper cells in the area. Some militants seamlessly pass for civilians at checkpoints, he said. Others move into towns, rent apartments and maintain a low profile.
When the attack erupted, Qortay’s units formed a belt around the prison and the nearby residential neighborhoods. During the fighting, some IS members hid in civilian homes, slowing the SDF as it tried to avoid civilian casualties, Qortay said.
Now the prison is fully under SDF control, he said, but he expects more attacks. Militants remain hidden, literally, across the street. SDF troops are still conducting raids to find sleeper cells, relying on intelligence from residents.
One resident of Gweiran neighborhood told The Associated Press how he informs the local authorities whenever he sees a stranger on his street. He has told them of at least eight since the prison break, including one hiding in a water tank.
“I know everyone in this area, if I see a new face I report them directly,” he said. The AP is not identifying him for his safety.
But residents are also angered by the SDF’s clampdown on three neighborhoods near the prison. With guns slung, SDF soldiers at the districts’ entrances forbid locals from leaving until their areas are cleared of militants.
Supplies are allowed in, but residents say it’s not enough. Dozens complained of shortages in food and drinking water. Mothers said they didn’t have enough milk for their babies or food to feed their families.
Fatma al-Khodr sat on the steps outside her home on the phone, begging a neighbor for any leftover bread.
“We are the ones who are suffering the most after this attack. ... We fear Daesh, but we also need water,” she said, using the Arabic name for IS.
The militants’ ability to carry out such a major attack even amid intelligence warnings was a stinging blow to the SDF. The force is hoping it will show world powers that it needs more support, after long complaining it is left largely on its own to prevent the group’s revival in Syria.
On a recent day, the clouds hung low at a funeral for 23 of the SDF soldiers killed in the prison battle. Thousands came to pay their respects. Among them, Ibrahim Ismail, a merchant from the area.
“Their deaths were a shock to us all,” he said.
Then the crowd fell silent in remembrance. Portraits of the dead were held high as coffins draped in the region's Kurdish colors passed along the sea of human bodies.
A loudspeaker blared a verse from the Quran, “Do not think those who die in God’s path are dead.” Ismail completed the verse in a whisper to himself, “They are alive, with their Lord, prospering.” | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Stung-by-prison-battle-Kurds-say-they-need-help-16832236.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:31 | en | 0.970794 |
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected Republican gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch's request that it take over an absentee ballot box challenge in Wisconsin, in a ruling Friday.
Kleefisch, a former lieutenant governor, asked the conservative-controlled Supreme Court to take directly to take the case directly after a lower court's ruling that kept current law in place.
A Waukesha County judge on Jan. 13 ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes cannot be located anywhere other than at offices of local clerks and that no one other than the voter may return such a ballot.
An appeals court’s ruling put the lower court order on hold only until after the primary when the court was then going to consider the merits of the entire case.
Kleefisch's request is similar to one filed last month by a conservative group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
Judge Patience Roggensack was among three dissenting judges on Kleefisch's request.
“Because Wisconsin voters deserve elections conducted in a manner that we have reviewed and approved, I would grant Kleefisch’s petition to commence an original action. Because the majority sidesteps its obligation to hear the continuing cry of Wisconsin voters and address absentee ballot issues, I respectfully dissent,” she wrote.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has advised that local clerks can put drop boxes wherever they want.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers last year vetoed Republican bills that would have limited the location of absentee ballot drop boxes and who could return the ballots. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Supreme-Court-won-t-take-challenge-to-absentee-16832127.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:37 | en | 0.949904 |
ATLANTA (AP) — A Texas man accused of posting a message on Craigslist after the 2020 election calling on “patriots” in Georgia to “put a bullet” in three government officials has pleaded not guilty to a criminal charge.
Chad Stark and his attorney appeared briefly by video Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Russell Vineyard in Atlanta. Stark, 54, pleaded not guilty to one count of communicating interstate threats. He remains free on bond.
The Justice Department has said Stark's prosecution was the first criminal case brought by its new Election Threats Task Force that was created last summer. According to prosecutors, Stark posted a message on Jan. 5, 2021, titled: “Georgia Patriots it’s time to kill (Official A) the Chinese agent - $10,000."
The message stated, “Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors.” It goes on to urge Georgia residents to “militia up” and calls for shooting the three officials as well as “corrupt” local and federal judges.
