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MP Nick Gibb calls on Boris Johnson to resign in a Telegraph op-ed
Conservative Member of Parliament and former schools minister Nick Gibb has called on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign in an opinion piece https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/04/boris-johnson-must-go-bitter-pill-swallow-win-back-voters published in The Telegraph newspaper on Friday. Gibb, MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, said his constituents are "furious about the double standards" exposed by reports of social gatherings at Downing Street.
Conservative Member of Parliament and former schools minister Nick Gibb has called on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign in an opinion piece https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/04/boris-johnson-must-go-bitter-pill-swallow-win-back-voters published in The Telegraph newspaper on Friday.
Gibb, MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, said his constituents are "furious about the double standards" exposed by reports of social gatherings at Downing Street. A report by senior civil servant Sue Gray found that alcohol-fuelled events had taken place at Johnson's offices and residence when COVID-19 lockdown rules were in force.
Citing the report, Gibb said it was "inaccurate" that Johnson told the House of Commons there was no party. "To restore trust, we need to change the Prime Minister," he wrote in the op-ed.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- READ MORE ON:
- Parliament
- Telegraph
- Boris Johnson
- Johnson
- British
- Sue Gray
- House
- Commons
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https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/politics/1910979-mp-nick-gibb-calls-on-boris-johnson-to-resign-in-a-telegraph-op-ed
| 2022-02-04T23:16:48
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| 0.962835
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Pence says Trump was wrong that he could have overturned 2020 election
In a sharp admonishment of his former boss, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Friday Donald Trump was wrong to believe Pence had the power to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election that Trump has falsely claimed was stolen from him.
In a sharp admonishment of his former boss, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Friday Donald Trump was wrong to believe Pence had the power to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election that Trump has falsely claimed was stolen from him. After losing his re-election bid Democrat Joe Biden in November 2020, the Republican Trump in a bid to stay in office pressured Pence to block congressional certification of the results while presiding over the proceedings on Jan. 6, 2021. Pence, a loyal lieutenant during the four years of Trump's tumultuous presidency, opted not to block certification.
Trump has often disparaged Pence since then, and on Sunday issued a fresh statement saying the former vice president could have "overturned" the election. "President Trump is wrong," Pence said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. "I had no right to overturn the election."
"The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president," Pence added. Pence's comments represented his most forceful criticism of Trump to date. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"I understand the disappointment many feel about the last election. I was on the ballot," Pence said. "Whatever the future holds, I know we did our duty that day. John Quincy Adams reminds us: Duty is ours; results are God's," Pence added, quoting a 19th century U.S. president. "And the truth is there's more at stake than our party or political fortunes. Men and women: if we lose faith in the Constitution, we won't just lose elections, we'll lose our country," Pence added. 'DARK DAY'
While Pence was presiding over the certification, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to stop the certification. Pence and U.S. lawmakers inside the Capitol fled from the rioters. In his speech on Friday, Pence called Jan. 6 a "dark day."
His comments stand in contrast to the Republican Party, which on Friday censured https://www.reuters.com/world/us/loyal-trump-republican-party-moves-censure-us-reps-cheney-kinzinger-2022-02-04 Republican U.S. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for joining a House of Representatives select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. The party said the Democrat-led inquiry was persecuting "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse." Republicans aligned with Trump have made the false election claims a key part of their campaigns https://www.reuters.com/world/us/georgia-governors-race-tests-trumps-stolen-election-claims-2021-12-20 heading into the November 2022 midterm elections in which the party is seeking to win back control of Congress from the Democrats. Around 55% of Republicans nationally think the 2020 election was stolen, according to Reuters/Ipsos polls.
Trump, who continues to have a strong grip over the party even out of office for more than a year, has hinted he could run for president again in 2024. At a rally in Texas on Saturday, he said that if he were to win in 2024, he would pardon people charged with criminal offenses https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-would-pardon-jan-6-rioters-if-he-runs-wins-2022-01-30 in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. In a speech moments before the Jan. 6 attack, Trump repeated his false claims that the election was stolen through widespread voting fraud. Trump called upon Pence to "do the right thing" and block certification of the election results, while urging his supporters to go to the Capitol to "stop the steal."
"All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people," Trump told his supporters during the speech. Later, some of the rioters at the Capitol chanted "Hang Mike Pence" and some set up a makeshift gallows.
Olivia Troye, a former national security aide to Pence who has become a Trump critic, said it was the first time she had heard her former boss publicly say Trump was wrong. "It's a start," Troye wrote on Twitter.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/politics/1910980-pence-says-trump-was-wrong-that-he-could-have-overturned-2020-election
| 2022-02-04T23:16:56
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| 0.980792
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WHL
All Times Local
Western Conference
B.C. Division
U.S. Division
Eastern Conference
East Division
Central Division
Note: Two points for a team winning in overtime or shootout; the team losing in overtime or shootout receives one which is registered in the OTL or SOL columns.
Tuesday's results
Prince George 2 Tri-City 0
Wednesday's results
Edmonton 6 Medicine Hat 2
Spokane 3 Prince George 2 (OT)
Friday's results
Moose Jaw at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Edmonton at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Red Deer at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Brandon, 7 p.m.
Regina at Lethbridge, 7 p.m.
Prince George at Seattle, 7:05 p.m.
Portland at Tri-City, 7:05 p.m.
Victoria at Everett, 7:05 p.m.
Kelowna at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Kamloops at Vancouver, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday's games
Red Deer at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Edmonton at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Lethbridge at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Moose Jaw at Brandon, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Winnipeg, 8 p.m.
Kelowna at Tri-City, 6:05 p.m.
Vancouver at Seattle, 6:05 p.m.
Prince George at Everett, 6:05 p.m.
Kamloops at Victoria, 7:05 p.m.
Portland at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Sunday's games
Regina at Calgary, 2 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Winnipeg, 5 p.m.
Seattle at Vancouver, 4 p.m.
Kamloops at Victoria, 4:05 p.m.
Tuesday's games
Regina at Edmonton, 11 a.m.
Calgary at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Wednesday's games
Calgary at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Lethbridge at Moose Jaw, 7 p.m.
Spokane at Portland, 7 p.m.
Tri-City at Kamloops, 7 p.m.
Vancouver at Kelowna, 7:05 p.m.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/HKO-WHL-Standings-16832888.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:00
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en
| 0.898098
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U.S. House backs sweeping China competition bill as Olympics start
They harshly criticized the climate provisions and said they could be used to help Beijing, and accused Democrats of using the China measure to advance parts of Biden's economic agenda that could not pass the Senate. House Democrats said Republicans had refused to engage with them while they wrote the legislation.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday narrowly passed a multibillion-dollar bill https://www.reuters.com/business/us-house-leaders-set-unveil-chips-china-competition-bill-2022-01-25 aimed at increasing American competitiveness with China and boosting U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, despite Republican opposition. The Democratic-majority House backed the "America COMPETES Act of 2022" by 222-210, almost entirely along party lines. One Republican joined Democrats in voting for the measure and one Democrat voted no.
The vote took place hours after the opening ceremony https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/after-fraught-games-run-up-beijing-turns-opening-ceremony-2022-02-04 for the Beijing Winter Olympics, amid criticism in Congress of the International Olympic Committee for awarding the Games to China. Human rights groups have long criticized China's rights record, allegations China denies. The bill's passage by the House set up negotiations with the Senate on a compromise version of the legislation, which must pass both chambers before it can be sent to the White House for President Joe Biden's signature.
The talks could take weeks or months, although Biden urged quick action in a statement praising what he called "vital" legislation. "Every day we delay we fall farther behind and that increases our domestic national security risk," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a news conference.
The House bill authorizes almost $300 billion for research and development, including $52 billion to subsidize semiconductor manufacturing and research into the key components used in autos and computers. It also has $45 billion over six years to ease supply-chain problems that have exacerbated shortages. It includes changes to U.S. trade rules intended to offset China's market-distorting trade practices, including by strengthening anti-dumping rules.
The bill would authorize $8 billion in U.S. contributions to the Green Climate Fund, established by the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, to help developing countries cope. 'MAKE AMERICA ... SELF-SUFFICIENT'
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters before the vote that she intended to begin negotiations with the Senate quickly. "It is about making America ... self-sufficient when it comes to the supply chain, so that we're not depending on other countries," she said.
Raimondo said companies had told the administration that without the chips funding they would build manufacturing plants outside the United States. The Semiconductor Industry Association praised the bill.
Steve Zylstra, president of the Arizona Technology Council, said the bill was "profoundly important" to the state's ambitions of becoming the center of excellence for semiconductors in the United States, after both Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd recently announced plans to build new plants there. House Republicans complained that Democrats did not include them in drafting the legislation. They harshly criticized the climate provisions and said they could be used to help Beijing, and accused Democrats of using the China measure to advance parts of Biden's economic agenda that could not pass the Senate.
House Democrats said Republicans had refused to engage with them while they wrote the legislation. Democrats note that their bill includes all or part of more than 60 smaller measures that Republicans had co-sponsored. The Senate passed its own bill - the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act - by 68-32 in June. Eighteen Republicans joined every Senate Democrat in voting yes. That legislation includes $52 billion to increase domestic semiconductor production and authorizes $190 billion for U.S. technology and research to compete with China.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/politics/1910983-us-house-backs-sweeping-china-competition-bill-as-olympics-start
| 2022-02-04T23:17:04
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en
| 0.954304
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BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho has agreed to change its living will template so that pregnant people will not be kept on life support against their wishes.
The move is part of a legal settlement reached this week with four women who said the state's law governing advance health care directives discriminates based on gender and subjects pregnant people to different medical treatment than others.
The women, represented by legal groups including the women’s rights organization Legal Voice and the end-of-life patient rights organization Compassion & Choices, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2018 targeting the state's Medical Consent and Natural Death Act. The act says competent people have a fundamental right to control decisions on their medical care, including when to have life-saving care withdrawn. But it also included a template living will that said the directive would have no force during the course of a pregnancy.
State officials interpreted the rule to mean pregnant people must receive life-saving treatment regardless of their living wills, and the template with the pregnancy exclusion was promoted on a state website.
At least 47 states have adopted laws allowing living wills or advance medical directives, and 11 of them placed restrictions on advance directives for pregnant individuals. Besides Idaho, the others are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, according to Legal Voice.
Under the settlement, Idaho officials admit no wrongdoing but must make sure advance directives are followed regardless of whether the patient is pregnant. The state will create a new living will template, and notify everyone who has already filed a living will with the state's advance directive registry of the court's decision.
One of the women who brought the lawsuit, Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln, said the settlement was a welcome relief. She was pregnant when the case was first filed, and is now pregnant with her second child.
“My family and I can rest assured my rights and choices will be honored as we anticipate our family growing later this year,” Gaona-Lincoln said in a statement. “There is enough for expecting parents in Idaho to worry about; due to the previous pregnancy exclusion, I wasn’t granted that peace of mind with our first child.”
The Idaho Attorney General's office declined to comment on the settlement.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Idaho-settles-lawsuit-on-living-wills-for-16832985.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:06
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en
| 0.967075
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PLEASANT HILL, Iowa (AP) — A couple accused of starving their teenage son, who has special needs, has agreed to plea deals, according to court documents.
Richard Joe Ryan and Jennifer Ryan, of Pleasant Hill, were charged in April of last year with first-degree kidnapping and neglecting a dependent person.
The teenager's condition came to light when a citizen reported seeing the teenager zip-tied to a chair while his mother worked an eight-hour shift at Smith Automotive in Pleasant Hill, KCCI-TV reported.
Doctors at Blank Children’s Hospital said the teenager suffered from severe malnutrition and was only 78 pounds when he arrived at the hospital.
Investigators found the boy was routinely confined to his room, which had an alarm on the door, and was not permitted to eat breakfast, according to court records.
New court documents show Richard Ryan has agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges of false imprisonment, neglect of a dependent person and two counts of child endangerment. He’s scheduled to be sentenced April 1.
Jennifer Ryan also will agree to a plea deal in court on April 1, according to court documents.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Iowa-couple-accused-of-starving-their-son-to-take-16832924.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:12
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en
| 0.977846
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Soccer-Middlesbrough stun Man Utd on penalties in FA Cup fourth-round shock
Manchester United were knocked out of the FA Cup fourth round by Championship side Middlesbrough on penalties after wasting a sackful of chances in a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford on Friday.
- Country:
- United Kingdom
Manchester United were knocked out of the FA Cup fourth round by Championship side Middlesbrough on penalties after wasting a sackful of chances in a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford on Friday. The hosts paid for their profligacy in a tense shoot-out when, after the first 15 penalties had all been scored, United's Anthony Elanga blazed over to send 9,000 Boro fans wild.
Jadon Sancho's 25th-minute goal, shortly after Cristiano Ronaldo had missed a penalty, was scant reward for United's dominance with Ronaldo and Marcus Rashford both culpable of failing to take golden chances. Boro kept themselves in the tie, however, and equalised in the 64th minute when former United youth player Matt Crooks converted from close range.
Bruno Fernandes somehow struck the post with the goal gaping soon after and United then battered away at Boro's defence in extra time all to no avail. Boro then showed incredible poise with their penalties to send the 12-time FA Cup winners tumbling out.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/sports-games/1910986-soccer-middlesbrough-stun-man-utd-on-penalties-in-fa-cup-fourth-round-shock
| 2022-02-04T23:17:12
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| 0.948454
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NEW YORK (AP) — Jason Epstein, a publishing innovator and bon vivant who helped put the classics in paperback, co-founded The New York Review of Books and worked with such novelists as E.L. Doctorow, Vladimir Nabokov and Philip Roth, has died at age 93.
Epstein died Friday “surrounded by his books” at his home in Sag Harbor, New York, said his wife, the author and former New York Times journalist Judith Miller. The cause was congestive heart failure, she said.
The book world has its share of accidental lifers and Epstein was one. Once a young bohemian who desired only enough money to have time for reading, he took a job at Doubleday in the early 1950s, joined Random House in 1958 and remained for decades as editorial director. He became one of the industry's most honored executives, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Foundation, presenters, of the National Book Award, in 1988; and from the National Book Critics Circle in 2002.
Epstein was not just a man of letters, but of food and drink, whose own books included the memoir “Eating” and whose dining companions ranged from Buster Keaton to Jacqueline Kennedy to the notorious attorney-political operative Roy Cohn. In “Making It,” a 1967 best-seller about the literary world, Norman Podhoretz wrote affectionately of Epstein’s tastes for imported shoes, first-class travel and “appallingly expensive” restaurants.
“He was beautiful to watch,” Podhoretz observed.
He was as well-read and as opinionated as the authors he worked with, “so damned intelligent,” Mailer would joke, once telling The Associated Press that he had to adjust to an editor “who might be a lot brighter” then he was. Epstein published an early excerpt of Nabokov’s “Lolita” and fought unsuccessfully to convince Doubleday to publish the scandalous novel about a professor’s obsession with a 12-year old girl. Epstein also feuded bitterly with Gore Vidal and became a critic of the Library of America, believing that the imprint he helped establish had grown bloated. Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf would call him the “cross I bear,” while Epstein labeled Cerf “the bear I cross.”
Among the many books edited by Epstein: Doctorow’s Depression-era novel “Billy Bathgate,” Jane Jacobs’ classic of urban studies “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Mailer’s CIA epic “Harlot’s Ghost.”
Epstein admittedly passed over the occasional best-seller, although he was proud of rejecting Shirley MacLaine’s New Age favorite “Out on a Limb.”
“We were friends and she actually wrote much of that book at my house in Sag Harbor (on New York’s Long Island). But she never told me what it was about,” Epstein told the AP in 2000. “I read this and I said, ‘Come on, Shirley, you’re nuts.’”
The son of a successful textile salesman, Epstein grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, where he acquired his longtime passion for fine cuisine and spent so much time at the library that one librarian saved his card while he and his family spent a year in New York City. In the late 1940s, he entered Columbia University, when the school’s president was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Epstein met the future U.S. president once, and, by accident, made a fine impression.
“I had spent the night downtown with a girl,” Epstein told the AP. “I could hardly stand up. I had been up all night and he thought I was a bright young fellow, up bright and early. He was beaming, and he shook my hand.”
In his early 20s, his quest for affordable classics inspired him to start one of publishing’s first literary paperback imprints, Anchor Books, now part of Penguin Random House. He also helped launch two other major and lasting projects. One came in the early 1960s when a newspaper strike and the general tedium of literacy criticism led Epstein and his then-wife, Barbara, to help found The New York Review of Books, along with critic Elizabeth Hardwick and editor Robert Silvers among others. In the late 1970s, he was among the creators of the Library of America, which offers hardcover editions of the country’s most influential writers.
He had two children with Barbara Epstein: daughter Helen Epstein, a contributor to The New York Review of Books; and son Jacob Epstein, a television writer whose time in the book world was brief and unfortunate. His novel “The Wild Oats” was published in 1979 and was soon found to contain numerous similarities to Martin Amis’ “The Rachel Papers.”
“Epstein wasn’t influenced by ‘The Rachel Papers,’” Amis wrote at the time, “he had it flattened out beside his typewriter.”
Jason Epstein was the rare publishing veteran to show early and unforced enthusiasm for technology. He looked for ways to sell books online before the rise of e-books and Amazon.com and was a strong advocate for in-store machines that could print and bind works on demand. Epstein essentially advocated a system that enabled authors to bypass the industry that employed him, looking back to the days when Parson Weems could sell books about George Washington by simply sitting under a tree and hitting on a drum.
“Soon writers and readers will be able to meet again on a worldwide green where writers may once more beat their drums or hire a Weems to drum up business for them,” Epstein wrote in “Book Business,” a memoir published in 2001. “On the World Wide Web, future storytellers and their readers can mingle at leisure and talk at length.”
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Jason-Epstein-publishing-editor-and-innovator-16832833.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:18
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en
| 0.980171
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UK to make tech firms take faster action against criminal content
Under previous plans for the legislation, search engines, social media and video-sharing platforms were already due to be required to prioritise measures to reduce the chance of users stumbling across material on terrorism or child sexual abuse. As part of the broader proposals, this list will be extended to cover sexual images posted without the participants' consent, hate crimes, fraud, drug dealing, illegal weapon sales, promotion of suicide, people smuggling and sexual exploitation.
- Country:
- United Kingdom
Britain's government said on Friday it would add to the list of criminal content which tech firms will have to combat actively under a new law, or risk fines of up to 10% of their global turnover. Under previous plans for the legislation, search engines, social media and video-sharing platforms were already due to be required to prioritise measures to reduce the chance of users stumbling across material on terrorism or child sexual abuse.
As part of the broader proposals, this list will be extended to cover sexual images posted without the participants' consent, hate crimes, fraud, drug dealing, illegal weapon sales, promotion of suicide, people smuggling and sexual exploitation. Current laws generally only require tech companies such as the owners of Google or Facebook to take down this type of material if they receive a complaint.
"Companies must continue to take responsibility for stopping harmful material on their platforms. These new measures will make it easier and quicker to crack down on offenders and hold social media companies to account," interior minister Priti Patel said. The new legislation, known as the Online Safety Bill, will be enforced by communications regulator Ofcom, which will have the power to require British internet providers to block access to offending websites, as well as fine the websites' operators.
The draft bill was scrutinised by parliament committees in 2021 and is due to be put to parliament for a vote this year. Other parts of the bill criminalise online threats of serious harm and messages intended to cause serious distress which the government said were hard to prosecute under existing laws banning menacing, grossly offensive or obscene communications.
Existing legislation banning the consensual exchange of sexual images online, messages which unintentionally cause harm, or cause offence but not harm, would be repealed. "The criminal law should target those who specifically intend to cause harm, while allowing people to share contested and controversial ideas in good faith," said Penney Lewis, a law professor who advised on the changes.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/1910975-uk-to-make-tech-firms-take-faster-action-against-criminal-content
| 2022-02-04T23:17:21
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en
| 0.94244
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A judge on Friday temporarily halted Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order that sought to allow parents to opt out of classroom mask mandates for their children but had been met with resistance from some school districts.
Arlington Circuit Court Judge Louise DiMatteo ruled in favor of seven school boards that filed a lawsuit challenging the governor's order, one of the first actions Youngkin took after his inauguration Jan. 15. Her temporary restraining order means mask mandates put in place by school boards may remain, at least for now.
The judge found that the single issue before the court was whether Youngkin, through his emergency powers, can override the decision of local school boards delegated to them under a 2021 state law that required boards to provide in-person instruction in a way that adheres to federal COVID-19 mitigation strategies “to the maximum extent practicable.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking, regardless of vaccination status.
“On this pivotal point, the Court concludes that the Governor cannot” override local school officials, the judge wrote in her ruling.
DiMatteo said that while the case is pending in court, there appears to be a benefit to keeping the current polices of universal mask mandates in place.
“Keeping rules in place that have been established over the school year helps children, families and staff understand how they may be impacted during the pandemic. Without a restraining order, children and staff would have to reassess certain health conditions they believe are impacted by a mask policy (any mask policy), having relied upon a universal mask mandate implemented by the School Boards,” DiMatteo wrote in her ruling.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jason Miyares said he will appeal the ruling.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said in a statement that the decision was just the first step in the judicial process. “The governor will never stop fighting for parents’ ability to choose what is best for their children,” she said.
The school boards said in a joint statement that the judge’s order protects “the health and well-being of all students and staff and reaffirms the constitutional right of Virginia’s local school boards to enact policy at the local level.”
The school boards that sued were: Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Hampton, Prince William County and Richmond. They collectively serve over 350,000 students.
Youngkin, who campaigned heavily on education issues and had long said he opposed mask mandates, signed the order within hours of taking the oath of office. It took effect Jan. 24.
Districts across the state took various approaches to the governor's order, with many telling students masks were still required, despite the governor's order. Others dropped their mandates.
The Arlington lawsuit was one of several related to Youngkin’s executive order but the first to go before a judge.
A group of Chesapeake parents challenged the order in front of the Virginia Supreme Court, and parents of children with disabilities have filed a federal lawsuit. Another case was filed in Loudoun County against the school board and in support of the governor’s order.
Fairfax County Public Schools Board Chair Stella Pekarsky said in an interview that the uncertainty of the past couple of weeks have been difficult for families, the vast majority of whom opted to have their children follow the district’s masking policy.
“We are hopeful this will be permanent,” she said.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Judge-rules-against-VA-governor-s-opt-out-school-16832914.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:25
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en
| 0.972416
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Two white men were arrested earlier this week, days after a Black delivery van driver accused them of chasing him and shooting at him after he dropped off a package in a Mississippi city.
But driver Demonterrio Gibson, 24, on Friday said he doesn’t believe police took him seriously at first and his attorneys say both suspects have been “undercharged” and should face charges of attempted murder.
Nobody was injured but the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, Mississippi, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) south of Jackson — and pushback in local media from the city’s Black police chief.
Gregory Case and his son Brandon Case were arrested and released on bond Tuesday in connection with the alleged Jan. 24 attack on Gibson, 24. Gregory Case faces a charge of conspiracy; Brandon Case, shooting into a motor vehicle.
Lawyers for Gibson say more serious charges, including hate crime charges, are warranted in what they believe was a racially motivated assault. “I want both of them charged with attempted murder,” attorney Carlos Moore said Friday.
Moore and attorney James Bryant compared the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun. The white men, including a father and son, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Defense lawyers said they suspected he had committed crimes in their neighborhood, but prosecutors said there was no evidence of that. The three still face a federal hate crime trial.
Brookhaven, with a population that is 68% Black, is in Lincoln County, where District Attorney Dee Bates said information will be presented to a grand jury for a decision on charges once police complete the investigation of the Gibson incident. Witnesses, including Gibson, will be able to testify.
Gibson told The Associated Press on Friday that he was in uniform when the incident happened. He said he was in a van rented by FedEx but that it did not have a FedEx logo on it. He pulled into a driveway and dropped off a package sometime after 7 p.m. on Jan. 24. Before he turned his van around in the driveway to exit, he said, he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.
