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You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. | https://sportspyder.com/cf/oklahoma-sooners-football/news | 2022-04-09T14:15:52 | en | 0.738227 |
LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — Cheered by many fans who came just to see her make history, Rachel Balkovec debuted with a win Friday night as the first woman to manage the affiliate of a Major League Baseball team.
Balkovec guided the New York Yankees’ Class A Tampa Tarpons over Lakeland 9-6.
“I’ve never heard my name chanted like that,” she said. “It was so much fun. Again, I just see, it’s like I see me sitting in the stands, whatever 15, 20 years ago, and so it’s just really cool.”
In the postgame high-five line, Balkovec hugged each of her players and was given the ball from the final out. She provided some mementoes, too — her jersey and hat were headed to the baseball Hall of Fame.
Before the game, the 34-year-old Balkovec signed some autographs, drew a nice ovation when she was introduced and posed for a picture at home plate.
Then it was time to get to work. She had a game to run.
A lot of those in the crowd, however, felt the moment called for even more recognition.
So as she ran from the dugout to coach first base before the top of the second inning, a chant broke out at Joker Marchant Stadium.
“Let’s go, Rachel!”
It came from a group of girls as the Tarpons played the Flying Tigers in the Florida State League.
The Detroit Tigers Foundation — the Lakeland club is an affiliate — donated tickets to female athletes in the Polk County Schools, and 1,200 were distributed.
“They’re here in this moment and maybe they don’t even fully understand it right now, but I think obviously in the future when they get into their professional careers and maybe hit some brick walls that they’ll reflect on this moment,” Balkovec said.
“Strangely, it’s like I’ve always had a very strong vision, not specifically this maybe, but I’ve always had a strong vision for my life and understood I could make a really huge impact no matter area I’m in,” she said. “I felt that from a very young age.”
Tampa broke a 4-all tie in the seventh inning on a grand slam by Anthony Garcia. The last of Balkovec’s five pitchers for the night closed out the win.
The night ended with a scheduled fireworks show, and Balkovec signed autographs for around 20 minutes afterwards for all the remaining fans who wanted one.
“100%, I’ll never forget this game, never,” Yankees highly rated prospect and Tarpons center fielder Jasson Dominguez said.
Earlier in the day, Balkovec spoke at the Yankees’ complex at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa about her journey. Her parents were in attendance as she talked to reporters.
“It’s been 10 years of just working to this point,” she said. “Things have evolved. I was blatantly discriminated against back then. Some people say not to say that, but it’s just part of what has happened, and I think it’s important to say because it lets you know how much change has happened.”
“So, blatant discrimination, that was 2010-ish, and now here we are 12 years later and I’m sitting here at a press conference as a manager,” she said.
Balkovec and the Tarpons made the 40-mile bus trip and arrived at the stadium around 90 minutes before game time.
Clad in Yankees’ road gray pants and blue Tarpons jersey and hat, Balkovec signed autographs along the right-field line and next to Tampa’s third-base side dugout as planes from the nearby Sun ‘n’ Fun Aerospace Expo buzzed overhead.
She was cheered by the crowd during the on-field pregame introductions, and shook hands with umpires Chris Argueza and Conor McKenna and Flying Tigers manager Andrew Graham during a lengthy lineup card exchange and ground rules review.
After the foursome posed for a group photo, the Flying Tigers took the field and history was made.
Balkovec has broken several barriers on her way to the position. She was the first woman to serve as a full-time minor league strength and conditioning coach, then the first to be a full-time hitting coach in the minors with the Yankees.
The Yankees announced her hiring as a minor league manager in January.
Balkovec, a former softball catcher at Creighton and New Mexico, got her first job in professional baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals as a minor league strength and conditioning coach in 2012.
Balkovec joined the Houston Astros in 2016. She was hired as the Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator and later was the strength and conditioning coach at Double-A Corpus Christi.
She joined the Yankees organization as a minor league hitting coach in 2019.
Balkovec, who missed out on her spring training managerial debut after being hit in the face by a batted ball during a drill March 22, arrived 10 minutes early for Friday’s media session.
“Overall I feel really excited,” Balkovec said. “I feel excited because it’s like, thankfully, I’m in the best-case scenario to accept a role like this because I had a lot of these players last year and I already know them.”
“I’m excited for the night because of what’s going on but also just excited for the season because it’s like, these are my guys,” she said.
___
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/rachel-balkovec-cheered-in-debut-managing-yankees-affiliate/ | 2022-04-09T14:15:52 | en | 0.980249 |
MARTINSVILLE, Va. (AP) — A lot of the talk in NASCAR has been about how the sturdiness of the Next Gen car allows for more physical racing, a point the first six winners — all 30 years old and under — have celebrated with playoff spots likely secured.
That physicality is likely to be more evident than anywhere at Martinsville Speedway, the circuit’s shortest track at 0.526 miles and oldest at 75 years.
The racing is always done in close quarters, and tempers frequently flare.
Ross Chastain has, in some circles, become something of a poster boy for aggressive driving. Two weeks ago, he bumped and banged his way around the final overtime lap at Circuit of the Americas in Texas for his first career win.
Last week at Richmond, he ticked off Ryan Blaney by moving him up the track.
“Aside from the finish at COTA and my little momentary lapse in judgment last week in Richmond, I feel like I’ve done a better job,” Chastain said Friday. “And then two weeks in a row, I’ve put myself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. So yeah, I mean, people are going to gravitate quickly and pass judgment very quickly on major sporting events, and this is no different.”
It hasn’t helped his popularity that he and his team seem to have figured out the Next Gen car pretty quickly, with four top-three finishes, as others struggle.
For the second season in a row, the first seven races have been won by seven drivers. Denny Hamlin ended a string of 12 straight races won by the 30-and-under crowd at Richmond Raceway, and leads active drivers with five Martinsville victories, even though his last of those victories came in 2015.
Alex Bowman picked up one of the most unique trophies in sports — race winners here get a grandfather clock — last fall in the penultimate race of the season. He spun Hamlin, a championship contender, out of the lead and then won in overtime, perhaps a harbinger of what race fans will see this time.
“Obviously, it’s a really special trophy,” Bowman said. “We had some controversy, but still super cool to be able to win here. It means a lot to me.”
Joey Logano has one Martinsville win, and said the attention being paid to the durability of the new cars — and to some degree a shortage of replacement parts if you damage the ones you have — might be being overblown.
“My aggression level, to be honest with you, is the same all the time, whether we have a bunch of parts or not or we got 10 wins or no wins,” he said.
“I’m going to win. That’s the goal.”
SHORTER RACE
The historically 500-lap race has been reduced to 400 laps this season, and Blaney expects that to yield more bumping and banging on Saturday night.
“I feel like it’s going to be a little bit more physical tomorrow night, not only because it’s 100 laps shorter. The cars can take more,” Blaney said.
“That’s what Martinsville is all about, and I think you get a car that can take it, you’re gonna see more of it. I don’t see anything kind of dumb happening or stupid aggressive, but I think you’re gonna use the bumper a little bit more, and you might use it a little quicker than you would with the previous car,” he said.
ODD AND ENDS
Defending series champion Kyle Larson is the betting favorite according to FanDuel Sportsbook. … Just like last week at Richmond, Martin Truex Jr. arrives having won three of the last five races here. … Blaney said he hasn’t been so bold as to determine where to put the grandfather clock trophy should he win one, but “I’ll put it right in the center of my living room, if anything, but you’ve got to get it first and then you kind of figure that out.”
___
More AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/recipe-for-success-at-martinsville-beating-and-banging/ | 2022-04-09T14:15:59 | en | 0.972921 |
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AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Scottie Scheffler strolled off Augusta National with both hands in his pockets as if he had just finished a casual round at home in the late afternoon.
The Masters was anything but that Friday.
The wind roaring through the Georgia pines gave Tiger Woods and so many others all they could handle, a relentless fight from tee to green. And then Scheffler made it feel even tougher.
His 5-under 67 matched the low score of the day and gave him a five-shot lead, tying a Masters record after 36 holes. The last four players who led by five shots going into the weekend went on to win. The lone exception was Harry “Lighthorse” Cooper in 1936.
That brought little more than a shrug from the No. 1 player in the world.
“I think I’m still playing against the golf course out there,” Scheffler said. “And there’s a bunch of other guys in he field. So I can’t be paying too much attention to them either way.”
Scheffler is beating them all, along with an increasingly difficult Augusta National.
“You live on a knife’s edge every hole, honestly,” said Adam Scott, who played in Scheffler’s group. “And I was playing with a guy who made it look easy. But that’s how he’s playing at the moment.”
In his debut as the new No. 1 player in the world, Scheffler looked the part. He was bogey-free over the final 15 holes, played smart from the fairways and trusted every shot he faced even as the wind was as strong as it was fickle.
Scheffler, the 25-year-old Texas Longhorn, has won three of his last five starts on the PGA Tour and doesn’t appear to be overwhelmed by the stage of Augusta National.
“I put myself in position, where I’m in position to win this golf tournament. I couldn’t ask for anything more after 36 holes,” Scheffler said. “My game feels like it’s in a good spot. I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing and not overthink things.”
He was at 8-under 136, five shots clear of defending champion Hideki Matsuyama (69), former champion Charl Schwartzel (69), former British Open champion Shane Lowry (68) and 18-hole leader Sungjae Im (74).
Woods was nine shots behind, a daunting task even on two good legs.
Despite four bogeys after five holes, Woods patched together a 74 and made it to the weekend in his first 72-hole event since the November 2020 Masters.
“Hey, I made the cut. I got a chance going into the weekend,” Woods said. “I think it’s going to be the golf course that Augusta National wants. It’s going to be quicker, drier, faster. It’s going to be a great test.”
Former Masters champion Dustin Johnson (73) led a group at 2-under 142, while the bunch another shot behind included two-time major champion Collin Morikawa and former PGA champion Justin Thomas, whose 67 matched Scheffler for best of the day.
Two hours after the start of a glorious and calm spring day in Augusta, the wind arrived with a blast and players held on for dear life. Scheffler could see sand blow out of the bunkers. Flags were ripping. Scores were soaring.
“Felt like I went 10 rounds with Canelo,” Sergio Garcia said of champion fighter Canelo Alvarez. That was after a hard-earned 74.
Spieth hit two into Rae’s Creek and took triple bogey on the par-3 12th. At least this was on a Friday, though he wound up missing the cut when he made double bogey on the 18th.
Scott was trying to stay in the mix until he had a wedge spin back into the water on the par-5 15th, hit the next over the green and took triple bogey.
Scheffler had no such troubles, even if it didn’t feel that way.
“I definitely feel like I was in a fight today,” he said. “I guess the only thing I would say to that is maybe I just performed a little bit better.”
Scheffler got his mistakes out of he way early and began to seize control with two birdies right before making the turn. After a tough par save from right of the 11th green, he added two birdies from 12 feet on the par-3 12th and a tough pitch from well right on the par-5 13th.
By then, the wind began to subside in the late afternoon and Scheffler began to pull away with two more birdies that made him a clear and difficult target on the weekend.
And to think only two months ago he still didn’t have a PGA Tour victory.
Woods made it through another hike along the undulating terrain of Augusta National, his limp more noticeable from a right leg held together with rods and screws from his car crash 14 months ago.
“I don’t feel as good as I would like to feel,” Woods said with a smile. “That’s OK. As I said, I’ve got a chance going into the weekend. Hopefully, I’ll have one of those light bulb moments and turn it on in the weekend and get it done.”
His putter wasn’t helping any. All the key putts Woods made in the opening round weren’t falling Friday as he piled up four bogeys in his opening five holes, raising questions if his improbable return to the Masters would only last two days.
