text stringlengths 65 123k | url stringlengths 25 420 | crawl_date timestamp[us, tz=UTC]date 2022-04-01 01:00:57 2022-09-19 04:34:04 |
|---|---|---|
UN experts warn of impact of abortion bans on US minorities
GENEVA (AP) — Independent U.N. human rights experts expressed concerns Tuesday about the adverse impact on the rights of racial and ethnic minorities from the U.S. Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for abortion in the United States, and called on the Biden administration and state governments to do more to buttress those rights.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a group of independent experts who work with the U.N. human rights office, said it was concerned about higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, among a host of concerns about the rights of Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous peoples, foreign-born migrants and others in the United States.
The calls came as part of a regular review of U.N. member states by the committee. The U.S. was among seven countries to be considered this summer. A large delegation of U.S. officials, including Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, traveled to Geneva earlier this month for hearings that fed into the committee’s thinking about the rights of ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S.
In its report, the committee ran the gamut of concerns and assessments — including praise for recent legislation and executive orders to improve the rights of minorities, and calls for a “national action plan” to combat systemic racism and racial discrimination and an effort to limit the impact of gun violence on such minorities.
It urged consideration of new laws or a review of existing ones to help fight excessive use of force by law enforcement, and called on the U.S. to adopt “all necessary measures” — including at the federal level — to ensure that all people can vote. It expressed concerns about an increase in new legislation with a “disproportionate impact” on minorities.
While noting some steps by the White House to address high maternal mortality rates, it said: “the committee is concerned that systemic racism along with intersecting factors such as gender, race, ethnicity and migration status have a profound impact on the ability of women and girls to access the full range of sexual and reproductive health services in (the U.S.) without discrimination.”
The concerns came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to strip away women’s constitutional protections for abortion that had been enshrined for nearly a half-century under Roe v. Wade, which paved the way for abortion bans in some states.
The committee, referring to the recent court decision, called on the United States to adopt “all necessary measures” at both state and federal level “to address the profound disparate impact of (the decision) on women of racial and ethnic minorities, Indigenous women and those with low incomes,” and provide safe, legal access to abortion under existing U.S. commitments to human rights.
It called on the U.S. to ensure that women seeking an abortion — or the health care providers who assist them — “are not subjected to criminal penalties.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/un-experts-warn-impact-abortion-bans-us-minorities/ | 2022-08-30T13:02:37Z |
Barbie honors Madam C.J. Walker, first female self-made millionaire in US
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 9:05 AM EDT|Updated: 8 minutes ago
(CNN) - What do Jane Goodall, Maya Angelou and Rosa Parks all have in common?
They are all inspiring women, but they also have a look-alike Barbie.
Now, you can add Madam C.J. Walker to that list. She was the first female self-made millionaire in the country.
She achieved enormous success by founding a line of hair care products and cosmetics designed for Black women.
Her Barbie doll is even holding her original product, Wonderful Hair Grower.
Walker was also a noted activist and philanthropist, supporting orphanages and Black colleges, and advocating for civil rights organizations and women’s rights.
The doll is the latest addition to Barbie’s Inspiring Women series.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/barbie-honors-madam-cj-walker-first-female-self-made-millionaire-us/ | 2022-08-30T13:13:44Z |
Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, partner announce birth of child
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 8:18 AM EDT|Updated: 55 minutes ago
(CNN) - Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick has a new member in the huddle.
His partner, Nessa, announced on Instagram that she had the couple’s first child a few weeks ago.
The post included a picture of Nessa, Kaepernick and their child, whose gender was not revealed.
Kaepernick hasn’t taken the field since his last game with the San Francisco 49ers during the 2016 season.
He first garnered controversy in 2016 when he started to kneel during the pre-game national anthem.
The following year he filed a grievance against the NFL saying they were preventing him from playing.
He later settled the complaint.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/former-nfl-quarterback-colin-kaepernick-partner-announce-birth-child/ | 2022-08-30T13:13:55Z |
Gen Z, millennials discuss their reluctance to become parents
NEW YORK (AP) — At 24, El Johnson has made up her mind that she won’t bear children, though she and her girlfriend haven’t ruled out adoption.
The graduate student who works in legal services in Austin, Texas, has a list of reasons for not wanting to give birth: the climate crisis and a genetic health condition among them.
“I don’t think it’s responsible to bring children into this world,” Johnson said. “There are already kids who need homes. I don’t know what kind of world it’s going to be in 20, 30, 40 years.”