He said the pickup driver tried to cut him off as he exited the driveway. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man.
“I drive down about two or three houses and there's another guy standing in the middle of the street, with a gun pointed at my vehicle,” said Gibson. The man motioned for him to stop. “I'm looking at him, like shaking my head, because why would I stop for somebody with a gun?”
Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the chase. Later, police told local news outlets that the elder Case was the suspected pickup driver, while Brandon Case was the man in the street. Gregory Case is 58, and his son is 35, according to The Daily Leader of Brookhaven.
Gibson said he called police and was told by one officer that police had received a call about a suspicious person at the same address at the same time. “I said, ‘Sir, I’m not a suspicious person. I'm a FedEx worker. I was just doing my job and they shot at me.'”
The Cases have not commented publicly on their arrests. The municipal clerk's office in Brookhaven said Friday morning it had not yet received paperwork on their arrests or information on their attorneys. Police chief Kenny Collins did not return calls from the AP seeking more information.
Early this week, Collins, who is Black, pushed back against allegations on social media of racism in Brookhaven. “We’re not going to have outsiders coming in trying to stir that up,” he told The Daily Leader. “Brookhaven is not a racist, prejudiced town. You can’t judge a town by the actions of two individuals.”
“People need to be careful what they post on social media,” Collins said. “If somebody is killed or hurt because of what you post on social media, you will be charged, too.”
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Lawyers-demand-serious-charges-for-gunfire-at-16832913.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:31
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| 0.985442
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CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (AP) — A sheriff's deputy is being praised for smashing the windows of a burning SUV and rescuing a frightened dog in a neighborhood south of Denver.
Douglas County Deputy Michael Gregorek's body camera video from Jan. 22, which was released Thursday, shows him arriving on the scene as smoke pours from the driver's side window of the SUV. The owner frantically yells that his dog Hank is somewhere inside the locked vehicle.
Gregorek uses his retractable baton to smash a side window and then the rear window before pulling Hank out and quickly carrying him to a nearby snowbank.
“I just went in there and grabbed on. And his body had already kind of started to tense up, so I knew he was really in a bad way. ... Nothing else really mattered at that point other than getting Hank out of the car,” Gregorek said in an interview released by the sheriff's department.
A neighbor told the deputy his wife was a veterinarian, but by the time she got home, Hank was already sprinting around and ready to play.
“I’m a dog parent. My only child is my dog, so I would have done the same thing, whether it be baby, human, dog, cat. A life is a life, and you kind of treat it as such in a situation like that," Gregorek said.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Lucky-dog-Colorado-deputy-rescues-pup-from-16832941.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:37
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| 0.987636
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MIAMI (AP) — Prosecutors filed two murder charges Friday against a 25-year-old real estate agent accused in the deaths of two homeless men in Miami last year.
Willy Maceo was previously charged with attempted murder after his arrest in December, according to court records.
Investigators had previously identified Maceo as a suspect in the Dec. 21 death of Jerome Antonio Price, 56, who was fatally shot while sleeping on a sidewalk in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, and the Oct. 16 fatal stabbing of Manuel Perez, 59, in downtown Miami. Maceo is also accused in the non-fatal shooting of a homeless man just a few hours before Price's death.
Detectives linked Maceo's Dodge Charger to the Wynwood shooting through surveillance video, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said during a news conference Friday. Investigators tracked down the car and found a Glock 9mm handgun, whose bullets matched casings found at both shooting scenes.
Surveillance video also led detectives to link Maceo to the Perez death. The man in that video shows a man who looks exactly like Maceo, officials said.
Investigators said they also were able to use video evidence and cellphone records to help them trace Maceo’s movements on the nights both men were killed.
Maceo has no criminal record but has a history of mental illness, authorities said.
The Miami Herald last month reported that Maceo had been sent to a hospital for a mental-health evaluation after he was acting erratically at his parents’ home in Kendall. Police officers seized his Glock but later returned it to him after the department’s legal bureau decided he was not enough of a risk for court intervention.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Man-faces-2-counts-of-murder-in-Miami-homeless-16832984.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:43
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| 0.982737
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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams apologized Friday after a 2019 video surfaced showing him using a racial slur for white people when talking about the New York Police Department.
The video, first reported by the New York Daily News, shows Adams, who is Black, speaking at a private event in December 2019, during the early stages of his mayoral run.
Adams is a former New York City police officer who rose to the rank of captain before leaving to serve in elected office. While in the New York Police Department, he became an outspoken critic of the department and co-founded an advocacy group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which pushed for criminal justice reform and spoke out against police brutality.
Speaking to a Harlem business group, Adams said “Every day in the police department, I kicked those crackers' ass, man! I was unbelievable in the police department with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement.” The line drew applause.
Adams was asked about the video at a news conference Friday and said he wanted to “definitely apologize” for his remarks and called them “inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate comments, should not have been used. Someone asked me a question using that comment and playing on that word. I responded in that comment. But clearly, it’s a comment that should not be used and I apologize not only to those who heard it but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me, and that was inappropriate," Adams said.
The word has often been considered a derogatory term for poor Southern white people, but the origins of the term are not entirely clear.
A 2013 report from NPR found the term was used as an insult as far back as the 17th Century and was later used to refer to Scots-Irish immigrants settling in the Southern U.S.
The mayor, who has been in office a little over a month, said the comment referred to his efforts to combat racism in the department.
“My fight in the police department was fighting racism throughout my entire journey. And I was serious about fighting against that and that is what it was attached to, the question that was asked. And that, you got my response, based on what that question was," he said.
The head of the city's largest police union quickly put out a statement defending Adams.
“Whenever a controversial video of a police officer surfaces online, we ask for fairness instead of a rush to outrage. We will apply the same standard here," said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch, who is white.
"We have spoken with Mayor Adams about this video. We have spent far too many hours together in hospital emergency rooms these past few weeks, and we’ve worked together for decades before that. A few seconds of video will not define our relationship. We have a lot of work to do together to support our members on the streets.”
Adams apology came a day after he hosted President Joe Biden in New York City and they met with top law enforcement officers to discuss plans to try to cut down gun violence in cities.
That presidential visit followed the deaths of two New York City police officers in a shooting in Harlem.
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Associated Press reporter Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report
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Follow Price on Twitter at twitter.com/michellelprice
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/NYC-Mayor-Eric-Adams-apologizes-for-using-racial-16832955.php
| 2022-02-04T23:17:56
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| 0.983638
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EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A man has been fatally shot by police after apparently holding multiple children and a woman hostage inside an Evansville home.
The man called 911 dispatchers Friday, told them he was “losing his mind” and was preparing to shoot and kill his family, according to 911 audio obtained by the Evansville Courier & Press.
He also called other agencies and a local television station, according to the newspaper.
Police Sgt. Nick Winsett said officers arrived at the home and were able to remove “multiple” children before the man allegedly retreated into a back room while holding a female hostage with a knife.
The man was shot after attempts by officers to negotiate with him were not successful, Winsett said.
”(The female victim) was starting to yell in pain and from the knife being held against her,” Winsett said. “That’s when our officers were able to neutralize him and rescue her.”
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Police-fatally-shoot-man-holding-woman-children-16832993.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:08
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| 0.993617
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BAYOU BLUE, La. (AP) — Police in Louisiana on Friday arrested a man accused of raping and killing his 5-year-old niece in North Carolina more than four years ago.
David Wesley Prevatte, 23, of Lumberton, North Carolina, was arrested Friday in Bayou Blue, Louisiana, Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said in a news release.
He said North Carolina's Pender County Sheriff’s Office tracked Prevatte to the community 43 miles (69 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans after getting a warrant accusing him of first-degree murder and first-degree rape of Paitin Fields in November 2017.
Capt. Brennan Matherne, a spokeperson for Webre, said he did not know whether Prevatte has an attorney who could comment.
The little girl died Nov. 16, 2017, three days after her family brought her to a hospital, unresponsive.
North Carolina news outlets reported that she was Prevatte’s niece.
“An autopsy showed signs of sexual trauma and strangulation,” and detectives identified Prevatte as a suspect in June 2018, the news release said.
It said Prevatte pleaded guilty the following March to unrelated charges of intimidating a witness, breaking and entering, larceny, and burning a building, and spent about 10 months in prison. He was released in January 2020.
The warrant against him also accuses him of committing a sex offense against a child.
He will be extradited to Pender County, Webre said. He complimented “the tenacity and professionalism ... that led to the arrest.”
Pender County Sheriff Alan Cutler said, “This has been an ongoing investigation and I am extremely pleased and proud of the effort that has been put into this investigation by my personnel."
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Sheriff-Uncle-of-slain-girl-tracked-down-4-years-16833033.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:14
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| 0.965063
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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Student protesters from a notoriously combative teachers’ college in southern Mexico rolled a driverless semi-tractor truck at considerable speed down a slope toward a line of National Guard and police officers Friday.
The officers got out of the way of the out-of-control freight truck, which crashed into a structure near a toll booth. But the National Guard said 14 of its officers were injured by stones and bottle rockets launched by the students.
The guard was called in after the students blockaded the main highway between Mexico City and the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.
Students from the rural teachers' college known as Ayotzinapa have a longstanding reputation for clashing with authorities, blocking the highway in the city of Chilpancingo and hijacking passing passenger buses and trucks.
In 2014, 43 students from the college were hijacking buses in the nearby city of Iguala when they were kidnapped and presumably killed by a drug gang.
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Student-protesters-in-Mexico-aim-truck-at-16833032.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:20
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| 0.982387
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(RNS) — Bruce Lindsay never expected to own a church. But when his mother died shortly before the pandemic, he wanted to use his inheritance to do something extraordinary.
“My mother, if she were alive today, I think would have a great chuckle at what I’ve purchased,” said Lindsay. “I found myself surrounded by a church when it was the last place on earth I wanted to go to as a kid.”
In August, after purchasing a 900-square-foot-Methodist church built in 1876, Lindsay and his business partner, Anna Cronin, opened Dirt Church Brewing Co. in East Haven, Vermont. It’s one of at least eight church breweries that have opened in the U.S. since 2020.
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This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.
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Today, the U.S. has roughly 30 breweries based in once-vacant churches. Though some church breweries have faced pushback for offering suds in a once sacred space, the move has precedent. Monks have been brewing beer in monasteries for centuries, offering it to visitors and often imbibing it themselves at a time when it was safer to drink beer than water.
Dirt Church Brewing Co. originally intended to open a brewery inside the church, but Cronin and Lindsay found it lacked running water, a septic tank and heat. Rather than tearing open the building to add the required services, they built the taproom next door, where the town’s former meetinghouse once stood. The church, now used as an art gallery and event space, remains integral to the brewery’s identity.
The name “dirt church” is both a nod to the 19th-century building as well as lingo used by the cycling community that Lindsay and Cronin belong to. “It’s kind of our little cheeky nickname for the Sunday morning long ride that was usually on mountain bikes or gravel bikes,” said Cronin. “Instead of going to ‘church-church,’ we would say, ‘Hey, are you going to dirt church?’”
Today, the brewery hosts “dirt church” for its patrons once a month via Sunday bike rides, runs or hikes — followed by a few celebratory beers at the taproom, of course.
Across the country in San Diego, The Lost Abbey brewing company opened a new location in December inside the shell of a Mexican Presbyterian church built in 1906. The brewery added pews, chandeliers, tapestries and even stained-glass windows to accentuate its slightly irreverent brand.
“This building fell into massive disrepair and probably would have been demolished were it not for the developers that saved it,” said Tomme Arthur, co-founder of The Lost Abbey. This is the brewery’s first location in a former house of worship.
The Lost Abbey was founded in 2006 to offer beers inspired by Belgian monastic brewing traditions, as well as some “nondenominational” beers brewed in no particular style. Per the company’s slogan, it offers brews to “sinners and saints alike” — a motto it’s embraced wholeheartedly.
The new location, appropriately dubbed “The Church,” is split into two sides, one for sinners and one for saints. The sections are marked by corresponding décor: A St. Peter statue presides over the saints area, and Mary Magdalene — who is often misidentified as a prostitute — occupies the sinners side.
The Lost Abbey’s beers play off of similar tropes, with “saintly” names such as “10 Commandments” or “Gift of the Magi” juxtaposed with names like “Judgment Day” or “Serpent’s Stout.” The next addition will be a beer featuring Baby Moses, a wink at the popular “Mandalorian” character Baby Yoda.
“We’ve always taken our beers more seriously than a lot of other things,” said Arthur, who grew up attending Catholic school. “What’s great is that every time that we need some sort of inspiration, we’re able to open up the Bible.”
The Ministry of Brewing, located in what was once St. Michael the Archangel Church in Baltimore, makes it a point to avoid religious themes in its marketing.
“All of our names of our beers are typically Baltimore references or something about the neighborhood,” said Jon Holley, the brewery’s general manager. “As far as religious terms, imagery, things like that, we already know that being in a church is a sensitive thing for a lot of people, so we’re not trying to touch that at all.”
The church was built in 1857 and was home to a German Catholic congregation and, later, a Spanish-speaking congregation before closing due to the cost of upkeep. In 2018, the Ministry of Brewing began a full renovation to preserve and restore many of the original elements of the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The church reopened to the public as a brewery in January 2020, featuring a dazzling interior with soaring columns and a mural-painted barrel ceiling. The brewery also hosts events, fundraisers and even local delegate debates.
Though Holley said he “half expected” pushback for residing in a historic church, the brewery has received overwhelming support. Most often, he said, patrons can be found enjoying the brewery’s bestselling hazy pale ale called “Wispy,” a reference to wispy stained glass.
Like the other two breweries, Dirt Church Brewing Co. in Vermont is intentional about its beer names. Its flagship beer? It’s named “Rejoice,” after Lindsay’s mother, Joyce.
“It’s our most popular beer,” said Lindsay. “Without my mother’s help, none of this would exist today.”
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https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Suds-in-the-sanctuary-breweries-populate-vacant-16833007.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:27
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| 0.975862
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NEW YORK (AP) — Five players were suspended Friday for violations of the minor league drug program, raising this year’s total to nine.
Free agent pitcher Nick Belzer and pitcher Charles Hall of Oakland’s Class A Central Lansing farm team were suspended for 50 games each for a second positive test for a drug of abuse. Miami Double-A outfielder Tristan Pompey also was suspended for 50 games for a second positive test for a drug of abuse.
Detroit pitcher Hector Rodriguez and Arizona pitcher Jose Valdez were suspended for 60 games each following positive tests for the performing-enhancing substance Stanozolol. Both are on Dominican Summer League rosters.
Four players were given 60-day bans on Jan. 28 following positive tests for Stanozolol: Seattle pitcher Brayan Diaz, Chicago Cubs left-hander Carlos Garcia, Houston right-hander Jorge Geraldo and Texas right-hander Aron Vargas. All are on Dominican Summer League rosters.
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/5-minor-leaguers-suspended-for-violating-drug-16832873.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:33
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| 0.944312
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ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Ski jumping captivates viewers every four years, when they fearlessly fly the length of an American football field plus the end zones.
Casual fans, though, probably have no clue about the scoring system or skills and techniques necessary to win gold even though the sport has been a part of the Winter Olympics since the first one in 1924.
In the U.S., most people can't probably name a ski jumper other than “Eddie the Eagle,” from the 2016 film about Eddie Edwards’ unlikely bid to become a British Olympian.
The Associated Press is here to help. Here's a look at what to watch, starting Saturday when the women go for gold, from the moment ski jumpers sit on a bar about as high as a 40-story building until they glide over machine-made snow and wait to see how far they flew and how the judges scored their performance.
THE BAR IS VERY HIGH
Ski jumpers sit on a bar, calming their nerves with deep breaths, and wait for a green light to go. If there's too much of a gust, they have to slide back off the bar and onto a step to wait for wind to calm down. A focused mind, which ignores fears, is key.
FUN ON THE IN-RUN
With skis wider and longer than those in other disciplines, jumpers go down a steep incline referred to as the in-run. They try to avoid making contact with the sides of ice-filled channels go as fast as 100 kph (62 mph) to help them fly farther.
Jumpers lead with their helmet, throw their hands back and crouch low into a tuck with a flat back for aerodynamics. Balance and flexibility are critical.
CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF
Near the end of the in-run, men and women make an explosive jump without moving their upper body to create lift for flight. The timing and technique in the take-off is perhaps the most important part of the 15-second process from sitting on the bar to sliding to a stop in the snow.
COME FLY WITH ME
Jumpers lean forward with hands near hips, hovering their torso over skis that are in a “V" shape in a technique used since Swedish ski jumper Jan Bokloev started doing it in 1985 after they previously had them parallel.
COMING IN FOR A LANDING
When skis hit the snow, judges want one slightly ahead of the other and for the jumpers to gracefully glide on what's known as the outrun.
STYLE POINTS MATTER
Jumpers are aiming for the K-point of the hill, where it starts to flatten out, to earn 60 points and those who fly past it earn more points while points are deducted from coming up short. Five judges award scores of up to 20 points for style from start to finish, looking for jumpers who look keep their torso and limbs still while floating through the air and land gracefully among other things.
SIZE MATTERS
There's a dirty little secret in the sport, which is plagued by eating disorders. Fat don't fly is a phrase heard at least in the U.S., because physics prevent a heavier jumper from flying farther than a lighter one.
Norway's Maren Lundby decided not to defend her Olympic gold because she put on weight and chose to put her physical and mental health first, leading to her skipping the season.
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS
If you're looking for a winner, maybe don't pick an American. The U.S. has won only one Olympic medal, and that happened nearly a century ago in what was quite a tale. Anders Haugen left the first Winter Olympics in 1924 without any hardware, but 50 years later was awarded a bronze medal after a scoring error was confirmed.
Norway, Austria and Germany are traditional powers. Poland and Japan are pretty good, too. Japanese jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi and Germany’s Karl Geiger are relatively safe bets to earn a spot on the podium.
On the women's side with Lundby taking time off and top-ranked Marita Kramer of Austria out after testing positive for COVID-19, Germany's Katharina Althaus and Sara Takanashi of Japan are the favorites.
HEY, WHAT’S NEW?
This year, for the first time at the Olympics, men and women will compete together in a mixed team event.
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Follow AP Sports Writer Larry Lage at https://twitter.com/larrylage
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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/EXPLAINER-Olympic-ski-jumpers-count-on-technique-16832907.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:52
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| 0.964229
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PARIS (AP) - Results from French football:
Lyon 2, Marseille 1
Marseille 5, Angers 2
Saint-Etienne vs. Montpellier, 11 a.m.
Monaco vs. Lyon, 3 p.m.
Lorient vs. Lens, 7 a.m.
Nice vs. Clermont Foot, 9 a.m.
Reims vs. Bordeaux, 9 a.m.
Strasbourg vs. Nantes, 9 a.m.
Troyes vs. Metz, 9 a.m.
Rennes vs. Brest, 11 a.m.
Lille vs. PSG, 2:45 p.m.
PSG vs. Rennes, 3 p.m.
Montpellier vs. Lille, 11 a.m.
Lyon vs. Nice, 3 p.m.
Monaco vs. Lorient, 7 a.m.
Angers vs. Strasbourg, 9 a.m.
Brest vs. Troyes, 9 a.m.
Clermont Foot vs. Saint-Etienne, 9 a.m.
Nantes vs. Reims, 9 a.m.
Lens vs. Bordeaux, 11:05 a.m.
Metz vs. Marseille, 2:45 p.m.
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https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/French-Results-16832990.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:58
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| 0.722282
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___
Lyon 2, Marseille 1
Marseille 5, Angers 2
Saint-Etienne vs. Montpellier, 11 a.m.
Monaco vs. Lyon, 3 p.m.
Lorient vs. Lens, 7 a.m.
Nice vs. Clermont Foot, 9 a.m.
Reims vs. Bordeaux, 9 a.m.
Strasbourg vs. Nantes, 9 a.m.
Troyes vs. Metz, 9 a.m.
Rennes vs. Brest, 11 a.m.
Lille vs. PSG, 2:45 p.m.
PSG vs. Rennes, 3 p.m.
Montpellier vs. Lille, 11 a.m.
Lyon vs. Nice, 3 p.m.
Monaco vs. Lorient, 7 a.m.
Angers vs. Strasbourg, 9 a.m.
Brest vs. Troyes, 9 a.m.
Clermont Foot vs. Saint-Etienne, 9 a.m.
Nantes vs. Reims, 9 a.m.
Lens vs. Bordeaux, 11:05 a.m.
Metz vs. Marseille, 2:45 p.m.
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https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/French-Standings-16832989.php
| 2022-02-04T23:18:58
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| 0.688472
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Early humans seemed to strike the perfect balance in situating their hearths in the cave, preserving ample sitting and cooking space while avoiding the worst effects of smoke.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Early humans seemed to strike the perfect balance in situating their hearths in the cave, preserving ample sitting and cooking space while avoiding the worst effects of smoke.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/2022-02-04/building-a-fire-in-a-cave-is-not-easy-early-humans-figured-out-how
| 2022-02-04T23:19:22
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en
| 0.924888
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The opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics began Friday in Beijing with all of the glitz of past Games, though the stadium was nearly empty of spectators because of COVID concerns.
Copyright 2022 NPR
The opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics began Friday in Beijing with all of the glitz of past Games, though the stadium was nearly empty of spectators because of COVID concerns.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/2022-02-04/the-beijing-2022-olympic-winter-games-are-officially-underway
| 2022-02-04T23:19:23
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| 0.95698
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CINCINNATI (AP) — Cincinnati Bengals tight end C.J. Uzomah missed a second day of practice due to a knee injury suffered in the AFC championship game.
Offensive lineman Jackson Carman has a sore back and also sat out Friday as the Bengals practiced for a second day in the indoor bubble at the University of Cincinnati because of bad weather, according to a pool report.
Uzomah became a clutch receiver for quarterback Joe Burrow this season, and the Bengals hope to get him back for the Super Bowl on Feb. 13. He was carted off with a knee sprain in last Sunday's AFC championship win over Kansas City.
“I don’t anticipate him doing much work this week,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “The goal really is to see where he’s at this weekend and see where he’s going to be on Monday.”
The Bengals will practice Saturday and Sunday, likely in the bubble with temperatures in the teens and 20s predicted. They'll arrive in Los Angeles on Tuesday, five days ahead of the Super Bowl.
Unlike Thursday, when icy conditions delayed one of the team buses, all the buses made it through the snowy streets of Cincinnati to the UC campus without issue on Friday.
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More AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Sprained-knee-sidelines-Bengals-TE-C-J-Uzomah-16832968.php
| 2022-02-04T23:19:24
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| 0.959788
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A millennial writer, an R. Crumb-style cartoonist and a coffee-shop barista form the romantic triangle in the Danish coming-of-age drama The Worst Person In The World.
Copyright 2022 NPR
A millennial writer, an R. Crumb-style cartoonist and a coffee-shop barista form the romantic triangle in the Danish coming-of-age drama The Worst Person In The World.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/2022-02-04/the-worst-person-in-the-world-is-the-valentines-day-movie-of-the-year
| 2022-02-04T23:19:25
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| 0.82594
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The U.S. has crossed yet another tragic landmark in the ongoing battle against COVID-19. On Friday, the country surpassed 900,000 deaths from the disease, two years after the first COVID-19 cluster was reported in Wuhan, China. Public health experts say coming close to the 1 million death mark from the virus is "inevitable."
"It's absolutely staggering," said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, which has tracked the number of COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic. "It's unreal, frankly. And what makes it an even ... greater heartbreak — as if the loss of 900,000 souls weren't enough of a heartbreak — is the fact that it's probably an undercount of the number of people that we've lost."
University of Texas at Austin professor and epidemiologist Lauren Ancel Meyers said the "horrible milestone" didn't have to happen.