And now he has two more.
Coming off consecutive bogeys at the start of Amen Corner, he was headed for more trouble on the par-5 13th except that he missed badly enough to stay on right side of the tributary of Rae’s Creek, setting up a pitch-and-putt for birdie.
“It was tough for everybody,” Woods said, and before long came a wry smile. “Obviously, there’s a few people who aren’t struggling out there.”
One of those would be Scheffler, who has everyone’s attention.
Another was Thomas, with whom Woods played his practice rounds last week and in the days leading up to the Masters. He opened with a 76 and spent the rest of the day sulking at what looked to be a lost opportunity.
He capped off his 67 with three straight birdies along the back nine.
“I very easily could be going home right now, and not only am I not, but I’m in a really good spot going into this weekend,” Thomas said.
He was seven behind, nonetheless, though he wasn’t the least bit surprised Scheffler was able to post such good rounds to build a big lead.
“If I played how I should yesterday, I should be right there with him,” Thomas said. “This place, I love it because you can make so many birdies — even in conditions like this, if you plot your way around and know how to get it around, you can make a lot of birdies. It exposes you when it gets this windy if you don’t have control of your ball.
“He clearly has control of everything right now based off the last couple of months, so I’m not too surprised,” he added. “But yeah, I would appreciate it if he would stop going too far away.”
___
For more AP Masters coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/the-masters | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/scheffler-builds-5-shot-masters-lead-as-tiger-makes-weekend/ | 2022-04-09T14:16:06 | en | 0.982638 |
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AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Tiger Woods’ second round at the Masters on Friday seemed like a constant ride from one end of the success spectrum to the other, his fortunes changing at an almost dizzying pace during one stretch of the afternoon.
Not his best, not his worst, but plenty good enough, especially considering what he’s been through in the 14 or so months since the car crash that almost cost him his right leg.
Playing in his first competitive event against tour pros in almost 18 months, Woods’ comeback appearance at the Masters will stretch into the weekend. His round of 2-over 74 on Friday left him at 1 over for the tournament and tied for 19th place — though nine shots behind runaway leader Scottie Scheffler.
“Made the cut on one leg,” caddie Joe LaCava said afterward, while Woods was signing his card and preparing for a post-round visit to Butler Cabin. “Wasn’t so bad, was it?”
LaCava was offering the proper perspective. Any golf that Woods plays for the rest of his life will basically be a bonus. The Old Tiger would have hated a day where he had four birdies and six bogeys at Augusta National. The New Tiger certainly didn’t celebrate the way his scorecard looked as the sun started to fall over the Masters on Friday night, but he accepted where he was.
“It was a good fight,” Woods said. “I got back in the ballgame. I’m four shots back of second.”
The day turned into a bit of a salvage operation after four bogeys in his first five holes.
The topsy-turvy, good-bad, wildly fluctuating part of the day started with a birdie on the par-5 8th, followed by a disappointing par on the par-4 9th when his approach from 143 yards went so far right that he dropped his 9-iron on the follow-through. That was followed by perhaps his gutsiest shot of the round, his second at the downhill par-4 10th, when he went at the pin, stuck his approach from just outside of 200 yards and made one of only 10 sub-par scores that hole yielded all day.
“I could have easily kicked myself out of the tournament today, but I kept myself in it,” Woods said.
Bogey followed at 11, bogey followed at 12, birdie followed at 13, birdie followed at 14. The roller-coaster stopped there, four pars coming in finished his afternoon — Woods lamented leaving some birdies out there, especially at the par-3 16th — and he’s playing the weekend.
Woods got to Augusta National on Sunday. He wouldn’t say when the last time was that he played this much golf in a weeklong period — “It’s been years,” was all he would offer — and he’s made no secret that his rebuilt leg and fused back are never going to be the way they once were.
The scoreboard says his position isn’t ideal, since trailing 18 other players with 36 holes left could never be called ideal.
His history, however, suggests it’s not as damning as it might look. Over his last 18 appearances at the Masters, Woods has moved up on the weekend 13 times. “Light bulb moments,” he calls them.
“You’ve seen guys do it with a chance going into the back nine,” Woods said. “If you are within five or six going into the back nine, anything can happen. I need to get myself there. That’s the key. I need to get myself there.”
It’s been done. Often, actually.
He’s made weekend moves that saw him finish four rounds at least 11 places up the leaderboard than he was after two rounds a half-dozen times. And frankly, in some of the years where he didn’t make a big weekend move, he didn’t have that far to climb anyway — since he was already near the top of the standings.
“I’m proud of the fact that my whole team got me into this position,” Woods said. “We worked hard to get me here to where I had an opportunity and then not to have, as I said, any setbacks this week, and we haven’t. Kept progressing.”
___
More AP Masters coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/the-masters | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/tiger-woods-has-an-up-and-down-second-round-at-masters/ | 2022-04-09T14:16:13 | en | 0.985228 |
Ukrainian soccer club Shakhtar Donetsk will play a series of charity games on a government-backed “Global Tour for Peace” that will raise money for the country’s military in the war against Russia.
The depleted squad has gathered in Turkey to prepare for Saturday’s opening match against Greek league leader Olympiakos. The games will also raise money for Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war.
“Football diplomacy will help us involve millions of fans around the world in assisting Ukraine, which is really important,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Friday. “By this charity tour, we will continue attracting the world’s attention to Russian aggression against Ukraine and raise more funds for the Ukrainian army.”
Shakhtar is also set to play Fenerbahce, Hajduk Split and Lechia Gdansk, with other opponents still to be confirmed.
Soccer clubs around Europe have been offering to play games against Ukrainian clubs and host youth players after soccer in the country was shut down when Russia invaded in February.
Olympiakos has advertised the game as “Football For Peace – Stop war in Ukraine.” Tickets for the match in Pireaus cost 10 euros ($10.90).
“This shall be the opening match in a series of friendlies the Ukrainian outfit is going to play against top clubs in Europe and the U.S.,” the defending Greek champions said.
Shakhtar has not played a competitive game since mid-December. On Feb. 26, the league leaders were scheduled to resume the domestic season after a winter break. But two days before their game at Metalist Kharkiv, Russia launched its military invasion and Ukrainian soccer stopped.
Shakhtar typically provides several players to the Ukrainian national team, which was unable to play a World Cup qualifying playoff match against Scotland two weeks ago.
FIFA wants to stage that game in Glasgow in early June. The winner will play Wales several days later for a place at this year’s World Cup in Qatar. FIFA also removed Russiafrom the playoffs.
Shakhtar has relied on a core of Brazilian players to win 13 league titles over the past 20 years and become a regular in the Champions League. In December, Shakhtar finished last in a Champions League group that included Real Madrid and Inter Milan.
During the war, FIFA changed transfer rules to let players with Ukrainian clubs sign elsewhere. Shakhtar loaned Tetê to Lyon while Junior Moraes, who gained citizenship and played for Ukraine, went to Brazil to play for Corinthians.
The club’s success has continued despite being exiled from its home city Donetsk in 2014, when pro-Russia separatists took control of parts of eastern Ukraine. The team has been playing in Kyiv in recent years.
Nicknamed the Miners, the club is owned by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov and has become a symbol of its home region. The Donbass Arena hosted games at the 2012 European Championship.
The club said during the war it has so far provided 1.4 billion Ukrainian hryvni ($48 million) in “humanitarian aid to civilians, as well as assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Territorial Defense force in dozens of cities and towns.”
___
More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/ukrainian-soccer-club-shakhtar-to-start-peace-themed-tour/ | 2022-04-09T14:16:20 | en | 0.972576 |
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Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar Saturday said alumni must ensure their contribution as ‘guru-dakshina’ to their institutions to help them grow better.
“Educational institutions are also like our home, every student is attached to it like a family member. Whenever old students revisit their institutes, they reminisce about the glorious phase of their lives that they spent there. Going down the memory lane, I still remember each corner of my college Pandit Neki Ram Sharma in Rohtak,” Khattar said.
He was addressing the ‘Alumni Meet-2022′ of Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak.
Describing the importance of alumni meet, Khattar said that “from Princeton University to Harvard University, alumni meets are organized in almost every university” across the globe. “Alumni of these Universities have made a special contribution in the progress of their universities. It is the responsibility of all of you to support the younger brothers and sisters studying in this University either by guiding them, paying their fees or in any other way,” Khattar said.
Evoking the ancient tradition of ‘gurukul, he said that in present time convocation ceremony is the ‘dakshina-day’.
The CM said that this year Rs 20,000 crore has been allocated to the education sector to achieve the target of constructing one college within a radius of every 20 kms and one medical college in every district. “This year four new medical colleges will be made functional,” he added.
Khattar directed the MDU vice chancellor to write a letter on his behalf to all the alumni, urging them to ensure their contribution in the progress of the university.
Calling upon the alumni to follow the principle of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas’, Khattar said, “All of us together have to make India Vishwa Guru”. V-C Rajbir Singh apprised CM of achievements of the University.
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An NHS nurse said she is on her “hands and knees, begging” as she waits for her Homes For Ukraine application to be processed. Lauren Corbishley, 43, an NHS nurse from Dawlish in Devon, applied to the scheme on March 18 to bring three members of a Ukrainian family to the UK.
But aside from the council making inquiries about a DBS check, she has heard nothing back. Ms Corbishley said she has “two beautiful spare rooms waiting” for Yuliia, husband Glib, their 17-year-old daughter Maryna and their two huskies, who have been in Warsaw since March 10.
She told the PA news agency: “I’m basically on my hands and knees, begging. As a nurse in this NHS that has worked through this pandemic, I’m on my knees, and I’m begging (the Government), please find my family’s applications and give them the (visas).
Read more: A385 in Paignton blocked in both directions after crash - updates
“Help me. I’ve given this country two years of my time with this pandemic. I am not rich, and I just want something back – and that is to get this family here.”
She said the Home Office appeared to have “shut up shop” and that she was getting “distressed” messages from the family asking what they should do. “I don’t know any more than them, I’m as in the dark as them," she said.
She added: “Yuliia yesterday was saying that she’s ashamed that we don’t want her here, but it seems like the Government doesn’t want them here. And what do you keep saying to the people that keep saying that to you? It’s hard.”
She pointed out that many of those fleeing Ukraine have suffered “trauma” and are going through “mental torture”. “The urgency on this is paramount to get people settled and safe,” she said.
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“The longer that goes on, where they’re just left in limbo, the trauma that they’ve already got from fleeing the war is just gonna get worse.” Ms Corbishley and her husband Ian have spent more than £1,000 of their own money on accommodation for Yuliia and her family as they have waited for the application to be approved.
The family have lost their home in Kharkiv as well as Glib’s business, which relied on Russian clients. They were put in touch with Ms Corbishley via the Shelter For Ukraine website around a month ago, and have been in touch ever since.
“We’re emotionally invested in it, both of us now,” she said. “That’s the heartbreaking thing because I could possibly say to her, ‘Look – go somewhere else, go where you are wanted, go where you haven’t got to wait in this pain and get your life on track and try and rebuild’.
“But there’s a selfish part of me now that is desperate to get here here because we’re friends and I’ve invested into it. She’s invested into it. That’s really the hardest thing.”
She called on the Government to provide clarity for those who are waiting to hear back about their Homes For Ukraine applications. She said: “Please just tell us, what do you want us to do? You want us to reapply?
“Because waiting is not a good enough response. We can’t just be told to wait any more. It’s awful.”
A Government spokesperson said: “We are moving as quickly as possible to ensure that those fleeing Ukraine can find safety in the UK through the Ukraine Family Scheme and Homes for Ukraine.