She’s so sure, in fact, that she’ll soon have her tubes removed. It’s a precautionary decision sealed by the fall of Roe v. Wade and by tight restrictions on abortion services in her state and around the country.
Other women interviewed also cited climate change, along with overwhelming student debt coupled with inflation, as reasons they’ll never be parents. Some younger men, too, are opting out and more are seeking vasectomies.
Whatever the motivation, they play a role in dramatically low birth rates in the U.S.
The U.S. birth rate fell 4% in 2020, the largest single-year decrease in nearly 50 years, according to a government report. The government noted a 1% uptick in U.S. births last year, but the number of babies born was still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic: about 86,000 fewer than in 2019.
Walter and Kyah King live in suburban Las Vegas. Walter, 29, a sports data scientist, and Kyah, 28, a college career counselor, have been together nearly 10 years, the last four as a married couple. The realization that they didn’t want to have kids came on slowly for both of them.
“It was in our early 20s when the switch sort of flipped,” Kyah said. “We had moved to California and we were really just starting our adult lives. I think we talked about having three kids at one point. But just with the economy and the state of the world and just thinking about the logistics of bringing children into the world. That’s really when we started to have our doubts.”
Finances are top of mind. Before taxes, the two earn about $160,000 combined, with about $120,000 in student loan debt for Kyah and about $5,000 left for Walter. The couple said they wouldn’t be able to buy a house and shoulder the costs of even one child without major sacrifices they’re not willing to make.
But for Kyah, the decision goes well beyond money.
“I think we would be great parents, but the thought of going into our health system to give birth is really scary. Black women, black mothers, are not valued in the same way that white mothers are,” said Kyah, who is Black.
When Kyah’s IUD expires, Walter said he’ll consider a vasectomy, a procedure that went on the rise among men under 30 during the pandemic.
Jordan Davidson interviewed more than 300 people for a book out in December titled, “So When are You Having Kids?” The pandemic, she said, led many to delay childbirth among those contemplating children at all.
“These timelines that people created for themselves of, I want to accomplish X by three years from now, changed. People weren’t necessarily willing to move the goalposts and say, OK, I’m going to forgo these accomplishments and do this differently,” she said. “People still want to travel. They still want to go to graduate school. They still want to meet certain financial benchmarks.”
Fears about climate change have cemented the idea of living without children for many, Davidson said.
“Now with increased wildfires, droughts, heat waves, all of a sudden it is becoming real that, OK, this is happening during my time, and what is this going to look like during the time that my children are alive?” she said.
In New York City, 23-year-old Emily Shapiro, a copyrighter for a pharmaceutical ad agency, earns $60,000 a year, lives at home as she saves money and has never wanted children.
“They’re sticky. I could never imagine picking up a kid that’s covered in ice cream. I’m a bit of a germaphobe. I don’t want to change a diaper. If I did have one, I wouldn’t want them until they’re in, like, sixth grade. I also think the physical Earth isn’t doing so great so it would be unfair,” she said.
Among those Jordan interviewed, concerns over the environment were far more prevalent among the younger group. Questions of affordability, she said, troubled both millennials and members of Gen Z.
“There is a lot of fear around having children who would be worse off than they viewed themselves during their childhoods,” Davidson said.
Dannie Lynn Murphy, who helps find software engineers for Google, said she was nearly 17 when she was removed from her home by child protective services due to a pattern of child abuse. Her wife, she said, was similarly raised in a “not great” environment.
“Both of us at one point would have said yes to kids,” she said. “In my late teenage, early adult years, I saw and understood the appeal and was attracted to the idea of getting to raise someone differently than I was raised. But the practical realities of a child kind of suck.”
Murphy earns about $103,000 a year, with bonuses and equity that can drive that amount up to $300,000. Her wife earns about $60,000 as an attorney. They don’t own their Seattle home.
“I can’t see myself committing to a mortgage, let alone a child,” the 28-year-old Murphy said. “I think the primary reason is financial. I would prefer to spend that money on traveling versus sinking a half a million dollars into raising a child. Secondarily, there’s now the fear of behaving with our children the way our parents behaved with us.”
Alyssa Persson, 31, was raised in small town South Dakota. Getting married and having children was ingrained in the culture, she said. It wasn’t until after her divorce from her high school sweetheart that she took a step back and asked herself what she actually wanted out of life.
“Most women where I’m from lose their identities in motherhood,” said Persson, who now lives in St. Louis and earns about $47,000 a year as a university librarian.
She’s carrying student loan debt of about $80,000. Persson is a former teacher who loves children, but she feels she is now thinking more clearly than ever about the costs, implications and sacrifices of parenting.