"It was not inevitable. There are things that we could have done and should have done ... to protect those who were most vulnerable." she said. "It's a very sad day."
Daily deaths remain high even as overall case numbers dip
The rolling seven-day average for daily COVID-19 deaths has been above 2,000 since Jan. 23, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's nearly three times higher than November when the agency was reporting a seven-day average of 700 deaths.
Vaccines are preventing most severe disease and death
As COVID vaccines have become widely available for Americans, the number of those who have received at least one dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine continues to increase.
However, the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans is still relatively low at approximately 64%. Amid the the most recent surge of the now dominant variant omicron, unvaccinated people were 97 times more likely to die compared to those who were boosted, according to data cited this week by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.
Public health experts note that broader vaccination and boosting would have reduced the number of deaths. "We would have at least 300,000 fewer deaths. Probably more ... than that," if the early pace of vaccination had been sustained, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. "But at least 300,000 Americans who have perished would still be with us. It's tragic."
According to the latest CDC data, 41% of Americans have received a booster.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/900-000-americans-have-died-of-covid-in-2-years-of-the-global-pandemic
| 2022-02-04T23:19:26
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A possibility of an Amazon union is once again on the ballot. Workers in Alabama are beginning a re-vote in a new chapter of the historic push to form Amazon's first unionized U.S. warehouse.
Copyright 2022 NPR
A possibility of an Amazon union is once again on the ballot. Workers in Alabama are beginning a re-vote in a new chapter of the historic push to form Amazon's first unionized U.S. warehouse.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/amazon-workers-in-alabama-begin-second-union-vote-heres-how-it-happened
| 2022-02-04T23:19:32
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NPR's Tamara Keith talks with David Maimon, director of Georgia State University's Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group, on how criminals are targeting mailboxes to steal and sell bank checks.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR's Tamara Keith talks with David Maimon, director of Georgia State University's Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group, on how criminals are targeting mailboxes to steal and sell bank checks.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/an-old-fashioned-crime-is-on-the-rise-bank-check-theft
| 2022-02-04T23:19:42
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| 0.889165
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Police are investigating the shooting of Amir Locke by officers executing a no-knock warrant. Video showed him lying on the couch and holding a gun seconds after a SWAT team entered the apartment.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Police are investigating the shooting of Amir Locke by officers executing a no-knock warrant. Video showed him lying on the couch and holding a gun seconds after a SWAT team entered the apartment.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/minneapolis-police-killed-amir-locke-while-serving-a-no-knock-warrant
| 2022-02-04T23:19:48
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| 0.952709
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Updated February 4, 2022 at 5:45 PM ET
Former Vice President Mike Pence called out former President Donald Trump on Friday, saying Trump is "wrong" to say that Pence had the authority to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election when Congress gathered to certify Joe Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021.
Speaking at a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence said, "President Trump is wrong: I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."
Trump has continued to refuse the election's outcome — that he lost to Biden — and this week he inaccurately insisted again that Pence "could have overturned the election" when Pence presided over the counting of electoral ballots at the Capitol. A pro-Trump mob overran the building that day, with some rioters shouting, "Hang Mike Pence."
Pence called Jan. 6, 2021, "a dark day" in Washington. "Whatever the future holds, I know we did our duty that day," Pence said, adding, "I believe the time has come to focus on the future."
"Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election," Pence said, adding that Vice President Kamala Harris "will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024."
"The truth is there's more at stake than our party or political fortunes," Pence added. "Men and women, if we lose faith in the Constitution, we won't just lose elections. We'll lose our country."
Pence's speech came on the same day that the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution censuring two House Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for taking part in a bipartisan committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in which four people were killed.
The resolution says that the committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot is going after people for engaging in "legitimate political discourse." RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel later tried to clarify that language, insisting it was not referring to the violence of the day.
Trump has floated the idea of giving pardons to those convicted of taking part in the violence should he be reelected president in 2024.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/pence-says-trump-is-wrong-to-insist-he-could-have-overturned-election-results
| 2022-02-04T23:19:55
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| 0.969542
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The Republican National Committee censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and in the censure document labeled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol "legitimate political discourse."
Copyright 2022 NPR
The Republican National Committee censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and in the censure document labeled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol "legitimate political discourse."
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/rnc-censures-cheney-and-kinzinger-for-their-participation-in-jan-6-investigation
| 2022-02-04T23:20:01
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NPR News The U.S. has reached 900,000 deaths from COVID-19 By Rob Stein Published February 4, 2022 at 2:16 PM MST Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 3:41 The U.S. has hit more than 900,000 deaths from COVID-19 — yet another once-unimaginable new toll. And the number of people dying every day is still rising. Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/the-u-s-has-reached-900-000-deaths-from-covid-19
| 2022-02-04T23:20:07
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| 0.939143
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NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Michael Carpenter, who represents the U.S. at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on the threat that the European continent could be plunged into war.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Michael Carpenter, who represents the U.S. at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on the threat that the European continent could be plunged into war.
Copyright 2022 NPR
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https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/u-s-diplomat-talks-path-forward-with-russia
| 2022-02-04T23:20:13
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| 0.909585
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___
US economy defies omicron and adds 467,000 jobs in January
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a surprising burst of hiring, America’s employers added 467,000 jobs in January in a sign of the economy’s resilience even in the face of a wave of omicron infections last month. The government’s report also drastically revised up its estimate of job gains for November and December by a combined 709,000. It also said the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to a still-low 4%, mainly because more people began looking for work and not all of them found jobs right away. The strong hiring gain for January, which defied expectations for only a slight gain, demonstrates the eagerness of many employers to hire even as the pandemic raged.
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Amazon workers try new tactics to unionize in Alabama
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon workers and organizers in Bessemer, Alabama, are making door-to-door house calls, sporting pro-union T-shirts and challenging anti-union messaging by Amazon-hired consultants as they try to convince their peers for the second time to unionize their warehouse. The union election starts Friday by secret ballot. The new organizing tactics come two months after the National Labor Relations Board ordered a do-over election upon determining that Amazon unfairly influenced the first election last year. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union estimates more than half of the 6,000 workers who voted last time around remain eligible this time. But the RWDSU still faces an uphill battle from Amazon, which doesn’t seem to have let up its aggressive anti-union stance.
___
Stocks mixed, yields fly as jobs data raises rate outlook
NEW YORK (AP) — Stock indexes ended mixed and Treasury yields jumped Friday as Wall Street’s expectations rise that the Federal Reserve may soon start raising interest rates sharply. The Labor Department said employers added 467,000 jobs last month, triple economists’ expectations. The stronger-than-expected data seems to lock in the Fed’s pivot toward fighting inflation by making moves that would ultimately act as a drag on markets. The S&P 500 climbed 0.5%, even though more stocks fell than rose in the index. The index got a boost from Amazon, which leaped 13.5% following a strong earnings report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%. ___
EU, US to resume trading oysters, mussels after long dispute
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union and the United States have agreed to resume trade in oysters, clams, mussels and scallops from the end of February. The deal announced Friday settles a 10-year trade dispute. Trade in live mollusks between the EU and the U.S. had stopped in 2011 due to a divide in regulatory standards. Under the deal, Spain and the Netherlands will be allowed to export mollusks to the U.S., while Massachusetts and Washington can now trade to the EU. Both sides praised the deal as another positive step in their trade relationship since U.S. President Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump.
___
Kohl’s: Buyout offers undermine value of business
NEW YORK (AP) — Kohl’s says that recent offers to purchase the department store chain undervalue its business, and it is adopting a shareholder rights plan to head off any hostile takeovers. The shareholder rights plan is effective immediately and expires in a year. The move comes as Kohl’s has received multiple buyout offers in recent weeks. Private equity firm Sycamore Partners had reportedly approached Kohl’s about a potential deal last month. A group called Acacia Research, backed by activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP, bid $64 per share, or about $9 billion. At the time the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin-based retailer said that its board was reviewing the offers.
___
Treasury urges closer watch on money laundering in fine art
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fine art isn’t just nice to look at. It’s also attractive to criminals trying to launder money, finance terrorism and trade illegal drugs and arms. And the Treasury Department wants art dealers and financiers to do something about that. The agency issued a report Friday recommending that financial firms and art dealers set up an information-sharing database to track how sales of fine art are linked to bad actors who make anonymous purchases. The need to monitor art sales has become more complicated and necessary with the recent rise in sales of digital assets known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
___
News Corp. hacked, reporters targeted; believed China-linked
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, News Corp., says it has been hacked, with data stolen from journalists and other employees. The cybersecurity firm investigating the intrusion, Mandiant, says Chinese intelligence-gathering is believed to be behind the operation. The Journal reported that people briefed on the intrusion said it appeared to date back to February 2020 and that scores of employees were impacted. It quoted them as saying the hackers were able to access reporters’ emails and Google Docs, including drafts of articles. News Corp. says customer and financial data were so far not affected, nor were company operations interrupted.
___
Biden solicitor swings mineral rights title back to tribes
FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The interior solicitor in the Biden administration says the mineral rights under the original Missouri River riverbed belong to a North Dakota tribal nation. The 68-page memorandum posted Friday by the U.S. Department of Interior is contrary to a May 2020 Trump administration opinion concluding that the state is legal owner of submerged lands beneath the river where it flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation. That memo rolled back an Obama administration opinion favoring the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. At stake is an estimated $100 million in unpaid royalties and future payments certain to come from oil drilling beneath the river.
___
The S&P 500 gained 23.09 points, or 0.5%, to 4,500.53. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 21.42 points, or 0.1%, to 35,089.74. The Nasdaq advanced 219.19 points, or 1.6%, to 14,098.01. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies gained 11.33 points, or 0.6%, to 2,002.36.
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https://www.chron.com/business/article/Business-Highlights-January-jobs-gain-jump-in-16832994.php
| 2022-02-04T23:21:11
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BEAUMONT, Texas — The Diocese of Beaumont is hosting a Mission Possible 5K to benefit catholic schools on Saturday, Feb. 5.
The run/walk will begin at 710 Archie Street with a blessing from Bishop Toups, sanctioned 5K race and a post-race celebration.
Proceeds from this race will fund the unique instructional needs of each of their schools, according to a news release from the Diocese of Beaumont.
Participants who already registered can pick up their packets on the morning of racy day. People who have not already done so, can register the day of, but only card payments will be accepted.
Parking can be found in several areas, but is not allowed in the Chancery parking lot. Organizers encourage participants to get parking before Beaumont Police secures the area at 7:30 a.m.
Volunteers are asked to report to the information booth on race day and park at the Chancery in the side lot off of College Street. Volunteers are also required to take a save environment course, that will be verified prior to the race. You can find that course here in English and in Spanish.
The awards ceremony will begin at 10:00 a.m. with a presentation of the t-shirt contest winners from each campus followed by awards for the top runners by age category. Beaumont Police will remove barricades by 10:30 a.m.
A free t-shirt in included with each registration, but the diocese is offering a dri-fit short-sleeve t-shirt as an option for an additional $5, while supplies last.
Port-o-potties will be located on the side of the Chancery, near the vendor tents. Port-o-potties will also be located at the midway point of the 5K.
Registration Fees:
- Kids K: $20
- 5K: $30
- 5K Family Rate: $25 Each
Age Groups for:
- 1K: 1-14, 15-99
- 5K: 1-14,15-19,20-29,30-39,etc. 70+
Awards for:
- Kids K: Top Overall Male & Female for 14 & Under
- 5K: Top Overall Male & Female, & 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Male & Female each age group
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https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/local/5k-run-benefit-catholic-schools-diocese-of-beaumont/502-6eb8f131-02ad-4bda-9172-8fc24f046cdc
| 2022-02-04T23:21:16
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| 0.949476
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WINNEMUCCA, Nev. (AP) _ Paramount Gold and Silver Corp. (PZG) on Friday reported a loss of $2.7 million in its fiscal second quarter.
The Winnemucca, Nevada-based company said it had a loss of 7 cents per share.
_____
This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on PZG at https://www.zacks.com/ap/PZG
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https://www.chron.com/business/article/Paramount-Gold-Fiscal-Q2-Earnings-Snapshot-16832928.php
| 2022-02-04T23:21:17
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Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trump's false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.”
In a speech to a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump's intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that, as vice president, he had the unilateral power to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.
“President Trump is wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election.”
While Pence has previously defended his actions on Jan. 6 and said that he and Trump will likely never see “eye to eye” on what happened that day, the remarks Friday marked his most forceful rebuttal of Trump to date. And they come as Pence has been laying the groundwork for a potential run for president in 2024, which could put him in direct competition with his former boss, who has also been teasing a comeback run.
Trump this week had escalated his attacks against Pence. In a statement Tuesday, Trump had said the committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol should instead probe “why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval.” And on Sunday, he blasted Pence, falsely declaring that “he could have overturned the Election!”
Vice presidents play only a ceremonial role in the the counting of Electoral College votes, and any attempt to interfere in the count would have represented a profound break from precedent and democratic norms.
Pence, in his remarks Friday, described Jan. 6, 2021, as “a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol" and framed his actions that day as in line with his duty as a constitutional conservative.
“The American people must know that we will always keep our oath to the Constitution, even when it would be politically expedient to do otherwise,” he told the group Friday. He noted that, under Article II Section One of the Constitution, “elections are conducted at the state level, not by the Congress” and that “the only role of Congress with respect to the Electoral College is to open and count votes submitted and certified by the states. No more, no less.”
He went on to call out those who have insisted that isn't the case.
“Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” he added. “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”
The audience applauded Pence's line about beating the Democrats in the upcoming presidential election, but remained silent when Pence said earlier that “Trump is wrong.”
Pence was inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify the presidential election, when a mob of Trump’s supporters violently smashed inside, assaulting police officers and hunting down lawmakers. Pence, who had released a letter moments before the session got underway that made clear he had no authority to overturn the will of the voters, was rushed to safety as some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”
Pence, in his remarks Friday, acknowledged the lingering anger among many in Trump’s base, even as he said it was time “to focus on the future.”
“The truth is, there’s more at stake than our party or political fortunes," he said. "Men and women, if we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country.”
Trump’s escalating rhetoric comes as he has been under growing scrutiny from the House committee investigating the attack. The panel has interviewed hundreds of witnesses, issued dozens of subpoenas and obtained reams of government documents that Trump tried to keep hidden.
It also comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers has been pushing to update the Electoral Count Act to eliminate any ambiguity about the vice president’s role.
While a basic declaration of fact, Pence’s decision to describe Trump as “wrong” was especially significant given Pence’s own posture in the White House. As Trump’s vice president, Pence was exceptionally deferential to him, never publicly voicing disagreement and defending even his most controversial actions.
Pence has so far tried to thread a needle on his actions Jan. 6, which continue to enrage large portions of Trump’s base, posing a potential complication if he runs for president in 2024.
In recent months, he has generally refrained from voluntarily raising the events of that day but has defended his actions when pressed, saying he was abiding by his constitutional role and was “proud” of the actions taken by Congress that day.
“I will always be proud that we did our part on that tragic day to reconvene the Congress and fulfilled our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” he said in one speech last year.
He has also accused Democrats and the media of continuing to focus on the insurrection to score political points against Republicans and divert attention from Biden’s agenda.
Pence has been traveling the country, visiting early voting states, delivering speeches and hosting fundraisers for midterm candidates. Pence, unlike some possible 2024 presidential contenders, has notably declined to rule out running against Trump.
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https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/nation-world/pence-trump-2020-election-jan-6/507-5cddd59b-5127-41bf-9348-72dafd538423
| 2022-02-04T23:21:22
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The Beijing Organizing Committee kicked off the 2022 Winter Olympics with the opening ceremony on Feb. 4. Athletes from around the world will compete on snow and ice in and around Beijing for the next two weeks.
But will the athletes actually compete on real snow? Headlines in the week leading up to the start of Beijing 2022 have suggested otherwise, claiming the event will rely almost entirely on artificial snow.
THE QUESTION
Are the Beijing Olympics relying almost entirely on artificial snow?
THE SOURCES
- Sport Ecology Group
- Beijing 2022 Pre-Games Sustainability Report
- Study from Department of Geography and Environmental Management at University of Waterloo in Canada
- Noah Molotch, associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder
THE ANSWER
Yes, the Beijing Olympics are relying almost entirely on artificial snow.
WHAT WE FOUND
According to a report from the Sport Ecology Group, the 2022 Beijing Olympics will make history as the first Olympics on “virtually 100% artificial snow.” Noah Molotch, associate professor of geography hydrology at the University of Colorado Boulder with expertise in snow hydrology and a doctorate in hydrology, said this will be the first Winter Olympics to rely almost entirely on artificial snow and to knowingly plan to do so from the beginning.
“Many Olympic Games will rely on natural snowfall, but then hedge with artificial snow as needed to augment the natural snow,” Molotch said. “But in these particular games, they knew going in that it's a place that gets very little natural snowfall, and that they would rely exclusively on artificial snow.”
The Olympics’ use of artificial snow for the 2022 Games is confirmed in the Beijing 2022 Pre-Games Sustainability Report. The report explains strategies the Beijing Organizing Committee is attempting to reduce water consumption in the creation of artificial snow, although the report doesn’t confirm the extent to which the Beijing Games will rely on artificial snow.
The Sport Ecology Group said artificial snow has been used in the Winter Olympics since the 1980 games in Lake Placid. Molotch said the snow in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which were located in an unusually warm climate for the Winter Olympics, was 80% artificial.
“Artificial snow tends to be a lot more dense, a lot icier, a lot harder, more like concrete once it's formed on the ground; whereas natural snow can be more like powdery snow, lighter and fluffier,” Molotch said. “Natural snow can also become icy over time, but when it initially falls from the sky, it's quite light and fluffy.”
Artificial snow is good for keeping snow conditions consistent from the top to the bottom of a hill, making it good for downhill skiing and other competitions that rely on speed, Molotch said. For aerial events like the halfpipe, he said, artificial snow can be more hazardous to crashing athletes because of its firmness.
But there is no right formula of snow to eliminate hazards for the athletes. Molotch said that even a mixture of artificial snow and natural snow can become inconsistent on the surface and therefore unsafe as athletes scrape off and melt the top layer of natural snow over the course of a competitive day.
The athletes know the characteristics of the different snow mixtures and prepare appropriately to compete on the specific conditions they’ll face, Molotch said. And they likely have plenty of opportunities to practice on artificial snow.
“Ski resorts across the world rely heavily on artificial snow early in the snow season,” Molotch said. “And depending on where you are in the world, they may rely on it throughout the entire ski season.”
The Sport Ecology Group report estimates that 95% of ski resorts globally rely on snowmaking to some extent. The resorts use their artificial snow to ensure good quality conditions, prolong the ski season, or both.
One major issue with artificial snow is that it’s incredibly water-intensive to create. That’s why the Beijing Organizing Committee dedicated an entire section of their sustainability report to mitigating its impact on the local water supply. This includes its adoption of a “smart snowmaking system” that can be monitored in real-time with digital devices. The Beijing Organizing Committee believes it can save up to 20% of water in snowmaking by using this system.
The need for artificial snow might continue into future Winter Olympics because of climate change, according to the Sport Ecology Group report. A study published in Jan. 2022 led by researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada predicted that in the event of high levels of fossil fuel emissions, only four of the past 21 Winter Olympic host cities, including Beijing, will make for reliable winter host locations by 2050 because of poor natural snow conditions. The researchers believe just one host city — Sapporo, Japan — will still be a reliable host of the Winter Olympics by the end of the century.
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https://www.12newsnow.com/article/news/verify/olympics-verify/winter-olympics-use-artificial-fake-snow-beijing-2022/536-cbc09c16-8105-4719-8bd7-0f00995e2c7f
| 2022-02-04T23:21:28
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| 0.952539
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minneapolis mayor imposes immediate moratorium on no-knock warrants after police shooting of Amir Locke.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Alert-Minneapolis-mayor-imposes-immediate-16833058.php
| 2022-02-04T23:21:29
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| 0.876702
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville Waffle House shooter is found guilty of 4 counts of first-degree murder; jury rejects insanity defense.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville Waffle House shooter is found guilty of 4 counts of first-degree murder; jury rejects insanity defense.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Alert-Nashville-Waffle-House-shooter-is-found-16833053.php
| 2022-02-04T23:21:35
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| 0.902961
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NEW YORK (AP) — US death toll from COVID-19 tops 900,000, propelled in part by the wildly contagious omicron variant.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Alert-US-death-toll-from-COVID-19-tops-900-000-16832832.php
| 2022-02-04T23:21:42
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| 0.878042
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DALLAS (AP) — The family of a Dallas man who died in police custody five years ago can proceed with their lawsuit against four officers, a federal appeals court ruled in an opinion filed Friday that overturned a lower court's ruling.
Qualified immunity shields conduct that “does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known," Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote for the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in sending the case back to U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas.
Godbey had thrown out the lawsuit brought by the family of tony Timpa, ruling that the officers were protected from liability in Timpa's 2016 death by the qualified immunity doctrine. The doctrine shields officers from liability for the legal performance of their duties.
The family accused Officer Dustin Dillard of using excessive force on Timpa by pressing his knee into Timpa's upper back for about 14 minutes. They also accused Sgt. Kevin Mansell, Senior Cpl. Raymond Dominquez and Officers Danny Vasquez and Domingo Rivera of failing to intervene to save Timpa, who was 32 when he died.
According to court documents, Timpa called 911 on Aug. 10, 2016, from a Dallas parking lot and said he was afraid and needed help, telling a dispatcher he suffered from schizophrenia and depression and was off his medication. Officers arrived to find him walking in traffic.
In police body camera videos, officers could be seen forcefully pinning Timpa to the ground for more than 14 minutes and cracking jokes even as the screaming, handcuffed man went still and fell silent. Shaking his limp body, the officers can be heard laughing and comparing Timpa to a child who doesn’t want to wake up for school. Not long after, a paramedic informed them he was dead.
Medical examiners ruled Timpa's death a homicide and said it was caused by cardiac arrest brought on by cocaine and the stress of physical restraint.
In 2017, a grand jury indicted Mansell, Vasquez and Dillard for misdemeanor deadly conduct in Timpa’s death, finding they had acted recklessly. Prosecutors dismissed the charges in March 2019 and the officers returned to active duty the next month.
Godbey threw out the family's lawsuit, which seeks almost $30 million in actual and exemplary damages.
But the three judges on the appeals court panel disagreed with Godbey's rationale and restored the lawsuit.
“Dillard’s continued use of force was not justified by a criminal investigatory function," Clement wrote. "The officers concede that Timpa’s criminal liability was ‘minor’ — no more than a traffic violation.” In fact, “the officers did not intend to charge him with any crimes.”
While overturning the summary judgment for Dillard, Hansell, Dominguez and Vasquez, the appeals court affirmed a summary judgment releasing Rivera from liability.
Dallas city officials do not comment on pending litigation, a city spokeswoman said. Attorneys for the family did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Appeals-court-Suit-may-proceed-over-Dallas-death-16832865.php
| 2022-02-04T23:21:48
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| 0.979154
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WASHINGTON (AP) — That bleak jobs report the White House had been bracing for never arrived Friday.
Instead, President Joe Biden got the pleasant surprise that the U.S. economy had powered through the omicron wave of the coronavirus and posted 467,000 new jobs in January — along with strong revisions to job gains in the two prior months. It showed just how much the pandemic's grip on the economy has faded, though the nation is still grappling with high inflation.
“Our country is taking everything that COVID has to throw at us, and we’ve come back stronger," Biden declared at the White House.
The jobs report suggested the United States has entered a new phase in its recovery from the pandemic. And it capped something of a comeback week for the president.
Also on Friday, the House passed a bill to jumpstart computer chip production and development, a key step for reconciling differences with an earlier measure approved by the Senate. And a day earlier, outside the economy, the administration announced that U.S. forces had raided the home of the Islamic State leader, leading Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi to blow himself up.