“We have streamlined the process so valid passport holders do not have to attend in-person appointments before arriving in the UK, simplified our forms and boosted caseworker numbers, while ensuring vital security checks are carried out.
“We continue to speed up visa processing across both schemes, with almost 30,000 visas issued in the last three weeks alone and thousands more expected to come through these uncapped routes.”
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For the second time in Hollywood history, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are engaged.
But unlike the first time, after months of dating under the paparazzi’s watch in 2002, Lopez handled the announcement herself. And because this is 2022, not 20 years earlier, the news of the couple’s engagement came via Lopez’s newsletter -- called On the JLo -- where the movie star taped a video for fans, sporting a green diamond engagement ring. Rather than saying anything specific, she let her followers connect the dots.
Lopez’s sister Lynda confirmed the news on her Instagram account. (As did a rep for Lopez in a news story to People.)
Lopez and Affleck were among the biggest celebrity couples in the early 2000s. They made two films together -- the 2003 romantic comedy “Gigli,” which bombed after receiving scathing reviews, and 2004′s “Jersey Girl.” By the time their second onscreen collaboration, an indie directed by Kevin Smith, had come out in theaters in March, the couple had already announced they’d broken up. Despite a lengthy engagement and being dubbed “Bennifer” by the tabloids, they never made it down the aisle.
But what a difference two decades makes. Although Lopez, 52, and Affleck, 49, got married to other people -- Jennifer Garner for him, and Marc Anthony for her -- they both got divorced. In their professional lives, Affleck won an Oscar for producing “Argo” and Lopez amassed a fortune following a stint as a judge on “American Idol,” which included touring, acting in movies and recording music. A year ago, they found themselves back together, dating in the public eye, but without the same scrutiny from the celebrity press, which has evolved and become less mean since then.
As Twitter cheered on their reunion, they made a series of red carpet appearances together, including at the Venice Film Festival in September for Affleck’s role in “The Last Duel,” and at the premiere of “Marry Me,” Lopez’s latest romantic comedy which opened in theaters in February.
And now, it seems, they’re living out the title of that film. | https://www.pilotonline.com/entertainment/ct-ent-jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-20220409-bioujzo7q5gjjip5qeyvk7zquu-story.html | 2022-04-09T14:23:29 | en | 0.969399 |
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RALEIGH, N.C. — When Ted Budd won a surprise endorsement from former President Donald Trump last year, he was a little-known congressman running for a Senate seat in North Carolina against some of the state’s most recognizable Republicans, including a former governor.
As he enters the final stretch before the state’s May 17 primary, Budd is again hoping for a boost, banking on the power of Trump’s endorsement to put him on top of a field that includes a dozen other Republicans.
“We feel we’ve got strong momentum,” Budd told The Associated Press. “Whether it’s grassroots, trend lines in polling or fundraising, we think we’re in a very good place.”
Budd’s candidacy will serve as an early test of whether Trump’s backing is powerful enough to lift someone from relative obscurity to the GOP nomination for a critical Senate seat. A strong showing by Budd could provide clues about how Trump-backed candidates in other states, including Georgia, that vote in quick succession after North Carolina, will fare.
The race “will be a test of the Trump effect on North Carolina among North Carolina Republicans, I think not just for North Carolina but nationally,” said Mike Rusher, a political consultant who previously worked for the state GOP.
Democrats have made inroads across the South in recent years, winning a presidential election in Georgia in 2020 for the first time in 28 years and picking up two Senate seats.
North Carolina has experienced similar demographic changes, driven by an influx of new residents to the Raleigh and Charlotte areas. But for now, Democrats have struggled to make the same progress in the state’s presidential and Senate races. Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential contender to carry North Carolina in 2008, and a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat since Kay Hagan the same year.
Trump will return to the state on Saturday for a rally in rural Johnston County, just southeast of Raleigh. He was a boon to North Carolina Republicans in the 2020 campaign, boosting turnout so that GOP candidates — with few exceptions — won races up and down the ballot even as Trump himself only narrowly eked out a win.
Budd is running for retiring Republican Sen. Richard Burr’s seat against former Gov. Pat McCrory, who is viewed as a moderate and has kept some distance from Trump while backing his economic policies. A dozen other Republicans are also seeking the nomination, including former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker, who has resisted Trump’s entreaties to drop out.
The winner is expected to take on presumptive Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court chief justice, in November’s general election. Like nearly all statewide races, the general election should be close, and a Democratic victory could thwart GOP hopes of retaking the Senate majority.
While McCrory entered the race as its best-known candidate, Budd and his advisers are increasingly optimistic that his position is strengthening in the race’s final weeks.
Budd credited Trump’s endorsement as “the single biggest factor to help advance and get attention on this campaign.” He has also benefited from millions of dollars in super PAC spending on his behalf, including from the Club for Growth’s political wing. The group’s ads heavily feature Trump’s endorsement, casting Budd as a reliable conservative while highlighting McCrory’s past criticism of the former president and slamming him as a “disloyal, liberal loser.”
McCrory became governor in 2013 but lost reelection after he signed a “bathroom bill” targeting transgender people that cost the state billions.
Saturday’s rally comes amid questions over whether Trump’s influence is fading amid stumbles in other states. Last month, he withdrew his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks, who was struggling to gain traction in Alabama’s Senate primary. Last year, his endorsed candidate in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Sean Parnell, dropped out amid allegations of abuse by his ex-wife.
As aides have warned that he is setting himself up for failure by offering too many endorsements, Trump has held off picking sides in several competitive Senate contests, including in Missouri and Ohio, where early voting is underway.
Seeing Walker as a potential spoiler, Trump has tried to no avail to pressure him to leave the race — a tactic he has used successfully in other contests to bolster his favored candidates’ chances.
The top vote-getter must garner more than 30% of the vote to avoid a runoff. Otherwise, the top two finishers advance to a runoff in late July.
“Look, we appreciate President Trump and the work that he did for our country, but it doesn’t mean that he makes the right decisions and sometimes he gets bad counsel,” Walker said in an interview. “And in this particular incident, he has hitched his wagon to the wrong horse.”
McCrory, meanwhile, dismissed polling out this week suggesting he had lost his early edge, saying there’s time for a counterattack.
“This race is going to be a dead heat. It’s neck and neck right now, and it’s amazing that we’re even in that position, considering $7 to $8 million have been spent against us from a special interest group in D.C.,” McCrory said in an unnamed reference to Club for Growth Action.
Many voters have yet to make up their minds, with early in-person voting beginning April 28.
John Dismukes, 48, of Carolina Beach describes himself as “100% undecided.” “I’m looking at all three of them,” he said.
Billy Shomaker, a retired commercial pilot from Beech Mountain, said he supports Budd regardless of Trump’s endorsement. “I like President Trump. I don’t like everything he does,” said Shomaker, 68.
Trump’s preferred candidates in North Carolina haven’t always been successful. In 2020, political newcomer Madison Cawthorn comfortably won a GOP congressional primary runoff over Trump’s pick.
But Trump soon embraced Cawthorn, who won the general election at age 25 and became one of the ex-president’s strongest supporters. Now, Trump is returning the favor, featuring him as a rally speaker and endorsing him for reelection even as Cawthorn has faced backlash over recent incendiary comments.
McCrory said he’s got his own political events Saturday and wouldn’t share the stage with Budd, Cawthorn or Trump even if offered.
Trump “says I don’t represent his values,” McCrory said, referencing the former president’s words when he endorsed Budd 10 months ago. “I agree with the policies of Trump. But yeah, we maybe have different opinion on values.”
___
Colvin reported from New York. | https://www.pilotonline.com/government/elections/vp-nw-north-carolina-senate-ted-budd-20220409-e5zyobcpx5ecldiqn2tg5u72w4-story.html | 2022-04-09T14:23:36 | en | 0.970666 |
This year is heating up to be another record-breaking one for anti-LGBTQ legislation in U.S. state legislatures.
In an attempt to fire-up a conservative base ahead of mid-term elections, Republican legislators have proposed at least 325 bills so far, with about 130 targeting transgender rights specifically.
That’s already ahead of the 268 introduced last year, a previous record. A total of 27 made it into law in 2021, for the worst year in recent history for anti-LGBTQ legislation, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group. This year, so far seven have become laws.
“We are seeing an uptick in the frequency and extremism of these bills as time goes on,” said Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth.
In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, dubbed by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. That legislation has already inspired copycat proposals in at least a handful of states, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio.
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said this week that he wants to prioritize passing legislation that mimics Florida’s. A separate law requiring Texas public school students to play sports based on their assigned gender at birth took effect in January.
Last month, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed bills into law which ban some types of medical procedures for transgender youth and prevent transgender students from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity.
Anti-LGBTQ legislation has also been signed in Arizona, South Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma and Utah this year. In 2022, Tennessee has introduced more anti-LGBTQ measures than any other state, including one that protects teachers who refuse to use a student’s preferred pronouns from civil liability or being fired.
Last year, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a law that bans transgender students from using bathrooms or locker rooms that align with their gender identity, and another that prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to prepubescent kids. (Doctors don’t usually prescribe those things until after a child enters puberty.)
On Thursday, Alabama’s House of Representatives voted to make it a felony — with a potential 10-year prison sentence — for a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to aid gender transition to anyone under 19. The bill would also mandate school counselors and nurses to alert parents if a child discloses that they identify as transgender. The proposal would need to be signed into law by the governor before it can go into effect.
Even though just a handful of the 325 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed this year have become law, experts are concerned that their mere consideration can still have an impact.
In some cases, teachers are being warned to steer clear of so-called “controversial” issues to avoid getting in trouble, which experts predict could cause a chilling effect in the classroom.
The number of calls from LGBTQ youth to crisis hotlines like the one run by the Trevor Project have jumped in recent years. The group found in a qualitative analysis that some young people reported feeling stressed or even suicidal due to the laws being debated in their state.
The latest groundswell in anti-LGBTQ legislation comes in the wake of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which allowed same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. The following year North Carolina passed its infamous bathroom bill, which spurred a boycott and ultimate rescinding of the law.
“It didn’t matter that we had overwhelmingly good popular opinion on marriage equality, state legislators were in a different mental and emotional space, and they spent their year spinning their wheels trying to find anything that they could do to claw back equality,” said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign.
There have been signs this year of pushback: A Texas judge last month blocked a directive from Governor Greg Abbott that the state Department of Family and Protective Services investigate instances of “sex change” procedures for youth, including surgeries and puberty-blocking drugs. And at the federal level, the U.S. State Department has said it will allow Americans who do not identify as male or female the option to select the “X” gender marker on passports, as part of a slate of actions to affirm the identities of transgender and nonbinary people in the U.S.
“We cannot talk about any one of these issues without the others, because what we’re talking about is not just about sports,” the Trevor Project’s Ames said. “It’s not just about health care. It’s not just about bathrooms or curriculum or any of the other areas where these transgender youth are being targeted. It is about a well coordinated national political campaign to write them out of existence.”
___
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Demand for real estate across Hampton Roads is high and competitive, and yet buyers have not given up on finding their perfect home. Surprisingly, not every property is fought over. Some properties stand out more; they’re the ones with features that buyers want now, and they can be under contract within hours.
If your home has one or more of these sought-after features, you can guarantee it will be at the top of many buyers’ property lists:
Storage. If there’s one thing a home can never have too much of, it’s storage — whether it’s more kitchen cabinets, a pantry, garage storage, or clever design updates with space for most anything.
Laundry room. A dedicated space for laundry is always a great feature. Buyers particularly like it on the floor with the main bedroom. If you don’t have the space for a dedicated laundry room, you can create a spot or make a current laundry space more appealing by adding storage (cabinets or shelving), a drying rack and a way to hide the area from guests. You can find great ideas on Pinterest.