“Having children sounds like a trap to me, to be frank,” she said. “Financially, socially, emotionally, physically. And if there were ever any shadow of a doubt, the fact that I cannot comfortably support myself on my salary is enough to scare me away from the idea entirely.”
___
Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie
—-
For more AP Lifestyles stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/lifestyle
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/gen-z-millennials-discuss-their-reluctance-become-parents/ | 2022-08-30T13:14:02Z |
Jackson, Miss., loses water service amid flooding; state to distribute water
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT/Gray News) - The state is stepping in to help as Jackson’s water system is teetering on collapse.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and National Guard will set up distribution sites to provide potable and non-potable water to residents, while Hinds County Emergency Operations had secured water to ensure the fire department could continue to operate when needed.
The city of Jackson has had to cut water production at its main treatment plant due to flooding from the Pearl River.
On Monday, the Pearl crested at 35.37 feet, more than 7 feet above flood stage. As a result, operators have had to make adjustments to the treatment process and have had to cut production there as a result of the change in the water’s chemical makeup brought about by that flooding.
“Because of the river water coming into the plant, we have had to change the way we treat the water. The chemical composition of the water coming in, we [had] to figure out how to contend with the water coming in,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said during a Monday press conference. “It has led to the reduction of water being put out into the system, which consequently, reduces tank levels and affects, systemwide, the water pressure in the homes of our residents.”
The water treatment plant brings in water from the reservoir. During floods, the makeup of the water changes and can have higher turbidity, more sediment and more organic materials in it.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves held an emergency press conference Monday night, hours after the mayor’s announcement.
Not long after Lumumba’s announcement, reports began pouring in from businesses, residents and state government officials that they no longer had water service.
Reeves said that’s because of a failure at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant, the city’s main treatment facility.
“What I am focused on right now is ensuring that we get an incident command center set up at the facility. They will be at O.B. Curtis, first thing tomorrow morning. They will work with the city personnel that are currently there. And we will assess what needs to be done to get the quantity of water flowing as quickly as humanly possible.”
Reeves wasn’t sure how long the state would be assisting the city, but officials said it could be for several months.
Reeves told reporters the state will be setting up a unified command center at the water treatment plant, and that officials with the Mississippi State Department of Health will immediately send in experts to help assess the problem at the facility.
The governor said the state had been preparing for a water failure at the plant but was hopeful that failure was still months or weeks away.
“We were told on Friday that there was no way to predict exactly when, but that it was a near certainty that Jackson would fail to produce running water sometime in the next several weeks or months,” he said. “We began preparing for a scenario where Jackson will be without running water for an extended period. Over the weekend, we started developing water distribution plans, sourcing tankers and assessing all the risks associated with an event like this ...
“All this was with the prayer that we would have more time before the system ran into failure,” he added. “Unfortunately, that failure appears to have begun today.”
Citing the lack of water, Jackson Public Schools is shifting to virtual learning on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the governor is leaving it up to many state agencies with downtown offices to determine whether they will operate.
The Mississippi Supreme Court, for instance, is going to operate with reduced staff at the Gartin Justice Building on Tuesday, with most staff of the appellate courts and Administrative Office of Courts working remotely.
“We have two water treatment facilities in the city of Jackson Fewell and O.B. Curtis is not operating anywhere near capacity. And we may find out tomorrow it’s not operating at all. We’ll find out,” Reeves said. “But what we do know is that ... the quantity of water is moving through the pipes in the city of Jackson, not even speaking to the quality, the quantity is not sufficient to provide the kind of water pressure that we need to do a lot of things.”
“Clearly, it’s not moving through the system fast enough to the 19th floor of the Sillers Building to ensure that our chiller is keeping the 19 floors of state government operating properly,” he added. “But it’s also, in some instances, perhaps not getting to the fourth or fifth floor of dorm rooms at Jackson State.”
MEMA Executive Director Stephen McCraney said several steps are being taken to help. Beginning Tuesday, the agency will be bringing in potable and non-potable to distribute to residents.
“We have a hurricane stock, a tornado stock ... it’s not the biggest in the world, but I’m going be able to roll out of there with probably 38,000 bottles of water first thing in the morning,” he said. “And then 18-wheelers are on the way. Logistics officers have already made that order.”
Initially, efforts will be to set up at city fire stations, where water is currently being distributed. However, MEMA will expand those efforts to other areas.
The state health department issued a boil water notice for all customers on Jackson’s surface water system on July 29. The notice was put in place due to high levels of turbidity taken in water samples. Lumumba initially objected to the order, despite the fact that Jackson issued its own boil water advisory.