Harvard University economist Jason Furman, a former adviser in the Obama White House, said the jobs report showed that employers and workers had gotten over the havoc caused by the pandemic.
The virus “is now one factor among many and no longer the dominant factor it was,” said Furman. He pointed to broad strength across the report and the addition of 151,000 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector — restaurants, hotels, entertainment and more in an area of the economy most prone to disruption from the pandemic.
Yet as the economy strengthens, a question for Biden personally — and his presidency — is whether he can stitch together the positives in a convincing way to revive his support that has declined in polls in the past year.
Who — and what — gets credit?
The infections caused by omicron had caused millions of Americans to miss work, leading to expectations that the economy lost jobs in January. Yet when the figures showed the virus had little impact, Republicans were quick to offer an alternative narrative — that the job gains reflected the expiration of unemployment benefits added with a push by Biden and his Democrats months earlier.
“Now that there is no longer a barrier to work in the form of Democrats’ unemployment bonuses and monthly stimulus checks, Americans are finally coming off the sidelines," said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.
And, jobs aside, Biden acknowledged things aren't entirely rosy. Inflation remains a major challenge, with consumer prices increasing at 7% over the past year.
The strong jobs report, however, may give the Federal Reserve reason to raise interest rates and pull back on its support for the economy to reduce inflation. Average hourly earnings rose 5.7% in January from a year ago, suggesting that the demand for workers is leading to higher incomes and possibly more sources of inflation.
Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the consultancy RSM, said the solid labor market should make it easier for the Fed to hike rates without disrupting growth very much. It's possible that workers will come out of the pandemic more productive than before, making it easier for growth to occur even as interest rates rise.
“Given the fact that corporate profits continued to rise at a strong clip even as wages quickly increased tends to imply that the American commercial sector and economy is in the midst of a productivity boom,” Brusuelas said. “That strongly implies that the economy will be able to absorb coming rate hikes in a better fashion than is currently acknowledged.”
Biden on Friday tried to make a play for the record books — touting the gains that have occurred under his stewardship. At 4% unemployment and 6.6 million jobs added during his first full year, he's making his case that his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package was a wise choice and that lawmakers should now support the rest of his agenda to prolong the growth.
“History has been made here,” Biden declared “It comes alongside the largest drop in unemployment rate in a single year on record, the largest reduction in childhood poverty ever recorded in a single year. And the strongest economic growth this country has seen in nearly 40 years.”
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Biden-sees-U-S-economy-as-powering-past-the-16833064.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:00
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| 0.974635
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SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A Los Angeles judge on Friday appeared strongly inclined to allow Bill Cosby to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege and avoid giving a deposition in the lawsuit of a woman who alleges he sexually abused her when she was 15 in the mid-1970s.
At a hearing to argue the issue, Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan agreed with Cosby's attorney that the 84-year-old has a reasonable fear of again facing criminal charges for one or more of the many sexual assault allegations that have been publicly aired against him, and has a right to avoid saying anything under oath that might lead to such charges.
“It does appear he has a reasonable fear of prosecution, and if new information came out, that could cause a prosecutor to change their mind,” Karlan said. “I don’t see how one could find to the contrary, other than concluding that he has a reasonable fear.”
Attorneys for Judy Huth, who alleges Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him at the Playboy Mansion around 1974, are seeking to compel Cosby to give a second deposition. Cosby's attorneys denied the allegation. He gave an initial deposition soon after the lawsuit was filed in 2014, before his two criminal trials and a later-overturned conviction in Pennsylvania.
Huth's attorney John Steven West argued that accusations against Cosby have been aired for years, and that all the alleged incidents date back decades. He said that any criminal charges would already have been filed.
“The facts that are known overwhelmingly show that Mr. Cosby does not have a realistic fear of prosecution,” West said. “Despite the fact that for 16 years his name has been at the forefront of accusations of sexual misconduct, there has been exactly one prosecution.”
West pointed out that Los Angeles police investigated Huth's allegations seven years ago, that the district attorney declined to file charges, and that other prosecutors have done the same with other Cosby accusers.
The judge didn't buy the argument.
“The fact that prosecutors decline to prosecute, doesn’t mean that a newly elected prosecutor won’t take a different view,” Karlan said, “nor would any future district attorney be bound by a decision not to prosecute.”
The judge planned to issue a written ruling later, but left little doubt that it would favor Cosby.
Cosby's lawyer Jennifer Bonjean argued, and the judge agreed, that the Pennsylvania case was a cautionary tale that applied here. Cosby, believing he had assurance from a prosecutor that he would not face charges, then was prosecuted after making damaging revelations in a 2005 civil lawsuit.
“They told him they weren’t going to prosecute him,” Bonjean said, "then 10 years later, they revoked it, after what? After he gave a deposition.”
That reversal is what led a Pennsylvania appeals court to throw out Cosby's conviction in June, after he had served nearly three years in prison.
Cosby had become the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when the jury at his 2018 retrial found him guilty of drugging and molesting college sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.
Earlier this week, Bonjean asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a bid by prosecutors to revive the case.
Cosby was already a groundbreaking Black actor and standup comedian when he created the top-ranked “Cosby Show” in the 1980s. A barrage of sexual assault allegations later destroyed his image as “America’s Dad” and led to multimillion-dollar court settlements with at least eight women.
Huth's is among the few lawsuits that he is still facing.
Karlan agreed to one more postponement, from April to May, of trial in the long-delayed case, but said Friday that he was determined to see the May date stick and have the jury trial begin.
The Associated Press generally does not name alleged victims of sexual assault unless they speak publicly, as Huth and Constand have done.
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Bill-Cosby-likely-to-avoid-testifying-in-sex-16833001.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:06
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| 0.982331
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bipartisan group of two dozen former South Carolina federal prosecutors are offering their “wholehearted support” for Judge Michelle Childs’ nomination to an appellate court, an elevation that's on hold due to Childs' consideration for an even higher post — the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Not only is Judge Childs fair to all lawyers, but she treats criminal defendants and victims with the utmost respect,” the attorneys wrote in a letter, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and Sen. Chuck Grassley, the panel's ranking Republican.
“Her professionalism and kindness have been a model for several recent federal judicial appointments in South Carolina, and she is admired throughout the state bar.”
President Joe Biden has nominated Childs, currently a judge on South Carolina's federal court, for a post on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, an appellate court often seen as a springboard to the U.S. Supreme Court.
She had been slated to appear before senators earlier this week, but the confirmation hearing was put off indefinitely following the White House’s confirmation that Childs was under consideration for a coming U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, due to the impending retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.
Childs has been a federal judge in South Carolina for more than a decade. In December 2020, just a month after Biden's victory, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn recommended her for the D.C. appellate court. Last week, Clyburn told reporters the move had been an intentional one, so as to position Childs for the highest court.
The White House has said it intends to name a pick by the end of this month. Potential nominees are defined by Biden’s election-year pledge that he would nominate a Black woman, with early discussions centering on a handful of names. Those include California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former Breyer clerk now on the D.C. appellate court.
But there has been focus on Childs due to advocacy from Clyburn, the highest ranking Black leader in Congress. The top Biden ally suggested the then-candidate promise to nominate a Black woman as his campaign struggled heading into South Carolina’s 2020 primary. Biden made the pledge at a debate in Charleston, and Clyburn endorsed him shortly thereafter.
Childs also shown the potential for bipartisan appeal in a closely divided Senate. On Sunday, she drew praise from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a former Judiciary Committee chairman, who called her a “fair-minded, highly gifted jurist.”
The potential nomination has drawn criticism from the left, mainly over Childs' defense work on employment cases while in private practice before becoming a judge. Childs' defenders have rebutted that critique, saying Childs also represented plaintiffs against employers, doing that and defense work evenhandedly.
Signatories to the letter include Bart Daniel, who served as South Carolina’s top federal prosecutor during the George H.W. Bush administration, and Peter McCoy, who left the post last year after an appointment by Donald Trump. It was also signed by Pete Strom, a Bill Clinton appointee, as well as Bill Nettles, South Carolina’s U.S. Attorney under Barack Obama.
“What we have observed is an unflappable demeanor and a willingness to consider each party’s position fully and fairly before reaching a decision,” the attorneys wrote of Childs’ courtroom manner. “We sign this bipartisan letter because we know these qualities will be brought to bear as a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.”
___
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Childs-gets-prosecutors-wholehearted-backing-16833019.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:12
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en
| 0.964087
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WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The FBI is reviewing the death of a Black teenager who was restrained for more than 30 minutes at a Kansas juvenile detention center, a county official said Friday.
Sedgwick County Commission Chairman David Dennis said he was told by county Sheriff Jeff Easter that the FBI requested all information regarding the death of 17-year-old Cedric Lofton, The Wichita Eagle reported.
“Sedgwick County provided everything that they asked for and will continue to do that,” Dennis said.
Dennis made his comments at a commission meeting that was called after a community task force recommended Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice be asked to review Lofton's death. The FBI is part of the Justice Department.
Lofton died two days after being taken to Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center in Wichita on Sept. 24 after his foster father called authorities seeking help because the teenager was hallucinating.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said last month that the 5-foot-10, 135-pound Lofton assaulted at least one police officer before being taken to the intake center. Lofton walked out of a cell there and struggled with several staff members before he was shackled, put on his stomach and handcuffed, Bennett said.
Staff members eventually realized Lofton had no pulse. They attempted chest compressions and called for emergency personnel to take him to a hospital, where he died two days later.
An autopsy ruled that Lofton's death was a homicide.
Bennett has said the county employees involved in Lofton's death could not be prosecuted under Kansas' self-defense laws because they were protecting themselves. That decision has prompted some state lawmakers to consider revising the law.
County Counselor Mike Pepoon said Friday the federal investigation would not involve any discussion of the state law Bennett cited.
“The FBI and the DOJ could look into civil rights criminal violations, hate crimes, that sort of thing, like they’ve done in other cases,” Pepoon said. “They will not be looking at whether or not anybody violated any of the statues that Marc Bennett was looking at."
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/FBI-reviewing-in-custody-death-of-restrained-16832906.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:24
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en
| 0.98146
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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem died from cardiac arrest and “associated effects,” his wife said Friday.
Stenehjem, a former legislator and the state’s longest-serving attorney general, died last week at age 68, just hours after he was found unresponsive taken to a hospital.
“I am deeply grateful for all those who worked tirelessly in Wayne’s time of need, supporting me and the rest of his family throughout the day,” his wife, Beth Bakke Stenehjem, said in a release.
Hundreds of people gathered at the Bismarck Event Center on Thursday to pay tribute to Stenehjem. He was eulogized as a man of integrity, honesty and strong moral principles.
“Wayne devoted his life in service to the State of North Dakota, and I am touched by the number of people who have let me know how much he meant to them,” Bakke Stenehjem said.
Stenehjem had announced last month that he would not seek another term, saying he wanted to spend more time traveling and with his family.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Family-State-attorney-general-died-from-cardiac-16833041.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:31
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en
| 0.989226
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ATLANTA (AP) — Tax collections continue to roll into Georgia's state coffers, supporting Gov. Brian Kemp's plan for a big boost in spending and a possible tax cut.
Figures released Friday show Georgia's general fund collected $17.8 billion through Jan. 31. That's $2.7 billion, or 18%, ahead of last year's pace. Through the first seven months of the 2022 budget year, the state is on pace to collect $30.5 billion, more than $3 billion above the $27.3 billion that lawmakers designated for spending.
Individual income taxes are running 16% ahead of last year through seven months, while corporate income taxes are running 32% ahead. Sales taxes are running 18% ahead. The state economist warned last month that big year-over-year increases are likely to abate in coming months, as revenue begins to be compared to months in which the state economy was more robust than in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kemp has proposed boosting spending for the current budget year, which ends June 30, by more than $4 billion. That includes using $1.6 billion from last year's surplus to give state income tax rebates — $250 to every single person filing state income taxes, $375 to every single person heading a household and $500 to married people filing jointly. Kemp also wants to make one-time payments of $2,000 to teachers, $5,000 to state employees and $1,000 to other K-12 workers including school bus drivers, part-time employees and cafeteria workers. Finally, Kemp wants to restore full funding to the state's K-12 and university funding formulas.
The governor proposes converting those one-time payments to annual raises and continuing the funding restorations in the budget year beginning July 1, when he wants to spend more than $30 billion in state revenue.
Republicans are also eyeing plans to cut state taxes. Republican state senators contending for higher office have proposed eliminating Georgia's income tax entirely. Republican House Speaker David Ralston of Blue Ridge has rejected that plan, but has said he wants to make a more incremental tax cut. Kemp has said he wants to work with Ralston on a tax cut.
The state finished the 2021 budget year with a $2.35 billion surplus even after the state’s rainy day fund was filled to the legal limit of $4.3 billion.
Georgia’s budget pays to educate 1.7 million K-12 students and 435,000 college students, house 45,000 state prisoners, pave 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) of highways and care for more than 200,000 people who are mentally ill, developmentally disabled or addicted to drugs or alcohol.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Georgia-state-tax-revenue-bonanza-continues-16833008.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:37
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en
| 0.964954
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WHL
All Times Local
Western Conference
B.C. Division
U.S. Division
Eastern Conference
East Division
Central Division
Note: Two points for a team winning in overtime or shootout; the team losing in overtime or shootout receives one which is registered in the OTL or SOL columns.
Tuesday's results
Prince George 2 Tri-City 0
Wednesday's results
Edmonton 6 Medicine Hat 2
Spokane 3 Prince George 2 (OT)
Friday's results
Moose Jaw at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Edmonton at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Red Deer at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Brandon, 7 p.m.
Regina at Lethbridge, 7 p.m.
Prince George at Seattle, 7:05 p.m.
Portland at Tri-City, 7:05 p.m.
Victoria at Everett, 7:05 p.m.
Kelowna at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Kamloops at Vancouver, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday's games
Red Deer at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Edmonton at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Lethbridge at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Moose Jaw at Brandon, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Winnipeg, 8 p.m.
Kelowna at Tri-City, 6:05 p.m.
Vancouver at Seattle, 6:05 p.m.
Prince George at Everett, 6:05 p.m.
Kamloops at Victoria, 7:05 p.m.
Portland at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Sunday's games
Regina at Calgary, 2 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Winnipeg, 5 p.m.
Seattle at Vancouver, 4 p.m.
Kamloops at Victoria, 4:05 p.m.
Tuesday's games
Regina at Edmonton, 11 a.m.
Calgary at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Wednesday's games
Calgary at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Lethbridge at Moose Jaw, 7 p.m.
Spokane at Portland, 7 p.m.
Tri-City at Kamloops, 7 p.m.
Vancouver at Kelowna, 7:05 p.m.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/HKO-WHL-Standings-16832888.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:49
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en
| 0.898098
|
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho has agreed to change its living will template so that pregnant people will not be kept on life support against their wishes.
The move is part of a legal settlement reached this week with four women who said the state's law governing advance health care directives discriminates based on gender and subjects pregnant people to different medical treatment than others.
The women, represented by legal groups including the women’s rights organization Legal Voice and the end-of-life patient rights organization Compassion & Choices, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2018 targeting the state's Medical Consent and Natural Death Act. The act says competent people have a fundamental right to control decisions on their medical care, including when to have life-saving care withdrawn. But it also included a template living will that said the directive would have no force during the course of a pregnancy.
State officials interpreted the rule to mean pregnant people must receive life-saving treatment regardless of their living wills, and the template with the pregnancy exclusion was promoted on a state website.
At least 47 states have adopted laws allowing living wills or advance medical directives, and 11 of them placed restrictions on advance directives for pregnant individuals. Besides Idaho, the others are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, according to Legal Voice.
Under the settlement, Idaho officials admit no wrongdoing but must make sure advance directives are followed regardless of whether the patient is pregnant. The state will create a new living will template, and notify everyone who has already filed a living will with the state's advance directive registry of the court's decision.
One of the women who brought the lawsuit, Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln, said the settlement was a welcome relief. She was pregnant when the case was first filed, and is now pregnant with her second child.
“My family and I can rest assured my rights and choices will be honored as we anticipate our family growing later this year,” Gaona-Lincoln said in a statement. “There is enough for expecting parents in Idaho to worry about; due to the previous pregnancy exclusion, I wasn’t granted that peace of mind with our first child.”
The Idaho Attorney General's office declined to comment on the settlement.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Idaho-settles-lawsuit-on-living-wills-for-16832985.php
| 2022-02-04T23:22:55
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en
| 0.967075
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Baltimore Ravens President Dick Cass retiring
Cass, 76, has led the organization for the past 18 years; Sashi Brown to take over in April
Cass, 76, has led the organization for the past 18 years; Sashi Brown to take over in April
Baltimore Ravens President Dick Cass is retiring, the team announced Friday evening.
For the first time in nearly two decades, the Ravens will have a change at the top of the organization.
Cass, 76, who has led the organization for the past 18 years, will retire in April and hand over the leadership reigns to new incoming president Sashi Brown, who has served for the past three years as president of Monumental Basketball and as a special advisor to Monumental Sports Chairman Ted Leonsis.
Sources tell 11 Sports that Brown was the hand-picked choice by both Cass and team owner Steve Bisciotti. Brown is a former executive vice president with the Cleveland Browns. Brown, who is black, is hired during a time when NFL diversity practices have come under scrutiny.
Cass' tenure has seen enormous growth in the Ravens organization. He helped navigate Bisciotti's purchase of the team from Art Modell and has held the president's role since 2004.
During that time, Cass has led initiatives to expand the Ravens' footprint both at the team facility and in the community. An impactful presence on the board of the Ravens Foundation Inc., Cass has also served on boards for the Greater Baltimore Committee, Kennedy Krieger Institute and Baltimore Community Foundation.
Cass has overseen every aspect of the Ravens organization and done so with a sharp eye, an even disposition and the respect of not only his team but the entire league.
Since his 2004 Baltimore arrival, Cass helped guide Ravens teams that have won five AFC North titles, clinched 10 postseason berths, appeared in three AFC Championship games and won one Super Bowl (XLVII in 2012). During his tenure, Baltimore has produced the NFL's fifth-best overall winning percentage (.586), including the league's third-best mark at home (.713).
Cass has spearheaded multiple M&T Bank Stadium improvement/enhancement projects, reaching investment levels over $200 million. Cass also led the construction and subsequent expansion, at a total cost of more than $90 million, of the Ravens' Under Armour Performance Center, which continues as one of the NFL's best office and practice facilities.
Born in Washington, D.C., Cass graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton in 1968 before graduating from Yale Law School in 1971. He and his wife, Heather, have two children: a daughter, Courtney (Ryland Sumner), and son, Willy (Madelaine), and three grandchildren.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/baltimore-ravens-dick-cass-retires/38987461
| 2022-02-04T23:23:00
|
en
| 0.974289
|
PLEASANT HILL, Iowa (AP) — A couple accused of starving their teenage son, who has special needs, has agreed to plea deals, according to court documents.
Richard Joe Ryan and Jennifer Ryan, of Pleasant Hill, were charged in April of last year with first-degree kidnapping and neglecting a dependent person.
The teenager's condition came to light when a citizen reported seeing the teenager zip-tied to a chair while his mother worked an eight-hour shift at Smith Automotive in Pleasant Hill, KCCI-TV reported.
Doctors at Blank Children’s Hospital said the teenager suffered from severe malnutrition and was only 78 pounds when he arrived at the hospital.
Investigators found the boy was routinely confined to his room, which had an alarm on the door, and was not permitted to eat breakfast, according to court records.
New court documents show Richard Ryan has agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges of false imprisonment, neglect of a dependent person and two counts of child endangerment. He’s scheduled to be sentenced April 1.
Jennifer Ryan also will agree to a plea deal in court on April 1, according to court documents.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Iowa-couple-accused-of-starving-their-son-to-take-16832924.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:01
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en
| 0.977846
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NEW YORK (AP) — Jason Epstein, a publishing innovator and bon vivant who helped put the classics in paperback, co-founded The New York Review of Books and worked with such novelists as E.L. Doctorow, Vladimir Nabokov and Philip Roth, has died at age 93.
Epstein died Friday “surrounded by his books” at his home in Sag Harbor, New York, said his wife, the author and former New York Times journalist Judith Miller. The cause was congestive heart failure, she said.
The book world has its share of accidental lifers and Epstein was one. Once a young bohemian who desired only enough money to have time for reading, he took a job at Doubleday in the early 1950s, joined Random House in 1958 and remained for decades as editorial director. He became one of the industry's most honored executives, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Foundation, presenters, of the National Book Award, in 1988; and from the National Book Critics Circle in 2002.
Epstein was not just a man of letters, but of food and drink, whose own books included the memoir “Eating” and whose dining companions ranged from Buster Keaton to Jacqueline Kennedy to the notorious attorney-political operative Roy Cohn. In “Making It,” a 1967 best-seller about the literary world, Norman Podhoretz wrote affectionately of Epstein’s tastes for imported shoes, first-class travel and “appallingly expensive” restaurants.
“He was beautiful to watch,” Podhoretz observed.
He was as well-read and as opinionated as the authors he worked with, “so damned intelligent,” Mailer would joke, once telling The Associated Press that he had to adjust to an editor “who might be a lot brighter” then he was. Epstein published an early excerpt of Nabokov’s “Lolita” and fought unsuccessfully to convince Doubleday to publish the scandalous novel about a professor’s obsession with a 12-year old girl. Epstein also feuded bitterly with Gore Vidal and became a critic of the Library of America, believing that the imprint he helped establish had grown bloated. Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf would call him the “cross I bear,” while Epstein labeled Cerf “the bear I cross.”
Among the many books edited by Epstein: Doctorow’s Depression-era novel “Billy Bathgate,” Jane Jacobs’ classic of urban studies “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Mailer’s CIA epic “Harlot’s Ghost.”
Epstein admittedly passed over the occasional best-seller, although he was proud of rejecting Shirley MacLaine’s New Age favorite “Out on a Limb.”
“We were friends and she actually wrote much of that book at my house in Sag Harbor (on New York’s Long Island). But she never told me what it was about,” Epstein told the AP in 2000. “I read this and I said, ‘Come on, Shirley, you’re nuts.’”
The son of a successful textile salesman, Epstein grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, where he acquired his longtime passion for fine cuisine and spent so much time at the library that one librarian saved his card while he and his family spent a year in New York City. In the late 1940s, he entered Columbia University, when the school’s president was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Epstein met the future U.S. president once, and, by accident, made a fine impression.
“I had spent the night downtown with a girl,” Epstein told the AP. “I could hardly stand up. I had been up all night and he thought I was a bright young fellow, up bright and early. He was beaming, and he shook my hand.”
In his early 20s, his quest for affordable classics inspired him to start one of publishing’s first literary paperback imprints, Anchor Books, now part of Penguin Random House. He also helped launch two other major and lasting projects. One came in the early 1960s when a newspaper strike and the general tedium of literacy criticism led Epstein and his then-wife, Barbara, to help found The New York Review of Books, along with critic Elizabeth Hardwick and editor Robert Silvers among others. In the late 1970s, he was among the creators of the Library of America, which offers hardcover editions of the country’s most influential writers.
He had two children with Barbara Epstein: daughter Helen Epstein, a contributor to The New York Review of Books; and son Jacob Epstein, a television writer whose time in the book world was brief and unfortunate. His novel “The Wild Oats” was published in 1979 and was soon found to contain numerous similarities to Martin Amis’ “The Rachel Papers.”
“Epstein wasn’t influenced by ‘The Rachel Papers,’” Amis wrote at the time, “he had it flattened out beside his typewriter.”
Jason Epstein was the rare publishing veteran to show early and unforced enthusiasm for technology. He looked for ways to sell books online before the rise of e-books and Amazon.com and was a strong advocate for in-store machines that could print and bind works on demand. Epstein essentially advocated a system that enabled authors to bypass the industry that employed him, looking back to the days when Parson Weems could sell books about George Washington by simply sitting under a tree and hitting on a drum.