Updated windows. Old windows can be an eyesore and a huge energy leak, and buyers know it; they also know replacing them can eat into a renovation budget. Homes with newer or energy-efficient windows attract more buyers and are much brighter inside.
If your windows are older and you can upgrade them, you will benefit and buyers will love them.
Adequate lighting. Lighting can make or break a home sale; homes that lack adequate lighting come off as dark and uninviting. The type of lighting can also be a big draw. Stark, fluorescent lighting commonly found in older homes is inefficient and an energy waster. Incandescent bulbs are still available, but they are not energy efficient. Compact fluorescent lamps, CFLs, are more energy efficient than incandescents, but they contain mercury and need to be recycled as hazardous waste.
Buyers like homes with modern lighting systems and LED bulbs. LEDs can last for thousands of hours, are extremely energy efficient and can provide a clean white light. They may be more costly up front but they will last for years.
Outdoor area. Buyers love living space. Homes that have usable living space inside and out are highly sought after in Hampton Roads, especially as the weather gets warmer.
Patios are popular. They’re more affordable to install and easier to maintain than a deck or porch, and they’re versatile and can be customized in a variety of ways.
Maura Callan Bain is a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Towne Realty. She is a member of the Hampton Roads Realtors Association, Virginia Realtors and the National Association of Realtors. For more on HRRA, visit www.hrra.com. Contact Maura at maura@MauraBainHomes.com, by text at 757-418-2139, or visit maurabainhomes.com. | https://www.pilotonline.com/life/real-estate/vp-hl-roc-attract-home-buyers-040922-20220409-j34rhcl5tnhohlxayyn5a6xiwq-story.html | 2022-04-09T14:23:49 | en | 0.941255 |
Amazon is seeking to overturn the historic union victory at one of its New York City warehouses, arguing in a legal filing Friday that union organizers and the National Labor Relations Board acted in a way that tainted the results. It now wants to redo the election.
The e-commerce giant listed 25 objections in the filing obtained by The Associated Press, accusing organizers with the nascent Amazon Labor Union of intimidating workers to vote for the union, a claim an attorney representing the group has called “patently absurd.”
“The employees have spoken,” Eric Milner, the attorney, said in a statement Thursday after Amazon’s initial planned objections were made public in another legal filing.
“Amazon is choosing to ignore that, and instead engage in stalling tactics to avoid the inevitable — coming to the bargaining table and negotiating for a contract” on behalf of the workers, he said.
Warehouse workers in Staten Island cast 2,654 votes — or about 55% — in favor of a union, giving the fledgling group enough support to pull off a victory last Friday.
In one objection, Amazon said organizers “intentionally created hostile confrontations in front of eligible voters,” by interrupting the mandatory meetings the company held to persuade its employees to reject the union drive. In a filing released earlier this month, the company disclosed it spent about $4.2 million last year on labor consultants.
In another objection, Amazon targeted organizers’ distribution of cannabis to workers, saying the labor board “cannot condone such a practice as a legitimate method of obtaining support for a labor organization.” New York legalized the recreational use of marijuana last year for those over 21. Milner, the attorney representing the union, said Amazon is grasping at straws.
Distributing cannabis “is no different than distributing free t-shirts and it certainly did not act to interfere with the election,” he said.
The company also accused organizers of improperly polling workers.
The retailer had initially signaled it planned to challenge the election results because of a lawsuit the NLRB filed in March, in which the board sought to force Amazon to reinstate a fired employee who was involved in the union drive.
Amazon pointed to the lawsuit in one of its objections filed Friday, saying the regional NLRB office that brought the suit “failed to protect the integrity and neutrality of its procedures,” and had created an impression of support for the union by seeking reinstatement for the former employee, Gerald Bryson.
“Based on the evidence we’ve seen so far, as set out in our objections, we believe that the actions of the NLRB and the ALU improperly suppressed and influenced the vote, and we think the election should be conducted again so that a fair and broadly representative vote can be had,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement Friday.
Bryson was fired in the early days of the pandemic after leading a protest calling for the company to do more to protect workers against COVID-19. While off the job during the protest, Bryson got into a dispute with another worker and was later fired for violating Amazon’s vulgar-language policy, according to his attorney Frank Kearl.
The NLRB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its spokesperson, Kayla Blado, previously said the independent agency is authorized by Congress to enforce the National Labor Relations Act.
“All NLRB enforcement actions against Amazon have been consistent with that Congressional mandate,” she said.
In other objections, Amazon targeted how the labor agency conducted the election. It said the agency failed to control media presence around the voting area and didn’t have enough staff and equipment, which the company says created long lines and “discouraged many employees from voting in subsequent polling sessions.”
Meanwhile, both Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a union that spearheaded a separate union drive in Bessemer, Alabama, have filed objections to that election. The final outcome of the union vote in Alabama is still up in the air with 416 outstanding challenged ballots in the balance. Initial results show the union down by 118 votes, with the majority of Amazon warehouse workers rejecting a bid to form unionize.
RWDSU, which filed more than 20 objections, said in its filing Thursday that its objections are “grounds to set the election aside.”
A hearing to review the challenged ballots is expected to begin in the coming weeks. | https://www.news10.com/news/amazon-seeks-to-overturn-union-win-says-vote-was-tainted/ | 2022-04-09T14:23:51 | en | 0.967209 |
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Start the spring gardening season off right by making sure your dollars won’t be wasted on weak or sick plants. Beginning with healthy, sturdy plants gives any garden an advantage. Healthy plants look better, establish themselves faster, and require less fuss and maintenance in the long run. So before you buy plants, inspect them thoroughly.
One place you can find knowledgeable help, as well as great healthy plants, is Norfolk Botanical Garden’s annual spring plant sale. This year’s sale will be in-person, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 22 through 24.
Here are more tips:
Foliage. If you notice wilting or yellowing, steer clear and find a plant that has healthy, hydrated, green leaves. This is especially true for annuals and vegetables. Some of us have a soft spot for struggling plants. But that can lead to heartbreak, and you will spend months trying to get one sad plant to catch up to the rest of your garden.
Shape. Generally, the goal is for fullness, multiple stems and a crown that has room to breathe. Avoid tall, spindly plants; they may have been crowded and had to stretch for light. This may mean ongoing stress leading to poor branching, and fewer buds and flowers on those weak branches.
Insects. Look for signs of damage like holes, leaf miner trails, mottling, webbing and insect droppings. Inspect the tops and undersides of the leaves, as well as the stems. A few holes don’t necessarily mean the plant is a total loss. Typically, if a nursery notices pest damage, the staff will treat it before it hits the sales floor. If most of the plant looks good, especially the new growth, and you see no active signs of insects, then it should be fine.
Disease. Just as you would for insect damage, check the plant for signs like yellowing, wilting, dark spots, brown leaf tips or powdery areas. Check the stems for discoloration or soft spots. Bringing home a sick plant not only is a bad investment, but it also risks spreading disease to your other plants.
Roots. Most people don’t think to turn a plant over and pull off its pot to inspect the roots, but doing that will be worth your time. If you see roots coming out of the holes, the plant could be root bound, which could lead to problems. Conversely, if you see little sign of root growth, the plant may be too young and will need coddling to survive. A healthy plant should have roots extending to the edge of the pot, but it should not look crowded.
Buds and flowers. All gardeners are familiar with the temptation to buy a plant covered in fully open, bright blooms. However, buying plants in the bud stage is less stressful for the plant, and it should establish more readily. You’ll also get a longer bloom time in your garden. Look for good leaves and roots, not flowers.
Join us at our plant sale and together, we can plant a better world.
For details, visit norfolkbotanicalgarden.org.
Meredith Simmons is the greenhouse manager at Norfolk Botanical Garden. | https://www.pilotonline.com/life/wildlife-nature/vp-hl-wild-green-yonder-tips-money-plants-040922-20220409-slz5mxo6anaurez3ymsjpasojm-story.html | 2022-04-09T14:23:56 | en | 0.956778 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A gunman accused of shooting and seriously wounding Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stealing her two French bulldogs was mistakenly released from jail and is being sought, authorities said Friday.
James Howard Jackson, 19, was facing an attempted murder charge when he was released from Los Angeles County’s jail on Wednesday “due to a clerical error,” the county Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
The sheriff’s Major Crimes Bureau is Major Crimes Bureau is working on finding him, the statement said.
Jackson is one of five people arrested in connection with the Feb. 24, 2021, attack in Hollywood. Prosecutors said Jackson and two other alleged gang members had driven around looking for expensive French bulldogs to steal, then spotted, tailed and robbed Ryan Fischer as he walked Lady Gaga’s dogs near Sunset Boulevard.
During a violent struggle, Fischer was hit, choked and then shot in an attack captured by the doorbell camera of a nearby home.
The camera recorded the dog walker screaming “Oh, my God! I’ve been shot!” and “Help me!” and “I’m bleeding out from my chest!”
Fischer lost part of a lung.
“While I’m deeply concerned at the events that led to his release, I’m confident law enforcement will rectify the error,” Fischer said in a statement obtained by KABC-TV. “I ask for Mr. Jackson to turn himself over to the authorities, so resolution to the crime committed against me runs its course, whatever the courts determine that outcome to be.”
The pop star’s dogs were returned two days later by a woman who claimed she had found them tied to a pole and asked about Lady Gaga’s offer of a $500,000 reward if the dogs were returned “no questions asked.” The singer was in Rome at the time filming a movie.
She’s charged with receiving stolen property and the father of another suspect is charged with helping him avoid arrest.
Jackson already had been charged in the attack and had pleaded not guilty when the county district attorney’s office filed a superceding indictment Tuesday charging him with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit a robbery and assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
The move was done “to speed up the legal process” and Jackson was arraigned Wednesday under a new case number, the DA’s office said in a statement.
“Mr. Jackson was subsequently released from custody by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. We are unsure as to why they did so,” the statement said. | https://www.news10.com/news/entertainment/accused-shooter-in-lady-gaga-dog-theft-mistakenly-freed/ | 2022-04-09T14:23:57 | en | 0.980597 |
HAMPTON — A 19-year-old man has been arrested in connection to the shooting death of a 17-year-old boy in Hampton.
Investigators arrested Jimmy Leshawn Williams, a Norfolk resident, and charged him with murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, according to a Saturday release.
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Williams was taken into custody in Chesapeake.
Last Saturday, Hampton Police responded to a reported shooting just after 2 a.m. in the 500 block of Wine Street.
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When officers arrived, they found a 17-year-old victim had been struck by gunfire. He was pronounced dead on scene. | https://www.pilotonline.com/news/crime/vp-nw-hampton-shooting-man-arrested-20220409-7yrqurdicbhgzggrnx575slzai-story.html | 2022-04-09T14:24:02 | en | 0.978018 |
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s former No. 2 official John Lee on Saturday formally declared his candidacy for the upcoming leadership election, entering the race for chief executive viewed by many as Beijing’s preferred candidate.
Lee said at an online news conference that he would stand for the election on May 8 after the Chinese government approved his resignation, which he submitted last week, as the city’s chief secretary for administration.
He said a new government under his leadership would safeguard the rule of law and the “one country, two systems” framework in the city that allows Hong Kong to govern semi-autonomously and enjoy certain freedoms not found in mainland China.
“This decision is made out of my loyalty to my country, my love for Hong Kong, and my sense of duty to the Hong Kong people,” Lee said.
Lee’s candidacy comes after current leader Carrie Lam announced she would not run for a second term, following a rocky five years in power that spanned the COVID-19 pandemic, a crackdown on political freedoms and Beijing’s rapid and growing influence over the territory.