Prosecutors did not name the officials in documents filed in federal court in Georgia.
Former President Donald Trump has made repeated false claims that widespread fraud cost him the election, and some of his supporters have targeted election officials and workers in Georgia and elsewhere, making violent threats against them. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Texas-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-making-threats-16832006.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:43 | en | 0.965023 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — UCLA men's basketball player Mac Etienne was arrested and cited on suspicion of misdemeanor assault after appearing to spit toward a fan after the Bruins lost a road game to Pac-12 rival Arizona, a University of Arizona police spokesman said Friday.
The alleged incident occurred Thursday night as UCLA players left the McKale Center playing floor and entered a tunnel to go to their locker room, said the spokesman, Officer Jesus Aguilar.
Etienne was allowed to go to the locker room and was then arrested, cited and released, Aguilar said.
Local media outlets reported that fans jeered UCLA players when the incident occurred. The Wildcats beat the Bruins 76-66.
UCLA officials knew of the incident and were reviewing it, university spokesman Scott Markley said in a statement.
“UCLA Athletics is committed to and expects the highest level of sportsmanship," the statement said.
Etienne, a redshirt freshman, was not in uniform and did not play in the game.
It wasn't immediately clear whether saliva landed on any fans but the misdemeanor assault charge alleges intent, Aguilar said.
“We did have a willing victim who did want to press charges," he said.
Etienne wasn't taken into custody or booked into jail but he will be expected to either appear in court on a future date or make alternative arrangements with court officials, Aguilar said.
“We had no reason to take him into custody," he said. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/UCLA-player-arrested-after-allegedly-spitting-at-16831781.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:49 | en | 0.982779 |
CHICAGO (AP) — A suburban Chicago woman alleges that a hospital tested her for drugs without her consent before she gave birth, resulting in a false positive for opiates that she attributes to a poppy seed cake but which led to months of monitoring by state child welfare workers.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the ACLU of Illinois filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights on the woman’s behalf against the AMITA St. Alexius Medical Center for carrying out the “discriminatory, non-consensual drug test of a first-time mother.”
The 46-year-old woman gave birth via cesarean section to a premature but otherwise healthy boy in April 2021 at the Hoffman Estates hospital. She said hospital staff rejected her explanation that she may have tested positive for opiates because the day she was tested and the day before, she had eaten makowiec, a poppy seed cake that’s a traditional Polish Easter dessert.
“I never imagined that enjoying a traditional Polish cake at an Easter celebration would create suspicion that we would not care for our child,” the woman said Thursday in a news release.
The woman and her husband, who live in the DuPage County city of Wood Dale, emigrated from Poland in 2001.
She said she told nurses and doctors she had not taken any drugs, and the only possible explanation was that it was a false positive because of the poppy seed cake.
The woman alleges that a doctor and nurse brushed off her concerns despite research showing it's possible for people to test positive for opiates after eating poppy seeds.
She alleges the hospital violated the Illinois Human Rights Act by testing her urine for drugs without her knowledge or consent and reporting her to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services based on a false positive result.
“There’s no medical reason to drug test all pregnant people as they come in for medical care and these kind of blanket policies really deter pregnant people from getting treatment and support," said Emily Hirsch, an ACLU staff attorney. “... She’s coming in and the only reason they’re drug testing her is because she’s pregnant, and that is a form of sex discrimination.”
Tim Nelson, a spokesman for Amita Health, said in an email that the health system can’t comment on pending litigation. He did not respond to questions about whether the hospital or Amita Health performs drug tests on all pregnant women who are admitted.
The woman, whose infant exhibited no symptoms of withdrawal, was taken to newborn intensive care before she was contacted by a hospital social worker to talk about the drug test results.
She explained again about the poppy seed cake but the social worker said the umbilical cord blood would still be tested. It tested positive for morphine, which is an opioid, and the social worker was required to report the matter to DCFS despite believing her explanation, the complaint states.
The state agency’s investigation lasted about three months. Though the case was terminated July 1, her file will be maintained for 5 years.
The Illinois Department of Human Rights can mediate and investigate complaints and issue findings. If it finds substantial evidence of the woman's charge, the complaint can be taken to court or filed with the Illinois Human Rights Commission, among other outcomes, the Chicago Tribune reported. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Woman-alleges-poppy-seed-cake-led-to-positive-16832260.php | 2022-02-04T18:59:56 | en | 0.969677 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Locked out players rejected Major League Baseball’s request for a federal mediator to enter stalled labor negotiations.