“Soon writers and readers will be able to meet again on a worldwide green where writers may once more beat their drums or hire a Weems to drum up business for them,” Epstein wrote in “Book Business,” a memoir published in 2001. “On the World Wide Web, future storytellers and their readers can mingle at leisure and talk at length.”
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Jason-Epstein-publishing-editor-and-innovator-16832833.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:07
|
en
| 0.980171
|
Police: Suspect's crime spree in Howard County involves 89 victims, possibly more
Howard County authorities said one man's crime spree left dozens of victims in his wake.
County police said investigators connected 19-year-old Kaishawn Johnson to a series of crimes that spanned nearly half of last year.
"This shows how one person can have such an impact on a community," Howard County police spokesman Seth Hoffman said.
Investigators arrested Johnson at his Washington, D.C., home on Feb. 1 based on an indictment on 133 criminal counts.
"Taking this one person off the street who has committed so many of these crimes is a big relief for us and, I hope, for Howard County," Hoffman said.
Johnson is accused of a crime spree that includes stealing 20 vehicles, breaking into and stealing from 92 others and, in three cases, breaking into a home to steal car keys.
"We started to put the pieces together, and we started through good old police work, some newer technology and investigative techniques, we were able to link all these crimes and the suspect was charged," Hoffman said.
The indictment names at least 89 different Howard County residents as victims who were targeted across 13 days from August to December 2021 from Clarksville to Columbia to Elkridge. A large concentration of crimes were reported in the River Hill and Hickory Ridge communities, among others, in the area of Maryland Route 32 and U.S. Route 29.
"A lot of different areas in Howard County. Just crimes of opportunity wherever was easiest to grab something out of a car or enter a house, so that's what we saw in a lot of these cases," Hoffman said.
Police said while Johnson is the only person charged so far, the investigation continues and authorities believe there may be more victims.
Johnson is being held without bond at the Howard County Detention Center. He has qualified for a public defender, and he has a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 7.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/kaishawn-johnson-howard-county-crime-spree-suspect/38987603
| 2022-02-04T23:23:10
|
en
| 0.978829
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A judge on Friday temporarily halted Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order that sought to allow parents to opt out of classroom mask mandates for their children but had been met with resistance from some school districts.
Arlington Circuit Court Judge Louise DiMatteo ruled in favor of seven school boards that filed a lawsuit challenging the governor's order, one of the first actions Youngkin took after his inauguration Jan. 15. Her temporary restraining order means mask mandates put in place by school boards may remain, at least for now.
The judge found that the single issue before the court was whether Youngkin, through his emergency powers, can override the decision of local school boards delegated to them under a 2021 state law that required boards to provide in-person instruction in a way that adheres to federal COVID-19 mitigation strategies “to the maximum extent practicable.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking, regardless of vaccination status.
“On this pivotal point, the Court concludes that the Governor cannot” override local school officials, the judge wrote in her ruling.
DiMatteo said that while the case is pending in court, there appears to be a benefit to keeping the current polices of universal mask mandates in place.
“Keeping rules in place that have been established over the school year helps children, families and staff understand how they may be impacted during the pandemic. Without a restraining order, children and staff would have to reassess certain health conditions they believe are impacted by a mask policy (any mask policy), having relied upon a universal mask mandate implemented by the School Boards,” DiMatteo wrote in her ruling.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jason Miyares said he will appeal the ruling.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said in a statement that the decision was just the first step in the judicial process. “The governor will never stop fighting for parents’ ability to choose what is best for their children,” she said.
The school boards said in a joint statement that the judge’s order protects “the health and well-being of all students and staff and reaffirms the constitutional right of Virginia’s local school boards to enact policy at the local level.”
The school boards that sued were: Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Hampton, Prince William County and Richmond. They collectively serve over 350,000 students.
Youngkin, who campaigned heavily on education issues and had long said he opposed mask mandates, signed the order within hours of taking the oath of office. It took effect Jan. 24.
Districts across the state took various approaches to the governor's order, with many telling students masks were still required, despite the governor's order. Others dropped their mandates.
The Arlington lawsuit was one of several related to Youngkin’s executive order but the first to go before a judge.
A group of Chesapeake parents challenged the order in front of the Virginia Supreme Court, and parents of children with disabilities have filed a federal lawsuit. Another case was filed in Loudoun County against the school board and in support of the governor’s order.
Fairfax County Public Schools Board Chair Stella Pekarsky said in an interview that the uncertainty of the past couple of weeks have been difficult for families, the vast majority of whom opted to have their children follow the district’s masking policy.
“We are hopeful this will be permanent,” she said.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Judge-rules-against-VA-governor-s-opt-out-school-16832914.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:14
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| 0.972416
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Two white men were arrested earlier this week, days after a Black delivery van driver accused them of chasing him and shooting at him after he dropped off a package in a Mississippi city.
But driver Demonterrio Gibson, 24, on Friday said he doesn’t believe police took him seriously at first and his attorneys say both suspects have been “undercharged” and should face charges of attempted murder.
Nobody was injured but the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, Mississippi, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) south of Jackson — and pushback in local media from the city’s Black police chief.
Gregory Case and his son Brandon Case were arrested and released on bond Tuesday in connection with the alleged Jan. 24 attack on Gibson, 24. Gregory Case faces a charge of conspiracy; Brandon Case, shooting into a motor vehicle.
Lawyers for Gibson say more serious charges, including hate crime charges, are warranted in what they believe was a racially motivated assault. “I want both of them charged with attempted murder,” attorney Carlos Moore said Friday.
Moore and attorney James Bryant compared the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun. The white men, including a father and son, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Defense lawyers said they suspected he had committed crimes in their neighborhood, but prosecutors said there was no evidence of that. The three still face a federal hate crime trial.
Brookhaven, with a population that is 68% Black, is in Lincoln County, where District Attorney Dee Bates said information will be presented to a grand jury for a decision on charges once police complete the investigation of the Gibson incident. Witnesses, including Gibson, will be able to testify.
Gibson told The Associated Press on Friday that he was in uniform when the incident happened. He said he was in a van rented by FedEx but that it did not have a FedEx logo on it. He pulled into a driveway and dropped off a package sometime after 7 p.m. on Jan. 24. Before he turned his van around in the driveway to exit, he said, he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.
He said the pickup driver tried to cut him off as he exited the driveway. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man.
“I drive down about two or three houses and there's another guy standing in the middle of the street, with a gun pointed at my vehicle,” said Gibson. The man motioned for him to stop. “I'm looking at him, like shaking my head, because why would I stop for somebody with a gun?”
Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the chase. Later, police told local news outlets that the elder Case was the suspected pickup driver, while Brandon Case was the man in the street. Gregory Case is 58, and his son is 35, according to The Daily Leader of Brookhaven.
Gibson said he called police and was told by one officer that police had received a call about a suspicious person at the same address at the same time. “I said, ‘Sir, I’m not a suspicious person. I'm a FedEx worker. I was just doing my job and they shot at me.'”
The Cases have not commented publicly on their arrests. The municipal clerk's office in Brookhaven said Friday morning it had not yet received paperwork on their arrests or information on their attorneys. Police chief Kenny Collins did not return calls from the AP seeking more information.
Early this week, Collins, who is Black, pushed back against allegations on social media of racism in Brookhaven. “We’re not going to have outsiders coming in trying to stir that up,” he told The Daily Leader. “Brookhaven is not a racist, prejudiced town. You can’t judge a town by the actions of two individuals.”
“People need to be careful what they post on social media,” Collins said. “If somebody is killed or hurt because of what you post on social media, you will be charged, too.”
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Lawyers-demand-serious-charges-for-gunfire-at-16832913.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:20
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| 0.985442
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Contract talks continue: Ravens willing to let Lamar Jackson set pace of negotiations
DeCosta: Ravens expect to get much younger on defensive line for 2022 season
DeCosta: Ravens expect to get much younger on defensive line for 2022 season
For years, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson has been a big part of the team's offense. And, moving forward, the team wants to keep it that way, but Jackson's contract negotiations are a bit unusual.
Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta made it clear Friday that the team both wants and expects Lamar Jackson to be the quarterback for years to come.
Jackson is coming up on the final year of his contract. Because Jackson represents himself and does not use an agent, all of his dealings are directly with DeCosta, and those conversations are ongoing.
The Ravens exercised the right to pick up the fifth year of Jackson's rookie contract, which means next season, Jackson will make $23.5 million -- a huge bump of nearly $20 million from last year's salary. But it's still far below the $40-million-a-year tier of the top paid quarterbacks get in the NFL.
It isn't clear if Jackson is betting on himself on having a huge season in 2022 or just exercising extreme caution navigating the contract nuances of a massive deal. What is clear is the Ravens want Jackson and they are more than willing to let him set the pace of negotiations and timing of an eventual new deal.
"Lamar and I had probably, I don't know, five or six conversations at different points over the last year in regards to his contract," DeCosta said. "I would say we're working at Lamar's pace. He's comfortable where we are right now. I think he feels that we have a lot of unfinished business, he has a lot of unfinished business. He wants to win the division, he wants to win the Super Bowl. I think he and I both share that same vision."
Protecting Jackson physically is probably more urgent than protecting him financially. DeCosta said improving the offensive and defensive lines will take high priorities this offseason, especially in the NFL Draft in April.
Along with getting a new defensive coordinator, the Ravens also expect to get much younger on the defensive line for the 2022 season. Veteran Calais Campbell is a free agent and defensive tackle Brandon Williams has a huge cap number while Derek Wolfe remains under contract but has the combo of age and injury history.
Getting younger and better up front on the defense didn't sneak up on the Ravens. The team has been projecting big changes at this position for the coming season for some time.
"I would say that the defensive line is definitely something that as we looked out two years ago last year, we felt like 2022 would be the year that we'd have to find some more young guys," DeCosta said. "We did feel that this would be the year that we would probably be looking at defensive linemen as well."
Also Friday, DeCosta made it clear the team isn't interested in wide receiver Antonio Brown, it does expect cornerback Marcus Peters back and building a better offensive line is an offseason priority.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/ravens-lamar-jackson-contract-talks-continue/38986910
| 2022-02-04T23:23:20
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| 0.980078
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CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (AP) — A sheriff's deputy is being praised for smashing the windows of a burning SUV and rescuing a frightened dog in a neighborhood south of Denver.
Douglas County Deputy Michael Gregorek's body camera video from Jan. 22, which was released Thursday, shows him arriving on the scene as smoke pours from the driver's side window of the SUV. The owner frantically yells that his dog Hank is somewhere inside the locked vehicle.
Gregorek uses his retractable baton to smash a side window and then the rear window before pulling Hank out and quickly carrying him to a nearby snowbank.
“I just went in there and grabbed on. And his body had already kind of started to tense up, so I knew he was really in a bad way. ... Nothing else really mattered at that point other than getting Hank out of the car,” Gregorek said in an interview released by the sheriff's department.
A neighbor told the deputy his wife was a veterinarian, but by the time she got home, Hank was already sprinting around and ready to play.
“I’m a dog parent. My only child is my dog, so I would have done the same thing, whether it be baby, human, dog, cat. A life is a life, and you kind of treat it as such in a situation like that," Gregorek said.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Lucky-dog-Colorado-deputy-rescues-pup-from-16832941.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:26
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| 0.987636
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The Republican National Committee censured two GOP lawmakers on Friday for participating on the committee investigating the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and assailed the panel for leading a "persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."Related video above: Get the Facts: A timeline of Jan. 6, 2021GOP officials took a voice vote to approve censuring Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger at the party's winter meeting in Salt Lake City. The censure was approved a day after an RNC subcommittee watered down a resolution that had recommended expelling the pair from the party.The censure accuses Cheney and Kinzinger of "participating in a Democrat-led persecution."RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel denied that the "legitimate political discourse" wording in the censure was referring to the violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and said it had to do with other actions taken by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But the resolution drew no such distinction.RNC members take issue with what they see as the overly broad subpoenas, including one for Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward. Ward, an osteopathic doctor, sued to block the subpoena and argues providing her phone records would compromise patients' privacy."What are you going for? What are you looking for? You should have a specific scope," said Pam Pollard, an RNC member from Oklahoma.But GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who voted to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials, excoriated his party for the censure."Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol," he tweeted. "Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost." McDaniel is his niece.McDaniel and her co-chair Tommy Hicks focused their remarks to RNC members on the 2022 midterms and key tenets of their platform — crime rates, parental rights over school curriculum choices and pandemic restrictions on businesses. Though they hardly mentioned the former president by name, Trump's sway among party officials was made evident by the censure and criticisms of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Cheney, of Wyoming, and Kinzinger, of Illinois, are the only two Republicans on the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Trump and other GOP members were incensed when Kinzinger and Cheney agreed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's invitation to join the Democratic-led House committee, giving the Jan. 6 panel a veneer of bipartisan credibility.The most consequential element of the censure is a call for the party to no longer support Cheney and Kinzinger as Republicans.The censure — combined with support from RNC members from Wyoming — allows the party to invoke a rule to back candidates other than Cheney. It sets in motion a way for the party to support Cheney's primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump. Wyoming's primary is in August.Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler said in a statement that the move subverted the will of Wyoming voters."Frank Eathorne and the Republican National Committee are trying to assert their will and take away the voice of the people of Wyoming before a single vote has even been cast," he said, referring to the Wyoming GOP chair who co-sponsored the resolution.Kinzinger is not running for reelection.RNC members also voted in favor of a rule change that would prohibit their candidates from participating in debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates.The institution has been a staple of presidential elections for three decades, but Republicans have decried the format as biased. After advancing on Friday, the rules change is expected to be completed when the RNC meets in summer.Republicans object to past moderators they perceive as left-leaning and remarks about Trump made by commission co-chair Mike McCurry."Restoring faith in our elections means making sure our candidate can compete on a level playing field," McDaniel said in a speech on Friday."We are not walking away from debates, we are walking away from the Commission on Presidential Debates because it's a biased monopoly that does not serve the best interests of the American people," she added.Even with a rules change, decisions about whether to participate in commission-sponsored debates will fall to the GOP's eventual 2024 nominee.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Republican National Committee censured two GOP lawmakers on Friday for participating on the committee investigating the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and assailed the panel for leading a "persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."
Related video above: Get the Facts: A timeline of Jan. 6, 2021
GOP officials took a voice vote to approve censuring Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger at the party's winter meeting in Salt Lake City. The censure was approved a day after an RNC subcommittee watered down a resolution that had recommended expelling the pair from the party.
The censure accuses Cheney and Kinzinger of "participating in a Democrat-led persecution."
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel denied that the "legitimate political discourse" wording in the censure was referring to the violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and said it had to do with other actions taken by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But the resolution drew no such distinction.
Rick Bowmer / AP Photo
Ronna McDaniel, the GOP chairwoman, speaks during the Republican National Committee winter meeting Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Salt Lake City. Republican Party officials voted to punish GOP Reps.
RNC members take issue with what they see as the overly broad subpoenas, including one for Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward. Ward, an osteopathic doctor, sued to block the subpoena and argues providing her phone records would compromise patients' privacy.
"What are you going for? What are you looking for? You should have a specific scope," said Pam Pollard, an RNC member from Oklahoma.
But GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who voted to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials, excoriated his party for the censure.
"Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol," he tweeted. "Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost."
McDaniel is his niece.
McDaniel and her co-chair Tommy Hicks focused their remarks to RNC members on the 2022 midterms and key tenets of their platform — crime rates, parental rights over school curriculum choices and pandemic restrictions on businesses. Though they hardly mentioned the former president by name, Trump's sway among party officials was made evident by the censure and criticisms of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Cheney, of Wyoming, and Kinzinger, of Illinois, are the only two Republicans on the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Trump and other GOP members were incensed when Kinzinger and Cheney agreed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's invitation to join the Democratic-led House committee, giving the Jan. 6 panel a veneer of bipartisan credibility.
The most consequential element of the censure is a call for the party to no longer support Cheney and Kinzinger as Republicans.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., participate in the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th Committee markup to vote on adopting the report "Recommending that the House of Representatives Cite Stephen K. Bannon for Criminal Contempt of Congress" on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021.
The censure — combined with support from RNC members from Wyoming — allows the party to invoke a rule to back candidates other than Cheney. It sets in motion a way for the party to support Cheney's primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump. Wyoming's primary is in August.
Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler said in a statement that the move subverted the will of Wyoming voters.
"Frank Eathorne and the Republican National Committee are trying to assert their will and take away the voice of the people of Wyoming before a single vote has even been cast," he said, referring to the Wyoming GOP chair who co-sponsored the resolution.
Kinzinger is not running for reelection.
RNC members also voted in favor of a rule change that would prohibit their candidates from participating in debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The institution has been a staple of presidential elections for three decades, but Republicans have decried the format as biased. After advancing on Friday, the rules change is expected to be completed when the RNC meets in summer.
Republicans object to past moderators they perceive as left-leaning and remarks about Trump made by commission co-chair Mike McCurry.
"Restoring faith in our elections means making sure our candidate can compete on a level playing field," McDaniel said in a speech on Friday.
"We are not walking away from debates, we are walking away from the Commission on Presidential Debates because it's a biased monopoly that does not serve the best interests of the American people," she added.
Even with a rules change, decisions about whether to participate in commission-sponsored debates will fall to the GOP's eventual 2024 nominee.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/rnc-censures-liz-cheney-adam-kinzinger-jan-6-probe/38987541
| 2022-02-04T23:23:30
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| 0.963248
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MIAMI (AP) — Prosecutors filed two murder charges Friday against a 25-year-old real estate agent accused in the deaths of two homeless men in Miami last year.
Willy Maceo was previously charged with attempted murder after his arrest in December, according to court records.
Investigators had previously identified Maceo as a suspect in the Dec. 21 death of Jerome Antonio Price, 56, who was fatally shot while sleeping on a sidewalk in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, and the Oct. 16 fatal stabbing of Manuel Perez, 59, in downtown Miami. Maceo is also accused in the non-fatal shooting of a homeless man just a few hours before Price's death.
Detectives linked Maceo's Dodge Charger to the Wynwood shooting through surveillance video, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said during a news conference Friday. Investigators tracked down the car and found a Glock 9mm handgun, whose bullets matched casings found at both shooting scenes.
Surveillance video also led detectives to link Maceo to the Perez death. The man in that video shows a man who looks exactly like Maceo, officials said.
Investigators said they also were able to use video evidence and cellphone records to help them trace Maceo’s movements on the nights both men were killed.
Maceo has no criminal record but has a history of mental illness, authorities said.
The Miami Herald last month reported that Maceo had been sent to a hospital for a mental-health evaluation after he was acting erratically at his parents’ home in Kendall. Police officers seized his Glock but later returned it to him after the department’s legal bureau decided he was not enough of a risk for court intervention.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Man-faces-2-counts-of-murder-in-Miami-homeless-16832984.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:32
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| 0.982737
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Thieves steal equipment from several Baltimore businesses, police say
Setting up a business during the coronavirus pandemic is hard enough, but thieves made it even harder for a couple of Baltimore entrepreneurs.
Baltimore police are investigating a series of break-ins across the city. The business community said they are concerned.
The break-ins happened in west Baltimore, east Baltimore, Mount Vernon and the Howard Street corridor.
"We were home, about 3:30 a.m., the alarms go off and our cameras show three guys break the window and come through the glass in search of money," Cuples Tea House co-owner Eric Dodson said.
Dodson and his wife own Cuples Tea House on Howard Street. They had only been open for two months when the break-in happened on Jan. 26.
"Less than 20 seconds, they came through, went behind the counter and were gone," he said.
They didn't get anything because it's a cashless business, but they left a big mess.
Milk & Honey Vagrant Coffee on East Lanvale Street had a similar experience on Monday.
"Someone broke the window and stole the register. Fortunately, we're cashless, so they didn't actually get any money," said Evan Talbott, Milk & Honey Vagrant Coffee.
They didn't even take the tip jar but left a mess for the cafe to clean up.
"And they bled cause they cut themselves when they broke the windows," Talbott said.
One future business suffered a blow when someone cut the chain and stole kitchen equipment that had been donated to them by other businesses. The items were chained and locked up outside Monday so that contractors could have space to work.
"Probably eight pieces total and each piece was around $1,000, so we think like around $8,000 to $10,000. It was like a six-burner Vulcan oven, several chest freezers, reach-in fridge freezers," Our Time Kitchen co-owner Kiah Gibian said.
Gibian and her business partner were planning to open Our Time Kitchen in the spring. Once up and running, the shared space will help local chefs get their businesses going.
The businesses that donated the equipment are planning to host fundraisers later this month to replenish what was lost.
Meanwhile, Dodson said he's keeping a brick as a reminder of what happened at his first brick-and-mortar store.
"To be burglarized, it was disheartening, but thanks to the community and the resiliency of the community and the people that looked out for us, we were reopened in less than a day," he said.
Police said they made an arrest for a break-in at Dooby's on Jan. 24. Detectives are investigating whether the person in custody is responsible for the other burglaries in the area.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/stolen-equipment-from-baltimore-businesses/38986397
| 2022-02-04T23:23:41
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| 0.986547
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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams apologized Friday after a 2019 video surfaced showing him using a racial slur for white people when talking about the New York Police Department.
The video, first reported by the New York Daily News, shows Adams, who is Black, speaking at a private event in December 2019, during the early stages of his mayoral run.
Adams is a former New York City police officer who rose to the rank of captain before leaving to serve in elected office. While in the New York Police Department, he became an outspoken critic of the department and co-founded an advocacy group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which pushed for criminal justice reform and spoke out against police brutality.
Speaking to a Harlem business group, Adams said “Every day in the police department, I kicked those crackers' ass, man! I was unbelievable in the police department with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement.” The line drew applause.
Adams was asked about the video at a news conference Friday and said he wanted to “definitely apologize” for his remarks and called them “inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate comments, should not have been used. Someone asked me a question using that comment and playing on that word. I responded in that comment. But clearly, it’s a comment that should not be used and I apologize not only to those who heard it but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me, and that was inappropriate," Adams said.
The word has often been considered a derogatory term for poor Southern white people, but the origins of the term are not entirely clear.
A 2013 report from NPR found the term was used as an insult as far back as the 17th Century and was later used to refer to Scots-Irish immigrants settling in the Southern U.S.
The mayor, who has been in office a little over a month, said the comment referred to his efforts to combat racism in the department.
“My fight in the police department was fighting racism throughout my entire journey. And I was serious about fighting against that and that is what it was attached to, the question that was asked. And that, you got my response, based on what that question was," he said.
The head of the city's largest police union quickly put out a statement defending Adams.
“Whenever a controversial video of a police officer surfaces online, we ask for fairness instead of a rush to outrage. We will apply the same standard here," said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch, who is white.
"We have spoken with Mayor Adams about this video. We have spent far too many hours together in hospital emergency rooms these past few weeks, and we’ve worked together for decades before that. A few seconds of video will not define our relationship. We have a lot of work to do together to support our members on the streets.”
Adams apology came a day after he hosted President Joe Biden in New York City and they met with top law enforcement officers to discuss plans to try to cut down gun violence in cities.
That presidential visit followed the deaths of two New York City police officers in a shooting in Harlem.
___
Associated Press reporter Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report
___
Follow Price on Twitter at twitter.com/michellelprice
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/NYC-Mayor-Eric-Adams-apologizes-for-using-racial-16832955.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:44
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| 0.983638
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Pence says 'Trump is wrong' to say 2020 election could be overturned
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trump's false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply "wrong."
Speaking to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump's intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that he could have done something to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.
"President Trump is wrong," Pence said. "I had no right to overturn the election."
Pence stated "the presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone."
Pence's remarks come as he has been laying the groundwork for a potential run for president in 2024, which could put him in direct competition with his former boss, who has also been teasing a comeback run.