Lee, 64, is a staunch advocate of the city’s national security law, which has been used since 2020 to target pro-democracy activists, supporters and media, diminishing freedoms promised to Hong Kong during Britain’s handover to China in 1997.
Experts in the city see a potential administration under Lee as a signal that Beijing could further tighten its grip on the semi-autonomous Chinese city.
The chief executive will be voted in by an election committee of about 1,500 people, a majority of whom are pro-Beijing. The new leader will take office on July 1.
Lee spent the early years of his civil service career as a police officer and steadily climbed the ranks. He became Hong Kong’s security minister in July 2017 under Lam’s administration, and last June was promoted to chief secretary for administration.
Lee was a key figure in proposing contentious legislation in 2019 that would have allowed suspects in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China. He later oversaw a police crackdown on demonstrators after the proposed bill sparked months of massive anti-government protests in 2019.
After the protests were snuffed out, Lee was an outspoken supporter of the national security law imposed on the city, which outlaws subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces in the city’s affairs and has been used to suppress dissent. Over 150 people have been arrested since the law was implemented.
In 2020, the U.S sanctioned Lee, together with Lam and other Hong Kong and mainland Chinese government officials, for “undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and restricting the freedom of expression or assembly.”
Next month’s election will be the first since Hong Kong’s electoral laws were amended last year to ensure that only “patriots” loyal to Beijing can hold office. The changes make it difficult for pro-democracy supporters to run for chief executive.
Hong Kong’s leader is chosen every five years, although the selection process is carefully orchestrated behind the scenes by Beijing. The four chief executives selected since Hong Kong’s handover have all been candidates seen as favored by Beijing.
Lee said he would focus policymaking on ensuring that Hong Kong remains competitive globally and “bolster its role as a gateway and bridge between our country and the world.” | https://www.news10.com/news/hong-kongs-ex-no-2-official-to-stand-for-leadership-polls/ | 2022-04-09T14:24:04 | en | 0.977524 |
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James City — As Colette Roots pries herself free from the jutting thorn bushes and brambles that mark the path, she pauses only for a moment before continuing along the dirt road.
The path itself is only a few hundred yards away from the historic Oak Grove Cemetery, hidden from sight as nature works hard to overtake it. There are deep grooves and ruts from the weight of the vehicles that once traveled on the path long before nearby Rochambeau Road existed.
It is a road Roots’ not-so distant ancestors would have traveled every Sunday morning before the federal government forced them to relocate their house of worship miles away from its sacred cemetery.
Now, nearly seven decades later, Roots trudges down the same path for the first time. It is a homecoming of sorts, and she works hard to hold back tears as she looks on to where the original Oak Grove Baptist Church once stood.
“I cried, I couldn’t help it, when they called and said they found the church spot,” Roots said. “It’s taken some time but we’re proving our history out here. We’re proving we were here and people are going to know what happened to us.”
The discovery itself has been months in the making. There had been talks among the descendants about where the church might have stood, but those old enough to remember were no longer able to go searching for it. A 1930s land map hinted at a location, but there was nothing definitive.
So, Roots called in the help of the College of William & Mary’s Center for Archeological Research. Her goal: to find the church and begin the process of adding the site to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources’ list of historic landmarks.
“If we get the Department of Historic Resources recognition, it’ll be very good for the church because we’ll have more information and can prove our history,” Roots said.
Early one Friday morning in late February, Roots received a call from Elizabeth Monroe, the project archaeologist at the W&M research center. She had found the site.
The once-lost site is now filled with little pink flags. One tied tightly to a tree left of the site indicates the road, the same one Roots would travel later that day for the first time. Another flag wraps around a twisted piece of metal half buried in the ground — all that remains of the church’s original tin roof. Other pieces of concrete and brick are scattered around the site.
For Monroe, it was a clear indication that this is where the church’s original place of worship was located before its forcible relocation by the federal government in the early 1940s.
“This has been a great project, it’s refreshing to be able to say, ‘hey, this is it’ without actually having to dig in and disturb the site,” Monroe said.
A few days later, Roots received another call that she hadn’t expected. Two miles northeast from the cemetery, Monroe had discovered the original Oak Grove Baptist school.
The building, a two-story segregated Black school located across from what is now Airport Road near Waller Mill Park, was erected in the early 1910s solely from funds gathered in collection plates from many of the nearby segregated churches.
It stood as a testament to the community’s goodwill and triumph until a lightning strike brought the building down in flames in the 1940s.
According to David Lewes, a historian at the W&M archaeological research center who is leading the project proposal for historical recognition, it was not uncommon during the time to see communities, especially in underrepresented spaces, to come together and fund school buildings.
“It’s the whole phenomenon that went on until the 60s and 70s, where the allocation of resources wasn’t really proportional to the size of the community, especially in areas that were predominantly African American,” Lewes said.
With little to go on except a few land maps indicating a general location, Monroe ventured past the bustling road and into the woods, where the concrete and cars disappear behind growing pines and overgrown foliage.
There, she came across three paths: one leading behind the school site, one that continued past the site and up a hill marked only by rocks long-since covered in thick, green moss and one leading from the road to the school site.
While she is unsure whether the first two are as old as the site, Monroe is almost certain that the road leading to the schoolyard is the original path that so many travelled once before.
While travelling on one of the paths, Monroe noticed a small lumpy patch of land that rose up above the rest. For Monroe, it was a tell-tale sign that something, maybe former building materials, had been piled up there. As she neared the pile, Monroe said she noticed cement blocks, bricks and other remnants of the former school building.
She had found the site.
“When you look off in the distance over there, you notice how it’s flat,” Monroe said, pointing toward Airport Road. “So, that told me that when the school burnt down, they probably demolished whatever was still standing and they probably spread things out. I think this is what we’re seeing here.”
A foot-deep sunken spot, now covered in a thick layer of moss surrounded by a circle of younger trees also gave further proof of the old church site. The spot is likely the well the school children and teachers would have used for water.
For Monroe and Lewes, all of it was the evidence they needed to submit their proposal to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
With Monroe’s field work and Lewes’ historical research, the pair said they had collected enough information without having to disturb the site further. At this time, there is no plan to dig further and conduct additional field work.
For roughly three years, Roots has dedicated nearly every day to researching, reaching out to various historical institutions and collecting descendants’ stories in order to shed light on Oak Grove Baptist, a historic Black church founded in the 19th-century following a split from First Baptist Church, and its longstanding history in the community.
It began with the preservation and restoration of its historic gravesite subsequently followed by the discovery of a fringe gravesite located behind the Dominion Power plant on Waller Mill Road. The graves, many of them belonging to children and who Roots fondly refers to as “her babies,” are a result of the church’s forced relocation by Camp Peary in the 1940s.
The relocation resulted in a diaspora from its original site off of Rochambeau Road to its current location on Waller Mill Road.
After a period of time, in which the congregation had to ask the federal government for permission to bury their loved ones and visit their graves, the land on which the fringe gravesite sits was given in order to bury their loved ones.
But over time, this too became lost to the church descendants as Dominion Energy moved in and blocked access to the site. With Roots’ help, the site is now open to the descendants who can now visit freely. There are talks of relocating the graves back to the original cemetery in the future.
With the help of the community, the Oak Grove congregation is working to renovate its church, which a few months ago, did not have heat or proper amenities.
Roots’ latest endeavor has been to receive historic recognition and bring the two sites into the state’s designated historic landmark list.
When she reached out to the college in December, she met with Lewes and then Monroe to begin the process. With an estimated cost of $8,000 to conduct the work, the pair worked closely to apply for state grants, including one that offers funding for projects that involve underrepresented communities. These typically include historic Black sites as well as Virginia Native sites.
They received the grant funding in January and began the historical and archaeological work in February. According to Lewes, they will submit their final proposal this month and plan to hear whether the sites will be added to the list in June.
Until then, Roots said she does not plan on stopping her efforts anytime soon. While she has accomplished several things in the name of the church, she said there is still much to be done.
Em Holter, emily.holter@virginiamedia.com, 757-256-6657, @EmHolterNews. | https://www.pilotonline.com/virginiagazette/va-vg-oak-grove-church-discovery-0402-20220409-zio6kqzuffgzpky2nwbatggwcq-story.html | 2022-04-09T14:24:09 | en | 0.980272 |
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Two European divers were rescued by fishermen on Saturday but a third, a 14-year-old Dutch, had died, four days after they disappeared off a southern Malaysian island and drifted some 70 nautical miles (100 kilometers), authorities said.
Alexia Alexandra Molina, 18, of France and Adrian Peter Chesters, 46, of Britain were found early Saturday in neighboring Indonesian waters and taken to a hospital, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said.
Chesters’ Dutch son, Nathen Renze Chesters, remained missing but Chesters told police that he had died because he was too weak, the agency said in a statement.
The agency said it notified Indonesian authorities to continue searching for the body. The search operation in Malaysia has been called off.
Molina and Chesters were found 16 nautical miles (30 kilometers) north of Indonesia’s Bintan Island, which is about 70 nautical miles (100 kilometers) from the location they were reported missing on Wednesday, according to Mersing police chief Cyril Edward Nuing.
The three were diving with their Norwegian instructor, Kristine Grodem, about 15 meters (50 feet) deep at an island off Mersing town in Malaysia’s southern Johor state. Grodem, 35, was rescued Thursday by a tugboat. She said the four of them surfaced safely Wednesday afternoon but later drifted away from the boat and were separated by a strong current.
Grodem was training for the other three, who were seeking to obtain advanced diving licenses, maritime officials said.
The boat skipper was detained for further investigation, and diving activities off Mersing were suspended. There are several islands off the town that are popular dive spots.
Malaysia’s borders reopened to foreigners on April 1 after being closed for more than two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/2-european-divers-rescued-in-indonesia-dutch-teenager-dead/ | 2022-04-09T14:24:10 | en | 0.987637 |
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POISSY, France (AP) — From the market stall outside Paris that she’s run for 40 years, Yvette Robert can see first-hand how soaring prices are weighing on France’s presidential election and turning the first round of voting on Sunday into a nail-biter for incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.
Shoppers, increasingly worried about how to make ends meet, are buying ever-smaller quantities of Robert’s neatly stacked fruits and vegetables, she says. And some of her clients no longer come at all to the market for its baguettes, cheeses and other tasty offerings. Robert suspects that with fuel prices so high, some can no longer afford to take their vehicles to shop.
“People are scared — with everything that’s going up, with prices for fuel going up,” she said Friday as campaigning concluded for act one of the two-part French election drama, held against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages. The pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices that are hitting low-income households particularly hard subsequently roared back as dominant election themes. They could drive many voters Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.
Macron, now 44, trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest president in 2017. The win for the former banker who, unlike Le Pen, is a fervent proponent of European collaboration was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.
In courting voters, Macron has economic successes to point to: The French economy is rebounding faster than expected from the battering of COVID-19, with a 2021 growth rate of 7%, the highest since 1969. Unemployment is down to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II, Macron also got a polling bump, with people rallying around the wartime leader.
But the 53-year-old Le Pen is a now a more polished, formidable and savvy political foe as she makes her third attempt to become France’s first woman president. And she has campaigned particularly hard and for months on cost of living concerns, capitalizing on the issue that pollsters say is foremost on voters’ minds.
Le Pen also pulled off two remarkable feats. Despite her plans to sharply curtail immigration and dial back some rights for Muslims in France, she nevertheless appears to have convinced growing numbers of voters that she is no longer the dangerous, racist nationalist extremist that critics, including Macron, accuse her of being.