Numerous issues have led to the failure at the plant, including a lack of maintenance and a lack of staff.
“A far too small number of heroic frontline workers were trying their hardest to hold the system together, but that it was a near impossibility,” Reeves said. “The state is going to get more operators at O.B. Curtis.”
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/jackson-miss-loses-water-service-amid-flooding-state-distribute-water/ | 2022-08-30T13:14:11Z |
Man paddles down river in hollowed-out pumpkin
NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (CNN) – A man in Nebraska is going for a big, orange world record.
Duane Hansen hopes Guinness World Records will certify his trip down the Missouri River in a hollowed-out pumpkin as the longest such trip ever.
He paddled 38 miles in the pumpkin Saturday to celebrate his 60th birthday.
He set out from the city of Bellevue around 7:30 a.m. and arrived in Nebraska City about 11 hours later.
The makeshift vessel had the name S.S. Berta written on the back and a cup holder carved in the hull.
The previous Guinness World Record for the longest journey by pumpkin boat was 25.5 miles.
A spokesperson for Guinness World Records said they have gotten Hansen’s application for the title and are awaiting evidence to review it.
Berta the pumpkin weighed 846 pounds.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/man-paddles-down-river-hollowed-out-pumpkin/ | 2022-08-30T13:14:18Z |
Meghan speaks about her efforts ‘forgiving’ royal family
LONDON (AP) — Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, says that “just by existing,” she and her husband Prince Harry “upset the dynamic of the hierarchy” when they were in the U.K.
The former actress made headlines in Britain on Tuesday with comments made during an interview with U.S. magazine The Cut. In the interview published Monday, the duchess said it’s not easy to “forgive” when asked if there was room for forgiveness between her, Britain’s royal family and her own family. She also referred to Harry’s strained ties with his father, Prince Charles.
“I think forgiveness is really important. It takes a lot more energy to not forgive,” she said. “But it takes a lot of effort to forgive. I’ve really made an active effort, especially knowing that I can say anything.”
Meghan, 41, and Harry, 37, have been in a tense relationship with Britain’s royal family since they stepped away from royal duties and left the U.K. in early 2020, citing what they said were the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.
Since their move to California, where they are now settled with their two young children, they have publicly discussed their unhappiness with the royal family. In a bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, Meghan spoke about racism within the monarchy and Harry said Charles had stopped taking his calls.
Asked about Meghan’s privacy lawsuit against a British tabloid, The Cut — part of New York Magazine — said the duchess spoke about the terrible impact of “toxic tabloid culture” on both her and Harry’s families.
“Harry said to me, ‘I lost my dad in this process.’ It doesn’t have to be the same for them as it was for me, but that’s his decision,” she told the magazine.
A spokeswoman for Meghan later clarified that the duchess was referring to losing her own estranged father, Thomas Markle, and saying that she hopes this does not happen to Harry and his father.
The couple have signed deals with Spotify and Netflix, and the first offering, a podcast featuring Meghan as a host in conversation with celebrities, has just launched.
___
Follow all AP stories on Britain’s royal family at https://apnews.com/hub/queen-elizabeth-ii.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/meghan-speaks-about-her-efforts-forgiving-royal-family/ | 2022-08-30T13:14:24Z |
UN experts warn of impact of abortion bans on US minorities
GENEVA (AP) — Independent U.N. human rights experts expressed concerns Tuesday about the adverse impact on the rights of racial and ethnic minorities from the U.S. Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for abortion in the United States, and called on the Biden administration and state governments to do more to buttress those rights.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a group of independent experts who work with the U.N. human rights office, said it was concerned about higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, among a host of concerns about the rights of Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous peoples, foreign-born migrants and others in the United States.
The calls came as part of a regular review of U.N. member states by the committee. The U.S. was among seven countries to be considered this summer. A large delegation of U.S. officials, including Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, traveled to Geneva earlier this month for hearings that fed into the committee’s thinking about the rights of ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S.
In its report, the committee ran the gamut of concerns and assessments — including praise for recent legislation and executive orders to improve the rights of minorities, and calls for a “national action plan” to combat systemic racism and racial discrimination and an effort to limit the impact of gun violence on such minorities.
It urged consideration of new laws or a review of existing ones to help fight excessive use of force by law enforcement, and called on the U.S. to adopt “all necessary measures” — including at the federal level — to ensure that all people can vote. It expressed concerns about an increase in new legislation with a “disproportionate impact” on minorities.