In a statement Tuesday, Trump said the committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol should instead probe "why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval." And on Sunday, he blasted Pence, falsely declaring that "he could have overturned the election!"
Vice presidents play only a ceremonial role in the the counting of Electoral College votes, and any attempt to interfere in the count would have represented a profound break from precedent and democratic norms.
"Frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president," Pence said. "Under the constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024."
Pence, in his remarks Friday, described Jan. 6, 2021, as "a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol."
Pence was inside the building, presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify the presidential election, when a mob of Trump’s supporters violently smashed inside, assaulting police officers and hunting down lawmakers. Pence, who had released a statement earlier that day to make clear he had no authority to overturn the will of the voters, was rushed to safety as some rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence!"
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/trump-is-wrong-pence/38986773
| 2022-02-04T23:23:51
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| 0.979167
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EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A man has been fatally shot by police after apparently holding multiple children and a woman hostage inside an Evansville home.
The man called 911 dispatchers Friday, told them he was “losing his mind” and was preparing to shoot and kill his family, according to 911 audio obtained by the Evansville Courier & Press.
He also called other agencies and a local television station, according to the newspaper.
Police Sgt. Nick Winsett said officers arrived at the home and were able to remove “multiple” children before the man allegedly retreated into a back room while holding a female hostage with a knife.
The man was shot after attempts by officers to negotiate with him were not successful, Winsett said.
”(The female victim) was starting to yell in pain and from the knife being held against her,” Winsett said. “That’s when our officers were able to neutralize him and rescue her.”
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Police-fatally-shoot-man-holding-woman-children-16832993.php
| 2022-02-04T23:23:57
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| 0.993617
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UM School of Pharmacy students administer COVID-19 booster shots
Next week will be Health Care Heroes week in Maryland.
On Friday, some pharmacy students at the University of Maryland Baltimore did their part to vaccinate fellow students.
|| COVID-19 updates | Maryland's latest numbers | Get tested | Vaccine Info ||
Those students joined Safeway for Booster Day. The university has a booster requirement for all students who live on campus.
Students from the School of Pharmacy got hands-on experience administering those doses. Those who received the doses said getting their shot was a no brainer.
"I would like to resume my daily normal living. I'm just trying to do my part to stop the COVID pandemic," said Adrienne Kambouris, who received a booster shot.
"Our students were really excited to do this opportunity, especially since this semester just started, they're excited to come back to campus and interact with each other, and receiving these boosters just allow them to do it a little bit more safely," said Cherokee Layson-Wolf, associate professor UM School of Pharmacy.
The clinic runs until 7 p.m. this evening.
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/university-of-maryland-baltimore-pharmacy-students-give-covid-19-booster-shots/38987050
| 2022-02-04T23:24:01
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| 0.973094
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BAYOU BLUE, La. (AP) — Police in Louisiana on Friday arrested a man accused of raping and killing his 5-year-old niece in North Carolina more than four years ago.
David Wesley Prevatte, 23, of Lumberton, North Carolina, was arrested Friday in Bayou Blue, Louisiana, Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said in a news release.
He said North Carolina's Pender County Sheriff’s Office tracked Prevatte to the community 43 miles (69 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans after getting a warrant accusing him of first-degree murder and first-degree rape of Paitin Fields in November 2017.
Capt. Brennan Matherne, a spokeperson for Webre, said he did not know whether Prevatte has an attorney who could comment.
The little girl died Nov. 16, 2017, three days after her family brought her to a hospital, unresponsive.
North Carolina news outlets reported that she was Prevatte’s niece.
“An autopsy showed signs of sexual trauma and strangulation,” and detectives identified Prevatte as a suspect in June 2018, the news release said.
It said Prevatte pleaded guilty the following March to unrelated charges of intimidating a witness, breaking and entering, larceny, and burning a building, and spent about 10 months in prison. He was released in January 2020.
The warrant against him also accuses him of committing a sex offense against a child.
He will be extradited to Pender County, Webre said. He complimented “the tenacity and professionalism ... that led to the arrest.”
Pender County Sheriff Alan Cutler said, “This has been an ongoing investigation and I am extremely pleased and proud of the effort that has been put into this investigation by my personnel."
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Sheriff-Uncle-of-slain-girl-tracked-down-4-years-16833033.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:03
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| 0.965063
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ORLAND PARK, Ill. (AP) — A commuter train struck the front-end of a school bus that stalled on tracks in suburban Chicago.
The driver and the five students aboard the bus were able to exit before the 2:40 p.m. Friday crash in Orland Park, southwest of Chicago.
Orland Fire Protection District Chief Michael Schofield said an investigation shows “the driver stopped at the tracks as required to do so, but when she started the bus to cross, the bus stalled with the front end of the bus over the tracks.”
“The gate came down on top of the bus and the driver then quickly escorted the five children off of the bus to safety minutes before the Metra train hit the front of the bus,” he said.
Metra service near Orland Park temporarily was halted, according to the commuter service.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Stalled-school-bus-struck-by-Chicago-area-16833056.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:09
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| 0.965635
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US death toll from COVID-19 hits 900,000, accelerated by omicron
Propelled in part by the wildly contagious omicron variant, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.
The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, North Carolina.
The milestone comes more than 13 months into a vaccination drive that has been beset by misinformation and political and legal strife, though the shots have proved safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness and death.
"It is an astronomically high number. If you had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic was getting going that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it," said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
He noted that most of the deaths happened after the vaccine gained authorization.
"We got the medical science right. We failed on the social science. We failed on how to help people get vaccinated, to combat disinformation, to not politicize this," Jha said. "Those are the places where we have failed as America."
Just 64% of the population is fully vaccinated, or about 212 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We have underestimated our enemy here, and we have under-prepared to protect ourselves," said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "We've learned a tremendous amount of humility in the face of a lethal and contagious respiratory virus."
Nor is COVID-19 finished with the United States. Dr. Andrew Noymer, a professor of public health at the University of California at Irvine, predicted the U.S. will hit 1 million deaths by March 1.
"I think it's important for us not to be numbed. Each one of those numbers is someone," said the Rev. Gina Anderson-Cloud, senior pastor of Fredericksburg United Methodist Church in Virginia. "Those are mothers, fathers, children, our elders."
Tracking COVID-19
- Here's how the authorization process for children's COVID-19 shots is different than others
- Disneyland mandates vaccines for employees but not guests
- Strained US hospitals seek foreign nurses amid visa windfall
While omicron is loosening its grip on the U.S., with new cases plunging in recent weeks and the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 turning downward, deaths are running at more than 2,400 per day on average, the highest level since last winter.
Despite its wealth and its world-class medical institutions, the U.S. has the highest reported toll of any country, and even then, the real number of lives lost directly or indirectly to the coronavirus is thought to be significantly higher.
Experts believe some COVID-19 deaths have been misattributed to other conditions. And some Americans are thought to have died of chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes because they were unable or unwilling to obtain treatment during the crisis.
Anderson-Cloud lost her dementia-stricken father after he was hospitalized for cancer surgery and then isolated in a COVID-19 ward. He went into cardiac arrest, was revived, but died about a week later.
She had planned to be by his bedside, but the rules barred her from going to the hospital. She wonders if his condition was made worse by his isolation. She wonders if he was scared. She wonders how many other cases like his there are.
"There are all these stories and all that pain," she said.
COVID-19 has become one of the top three causes of death in America, behind the big two — heart disease and cancer. Noymer said if the mortality rate from COVID-19 continues, it will shave up to two years off U.S. life expectancy.
Ja said he and other medical professionals are frustrated that policymakers are seemingly running out of ideas for getting people to roll up their sleeves.
"There aren't a whole lot of tools left. We need to double down and come up with new ones," he said.
When the vaccine was rolled out in mid-December 2020, the death toll stood at about 300,000. It hit 600,000 in mid-June 2021 and 700,000 on Oct. 1. On Dec. 14, it reached 800,000.
It took just 51 more days to get to 900,000, the fastest 100,000-death jump since last winter.
The latest 100,000 deaths encompass those caused by both the delta variant and omicron, which began spreading rapidly in December and became the predominant version in the U.S. before the month was out.
While omicron has proved less likely to cause severe illness than delta, the sheer number of people who became infected with omicron contributed to the high number of deaths.
"We have been fighting among ourselves about tools that actually do save lives. Just the sheer amount of politics and misinformation around vaccines, which are remarkably effective and safe, is staggering," Sharfstein said.
He added: "This is the consequence."
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https://www.wbaltv.com/article/us-death-toll-covid-19-900k/38987217
| 2022-02-04T23:24:11
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| 0.979502
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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Student protesters from a notoriously combative teachers’ college in southern Mexico rolled a driverless semi-tractor truck at considerable speed down a slope toward a line of National Guard and police officers Friday.
The officers got out of the way of the out-of-control freight truck, which crashed into a structure near a toll booth. But the National Guard said 14 of its officers were injured by stones and bottle rockets launched by the students.
The guard was called in after the students blockaded the main highway between Mexico City and the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.
Students from the rural teachers' college known as Ayotzinapa have a longstanding reputation for clashing with authorities, blocking the highway in the city of Chilpancingo and hijacking passing passenger buses and trucks.
In 2014, 43 students from the college were hijacking buses in the nearby city of Iguala when they were kidnapped and presumably killed by a drug gang.
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Student-protesters-in-Mexico-aim-truck-at-16833032.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:15
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| 0.982387
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US economy defies omicron and adds 467,000 jobs in January
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a surprising burst of hiring, America’s employers added 467,000 jobs in January in a sign of the economy’s resilience even in the face of a wave of omicron infections last month. The government’s report also drastically revised up its estimate of job gains for November and December by a combined 709,000. It also said the unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to a still-low 4%, mainly because more people began looking for work and not all of them found jobs right away. The strong hiring gain for January, which defied expectations for only a slight gain, demonstrates the eagerness of many employers to hire even as the pandemic raged.
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Amazon workers try new tactics to unionize in Alabama
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon workers and organizers in Bessemer, Alabama, are making door-to-door house calls, sporting pro-union T-shirts and challenging anti-union messaging by Amazon-hired consultants as they try to convince their peers for the second time to unionize their warehouse. The union election starts Friday by secret ballot. The new organizing tactics come two months after the National Labor Relations Board ordered a do-over election upon determining that Amazon unfairly influenced the first election last year. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union estimates more than half of the 6,000 workers who voted last time around remain eligible this time. But the RWDSU still faces an uphill battle from Amazon, which doesn’t seem to have let up its aggressive anti-union stance.
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Stocks mixed, yields fly as jobs data raises rate outlook
NEW YORK (AP) — Stock indexes ended mixed and Treasury yields jumped Friday as Wall Street’s expectations rise that the Federal Reserve may soon start raising interest rates sharply. The Labor Department said employers added 467,000 jobs last month, triple economists’ expectations. The stronger-than-expected data seems to lock in the Fed’s pivot toward fighting inflation by making moves that would ultimately act as a drag on markets. The S&P 500 climbed 0.5%, even though more stocks fell than rose in the index. The index got a boost from Amazon, which leaped 13.5% following a strong earnings report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%. ___
EU, US to resume trading oysters, mussels after long dispute
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union and the United States have agreed to resume trade in oysters, clams, mussels and scallops from the end of February. The deal announced Friday settles a 10-year trade dispute. Trade in live mollusks between the EU and the U.S. had stopped in 2011 due to a divide in regulatory standards. Under the deal, Spain and the Netherlands will be allowed to export mollusks to the U.S., while Massachusetts and Washington can now trade to the EU. Both sides praised the deal as another positive step in their trade relationship since U.S. President Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump.
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Kohl’s: Buyout offers undermine value of business
NEW YORK (AP) — Kohl’s says that recent offers to purchase the department store chain undervalue its business, and it is adopting a shareholder rights plan to head off any hostile takeovers. The shareholder rights plan is effective immediately and expires in a year. The move comes as Kohl’s has received multiple buyout offers in recent weeks. Private equity firm Sycamore Partners had reportedly approached Kohl’s about a potential deal last month. A group called Acacia Research, backed by activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP, bid $64 per share, or about $9 billion. At the time the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin-based retailer said that its board was reviewing the offers.
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Treasury urges closer watch on money laundering in fine art
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fine art isn’t just nice to look at. It’s also attractive to criminals trying to launder money, finance terrorism and trade illegal drugs and arms. And the Treasury Department wants art dealers and financiers to do something about that. The agency issued a report Friday recommending that financial firms and art dealers set up an information-sharing database to track how sales of fine art are linked to bad actors who make anonymous purchases. The need to monitor art sales has become more complicated and necessary with the recent rise in sales of digital assets known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
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News Corp. hacked, reporters targeted; believed China-linked
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, News Corp., says it has been hacked, with data stolen from journalists and other employees. The cybersecurity firm investigating the intrusion, Mandiant, says Chinese intelligence-gathering is believed to be behind the operation. The Journal reported that people briefed on the intrusion said it appeared to date back to February 2020 and that scores of employees were impacted. It quoted them as saying the hackers were able to access reporters’ emails and Google Docs, including drafts of articles. News Corp. says customer and financial data were so far not affected, nor were company operations interrupted.
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Biden solicitor swings mineral rights title back to tribes
FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The interior solicitor in the Biden administration says the mineral rights under the original Missouri River riverbed belong to a North Dakota tribal nation. The 68-page memorandum posted Friday by the U.S. Department of Interior is contrary to a May 2020 Trump administration opinion concluding that the state is legal owner of submerged lands beneath the river where it flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation. That memo rolled back an Obama administration opinion favoring the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. At stake is an estimated $100 million in unpaid royalties and future payments certain to come from oil drilling beneath the river.
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The S&P 500 gained 23.09 points, or 0.5%, to 4,500.53. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 21.42 points, or 0.1%, to 35,089.74. The Nasdaq advanced 219.19 points, or 1.6%, to 14,098.01. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies gained 11.33 points, or 0.6%, to 2,002.36.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/business/article/Business-Highlights-January-jobs-gain-jump-in-16832994.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:19
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| 0.954919
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(RNS) — Bruce Lindsay never expected to own a church. But when his mother died shortly before the pandemic, he wanted to use his inheritance to do something extraordinary.
“My mother, if she were alive today, I think would have a great chuckle at what I’ve purchased,” said Lindsay. “I found myself surrounded by a church when it was the last place on earth I wanted to go to as a kid.”
In August, after purchasing a 900-square-foot-Methodist church built in 1876, Lindsay and his business partner, Anna Cronin, opened Dirt Church Brewing Co. in East Haven, Vermont. It’s one of at least eight church breweries that have opened in the U.S. since 2020.
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This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.
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Today, the U.S. has roughly 30 breweries based in once-vacant churches. Though some church breweries have faced pushback for offering suds in a once sacred space, the move has precedent. Monks have been brewing beer in monasteries for centuries, offering it to visitors and often imbibing it themselves at a time when it was safer to drink beer than water.
Dirt Church Brewing Co. originally intended to open a brewery inside the church, but Cronin and Lindsay found it lacked running water, a septic tank and heat. Rather than tearing open the building to add the required services, they built the taproom next door, where the town’s former meetinghouse once stood. The church, now used as an art gallery and event space, remains integral to the brewery’s identity.
The name “dirt church” is both a nod to the 19th-century building as well as lingo used by the cycling community that Lindsay and Cronin belong to. “It’s kind of our little cheeky nickname for the Sunday morning long ride that was usually on mountain bikes or gravel bikes,” said Cronin. “Instead of going to ‘church-church,’ we would say, ‘Hey, are you going to dirt church?’”
Today, the brewery hosts “dirt church” for its patrons once a month via Sunday bike rides, runs or hikes — followed by a few celebratory beers at the taproom, of course.
Across the country in San Diego, The Lost Abbey brewing company opened a new location in December inside the shell of a Mexican Presbyterian church built in 1906. The brewery added pews, chandeliers, tapestries and even stained-glass windows to accentuate its slightly irreverent brand.
“This building fell into massive disrepair and probably would have been demolished were it not for the developers that saved it,” said Tomme Arthur, co-founder of The Lost Abbey. This is the brewery’s first location in a former house of worship.
The Lost Abbey was founded in 2006 to offer beers inspired by Belgian monastic brewing traditions, as well as some “nondenominational” beers brewed in no particular style. Per the company’s slogan, it offers brews to “sinners and saints alike” — a motto it’s embraced wholeheartedly.
The new location, appropriately dubbed “The Church,” is split into two sides, one for sinners and one for saints. The sections are marked by corresponding décor: A St. Peter statue presides over the saints area, and Mary Magdalene — who is often misidentified as a prostitute — occupies the sinners side.
The Lost Abbey’s beers play off of similar tropes, with “saintly” names such as “10 Commandments” or “Gift of the Magi” juxtaposed with names like “Judgment Day” or “Serpent’s Stout.” The next addition will be a beer featuring Baby Moses, a wink at the popular “Mandalorian” character Baby Yoda.
“We’ve always taken our beers more seriously than a lot of other things,” said Arthur, who grew up attending Catholic school. “What’s great is that every time that we need some sort of inspiration, we’re able to open up the Bible.”
The Ministry of Brewing, located in what was once St. Michael the Archangel Church in Baltimore, makes it a point to avoid religious themes in its marketing.
“All of our names of our beers are typically Baltimore references or something about the neighborhood,” said Jon Holley, the brewery’s general manager. “As far as religious terms, imagery, things like that, we already know that being in a church is a sensitive thing for a lot of people, so we’re not trying to touch that at all.”
The church was built in 1857 and was home to a German Catholic congregation and, later, a Spanish-speaking congregation before closing due to the cost of upkeep. In 2018, the Ministry of Brewing began a full renovation to preserve and restore many of the original elements of the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The church reopened to the public as a brewery in January 2020, featuring a dazzling interior with soaring columns and a mural-painted barrel ceiling. The brewery also hosts events, fundraisers and even local delegate debates.
Though Holley said he “half expected” pushback for residing in a historic church, the brewery has received overwhelming support. Most often, he said, patrons can be found enjoying the brewery’s bestselling hazy pale ale called “Wispy,” a reference to wispy stained glass.
Like the other two breweries, Dirt Church Brewing Co. in Vermont is intentional about its beer names. Its flagship beer? It’s named “Rejoice,” after Lindsay’s mother, Joyce.
“It’s our most popular beer,” said Lindsay. “Without my mother’s help, none of this would exist today.”
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https://www.chron.com/news/article/Suds-in-the-sanctuary-breweries-populate-vacant-16833007.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:21
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| 0.975862
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WINNEMUCCA, Nev. (AP) _ Paramount Gold and Silver Corp. (PZG) on Friday reported a loss of $2.7 million in its fiscal second quarter.
The Winnemucca, Nevada-based company said it had a loss of 7 cents per share.
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This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on PZG at https://www.zacks.com/ap/PZG
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/business/article/Paramount-Gold-Fiscal-Q2-Earnings-Snapshot-16832928.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:25
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| 0.94254
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NEW YORK (AP) — Five players were suspended Friday for violations of the minor league drug program, raising this year’s total to nine.
Free agent pitcher Nick Belzer and pitcher Charles Hall of Oakland’s Class A Central Lansing farm team were suspended for 50 games each for a second positive test for a drug of abuse. Miami Double-A outfielder Tristan Pompey also was suspended for 50 games for a second positive test for a drug of abuse.
Detroit pitcher Hector Rodriguez and Arizona pitcher Jose Valdez were suspended for 60 games each following positive tests for the performing-enhancing substance Stanozolol. Both are on Dominican Summer League rosters.
Four players were given 60-day bans on Jan. 28 following positive tests for Stanozolol: Seattle pitcher Brayan Diaz, Chicago Cubs left-hander Carlos Garcia, Houston right-hander Jorge Geraldo and Texas right-hander Aron Vargas. All are on Dominican Summer League rosters.
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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https://www.chron.com/sports/article/5-minor-leaguers-suspended-for-violating-drug-16832873.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:27
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| 0.944312
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minneapolis mayor imposes immediate moratorium on no-knock warrants after police shooting of Amir Locke.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Alert-Minneapolis-mayor-imposes-immediate-16833058.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:32
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| 0.876702
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville Waffle House shooter is found guilty of 4 counts of first-degree murder; jury rejects insanity defense.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville Waffle House shooter is found guilty of 4 counts of first-degree murder; jury rejects insanity defense.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Alert-Nashville-Waffle-House-shooter-is-found-16833053.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:38
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| 0.902961
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ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — Ski jumping captivates viewers every four years, when they fearlessly fly the length of an American football field plus the end zones.
Casual fans, though, probably have no clue about the scoring system or skills and techniques necessary to win gold even though the sport has been a part of the Winter Olympics since the first one in 1924.
In the U.S., most people can't probably name a ski jumper other than “Eddie the Eagle,” from the 2016 film about Eddie Edwards’ unlikely bid to become a British Olympian.
The Associated Press is here to help. Here's a look at what to watch, starting Saturday when the women go for gold, from the moment ski jumpers sit on a bar about as high as a 40-story building until they glide over machine-made snow and wait to see how far they flew and how the judges scored their performance.
THE BAR IS VERY HIGH
Ski jumpers sit on a bar, calming their nerves with deep breaths, and wait for a green light to go. If there's too much of a gust, they have to slide back off the bar and onto a step to wait for wind to calm down. A focused mind, which ignores fears, is key.
FUN ON THE IN-RUN
With skis wider and longer than those in other disciplines, jumpers go down a steep incline referred to as the in-run. They try to avoid making contact with the sides of ice-filled channels go as fast as 100 kph (62 mph) to help them fly farther.
Jumpers lead with their helmet, throw their hands back and crouch low into a tuck with a flat back for aerodynamics. Balance and flexibility are critical.
CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF
Near the end of the in-run, men and women make an explosive jump without moving their upper body to create lift for flight. The timing and technique in the take-off is perhaps the most important part of the 15-second process from sitting on the bar to sliding to a stop in the snow.
COME FLY WITH ME
Jumpers lean forward with hands near hips, hovering their torso over skis that are in a “V" shape in a technique used since Swedish ski jumper Jan Bokloev started doing it in 1985 after they previously had them parallel.
COMING IN FOR A LANDING
When skis hit the snow, judges want one slightly ahead of the other and for the jumpers to gracefully glide on what's known as the outrun.
STYLE POINTS MATTER
Jumpers are aiming for the K-point of the hill, where it starts to flatten out, to earn 60 points and those who fly past it earn more points while points are deducted from coming up short. Five judges award scores of up to 20 points for style from start to finish, looking for jumpers who look keep their torso and limbs still while floating through the air and land gracefully among other things.
SIZE MATTERS
There's a dirty little secret in the sport, which is plagued by eating disorders. Fat don't fly is a phrase heard at least in the U.S., because physics prevent a heavier jumper from flying farther than a lighter one.
Norway's Maren Lundby decided not to defend her Olympic gold because she put on weight and chose to put her physical and mental health first, leading to her skipping the season.
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS
If you're looking for a winner, maybe don't pick an American. The U.S. has won only one Olympic medal, and that happened nearly a century ago in what was quite a tale. Anders Haugen left the first Winter Olympics in 1924 without any hardware, but 50 years later was awarded a bronze medal after a scoring error was confirmed.
Norway, Austria and Germany are traditional powers. Poland and Japan are pretty good, too. Japanese jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi and Germany’s Karl Geiger are relatively safe bets to earn a spot on the podium.
On the women's side with Lundby taking time off and top-ranked Marita Kramer of Austria out after testing positive for COVID-19, Germany's Katharina Althaus and Sara Takanashi of Japan are the favorites.
HEY, WHAT’S NEW?
This year, for the first time at the Olympics, men and women will compete together in a mixed team event.