She’s done that partly by diluting some of her rhetoric and fieriness. She also had outside help: A presidential run by Eric Zemmour, an even more extreme far-right rabble-rouserwith repeated convictions for hate speech, has had the knock-on benefit for Le Pen of making her look almost mainstream by comparison.
Secondly, and also stunning: Le Pen has adroitly sidestepped any significant blowback for her previous perceived closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She went to the Kremlin to meet himduring her last presidential campaign in 2017. But in the wake of the war in Ukraine, that potential embarrassment doesn’t appear to have turned Le Pen’s supporters against her. She has called the invasion “absolutely indefensible” and said Putin’s behavior cannot be excused “in any way.”
At her market stall, Robert says she plans to vote Macron, partly because of the billions of euros (dollars) that his government doled out at the the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to keep people, businesses and France’s economy afloat. When food markets closed, Robert got 1,500 euros ($1,600) a month to tide her over.
“He didn’t leave anyone by the side of the road,” she says of Macron.
But she thinks that this time, Le Pen is in with a chance, too.
“She has changed the way she speaks,” Robert said. “She has learned to moderate herself.”
Barring a monumental surprise, both Macron and Le Pen are expected to advance again from the first-round field of 12 candidates, to set up a winner-takes-all rematch in the second-round vote on April 24. Polls suggest that far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is likely to finish out of the running in third place. Some of France’s overseas territories in the Pacific, the Caribbean and South America vote Saturday, before Sunday voting on the French mainland.
When Macron made a campaign stop in Poissy, the town west of Paris where Robert has her stall, in early March, pollsters had him leading Le Pen by double digits. Although a Le Pen victory still appears improbable, much of Macron’s advantage has subsequently evaporated. Kept busy by the war in Ukraine, Macron may be paying a price for his somewhat subdued campaign, which made him look aloof to some voters.
Market-goer Marie-Helene Hirel, a 64-year-old retired tax collector, voted Macron in 2017 but said she’s too angry with him to do so again. Struggling on her pension with rising prices, Hirel said she is thinking of switching her vote to Le Pen, who has promised fuel and energy tax cuts that Macron says would be ruinous.
Although Le Pen’s “relations with Putin worry me,” Hirel said that voting for her would be a way of protesting against Macron and what she perceives as his failure to better protect people from the sting of inflation.
“Now I’m also part of the ‘all against Macron camp,” she said. “He is making fools of us all.” | https://www.news10.com/news/international/in-france-a-nail-biting-election-as-macrons-rival-surges/ | 2022-04-09T14:24:17 | en | 0.973031 |
The state-by-state winning lottery numbers through Friday:
6-3-5
(six, three, five)
02-06-08-16-42
(two, six, eight, sixteen, forty-two)
01-04-08-15-22-23-26-33-40-43-49-61-67-68-70-71-74-76-77-80
(one, four, eight, fifteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-six, thirty-three, forty, forty-three, forty-nine, sixty-one, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, seventy, seventy-one, seventy-four, seventy-six, seventy-seven, eighty)
04-11-18-24
(four, eleven, eighteen, twenty-four)
01-02-06-13-15-21
(one, two, six, thirteen, fifteen, twenty-one)
0-2-3
(zero, two, three)
7-5-1-7
(seven, five, one, seven)
05-06-07-09-13-16-17-19-20-21-22
(five, six, seven, nine, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two)
02-03-04-05-07-12-15-18-20-21-22
(two, three, four, five, seven, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two)
1-3-9
(one, three, nine)
3-2-8-1
(three, two, eight, one)
03-15-18-24-25-33, Doubler: N
(three, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four, twenty-five, thirty-three; Doubler: N)
07-08-14-18-30
(seven, eight, fourteen, eighteen, thirty)
2-9-0
(two, nine, zero)
2-2-1-5
(two, two, one, five) | https://www.chron.com/lottery/article/Lottery-State-by-State-17069107.php | 2022-04-09T14:24:20 | en | 0.750396 |
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — When lunchtime comes, Maybel Sequera and Juan González share a plate of noodles and beans at their home in a low-income neighborhood west of Venezuela’s capital. Their meager lunch was a gift from a nonprofit organization as the couple cannot afford to feed themselves.
Sequera, 72, and González, 74, worked for years as a seamstress and driver to build their two houses and raise their four children. But now, after 50 years of marriage, they rely on donations for food, medicines and clothing.
The government raised their combined monthly pensions from about $4 to roughly $60 last month. But it would have to be multiplied by six for them to be able to buy a basket of goods.
“Now that they have increased us to 130 (each), we are going to see how we manage with those 130 because it is not enough either,” Sequera said referring to the pension in bolívares, Venezuela’s official currency and in which pensions are paid.
In Venezuela, the pension is the amount paid monthly to workers who retire after reaching 750 weeks of Social Security contributions and turning 55, in the case of women, and 60 for men.
Since 1995 — years before Hugo Chavez imposed in the South American country what he considered socialism — a pension is equal to the monthly minimum wage. Workers contribute between 2% and 4% of their salary to Social Security while employers pay an additional 9% to 11% on behalf of workers.
The pensions of Sequera, González and millions of other similarly situated retirees went up last month because President Nicolás Maduro increased the monthly minimum wage from roughly $2 to about $30, an amount insufficient to pay basic goods, whose cost in February was estimated at $365, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory, an organization specializing in economic studies.
Venezuela has just over five million pensioners, according to official figures. Annual inflation, which slowed last year but still reached 686.4%, has eaten up their pensions for years.
Although the country in the second half of the last decade experienced a severe shortage of food and hygiene items, prompting people to stand in long lines outside supermarkets to buy whatever they could, store shelves are now well stocked and display imported products. But high prices set in dollars make it impossible for much of the population to afford goods.
This dynamic leaves many older adults dependent on remittances from the more than six million Venezuelans who have migrated due to the economic, political and social crises of recent years.
Nonprofit organizations and churches fill some gaps, but it is not uncommon to see the elderly on the sidewalks of Caracas, the capital, selling candy or begging for money.
“I have to manage to get food. It’s not easy, because you’re of an age, you go out on the street and many people look at you with contempt,” Miriam Jiménez, 68, told The Associated Press after picking up a plate of food at a soup kitchen for the elderly in western Caracas. “One has to beg in the streets. Sometimes, a neighbor gives me something.”
In other South American countries, pensions range from $230 to $650, but the amounts are also usually below the cost of a basket of basic goods or the monthly minimum wage. In Chile, new President Gabriel Boric promised to raise the amount to $310, although it will remain below the $435 monthly minimum wage.
Luis Francisco Cabeza, director of Convite, a non-governmental organization focused on care for the elderly in Venezuela, said social security for the elderly population should not just be a pension. He said it should also include access to medicines, medical care and recreation.
“The pension is a system that seeks to protect you against the contingency of reaching old age,” he added. In Venezuela, the hospital system is precarious, so patients must bring all medical supplies to be treated.
Sequera has been diagnosed with two types of cancer this year, including a type of skin cancer that required an operation on her face. To pay for medical supplies, she sold two of her three sewing machines, which she used to mend neighbors’ clothes in exchange for money.
Pensioners protested dozens of times across the country last year. At the protests in the capital, some could be seen wearing broken shoes and worn clothes.
Sequera and González had a cup of coffee after finishing the plate of noodles and beans for lunch.
“Today, (at breakfast) we ate the last little egg. We are going to wait for another blessing to come out there,” González said.
“For the night, God will provide,” his wife interjected. “And if not, a glass of water and go to sleep,” González lamented. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/pension-hike-not-enough-for-venezuelans-to-afford-basic-food/ | 2022-04-09T14:24:24 | en | 0.966783 |
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The state-by-state winning lottery numbers through Friday:
2-6-9
(two, six, nine)
02-08-10-26-38
(two, eight, ten, twenty-six, thirty-eight)
01-14-25-30-39-41
(one, fourteen, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-nine, forty-one)
6-7-5
(six, seven, five)
0-0-0
(zero, zero, zero)
3-8-4-7
(three, eight, four, seven)
9-6-8-3
(nine, six, eight, three)
05-08-22-24-32
(five, eight, twenty-two, twenty-four, thirty-two)
2-1-5
(two, one, five)
2-2-8
(two, two, eight)
2-3-7-7
(two, three, seven, seven)
1st:12 Lucky Charms-2nd:3 Hot Shot-3rd:10 Solid Gold, Race Time: 1:40.92
(1st: 12 Lucky Charms, 2nd: 3 Hot Shot, 3rd: 10 Solid Gold; Race Time: one: 40.92)
16-17-22-26-28
(sixteen, seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-six, twenty-eight)
04-06-07-17-32
(four, six, seven, seventeen, thirty-two)
3-7-3
(three, seven, three)
1-2-1
(one, two, one)
01-11-18-25-31
(one, eleven, eighteen, twenty-five, thirty-one)
11-18-25-29-32-40
(eleven, eighteen, twenty-five, twenty-nine, thirty-two, forty)
8-2-2, WB: 3
(eight, two, two; WB: three)
0-6-7, WB: 6
(zero, six, seven; WB: six)
7-5-2-8, WB: 8
(seven, five, two, eight; WB: eight)
2-3-2-1, WB: 7
(two, three, two, one; WB: seven)
03-09-10-15-17-20
(three, nine, ten, fifteen, seventeen, twenty)
4-9-5
(four, nine, five)
0-8-2
(zero, eight, two)
3-6-9-1
(three, six, nine, one)
9-5-6-5
(nine, five, six, five)
0-2
(zero, two)
2-2
(two, two)
7-4-5
(seven, four, five)
2-8-0
(two, eight, zero)
7-3-1-2
(seven, three, one, two)
2-1-1-5
(two, one, one, five)
1-5-6-2-3
(one, five, six, two, three)
1-1-3-0-5
(one, one, three, zero, five)
01-09-11-14-22
(one, nine, eleven, fourteen, twenty-two)