NEW YORK (AP) — Locked out players rejected Major League Baseball’s request for a federal mediator to enter stalled labor negotiations. | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/sports/article/Alert-Locked-out-players-rejected-Major-League-16832283.php | 2022-02-04T19:00:02 | en | 0.897622 |
Joe Burrow knew Evan McPherson must be a special kicker if the Cincinnati Bengals were willing to spend a fifth-round pick on a position usually filled by undrafted players and journeyman.
But the Bengals targeted McPherson and made him the only kicker taken in the 2021 draft, a decision that has been validated by one of the NFL's greatest postseason kicking runs.
“Obviously kickers aren’t usually drafted that high, but I figured if we’re drafting a kicker, he’s going to be really good for us,” Burrow said this week. “Then I met Evan and you kind of know how a kicker is going to perform based on how he reacts and interacts with people in the locker room. All the kickers can kick it and put it through the uprights, but it’s really how you handle the intense situations that’s going to really make or break your reputation as a kicker.”
McPherson survived the friendly ribbing from his new teammates and dished it back himself, showing the Bengals he was ready for the NFL. But nothing has been more intense — and no performance has been better than McPherson has done so far in the playoffs.
He has been perfect on kicks through three games, making four field goals in each win and delivering walk-off kicks on the road the past two weeks to beat Tennessee and Kansas City and send Cincinnati to the Super Bowl.
“He’s been everything that we expected him to be and and then some,” special teams coach Darrin Simmons said. “But his mental makeup is fantastic. It’s exactly what you’re looking for in that position.”
McPherson's 12 field goals so far are two shy of Adam Vinatieri's record from the 2006 postseason and he already has as many four field-goal games in the playoffs as any player ever, tying the record Vinatieri set in his 24-year career.
McPherson's 12 field goals from at least 50 yards are the most in a single regular season and playoffs combined, and his three makes from long range in the playoffs are two shy of Vinatieri's record.
Longtime NFL kicker and CBS kicking analyst Jay Feely said the only postseason he would put ahead of McPherson's is what Vinatieri did in the 2001 season when he made “the greatest kick of all time,” a 45-yarder in the snow to force overtime against the Raiders. Vinatieri then made a 23-yarder to win that game, and a walk-off 48-yarder to beat the Rams in the Super Bowl.
But McPherson is doing this as a rookie under the bright playoff lights.
“A little bit of it is he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” Feely said. “So he’s just out there having fun. He hasn’t had the big misses. He did have the one game against Green Bay where he missed, but he was able to overcome that. That’s what defines great NFL kickers is their ability to overcome failure, to not allow it deter him. That’s the point this season where your entire rookie year could go off the rails and it could make you not be confident in yourself and your swing starts to change, especially when you’re a draft pick.”
McPherson missed three field goals in his first five games, including two in an OT loss to Green Bay in Week 5. He even memorably celebrated one of those misses as if he had made a game-winner.
But he has nailed 35 of 37 field goals since then, validating the scouting report Simmons got from his former kicker Shayne Graham, who coached McPherson in college at Florida.
“He talked to me a lot about what Evan’s makeup was and how confident he was without being cocky, and that’s an important differentiation to make,” Simmons said. “You want these guys to have short-term memory that if good or bad, that they live to perform in the next kick. The most important kick is not the last kick, it’s the next kick.”
The Bengals have marked McPherson's winning kicks the past two weeks with Tweets, saying “THAT’S WHY YOU DRAFT A KICKER!”
But Feely said he doesn't expect McPherson's success to lead to a run on kickers going in the draft. He said determining which kickers have the fortitude to succeed like McPherson and which ones will flame out like Tampa Bay 2016 second-round pick Roberto Aguayo is nearly impossible to know.
“I think it’s really hard to draft a kicker and be successful," Feely said. “I think it’s difficult for a personnel department to be able to look at a guy no matter where he played, no matter what level, and determine if he has the ability mentally and the mental makeup to come into the NFL to succeed.”
___
More AP Super Bowl coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.myjournalcourier.com/sports/article/Bengals-rookie-kicker-McPherson-on-record-playoff-16832169.php | 2022-02-04T19:00:14 | en | 0.983387 |
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