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Follow AP Sports Writer Larry Lage at https://twitter.com/larrylage
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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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https://www.chron.com/sports/article/EXPLAINER-Olympic-ski-jumpers-count-on-technique-16832907.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:40
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| 0.964229
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NEW YORK (AP) — US death toll from COVID-19 tops 900,000, propelled in part by the wildly contagious omicron variant.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Alert-US-death-toll-from-COVID-19-tops-900-000-16832832.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:44
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| 0.878042
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PARIS (AP) - Results from French football:
Lyon 2, Marseille 1
Marseille 5, Angers 2
Saint-Etienne vs. Montpellier, 11 a.m.
Monaco vs. Lyon, 3 p.m.
Lorient vs. Lens, 7 a.m.
Nice vs. Clermont Foot, 9 a.m.
Reims vs. Bordeaux, 9 a.m.
Strasbourg vs. Nantes, 9 a.m.
Troyes vs. Metz, 9 a.m.
Rennes vs. Brest, 11 a.m.
Lille vs. PSG, 2:45 p.m.
PSG vs. Rennes, 3 p.m.
Montpellier vs. Lille, 11 a.m.
Lyon vs. Nice, 3 p.m.
Monaco vs. Lorient, 7 a.m.
Angers vs. Strasbourg, 9 a.m.
Brest vs. Troyes, 9 a.m.
Clermont Foot vs. Saint-Etienne, 9 a.m.
Nantes vs. Reims, 9 a.m.
Lens vs. Bordeaux, 11:05 a.m.
Metz vs. Marseille, 2:45 p.m.
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https://www.chron.com/sports/article/French-Results-16832990.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:46
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| 0.722282
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DALLAS (AP) — The family of a Dallas man who died in police custody five years ago can proceed with their lawsuit against four officers, a federal appeals court ruled in an opinion filed Friday that overturned a lower court's ruling.
Qualified immunity shields conduct that “does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known," Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote for the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in sending the case back to U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas.
Godbey had thrown out the lawsuit brought by the family of tony Timpa, ruling that the officers were protected from liability in Timpa's 2016 death by the qualified immunity doctrine. The doctrine shields officers from liability for the legal performance of their duties.
The family accused Officer Dustin Dillard of using excessive force on Timpa by pressing his knee into Timpa's upper back for about 14 minutes. They also accused Sgt. Kevin Mansell, Senior Cpl. Raymond Dominquez and Officers Danny Vasquez and Domingo Rivera of failing to intervene to save Timpa, who was 32 when he died.
According to court documents, Timpa called 911 on Aug. 10, 2016, from a Dallas parking lot and said he was afraid and needed help, telling a dispatcher he suffered from schizophrenia and depression and was off his medication. Officers arrived to find him walking in traffic.
In police body camera videos, officers could be seen forcefully pinning Timpa to the ground for more than 14 minutes and cracking jokes even as the screaming, handcuffed man went still and fell silent. Shaking his limp body, the officers can be heard laughing and comparing Timpa to a child who doesn’t want to wake up for school. Not long after, a paramedic informed them he was dead.
Medical examiners ruled Timpa's death a homicide and said it was caused by cardiac arrest brought on by cocaine and the stress of physical restraint.
In 2017, a grand jury indicted Mansell, Vasquez and Dillard for misdemeanor deadly conduct in Timpa’s death, finding they had acted recklessly. Prosecutors dismissed the charges in March 2019 and the officers returned to active duty the next month.
Godbey threw out the family's lawsuit, which seeks almost $30 million in actual and exemplary damages.
But the three judges on the appeals court panel disagreed with Godbey's rationale and restored the lawsuit.
“Dillard’s continued use of force was not justified by a criminal investigatory function," Clement wrote. "The officers concede that Timpa’s criminal liability was ‘minor’ — no more than a traffic violation.” In fact, “the officers did not intend to charge him with any crimes.”
While overturning the summary judgment for Dillard, Hansell, Dominguez and Vasquez, the appeals court affirmed a summary judgment releasing Rivera from liability.
Dallas city officials do not comment on pending litigation, a city spokeswoman said. Attorneys for the family did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Appeals-court-Suit-may-proceed-over-Dallas-death-16832865.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:50
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| 0.979154
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Lyon 2, Marseille 1
Marseille 5, Angers 2
Saint-Etienne vs. Montpellier, 11 a.m.
Monaco vs. Lyon, 3 p.m.
Lorient vs. Lens, 7 a.m.
Nice vs. Clermont Foot, 9 a.m.
Reims vs. Bordeaux, 9 a.m.
Strasbourg vs. Nantes, 9 a.m.
Troyes vs. Metz, 9 a.m.
Rennes vs. Brest, 11 a.m.
Lille vs. PSG, 2:45 p.m.
PSG vs. Rennes, 3 p.m.
Montpellier vs. Lille, 11 a.m.
Lyon vs. Nice, 3 p.m.
Monaco vs. Lorient, 7 a.m.
Angers vs. Strasbourg, 9 a.m.
Brest vs. Troyes, 9 a.m.
Clermont Foot vs. Saint-Etienne, 9 a.m.
Nantes vs. Reims, 9 a.m.
Lens vs. Bordeaux, 11:05 a.m.
Metz vs. Marseille, 2:45 p.m.
|
https://www.chron.com/sports/article/French-Standings-16832989.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:52
|
en
| 0.688472
|
WASHINGTON (AP) — That bleak jobs report the White House had been bracing for never arrived Friday.
Instead, President Joe Biden got the pleasant surprise that the U.S. economy had powered through the omicron wave of the coronavirus and posted 467,000 new jobs in January — along with strong revisions to job gains in the two prior months. It showed just how much the pandemic's grip on the economy has faded, though the nation is still grappling with high inflation.
“Our country is taking everything that COVID has to throw at us, and we’ve come back stronger," Biden declared at the White House.
The jobs report suggested the United States has entered a new phase in its recovery from the pandemic. And it capped something of a comeback week for the president.
Also on Friday, the House passed a bill to jumpstart computer chip production and development, a key step for reconciling differences with an earlier measure approved by the Senate. And a day earlier, outside the economy, the administration announced that U.S. forces had raided the home of the Islamic State leader, leading Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi to blow himself up.
Harvard University economist Jason Furman, a former adviser in the Obama White House, said the jobs report showed that employers and workers had gotten over the havoc caused by the pandemic.
The virus “is now one factor among many and no longer the dominant factor it was,” said Furman. He pointed to broad strength across the report and the addition of 151,000 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector — restaurants, hotels, entertainment and more in an area of the economy most prone to disruption from the pandemic.
Yet as the economy strengthens, a question for Biden personally — and his presidency — is whether he can stitch together the positives in a convincing way to revive his support that has declined in polls in the past year.
Who — and what — gets credit?
The infections caused by omicron had caused millions of Americans to miss work, leading to expectations that the economy lost jobs in January. Yet when the figures showed the virus had little impact, Republicans were quick to offer an alternative narrative — that the job gains reflected the expiration of unemployment benefits added with a push by Biden and his Democrats months earlier.
“Now that there is no longer a barrier to work in the form of Democrats’ unemployment bonuses and monthly stimulus checks, Americans are finally coming off the sidelines," said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.
And, jobs aside, Biden acknowledged things aren't entirely rosy. Inflation remains a major challenge, with consumer prices increasing at 7% over the past year.
The strong jobs report, however, may give the Federal Reserve reason to raise interest rates and pull back on its support for the economy to reduce inflation. Average hourly earnings rose 5.7% in January from a year ago, suggesting that the demand for workers is leading to higher incomes and possibly more sources of inflation.
Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the consultancy RSM, said the solid labor market should make it easier for the Fed to hike rates without disrupting growth very much. It's possible that workers will come out of the pandemic more productive than before, making it easier for growth to occur even as interest rates rise.
“Given the fact that corporate profits continued to rise at a strong clip even as wages quickly increased tends to imply that the American commercial sector and economy is in the midst of a productivity boom,” Brusuelas said. “That strongly implies that the economy will be able to absorb coming rate hikes in a better fashion than is currently acknowledged.”
Biden on Friday tried to make a play for the record books — touting the gains that have occurred under his stewardship. At 4% unemployment and 6.6 million jobs added during his first full year, he's making his case that his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package was a wise choice and that lawmakers should now support the rest of his agenda to prolong the growth.
“History has been made here,” Biden declared “It comes alongside the largest drop in unemployment rate in a single year on record, the largest reduction in childhood poverty ever recorded in a single year. And the strongest economic growth this country has seen in nearly 40 years.”
|
https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Biden-sees-U-S-economy-as-powering-past-the-16833064.php
| 2022-02-04T23:24:56
|
en
| 0.974635
|
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A Los Angeles judge on Friday appeared strongly inclined to allow Bill Cosby to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege and avoid giving a deposition in the lawsuit of a woman who alleges he sexually abused her when she was 15 in the mid-1970s.
At a hearing to argue the issue, Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan agreed with Cosby's attorney that the 84-year-old has a reasonable fear of again facing criminal charges for one or more of the many sexual assault allegations that have been publicly aired against him, and has a right to avoid saying anything under oath that might lead to such charges.
“It does appear he has a reasonable fear of prosecution, and if new information came out, that could cause a prosecutor to change their mind,” Karlan said. “I don’t see how one could find to the contrary, other than concluding that he has a reasonable fear.”
Attorneys for Judy Huth, who alleges Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him at the Playboy Mansion around 1974, are seeking to compel Cosby to give a second deposition. Cosby's attorneys denied the allegation. He gave an initial deposition soon after the lawsuit was filed in 2014, before his two criminal trials and a later-overturned conviction in Pennsylvania.
Huth's attorney John Steven West argued that accusations against Cosby have been aired for years, and that all the alleged incidents date back decades. He said that any criminal charges would already have been filed.
“The facts that are known overwhelmingly show that Mr. Cosby does not have a realistic fear of prosecution,” West said. “Despite the fact that for 16 years his name has been at the forefront of accusations of sexual misconduct, there has been exactly one prosecution.”
West pointed out that Los Angeles police investigated Huth's allegations seven years ago, that the district attorney declined to file charges, and that other prosecutors have done the same with other Cosby accusers.
The judge didn't buy the argument.
“The fact that prosecutors decline to prosecute, doesn’t mean that a newly elected prosecutor won’t take a different view,” Karlan said, “nor would any future district attorney be bound by a decision not to prosecute.”
The judge planned to issue a written ruling later, but left little doubt that it would favor Cosby.
Cosby's lawyer Jennifer Bonjean argued, and the judge agreed, that the Pennsylvania case was a cautionary tale that applied here. Cosby, believing he had assurance from a prosecutor that he would not face charges, then was prosecuted after making damaging revelations in a 2005 civil lawsuit.
“They told him they weren’t going to prosecute him,” Bonjean said, "then 10 years later, they revoked it, after what? After he gave a deposition.”
That reversal is what led a Pennsylvania appeals court to throw out Cosby's conviction in June, after he had served nearly three years in prison.
Cosby had become the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when the jury at his 2018 retrial found him guilty of drugging and molesting college sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.
Earlier this week, Bonjean asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a bid by prosecutors to revive the case.
Cosby was already a groundbreaking Black actor and standup comedian when he created the top-ranked “Cosby Show” in the 1980s. A barrage of sexual assault allegations later destroyed his image as “America’s Dad” and led to multimillion-dollar court settlements with at least eight women.
Huth's is among the few lawsuits that he is still facing.
Karlan agreed to one more postponement, from April to May, of trial in the long-delayed case, but said Friday that he was determined to see the May date stick and have the jury trial begin.
The Associated Press generally does not name alleged victims of sexual assault unless they speak publicly, as Huth and Constand have done.
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Bill-Cosby-likely-to-avoid-testifying-in-sex-16833001.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:02
|
en
| 0.982331
|
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bipartisan group of two dozen former South Carolina federal prosecutors are offering their “wholehearted support” for Judge Michelle Childs’ nomination to an appellate court, an elevation that's on hold due to Childs' consideration for an even higher post — the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Not only is Judge Childs fair to all lawyers, but she treats criminal defendants and victims with the utmost respect,” the attorneys wrote in a letter, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and Sen. Chuck Grassley, the panel's ranking Republican.
“Her professionalism and kindness have been a model for several recent federal judicial appointments in South Carolina, and she is admired throughout the state bar.”
President Joe Biden has nominated Childs, currently a judge on South Carolina's federal court, for a post on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, an appellate court often seen as a springboard to the U.S. Supreme Court.
She had been slated to appear before senators earlier this week, but the confirmation hearing was put off indefinitely following the White House’s confirmation that Childs was under consideration for a coming U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, due to the impending retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.
Childs has been a federal judge in South Carolina for more than a decade. In December 2020, just a month after Biden's victory, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn recommended her for the D.C. appellate court. Last week, Clyburn told reporters the move had been an intentional one, so as to position Childs for the highest court.
The White House has said it intends to name a pick by the end of this month. Potential nominees are defined by Biden’s election-year pledge that he would nominate a Black woman, with early discussions centering on a handful of names. Those include California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former Breyer clerk now on the D.C. appellate court.
But there has been focus on Childs due to advocacy from Clyburn, the highest ranking Black leader in Congress. The top Biden ally suggested the then-candidate promise to nominate a Black woman as his campaign struggled heading into South Carolina’s 2020 primary. Biden made the pledge at a debate in Charleston, and Clyburn endorsed him shortly thereafter.
Childs also shown the potential for bipartisan appeal in a closely divided Senate. On Sunday, she drew praise from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a former Judiciary Committee chairman, who called her a “fair-minded, highly gifted jurist.”
The potential nomination has drawn criticism from the left, mainly over Childs' defense work on employment cases while in private practice before becoming a judge. Childs' defenders have rebutted that critique, saying Childs also represented plaintiffs against employers, doing that and defense work evenhandedly.
Signatories to the letter include Bart Daniel, who served as South Carolina’s top federal prosecutor during the George H.W. Bush administration, and Peter McCoy, who left the post last year after an appointment by Donald Trump. It was also signed by Pete Strom, a Bill Clinton appointee, as well as Bill Nettles, South Carolina’s U.S. Attorney under Barack Obama.
“What we have observed is an unflappable demeanor and a willingness to consider each party’s position fully and fairly before reaching a decision,” the attorneys wrote of Childs’ courtroom manner. “We sign this bipartisan letter because we know these qualities will be brought to bear as a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.”
___
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.
|
https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Childs-gets-prosecutors-wholehearted-backing-16833019.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:09
|
en
| 0.964087
|
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The FBI is reviewing the death of a Black teenager who was restrained for more than 30 minutes at a Kansas juvenile detention center, a county official said Friday.
Sedgwick County Commission Chairman David Dennis said he was told by county Sheriff Jeff Easter that the FBI requested all information regarding the death of 17-year-old Cedric Lofton, The Wichita Eagle reported.
“Sedgwick County provided everything that they asked for and will continue to do that,” Dennis said.
Dennis made his comments at a commission meeting that was called after a community task force recommended Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice be asked to review Lofton's death. The FBI is part of the Justice Department.
Lofton died two days after being taken to Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center in Wichita on Sept. 24 after his foster father called authorities seeking help because the teenager was hallucinating.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said last month that the 5-foot-10, 135-pound Lofton assaulted at least one police officer before being taken to the intake center. Lofton walked out of a cell there and struggled with several staff members before he was shackled, put on his stomach and handcuffed, Bennett said.
Staff members eventually realized Lofton had no pulse. They attempted chest compressions and called for emergency personnel to take him to a hospital, where he died two days later.
An autopsy ruled that Lofton's death was a homicide.
Bennett has said the county employees involved in Lofton's death could not be prosecuted under Kansas' self-defense laws because they were protecting themselves. That decision has prompted some state lawmakers to consider revising the law.
County Counselor Mike Pepoon said Friday the federal investigation would not involve any discussion of the state law Bennett cited.
“The FBI and the DOJ could look into civil rights criminal violations, hate crimes, that sort of thing, like they’ve done in other cases,” Pepoon said. “They will not be looking at whether or not anybody violated any of the statues that Marc Bennett was looking at."
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/FBI-reviewing-in-custody-death-of-restrained-16832906.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:15
|
en
| 0.98146
|
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem died from cardiac arrest and “associated effects,” his wife said Friday.
Stenehjem, a former legislator and the state’s longest-serving attorney general, died last week at age 68, just hours after he was found unresponsive taken to a hospital.
“I am deeply grateful for all those who worked tirelessly in Wayne’s time of need, supporting me and the rest of his family throughout the day,” his wife, Beth Bakke Stenehjem, said in a release.
Hundreds of people gathered at the Bismarck Event Center on Thursday to pay tribute to Stenehjem. He was eulogized as a man of integrity, honesty and strong moral principles.
“Wayne devoted his life in service to the State of North Dakota, and I am touched by the number of people who have let me know how much he meant to them,” Bakke Stenehjem said.
Stenehjem had announced last month that he would not seek another term, saying he wanted to spend more time traveling and with his family.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Family-State-attorney-general-died-from-cardiac-16833041.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:21
|
en
| 0.989226
|
CINCINNATI (AP) — Cincinnati Bengals tight end C.J. Uzomah missed a second day of practice due to a knee injury suffered in the AFC championship game.
Offensive lineman Jackson Carman has a sore back and also sat out Friday as the Bengals practiced for a second day in the indoor bubble at the University of Cincinnati because of bad weather, according to a pool report.
Uzomah became a clutch receiver for quarterback Joe Burrow this season, and the Bengals hope to get him back for the Super Bowl on Feb. 13. He was carted off with a knee sprain in last Sunday's AFC championship win over Kansas City.
“I don’t anticipate him doing much work this week,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “The goal really is to see where he’s at this weekend and see where he’s going to be on Monday.”
The Bengals will practice Saturday and Sunday, likely in the bubble with temperatures in the teens and 20s predicted. They'll arrive in Los Angeles on Tuesday, five days ahead of the Super Bowl.
Unlike Thursday, when icy conditions delayed one of the team buses, all the buses made it through the snowy streets of Cincinnati to the UC campus without issue on Friday.
___
More AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Sprained-knee-sidelines-Bengals-TE-C-J-Uzomah-16832968.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:23
|
en
| 0.959788
|
ATLANTA (AP) — Tax collections continue to roll into Georgia's state coffers, supporting Gov. Brian Kemp's plan for a big boost in spending and a possible tax cut.
Figures released Friday show Georgia's general fund collected $17.8 billion through Jan. 31. That's $2.7 billion, or 18%, ahead of last year's pace. Through the first seven months of the 2022 budget year, the state is on pace to collect $30.5 billion, more than $3 billion above the $27.3 billion that lawmakers designated for spending.
Individual income taxes are running 16% ahead of last year through seven months, while corporate income taxes are running 32% ahead. Sales taxes are running 18% ahead. The state economist warned last month that big year-over-year increases are likely to abate in coming months, as revenue begins to be compared to months in which the state economy was more robust than in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kemp has proposed boosting spending for the current budget year, which ends June 30, by more than $4 billion. That includes using $1.6 billion from last year's surplus to give state income tax rebates — $250 to every single person filing state income taxes, $375 to every single person heading a household and $500 to married people filing jointly. Kemp also wants to make one-time payments of $2,000 to teachers, $5,000 to state employees and $1,000 to other K-12 workers including school bus drivers, part-time employees and cafeteria workers. Finally, Kemp wants to restore full funding to the state's K-12 and university funding formulas.
The governor proposes converting those one-time payments to annual raises and continuing the funding restorations in the budget year beginning July 1, when he wants to spend more than $30 billion in state revenue.
Republicans are also eyeing plans to cut state taxes. Republican state senators contending for higher office have proposed eliminating Georgia's income tax entirely. Republican House Speaker David Ralston of Blue Ridge has rejected that plan, but has said he wants to make a more incremental tax cut. Kemp has said he wants to work with Ralston on a tax cut.
The state finished the 2021 budget year with a $2.35 billion surplus even after the state’s rainy day fund was filled to the legal limit of $4.3 billion.
Georgia’s budget pays to educate 1.7 million K-12 students and 435,000 college students, house 45,000 state prisoners, pave 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) of highways and care for more than 200,000 people who are mentally ill, developmentally disabled or addicted to drugs or alcohol.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Georgia-state-tax-revenue-bonanza-continues-16833008.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:27
|
en
| 0.964954
|
The top-seeded Greenfield-Northwestern girls' basketball team is headed to the Springfield Lutheran Regional.
The Illinois High School Association released the Class 1A playoff schedule Friday afternoon.
Both Greenfield-NW and No. 4 seed Routt received first-round byes. The Tigers will play either No. 7 Springfield Lutheran or No. 9 Pawnee in the semifinals at 6 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14. Routt will play either No. 5 Kincaid South Fork or No. 12 Raymond Lincolnwood in the other semifinal at 7:30 p.m. that night.
The two winners will meet for the regional championship on Thursday, Feb. 17.
No. 2 Carrollton and No. 3 Calhoun-Brussels have been assigned to the Winchester Regional. Both received first-round byes.
No. 2 seed Brown County will play in the Lewistown Regional, along with No. 3 seed Havana. Top-seeded Mendon Unity and No. 4 seed Abingdon-Avon were sent to the Biggsville West Central Regional.
Brimfield Sectional
Tuesday, Feb. 22
Game 1 at 6 pm: Winner Biggsville West Central Regional vs. Winner Elmwood Regional
Game 2 at 7:30 pm: Winner Woodhull AlWood Regional vs. Winner Lewistown Regional
Thursday, Feb. 24
Game 3 at 7 pm: Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2
Elmwood Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (11) Flanagan-Cornell vs. (12) Toulon Stark County
Game 2 at TBA: (7) Roanoke-Benson vs. (13) Peoria Christian
Tuesday, Feb. 15
Game 3 at 6 pm: (2) Elmwood vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (3) Glasford (Illini Bluffs) vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Woodhull (AlWood) Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (6) Woodhull AlWood vs. (8) Oneida ROWVA
Game 2 at TBA: (4) Princeville vs. (10) Kewanee Wethersfield
Game 3 at TBA: (5) Annawan vs. (9) Galva
Monday, Feb. 14
Game 4 at 6 pm: (1) Brimfield vs. Winner Game 1
Game 5 at 7:30 pm: Winner Game 2 vs. Winner Game 3
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 6 at 7 pm: Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5
Lewistown Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (6) Lewistown vs. (9) Bushnell-Prairie City
Game 2 at TBA: (3) Havana vs. (12) Mason City Illini Central
Game 3 at TBA: (5) London Mills Spoon River Valley vs. (10) Astoria
Monday, Feb. 14
Game 4 at 6 pm: (2) Brown County vs. Winner Game 1
Game 5 at 7:30 pm: Winner Game 2 vs. Winner Game 3
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 6 at 7 pm: Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5
Biggsville West Central Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (8) Monmouth (United) vs. (11) Sciota West Prairie
Game 2 at TBA: (7) Biggsville West Central vs. (13) Liberty
Tuesday, Feb. 15
Game 3 at 6 pm: (1) Mendon (Unity) vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (4) Abingdon-Avon vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Bunker Hill Sectional
Tuesday, Feb. 22
Game 1 at 6 pm: Winner Springfield (Lutheran) Regional vs. Winner Carlyle Regional
Game 2 at 7:30 pm: Winner Dupo Regional vs. Winner Bluffs Regional
Thursday, Feb. 24
Game 3 at 7 pm: Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2
Dupo Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (8) Edwardsville Metro-East Lutheran vs. (9) Bunker Hill
Game 2 at TBA: (6) Dupo vs. (11) O'Fallon First Baptist Academy
Monday, Feb. 14
Game 3 at 6 pm: (1) Okawville vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (4) Nokomis vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Bluffs Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (8) Triopia vs. (10) Pleasant Hill-Western
Game 2 at TBA: (6) West Central vs. (11) North Greene
Tuesday, Feb. 15
Game 3 at 6 pm: (2) Carrollton vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (3) Hardin (Calhoun) [Coop] vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Springfield Lutheran Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (7) Springfield Lutheran vs. (9) Pawnee
Game 2 at TBA: (5) Kincaid South Fork vs. (12) Raymond Lincolnwood
Monday, Feb. 14
Game 3 at 6 pm: (1) Greenfield-Northwestern vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (4) Routt vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Carlyle Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (7) Sandoval vs. (10) Mt. Olive
Tuesday, Feb. 15
Game 2 at 6 pm: (2) Carlyle vs. Winner Game 1
Game 3 at 7:30 pm: (3) Glen Carbon Father McGivney vs. (5) Centralia Christ Our Rock Lutheran
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 4 at 7 pm: Winner Game 2 vs. Winner Game 3
|
https://www.myjournalcourier.com/sports/article/Greenfield-NW-Routt-girls-sent-to-Springfield-16832788.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:32
|
en
| 0.821594
|
The South County girls' basketball team is headed to the Hillsboro Regional.