09-19-21-24-32-42
(nine, nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-four, thirty-two, forty-two)
9-8, Fireball: 5
(nine, eight; Fireball: five)
9-8, Fireball: 9
(nine, eight; Fireball: nine)
4-2-3, Fireball: 5
(four, two, three; Fireball: five)
6-4-6, Fireball: 9
(six, four, six; Fireball: nine)
2-0-7-4, Fireball: 5
(two, zero, seven, four; Fireball: five)
9-2-4-8, Fireball: 9
(nine, two, four, eight; Fireball: nine)
8-7-2-0-7, Fireball: 5
(eight, seven, two, zero, seven; Fireball: five)
5-9-3-9-9, Fireball: 9
(five, nine, three, nine, nine; Fireball: nine)
6-0-6
(six, zero, six)
6-1-0
(six, one, zero)
3-2-3
(three, two, three)
3-0-0-3
(three, zero, zero, three)
8-0-2-9
(eight, zero, two, nine)
6-8-9-6
(six, eight, nine, six)
02-04-07-09-29
(two, four, seven, nine, twenty-nine)
1-3-3-5-6
(one, three, three, five, six)
2-2-4-8-1
(two, two, four, eight, one)
07-34-35-40-42
(seven, thirty-four, thirty-five, forty, forty-two)
02-10-18-21-31
(two, ten, eighteen, twenty-one, thirty-one)
5-1-5
(five, one, five)
1-3-4
(one, three, four)
3-1-0-8
(three, one, zero, eight)
7-1-6-9
(seven, one, six, nine)
14-19-22-26-31
(fourteen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-six, thirty-one)
08-13-20-28-33
(eight, thirteen, twenty, twenty-eight, thirty-three)
15-22-25-32-43
(fifteen, twenty-two, twenty-five, thirty-two, forty-three)
12-18-20-21-43
(twelve, eighteen, twenty, twenty-one, forty-three)
03-04-06-07-08-10-11-17-28-31-38-43-46-53-66-68-70-72-77-80, BE: 17
(three, four, six, seven, eight, ten, eleven, seventeen, twenty-eight, thirty-one, thirty-eight, forty-three, forty-six, fifty-three, sixty-six, sixty-eight, seventy, seventy-two, seventy-seven, eighty; BE: seventeen)
8-0-9, SB: 6
(eight, zero, nine; SB: six)
2-8-3, SB: 9
(two, eight, three; SB: nine)
2-9-2-1, SB: 6
(two, nine, two, one; SB: six)
8-1-9-4, SB: 9
(eight, one, nine, four; SB: nine)
01-03-05-08-10-12-13-15-16-17-18-24-33-44-53-56-67-68-69-76, BE: 53
(one, three, five, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-three, forty-four, fifty-three, fifty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy-six; BE: fifty-three)
2-8-3
(two, eight, three)
8-0-9
(eight, zero, nine)
8-1-9-4
(eight, one, nine, four)
2-9-2-1
(two, nine, two, one)
2-7-0
(two, seven, zero)
9-3-9
(nine, three, nine)
01-09-28-32, Cash Ball: 23
(one, nine, twenty-eight, thirty-two; Cash Ball: twenty-three)
9-7-3
(nine, seven, three)
1-3-7
(one, three, seven)
3-2-3-7
(three, two, three, seven)
4-5-9-6
(four, five, nine, six)
6-4-3
(six, four, three)
4-9-9-2
(four, nine, nine, two)
0-9-2-6-4
(zero, nine, two, six, four)
AH-2D-3D-2H-6S
(AH, 2D, 3D, 2H, 6S)
10-11-25-36-37, Bonus: 13
(ten, eleven, twenty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven; Bonus: thirteen)
1-2-3
(one, two, three)
2-8-2
(two, eight, two)
4-7-1-8
(four, seven, one, eight)
6-3-8-9
(six, three, eight, nine)
3-9-0-2-0
(three, nine, zero, two, zero)
3-0-2-4-6
(three, zero, two, four, six)
02-11-12-14-23
(two, eleven, twelve, fourteen, twenty-three)
6-7-7-1
(six, seven, seven, one)
7-6-6-2
(seven, six, six, two)
06-08-13-21-28
(six, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight)
KD-AD-10C-8H-10S
(KD, AD, 10C, 8H, 10S)
2-6-9
(two, six, nine)
7-6-4-7
(seven, six, four, seven)
2-0-0
(two, zero, zero)
6-0-3-0
(six, zero, three, zero)
03-12-17-27-30
(three, twelve, seventeen, twenty-seven, thirty)
03-05-08-11-12-13-16-17-19-22-29-30-32-48-49-53-55-58-60-61-66-67
(three, five, eight, eleven, twelve, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-two, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty-three, fifty-five, fifty-eight, sixty, sixty-one, sixty-six, sixty-seven)
5-0-0
(five, zero, zero)
18-24-27-37-39
(eighteen, twenty-four, twenty-seven, thirty-seven, thirty-nine)
03-04-10-19-23
(three, four, ten, nineteen, twenty-three)
5-0-1
(five, zero, one)
0-8-5
(zero, eight, five)
8-8-2-1
(eight, eight, two, one)
3-6-4-6
(three, six, four, six)
04-06-16-26-38
(four, six, sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-eight)
04-16-19-22, Bonus: 8
(four, sixteen, nineteen, twenty-two; Bonus: eight)
Month: 2, Day: 21, Year: 55
(Month: two; Day: twenty-one; Year: fifty-five)
1-0-9
(one, zero, nine)
03-04-07-13-14
(three, four, seven, thirteen, fourteen)
5-2-0, Fireball: 9
(five, two, zero; Fireball: nine)
2-1-1-6, Fireball: 9
(two, one, one, six; Fireball: nine)
03-08-13-27-38, Xtra: 2
(three, eight, thirteen, twenty-seven, thirty-eight; Xtra: two)
9-8-9, Fireball: 9
(nine, eight, nine; Fireball: nine)
0-7-1-8, Fireball: 9
(zero, seven, one, eight; Fireball: nine)
7-2-8
(seven, two, eight)
3-7-7
(three, seven, seven)
0-1-5-8
(zero, one, five, eight)
4-9-9-6
(four, nine, nine, six)
05-12-19-26-34
(five, twelve, nineteen, twenty-six, thirty-four)
01-16-32-37-39
(one, sixteen, thirty-two, thirty-seven, thirty-nine)
5-6-2
(five, six, two)
2-1-3-0
(two, one, three, zero)
3-8-8
(three, eight, eight)
8-4-8-1
(eight, four, eight, one)
04-08-11-15-20
(four, eight, eleven, fifteen, twenty)
02-04-08-10-11-16-23-29-37-39-48-50-53-55-58-61-62-65-74-76
(two, four, eight, ten, eleven, sixteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-seven, thirty-nine, forty-eight, fifty, fifty-three, fifty-five, fifty-eight, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-five, seventy-four, seventy-six)
07-11-13-23-34
(seven, eleven, thirteen, twenty-three, thirty-four)
7-6-4, Lucky Sum: 17
(seven, six, four; Lucky Sum: seventeen)
7-3-9, Lucky Sum: 19
(seven, three, nine; Lucky Sum: nineteen)
2-0-7-2, Lucky Sum: 11
(two, zero, seven, two; Lucky Sum: eleven)
6-8-8-7, Lucky Sum: 29
(six, eight, eight, seven; Lucky Sum: twenty-nine)
4-8-7
(four, eight, seven)
8-9-2
(eight, nine, two)
0-0-4-1
(zero, zero, four, one)
0-9-3-1
(zero, nine, three, one)
9-9-8-1-4
(nine, nine, eight, one, four)
3-0-4-5-1
(three, zero, four, five, one)
02-10-28-29-34
(two, ten, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty-four)
04-23-28-29-33
(four, twenty-three, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty-three)
8-7-0
(eight, seven, zero)
02-06-10-15-19-23-26-32
(two, six, ten, fifteen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-six, thirty-two)
6-7-1-8
(six, seven, one, eight)
8-1-7-6
(eight, one, seven, six)
4-4-3-2
(four, four, three, two)
3-3-2-3
(three, three, two, three)
17-21-36-40-41
(seventeen, twenty-one, thirty-six, forty, forty-one)
04-17-18-23-41-45
(four, seventeen, eighteen, twenty-three, forty-one, forty-five)
8-9, Wild: 7
(eight, nine; Wild: seven)
3-4, Wild: 8
(three, four; Wild: eight)
1-9-1, Wild: 7
(one, nine, one; Wild: seven)
9-6-3, Wild: 8
(nine, six, three; Wild: eight)
0-8-0-9, Wild: 7
(zero, eight, zero, nine; Wild: seven)
3-8-3-4, Wild: 8
(three, eight, three, four; Wild: eight)
5-5-5-7-2, Wild: 7
(five, five, five, seven, two; Wild: seven)
5-9-5-0-2, Wild: 8
(five, nine, five, zero, two; Wild: eight)
04-11-16-17-27
(four, eleven, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-seven)
9-6-1-8
(nine, six, one, eight)
4-4-8-6
(four, four, eight, six)
02-14-21-30-37, Extra: 20
(two, fourteen, twenty-one, thirty, thirty-seven; Extra: twenty)
05-15-21-32-35, Power-Up: 3
(five, fifteen, twenty-one, thirty-two, thirty-five; Power, Up: three)
1-1-5, FB: 1
(one, one, five; FB: one)
3-9-2, FB: 8
(three, nine, two; FB: eight)
8-9-9-7, FB: 1
(eight, nine, nine, seven; FB: one)
0-8-8-2, FB: 8
(zero, eight, eight, two; FB: eight)
5-4-5, Wild: 4
(five, four, five; Wild: four)
6-7-2, Wild:
(six, seven, two; Wild: zero)
7-6-1, Wild: 2
(seven, six, one; Wild: two)
3-1-9-0, Wild: 4
(three, one, nine, zero; Wild: four)
1-8-3-2, Wild: 5
(one, eight, three, two; Wild: five)
8-5-7-7, Wild: 2
(eight, five, seven, seven; Wild: two)
10-19-27-31-34, Bonus: 2
(ten, nineteen, twenty-seven, thirty-one, thirty-four; Bonus: two)
01-04-06-07-09-15-16-18-20-22-23-24
(one, four, six, seven, nine, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four)
06-08-11-12-14-15-16-17-19-21-22-24
(six, eight, eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-four)
01-04-06-08-12-14-15-16-17-18-19-23
(one, four, six, eight, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-three)
02-04-06-10-11-13-14-19-20-21-22-23
(two, four, six, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three)
01-05-16-26-34
(one, five, sixteen, twenty-six, thirty-four)
9-6-2-2, FIREBALL: 6
(nine, six, two, two; FIREBALL: six)
2-2-0-3, FIREBALL: 5
(two, two, zero, three; FIREBALL: five)
2-7-3-6, FIREBALL: 9
(two, seven, three, six; FIREBALL: nine)
5-9-1-0, FIREBALL:
(five, nine, one, zero; FIREBALL: zero)
6-7-1, FIREBALL:
(six, seven, one; FIREBALL: zero)
8-3-1, FIREBALL: 1
(eight, three, one; FIREBALL: one)
0-6-8, FIREBALL: 3
(zero, six, eight; FIREBALL: three)
3-8-0, FIREBALL: 3
(three, eight, zero; FIREBALL: three)
03-06-12-20-32
(three, six, twelve, twenty, thirty-two)
3-1-6, FB: 6
(three, one, six; FB: six)
3-9-3, FB: 7
(three, nine, three; FB: seven)
1-3-1-5, FB: 7
(one, three, one, five; FB: seven)
3-5-7-0, FB: 4
(three, five, seven, zero; FB: four)
6-3-5
(six, three, five)
02-06-08-16-42
(two, six, eight, sixteen, forty-two)
01-04-08-15-22-23-26-33-40-43-49-61-67-68-70-71-74-76-77-80
(one, four, eight, fifteen, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-six, thirty-three, forty, forty-three, forty-nine, sixty-one, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, seventy, seventy-one, seventy-four, seventy-six, seventy-seven, eighty)
04-11-18-24
(four, eleven, eighteen, twenty-four)
01-02-06-13-15-21
(one, two, six, thirteen, fifteen, twenty-one)
0-2-3
(zero, two, three)
7-5-1-7
(seven, five, one, seven)
05-06-07-09-13-16-17-19-20-21-22
(five, six, seven, nine, thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two)
02-03-04-05-07-12-15-18-20-21-22
(two, three, four, five, seven, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two)
1-3-9
(one, three, nine)
3-2-8-1
(three, two, eight, one)
03-15-18-24-25-33, Doubler: N
(three, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-four, twenty-five, thirty-three; Doubler: N)
07-08-14-18-30
(seven, eight, fourteen, eighteen, thirty)
2-9-0
(two, nine, zero)
2-2-1-5
(two, two, one, five) | https://www.chron.com/lottery/article/Lottery-State-by-State-All-17069108.php | 2022-04-09T14:24:26 | en | 0.685651 |
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Civilian evacuations moved forward in patches of battle-scarred eastern Ukraine on Saturday, a day after a missile strike killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 100 at a train station where thousands clamored to leave before an expected Russian onslaught.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded a tough global response to Friday’s train station attack in Kramatorsk, calling it the latest example of war crimes by Russian forces that should motivate the West to do more to help his country defend itself.
“All world efforts will be directed to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, his voice rising in anger.
Russia denied it was responsible and accused Ukraine’s military of firing on the station to try to turn blame for civilian casualties on Moscow. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman detailed the missile’s trajectory and Ukrainian troop positions to bolster the argument.
Western experts and Ukrainian authorities insisted that Russia launched the weapon. Remnants of the rocket had the words “For the children” in Russian painted on it. The phrasing seemed to suggest the missile was sent to avenge the loss or subjugation of children, although its exact meaning remained unclear..
With trains not running out of Kramatorsk on Saturday, panicked residents boarded buses or looked for other ways to get out, fearing the kind of unrelenting assaults and occupations by Russian invaders that delivered food shortages, demolished buildings and death to other cities elsewhere in Ukraine.
“It was terrifying. The horror, the horror,” one resident told British broadcaster Sky, recalling the train station . “Heaven forbid, to live through this again. No, I don’t want to.”
Ukraine’s state railway company said in a statement Saturday that residents of Kramatorsk and other parts of the country’s contested Donbas region could flee through other train stations. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 evacuation corridors were planned for Saturday.
Russia has pulled its troops from northern Ukraine and put its focus on the Donbas after failing to capture the capital, Kyiv. Western military analysts said a long arc of territory was under Russian control, from Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city — in the north to Kherson in the south. But Ukranian fighters continued to repel attacks and hold ground, according to the Western assessments.
The train station attack came as Ukrainian authorities worked to identify victims and document possible war crimes by Russian soldiers in northern Ukraine. The mayor of Bucha, a town near Kyiv where graphic evidence of civilian slayings emerged after the Russians withdrew, said search teams were still finding the bodies of people shot at close range in yards, parks and city squares.
On Friday, workers unearthed the bodies of 67 people from a mass grave near a church, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Russia has falsely claimedthat the scenes in Bucha were staged.
Ukrainian authorities and Western officials have repeatedly accused Russian forces of committing atrocities in the war that began with Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. A total of 176 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, while 324 more have been wounded, the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Saturday.
Ukrainian authorities have warned they expect to find more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been subjected to a monthlong blockade and intense fighting.
As journalists who had been largely absent from the city began to trickle back in, new images emerged of the devastation from an airstrike on a theater last month that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians seeking shelter.
Military analysts had predicted for weeks that Russia would succeed in taking Mariupol but said Ukrainian defenders were still putting up a fight. The city’s location on the Sea of Azov is critical to establishing a land bridge from the Crimean Peninula, which Russia seized from Ukraine eight years ago.
Some of the grisliest evidence of atrocities so far has been found in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, from which Russian troops pulled back in recent days. An international organization formed to identify the dead and missing from the 1990s Balkans conflicts is sending a team of forensics experts to Ukraine to help put names to bodies.
In an excerpted interview with American broadcaster CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday, Zelenskyy cited communications intercepted by the Ukrainian security service as evidence of Russian war crimes. The authenticity of the recordings could not be independently verified.
“There are (Russian) soldiers talking with their parents about what they stole and who they abducted. There are recordings of (Russian) prisoners of war who admitted to killing people,” he said. “There are pilots in prison who had maps with civilian targets to bomb. There are also investigations being conducted based on the remains of the dead.”
Many civilians now trying to evacuate are accustomed to living in or near a war zone because Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 in the Donbas.
The same week Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of areas controlled by the separatists and said he planned to send troops in to protect residents of the mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region.
Although the Kramatorsk train station is in Ukrainian government-controlled territory in the Donbas, the separatists, who work closely with Russian troops, blamed Ukraine for the attack. Western experts, however, dismissed Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s assertion that Russian forces “do not use” Tochka-U missiles, the type that hit the station.
The deaths of civilians at the train station brought renewed expressions of outrage from Western leaders and pledges that Russia would face further reprisals for its actions in Ukraine. On Saturday, Russia’s Defense Ministry tried to counter the dominant international narrative by again raising the specter of Ukraine planting false flags and misinformation.
A ministry spokesman, Major Gen. Igor Konashenkov, alleged Ukraine’s security services were preparing a “cynical staged” media operation in Irpin, another town near Kyiv. Konashenkov said the plan was to show — falsely, he said — more civilian casualties at the hands of the Russians and to stage the slaying of a fake Russian intelligence team that intended to kill witnesses. The claims could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian officials have pleaded with Western powers almost daily to send more arms, and to further punishRussia with sanctions, including the exclusion of Russian banks from the global financial system and a total European Union embargo on Russian gas and oil.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said during a visit to Kyiv on Saturday that he expects more EU sanctions against Russia, but he defended his country’s opposition so far to cutting off deliveries of Russian gas.
A package of sanctions imposed this week “won’t be the last one,” the chancellor said, acknowledging that “as long as people are dying, every sanction is still insufficient.” Austria is militarily neutral and not a member of NATO.
Nehammer was the latest in a parade of top leaders from the 27-nation EU to visit Zelenskyy. The head of the EU’s executive arm, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, gave the Ukrainian president a questionnaire Friday that could lead to Ukraine’s membership in the 27-member-country bloc.
Zelenskyy wryly promised to fast-track a response.
___
Anna reported from Bucha, Ukraine. Robert Burns in Washington, Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in London and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ukraine-seeks-tough-reply-after-missile-kills-52-at-station/ | 2022-04-09T14:24:30 | en | 0.964728 |
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One million gallons of radioactive water is inside a former nuclear power plant along Cape Cod Bay and it has got to go.
But where, is the vexing question, and will the state intervene as the company dismantling the plant decides?
Holtec International is considering treating the water and discharging it into the bay, drawing fierce resistance from local residents, shell fishermen and politicians. Holtec is also considering evaporating the contaminated water or trucking it to a facility in another state.
The fight in Massachusetts mirrors a current, heated debate in Japan over a plan to release more than 1 million tons of treated radioactive wastewater into the ocean from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in spring 2023. A massive tsunami in 2011 crashed into the plant. Three reactors melted down.
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts, closed in 2019 after nearly half a century providing electricity to the region. U.S. Rep. William Keating, a Democrat whose district includes the Cape, wrote to Holtec with other top Massachusetts lawmakers in January to oppose releasing water into Cape Cod Bay. He asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to examine its regulations.
Keating said in late March that Holtec’s handling of the radioactive water could set a precedent because the U.S. decommissioning industry is in its infancy. Most U.S. nuclear plants were built between 1970 and 1990.
“If they’re listening, sensitive and work with these communities, it’s important,” he said. “That’s the message for future decommissioning sites.”
Holtec has acquired closed nuclear plants across the country as part of its dismantling business, including the former Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey and Indian Point Energy Center in New York. It’s taking ownership of the Palisades Nuclear Plant on Lake Michigan, which is closing this year.
Pilgrim was a boiling water reactor. Water constantly circulated through the reactor vessel and nuclear fuel, converting it to steam to spin the turbine. The water was cooled and recirculated, picking up radioactive contamination.
Cape Cod is a tourist hotspot. Having radioactive water in the bay, even low levels, isn’t great for marketing, said Democratic state Rep. Josh Cutler, who represents a district there. Cutler is working to pass legislation to prohibit discharging radioactive material into coastal or inland waters.
Holtec said Pilgrim already discharged water into the bay for 50 years while the plant was operating and environmental studies, conducted by the plant operators and now Holtec, have shown little or no environmental impact. Radiological environmental reports are shared with the NRC annually.
“We are working to provide scientific data, educate the public on the reality of radiation in everyday life, and working to have experts explain the true science versus the emotional fear of the unknown,” spokesperson Patrick O’Brien wrote in an email in March.
WHAT ARE HOLTEC’S OPTIONS?
Holtec could treat the water and discharge it in batches over multiple years, likely the least expensive option. Or, it could evaporate the water on site, as it says it has done with about 680,000 gallons (2,600 kiloliters) over the past two years.
Evaporating the water would be more challenging to do now because the spent nuclear fuel is in storage, and couldn’t be used as a heat source. Holtec would have to use a different — likely more expensive — method that would release gas.
Or, Holtec could truck the water to an out-of-state facility, where it could be mixed with clay and buried or placed in an evaporation pond, or released into local waterways. That’s what Keating wants.
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, another boiling water reactor, was shut down in Vernon, Vermont, in 2014. It’s sending wastewater to disposal specialists in Texas and other states. Entergy operated and sold both Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim. NorthStar, a separate and competing corporation in the decommissioning business, is dismantling Vermont Yankee.
Nuclear plants occasionally need to dispose of water with low levels of radioactivity when they’re operating, so a process to release it in batches into local waterways was developed early in the nuclear industry.
In recent years at Pilgrim, the two largest releases were in 2011, with 29 releases totaling about 325,000 gallons (1,500 kiloliters), and 2013, with 21 releases totaling about 310,000 gallons.
The water from those releases was well below the federal limits for the amount of radionuclides in millirems a person would be exposed to in a year if they ate local seafood or swam in nearby waters, according to the NRC.
NRC spokesperson for the Northeast Neil Sheehan said the limits are set very conservatively and are believed to be protective of the public and environment. He said it’s important to consider the role of dilution — once the discharges mix with vast quantities of water any radioactivity is typically not detectable.
WHY ARE PEOPLE WORRIED?
In Duxbury, Kingston and Plymouth Bays, there are 50 oyster farms — the largest concentration in the state, worth $5.1 million last year, according to the Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative. The collaborative said dumping the water would devastate the industry, and the local economy along with it.
Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and longtime Pilgrim watchdog, questions if the water is heavily contaminated, especially from the pool that covered the stored, spent fuel for cooling and shielded workers from radiation.
“Isn’t this a crazy idea for Holtec to use our bay as their dump? No way,” she said.
Others didn’t know Pilgrim’s water went into the bay in previous years and they don’t want it to happen again.
“We can’t change that, but we can change what’s happening in the future,” said Cutler, the state lawmaker. “It’s the first time it has ever been decommissioned, so to compare this to the past is a convenient excuse. ‘Well, we did it in the past,’ that sounds like my kid.”
Towns on the Cape are trying to prohibit the dispersal of radioactive materials in their waters. Tribal leaders, fishermen, lobstermen and real estate agents have publicly stated their opposition as well.
Sheehan, the NRC spokesperson, said the water is not different or distinct, compared to water released during the plant’s operations. Holtec would have to handle it the same way, by filtering it, putting it into a tank, analyzing the radio isotopes and calculating the environmental impacts if it was released in batches, he added.
WHO GETS THE FINAL SAY?
Holtec wouldn’t need a separate approval from the NRC to discharge the water into the bay. However, Holtec would need permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if the water contained pollutants regulated by the Clean Water Act, such as dissolved metals.
If the water contained only radioactive materials regulated by the NRC, Holtec wouldn’t need to ask the EPA for a permit modification, according to the EPA’s water division for New England. Holtec has never given the EPA a pollutant characterization of the water associated with decommissioning, the division’s director said.
Mary Lampert, of Duxbury, is on a panel created by the state to look at issues related to the Pilgrim’s decommissioning. She believes the state could use its existing laws and regulations to stop the dumping and plans to press the Massachusetts attorney general to file a preliminary injunction to do so.
The attorney general’s office said it’s monitoring the issue and would take any Clean Water Act violations seriously.
Holtec said this week it’s examining the water for possible pollutants but the lab results won’t be available for awhile.
The company expects to decide what to do with the water later this year. Discharge, evaporation and some limited transportation will likely all be part of the solution, Holtec added. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/explainer-why-would-nuclear-plant-dump-wastewater-into-bay/ | 2022-04-09T14:24:37 | en | 0.95719 |
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