The Illinois High School Association released the Class 2A playoff schedule Friday afternoon.
South County, the No. 3 seed in its Sub-Sectional, will play No. 11 Litchfield in the quarterfinals on Saturday, Feb. 12.
The winner of that game will play either No. 6 Carlinville or No. 10 Gillespie in the semifinals at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 15. The championship game will be played at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17. If the higher-seeded teams win, South County would play No. 2 Hillsboro for the regional title.
Waverly Sectional
Tuesday, Feb. 22
Game 1 at 6 pm: Winner Roxana Regional vs. Winner Camp Point (Central) Regional
Game 2 at 7:30 pm: Winner Sacred Heart-Griffin Regional vs. Winner Hillsboro Regional
Thursday, Feb. 24
Game 3 at 7 pm: Winner Game 1 vs. Winner Game 2
Springfield (Sacred Heart-Griffin) Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (7) Pleasant Plains vs. (8) Riverton
Game 2 at TBA: (6) Williamsville vs. (9) Athens
Tuesday, Feb. 15
Game 3 at 6 pm: (1) Quincy (Notre Dame) vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (4) Sacred Heart-Griffin vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Hillsboro Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (7) Auburn vs. (8) Virden North Mac
Game 2 at TBA: (3) South County vs. (11) Litchfield
Game 3 at TBA: (6) Carlinville vs. (10) Gillespie
Tuesday, Feb. 15
Game 4 at 6 pm: (2) Hillsboro vs. Winner Game 1
Game 5 at 7:30 pm: Winner Game 2 vs. Winner Game 3
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 6 at 7 pm: Winner Game 4 vs. Winner Game 5
Camp Point (Central) Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (10) Hamilton vs. (11) Beardstown
Game 2 at TBA: (5) PORTA/A-C Central vs. (12) Rushville-Industry
Monday, Feb. 14
Game 3 at 6 pm: (2) Carthage Illini West vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (3) Camp Point Central vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
Roxana Regional
Saturday, Feb. 12
Game 1 at TBA: (9) Piasa (Southwestern) vs. (12) Roxana
Game 2 at TBA: (5) Pittsfield vs. (13) East Alton-Wood River
Monday, Feb. 14
Game 3 at 6 pm: (1) Alton (Marquette) vs. Winner Game 1
Game 4 at 7:30 pm: (4) Staunton vs. Winner Game 2
Thursday, Feb. 17
Game 5 at 7 pm: Winner Game 3 vs. Winner Game 4
|
https://www.myjournalcourier.com/sports/article/South-County-girls-basketball-headed-to-16832716.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:33
|
en
| 0.822088
|
WHL
All Times Local
Western Conference
B.C. Division
U.S. Division
Eastern Conference
East Division
Central Division
Note: Two points for a team winning in overtime or shootout; the team losing in overtime or shootout receives one which is registered in the OTL or SOL columns.
Tuesday's results
Prince George 2 Tri-City 0
Wednesday's results
Edmonton 6 Medicine Hat 2
Spokane 3 Prince George 2 (OT)
Friday's results
Moose Jaw at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Edmonton at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Red Deer at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Brandon, 7 p.m.
Regina at Lethbridge, 7 p.m.
Prince George at Seattle, 7:05 p.m.
Portland at Tri-City, 7:05 p.m.
Victoria at Everett, 7:05 p.m.
Kelowna at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Kamloops at Vancouver, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday's games
Red Deer at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Edmonton at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Lethbridge at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Moose Jaw at Brandon, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Winnipeg, 8 p.m.
Kelowna at Tri-City, 6:05 p.m.
Vancouver at Seattle, 6:05 p.m.
Prince George at Everett, 6:05 p.m.
Kamloops at Victoria, 7:05 p.m.
Portland at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Sunday's games
Regina at Calgary, 2 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Winnipeg, 5 p.m.
Seattle at Vancouver, 4 p.m.
Kamloops at Victoria, 4:05 p.m.
Tuesday's games
Regina at Edmonton, 11 a.m.
Calgary at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Wednesday's games
Calgary at Saskatoon, 7 p.m.
Lethbridge at Moose Jaw, 7 p.m.
Spokane at Portland, 7 p.m.
Tri-City at Kamloops, 7 p.m.
Vancouver at Kelowna, 7:05 p.m.
|
https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/HKO-WHL-Standings-16832888.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:40
|
en
| 0.898098
|
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho has agreed to change its living will template so that pregnant people will not be kept on life support against their wishes.
The move is part of a legal settlement reached this week with four women who said the state's law governing advance health care directives discriminates based on gender and subjects pregnant people to different medical treatment than others.
The women, represented by legal groups including the women’s rights organization Legal Voice and the end-of-life patient rights organization Compassion & Choices, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in 2018 targeting the state's Medical Consent and Natural Death Act. The act says competent people have a fundamental right to control decisions on their medical care, including when to have life-saving care withdrawn. But it also included a template living will that said the directive would have no force during the course of a pregnancy.
State officials interpreted the rule to mean pregnant people must receive life-saving treatment regardless of their living wills, and the template with the pregnancy exclusion was promoted on a state website.
At least 47 states have adopted laws allowing living wills or advance medical directives, and 11 of them placed restrictions on advance directives for pregnant individuals. Besides Idaho, the others are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, according to Legal Voice.
Under the settlement, Idaho officials admit no wrongdoing but must make sure advance directives are followed regardless of whether the patient is pregnant. The state will create a new living will template, and notify everyone who has already filed a living will with the state's advance directive registry of the court's decision.
One of the women who brought the lawsuit, Chelsea Gaona-Lincoln, said the settlement was a welcome relief. She was pregnant when the case was first filed, and is now pregnant with her second child.
“My family and I can rest assured my rights and choices will be honored as we anticipate our family growing later this year,” Gaona-Lincoln said in a statement. “There is enough for expecting parents in Idaho to worry about; due to the previous pregnancy exclusion, I wasn’t granted that peace of mind with our first child.”
The Idaho Attorney General's office declined to comment on the settlement.
|
https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Idaho-settles-lawsuit-on-living-wills-for-16832985.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:46
|
en
| 0.967075
|
PLEASANT HILL, Iowa (AP) — A couple accused of starving their teenage son, who has special needs, has agreed to plea deals, according to court documents.
Richard Joe Ryan and Jennifer Ryan, of Pleasant Hill, were charged in April of last year with first-degree kidnapping and neglecting a dependent person.
The teenager's condition came to light when a citizen reported seeing the teenager zip-tied to a chair while his mother worked an eight-hour shift at Smith Automotive in Pleasant Hill, KCCI-TV reported.
Doctors at Blank Children’s Hospital said the teenager suffered from severe malnutrition and was only 78 pounds when he arrived at the hospital.
Investigators found the boy was routinely confined to his room, which had an alarm on the door, and was not permitted to eat breakfast, according to court records.
New court documents show Richard Ryan has agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges of false imprisonment, neglect of a dependent person and two counts of child endangerment. He’s scheduled to be sentenced April 1.
Jennifer Ryan also will agree to a plea deal in court on April 1, according to court documents.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Iowa-couple-accused-of-starving-their-son-to-take-16832924.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:52
|
en
| 0.977846
|
NEW YORK (AP) — Jason Epstein, a publishing innovator and bon vivant who helped put the classics in paperback, co-founded The New York Review of Books and worked with such novelists as E.L. Doctorow, Vladimir Nabokov and Philip Roth, has died at age 93.
Epstein died Friday “surrounded by his books” at his home in Sag Harbor, New York, said his wife, the author and former New York Times journalist Judith Miller. The cause was congestive heart failure, she said.
The book world has its share of accidental lifers and Epstein was one. Once a young bohemian who desired only enough money to have time for reading, he took a job at Doubleday in the early 1950s, joined Random House in 1958 and remained for decades as editorial director. He became one of the industry's most honored executives, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Foundation, presenters, of the National Book Award, in 1988; and from the National Book Critics Circle in 2002.
Epstein was not just a man of letters, but of food and drink, whose own books included the memoir “Eating” and whose dining companions ranged from Buster Keaton to Jacqueline Kennedy to the notorious attorney-political operative Roy Cohn. In “Making It,” a 1967 best-seller about the literary world, Norman Podhoretz wrote affectionately of Epstein’s tastes for imported shoes, first-class travel and “appallingly expensive” restaurants.
“He was beautiful to watch,” Podhoretz observed.
He was as well-read and as opinionated as the authors he worked with, “so damned intelligent,” Mailer would joke, once telling The Associated Press that he had to adjust to an editor “who might be a lot brighter” then he was. Epstein published an early excerpt of Nabokov’s “Lolita” and fought unsuccessfully to convince Doubleday to publish the scandalous novel about a professor’s obsession with a 12-year old girl. Epstein also feuded bitterly with Gore Vidal and became a critic of the Library of America, believing that the imprint he helped establish had grown bloated. Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf would call him the “cross I bear,” while Epstein labeled Cerf “the bear I cross.”
Among the many books edited by Epstein: Doctorow’s Depression-era novel “Billy Bathgate,” Jane Jacobs’ classic of urban studies “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Mailer’s CIA epic “Harlot’s Ghost.”
Epstein admittedly passed over the occasional best-seller, although he was proud of rejecting Shirley MacLaine’s New Age favorite “Out on a Limb.”
“We were friends and she actually wrote much of that book at my house in Sag Harbor (on New York’s Long Island). But she never told me what it was about,” Epstein told the AP in 2000. “I read this and I said, ‘Come on, Shirley, you’re nuts.’”
The son of a successful textile salesman, Epstein grew up in Maine and Massachusetts, where he acquired his longtime passion for fine cuisine and spent so much time at the library that one librarian saved his card while he and his family spent a year in New York City. In the late 1940s, he entered Columbia University, when the school’s president was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Epstein met the future U.S. president once, and, by accident, made a fine impression.
“I had spent the night downtown with a girl,” Epstein told the AP. “I could hardly stand up. I had been up all night and he thought I was a bright young fellow, up bright and early. He was beaming, and he shook my hand.”
In his early 20s, his quest for affordable classics inspired him to start one of publishing’s first literary paperback imprints, Anchor Books, now part of Penguin Random House. He also helped launch two other major and lasting projects. One came in the early 1960s when a newspaper strike and the general tedium of literacy criticism led Epstein and his then-wife, Barbara, to help found The New York Review of Books, along with critic Elizabeth Hardwick and editor Robert Silvers among others. In the late 1970s, he was among the creators of the Library of America, which offers hardcover editions of the country’s most influential writers.
He had two children with Barbara Epstein: daughter Helen Epstein, a contributor to The New York Review of Books; and son Jacob Epstein, a television writer whose time in the book world was brief and unfortunate. His novel “The Wild Oats” was published in 1979 and was soon found to contain numerous similarities to Martin Amis’ “The Rachel Papers.”
“Epstein wasn’t influenced by ‘The Rachel Papers,’” Amis wrote at the time, “he had it flattened out beside his typewriter.”
Jason Epstein was the rare publishing veteran to show early and unforced enthusiasm for technology. He looked for ways to sell books online before the rise of e-books and Amazon.com and was a strong advocate for in-store machines that could print and bind works on demand. Epstein essentially advocated a system that enabled authors to bypass the industry that employed him, looking back to the days when Parson Weems could sell books about George Washington by simply sitting under a tree and hitting on a drum.
“Soon writers and readers will be able to meet again on a worldwide green where writers may once more beat their drums or hire a Weems to drum up business for them,” Epstein wrote in “Book Business,” a memoir published in 2001. “On the World Wide Web, future storytellers and their readers can mingle at leisure and talk at length.”
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Jason-Epstein-publishing-editor-and-innovator-16832833.php
| 2022-02-04T23:25:58
|
en
| 0.980171
|
New York City schools began a program Friday that shifted from traditional meals to vegan meals.
Every Friday, school cafeterias will serve vegan meals.
The initiative was started by the city's new mayor, Eric Adams, who is a vegan.
"Our children should not be continually fed food that is causing the healthcare crisis," Adams said in an interview with Good Day New York. "Childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma— there's a real correlation to what we serve in the Department of Education every day."
As for the menu items, Adams said students are weighing in on what healthy foods they want to be served at school.
Friday's meal included vegan veggie tacos.
According to The Associated Press, students can still request a non-vegan option. Milk, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hummus and pretzels will always be available to students, the AP reported.
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https://www.wsfltv.com/news/national/new-york-city-schools-go-vegan-on-fridays
| 2022-02-04T23:26:02
|
en
| 0.967762
|
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A judge on Friday temporarily halted Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order that sought to allow parents to opt out of classroom mask mandates for their children but had been met with resistance from some school districts.
Arlington Circuit Court Judge Louise DiMatteo ruled in favor of seven school boards that filed a lawsuit challenging the governor's order, one of the first actions Youngkin took after his inauguration Jan. 15. Her temporary restraining order means mask mandates put in place by school boards may remain, at least for now.
The judge found that the single issue before the court was whether Youngkin, through his emergency powers, can override the decision of local school boards delegated to them under a 2021 state law that required boards to provide in-person instruction in a way that adheres to federal COVID-19 mitigation strategies “to the maximum extent practicable.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking, regardless of vaccination status.
“On this pivotal point, the Court concludes that the Governor cannot” override local school officials, the judge wrote in her ruling.
DiMatteo said that while the case is pending in court, there appears to be a benefit to keeping the current polices of universal mask mandates in place.
“Keeping rules in place that have been established over the school year helps children, families and staff understand how they may be impacted during the pandemic. Without a restraining order, children and staff would have to reassess certain health conditions they believe are impacted by a mask policy (any mask policy), having relied upon a universal mask mandate implemented by the School Boards,” DiMatteo wrote in her ruling.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jason Miyares said he will appeal the ruling.
Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said in a statement that the decision was just the first step in the judicial process. “The governor will never stop fighting for parents’ ability to choose what is best for their children,” she said.
The school boards said in a joint statement that the judge’s order protects “the health and well-being of all students and staff and reaffirms the constitutional right of Virginia’s local school boards to enact policy at the local level.”
The school boards that sued were: Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Hampton, Prince William County and Richmond. They collectively serve over 350,000 students.
Youngkin, who campaigned heavily on education issues and had long said he opposed mask mandates, signed the order within hours of taking the oath of office. It took effect Jan. 24.
Districts across the state took various approaches to the governor's order, with many telling students masks were still required, despite the governor's order. Others dropped their mandates.
The Arlington lawsuit was one of several related to Youngkin’s executive order but the first to go before a judge.
A group of Chesapeake parents challenged the order in front of the Virginia Supreme Court, and parents of children with disabilities have filed a federal lawsuit. Another case was filed in Loudoun County against the school board and in support of the governor’s order.
Fairfax County Public Schools Board Chair Stella Pekarsky said in an interview that the uncertainty of the past couple of weeks have been difficult for families, the vast majority of whom opted to have their children follow the district’s masking policy.
“We are hopeful this will be permanent,” she said.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Judge-rules-against-VA-governor-s-opt-out-school-16832914.php
| 2022-02-04T23:26:05
|
en
| 0.972416
|
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Two white men were arrested earlier this week, days after a Black delivery van driver accused them of chasing him and shooting at him after he dropped off a package in a Mississippi city.
But driver Demonterrio Gibson, 24, on Friday said he doesn’t believe police took him seriously at first and his attorneys say both suspects have been “undercharged” and should face charges of attempted murder.
Nobody was injured but the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, Mississippi, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) south of Jackson — and pushback in local media from the city’s Black police chief.
Gregory Case and his son Brandon Case were arrested and released on bond Tuesday in connection with the alleged Jan. 24 attack on Gibson, 24. Gregory Case faces a charge of conspiracy; Brandon Case, shooting into a motor vehicle.
Lawyers for Gibson say more serious charges, including hate crime charges, are warranted in what they believe was a racially motivated assault. “I want both of them charged with attempted murder,” attorney Carlos Moore said Friday.
Moore and attorney James Bryant compared the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun. The white men, including a father and son, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Defense lawyers said they suspected he had committed crimes in their neighborhood, but prosecutors said there was no evidence of that. The three still face a federal hate crime trial.
Brookhaven, with a population that is 68% Black, is in Lincoln County, where District Attorney Dee Bates said information will be presented to a grand jury for a decision on charges once police complete the investigation of the Gibson incident. Witnesses, including Gibson, will be able to testify.
Gibson told The Associated Press on Friday that he was in uniform when the incident happened. He said he was in a van rented by FedEx but that it did not have a FedEx logo on it. He pulled into a driveway and dropped off a package sometime after 7 p.m. on Jan. 24. Before he turned his van around in the driveway to exit, he said, he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.
He said the pickup driver tried to cut him off as he exited the driveway. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man.
“I drive down about two or three houses and there's another guy standing in the middle of the street, with a gun pointed at my vehicle,” said Gibson. The man motioned for him to stop. “I'm looking at him, like shaking my head, because why would I stop for somebody with a gun?”
Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the chase. Later, police told local news outlets that the elder Case was the suspected pickup driver, while Brandon Case was the man in the street. Gregory Case is 58, and his son is 35, according to The Daily Leader of Brookhaven.
Gibson said he called police and was told by one officer that police had received a call about a suspicious person at the same address at the same time. “I said, ‘Sir, I’m not a suspicious person. I'm a FedEx worker. I was just doing my job and they shot at me.'”
The Cases have not commented publicly on their arrests. The municipal clerk's office in Brookhaven said Friday morning it had not yet received paperwork on their arrests or information on their attorneys. Police chief Kenny Collins did not return calls from the AP seeking more information.
Early this week, Collins, who is Black, pushed back against allegations on social media of racism in Brookhaven. “We’re not going to have outsiders coming in trying to stir that up,” he told The Daily Leader. “Brookhaven is not a racist, prejudiced town. You can’t judge a town by the actions of two individuals.”
“People need to be careful what they post on social media,” Collins said. “If somebody is killed or hurt because of what you post on social media, you will be charged, too.”
|
https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Lawyers-demand-serious-charges-for-gunfire-at-16832913.php
| 2022-02-04T23:26:11
|
en
| 0.985442
|
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (AP) — A sheriff's deputy is being praised for smashing the windows of a burning SUV and rescuing a frightened dog in a neighborhood south of Denver.
Douglas County Deputy Michael Gregorek's body camera video from Jan. 22, which was released Thursday, shows him arriving on the scene as smoke pours from the driver's side window of the SUV. The owner frantically yells that his dog Hank is somewhere inside the locked vehicle.
Gregorek uses his retractable baton to smash a side window and then the rear window before pulling Hank out and quickly carrying him to a nearby snowbank.
“I just went in there and grabbed on. And his body had already kind of started to tense up, so I knew he was really in a bad way. ... Nothing else really mattered at that point other than getting Hank out of the car,” Gregorek said in an interview released by the sheriff's department.
A neighbor told the deputy his wife was a veterinarian, but by the time she got home, Hank was already sprinting around and ready to play.
“I’m a dog parent. My only child is my dog, so I would have done the same thing, whether it be baby, human, dog, cat. A life is a life, and you kind of treat it as such in a situation like that," Gregorek said.
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Lucky-dog-Colorado-deputy-rescues-pup-from-16832941.php
| 2022-02-04T23:26:17
|
en
| 0.987636
|
MIAMI (AP) — Prosecutors filed two murder charges Friday against a 25-year-old real estate agent accused in the deaths of two homeless men in Miami last year.
Willy Maceo was previously charged with attempted murder after his arrest in December, according to court records.
Investigators had previously identified Maceo as a suspect in the Dec. 21 death of Jerome Antonio Price, 56, who was fatally shot while sleeping on a sidewalk in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, and the Oct. 16 fatal stabbing of Manuel Perez, 59, in downtown Miami. Maceo is also accused in the non-fatal shooting of a homeless man just a few hours before Price's death.
Detectives linked Maceo's Dodge Charger to the Wynwood shooting through surveillance video, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said during a news conference Friday. Investigators tracked down the car and found a Glock 9mm handgun, whose bullets matched casings found at both shooting scenes.
Surveillance video also led detectives to link Maceo to the Perez death. The man in that video shows a man who looks exactly like Maceo, officials said.
Investigators said they also were able to use video evidence and cellphone records to help them trace Maceo’s movements on the nights both men were killed.
Maceo has no criminal record but has a history of mental illness, authorities said.
The Miami Herald last month reported that Maceo had been sent to a hospital for a mental-health evaluation after he was acting erratically at his parents’ home in Kendall. Police officers seized his Glock but later returned it to him after the department’s legal bureau decided he was not enough of a risk for court intervention.
|
https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/Man-faces-2-counts-of-murder-in-Miami-homeless-16832984.php
| 2022-02-04T23:26:23
|
en
| 0.982737
|
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams apologized Friday after a 2019 video surfaced showing him using a racial slur for white people when talking about the New York Police Department.
The video, first reported by the New York Daily News, shows Adams, who is Black, speaking at a private event in December 2019, during the early stages of his mayoral run.
Adams is a former New York City police officer who rose to the rank of captain before leaving to serve in elected office. While in the New York Police Department, he became an outspoken critic of the department and co-founded an advocacy group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which pushed for criminal justice reform and spoke out against police brutality.
Speaking to a Harlem business group, Adams said “Every day in the police department, I kicked those crackers' ass, man! I was unbelievable in the police department with 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement.” The line drew applause.
Adams was asked about the video at a news conference Friday and said he wanted to “definitely apologize” for his remarks and called them “inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate comments, should not have been used. Someone asked me a question using that comment and playing on that word. I responded in that comment. But clearly, it’s a comment that should not be used and I apologize not only to those who heard it but to New Yorkers because they should expect more from me, and that was inappropriate," Adams said.
The word has often been considered a derogatory term for poor Southern white people, but the origins of the term are not entirely clear.
A 2013 report from NPR found the term was used as an insult as far back as the 17th Century and was later used to refer to Scots-Irish immigrants settling in the Southern U.S.
The mayor, who has been in office a little over a month, said the comment referred to his efforts to combat racism in the department.
“My fight in the police department was fighting racism throughout my entire journey. And I was serious about fighting against that and that is what it was attached to, the question that was asked. And that, you got my response, based on what that question was," he said.
The head of the city's largest police union quickly put out a statement defending Adams.
“Whenever a controversial video of a police officer surfaces online, we ask for fairness instead of a rush to outrage. We will apply the same standard here," said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch, who is white.
"We have spoken with Mayor Adams about this video. We have spent far too many hours together in hospital emergency rooms these past few weeks, and we’ve worked together for decades before that. A few seconds of video will not define our relationship. We have a lot of work to do together to support our members on the streets.”
Adams apology came a day after he hosted President Joe Biden in New York City and they met with top law enforcement officers to discuss plans to try to cut down gun violence in cities.
That presidential visit followed the deaths of two New York City police officers in a shooting in Harlem.
___
Associated Press reporter Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report
___
Follow Price on Twitter at twitter.com/michellelprice
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https://www.lakecountystar.com/news/article/NYC-Mayor-Eric-Adams-apologizes-for-using-racial-16832955.php
| 2022-02-04T23:26:30
|
en
| 0.983638
|
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