While noting some steps by the White House to address high maternal mortality rates, it said: “the committee is concerned that systemic racism along with intersecting factors such as gender, race, ethnicity and migration status have a profound impact on the ability of women and girls to access the full range of sexual and reproductive health services in (the U.S.) without discrimination.”
The concerns came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to strip away women’s constitutional protections for abortion that had been enshrined for nearly a half-century under Roe v. Wade, which paved the way for abortion bans in some states.
The committee, referring to the recent court decision, called on the United States to adopt “all necessary measures” at both state and federal level “to address the profound disparate impact of (the decision) on women of racial and ethnic minorities, Indigenous women and those with low incomes,” and provide safe, legal access to abortion under existing U.S. commitments to human rights.
It called on the U.S. to ensure that women seeking an abortion — or the health care providers who assist them — “are not subjected to criminal penalties.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/un-experts-warn-impact-abortion-bans-us-minorities/ | 2022-08-30T13:14:31Z |
TUESDAY
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
WEDNESDAY
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. at outdoors Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Open mic poetry event: 6-7:30 p.m., Night Heron Books and Coffee.
THURSDAY
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Wyoming Back to School bash: 4-7 p.m., Undine Park. Stop by the Laramie Police Foundation table to get one of 500 string packs with treats.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Diabetes Support Group meets: 5:30-6:30 p.m. via Zoom. Email questions@ivinsosnhospital.org for the link.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
FRIDAY
Spaghetti fundraiser dinner: 5:30-7:30 p.m., Elks Lodge, 103 S. 2nd St. Cost is $15 for a spaghetti dinner with meatballs and sausage. Limited quantities, so please call for a reservation, 307-742-2024.
Drive-in movie night featuring "Back to the Future": Doors open at 6 p.m., movie starts at 7, Laramie Range Ford, 3609 Grand Ave. A free drive-in style screening of the sci-fi classic. Donations will be accepted to benefit Cathedral Home.
SATURDAY
Acoustic singer-songwriter Jonathan Foster performs: 8 p.m., The Great Untamed, 209 S. 3rd St.
SUNDAY
Walk with a Doc: 1:30-2:30 p.m. at the Washington Park west shelter No. 3. Bring walking shoes and a friend. For more information, email questions@ivinsonhospital.org.
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
MONDAY
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Sept. 6
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Sept. 7
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Free “American Trombone!” recital at UW: 7:30 p.m., Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts recital hall.
Sept. 8
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Business After Hours: 5:30-7 p.m., Western States Bank, 3420 E. Grand Ave.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Sept. 9
NU2U street dance and costume party: 5-11 p.m., in front of the store at 5th and Garland streets in Laramie. Open for all ages.
Sept. 10
22nd annual Wyoming Buddy Walk: 9 a.m. to noon, Washington Park band shell.
Tailgate party for Wesley Foundation’s 100th anniversary: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., United Methodist Church parking lot, 1215 Gibbon St. The student ministry is marking 100 years at the University of Wyoming and First United Methodist. Free lunch picnic.
Summer Market Day at the fairgrounds: 3-6 p.m., beef barn.
Sept. 11
Special worship service for Wesley Foundation: 10 a.m., First United Methodist Church, 1215 Gibbon St., followed by a potluck. Special guest Bishop Karen Olivetto will attend and preach. All are invited to reminisce with former Wesley Foundation members and meet the recent generation of the organization.
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Sept. 12
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Albany County Historic Preservation Board meets: 6 p.m. via Microsoft Teams. To attend and receive an invite, email a request to kcbard@charter.net.
Sept. 13
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Albany County Republican Party meets: 6 p.m., Albany County Public Library.
Sept. 14
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Sept. 15
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Sept. 16
Albany County CattleWomen meet: 11:30 a.m., location tbd. Visit wyaccw.com in the week before the meeting for location and more information.
Sept. 17
Walk to End Alzheimer’s: 9 a.m., Optimist Park, with music and food following the walk.
Higher Ground Fair: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site in Laramie. A celebration of the six Rocky Mountain states and the native first nations that also call the region home. Proceeds from ticket sales (kids admitted free) help support Feeding Laramie Valley. Fore more information or to volunteer, call 307-223-4300 or email info@highergroundfair.org.
Sept. 18
Higher Ground Fair: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site in Laramie. A celebration of the six Rocky Mountain states and the native first nations that also call the region home. Proceeds from ticket sales (kids admitted free) help support Feeding Laramie Valley. Fore more information or to volunteer, call 307-223-4300 or email info@highergroundfair.org.
Walk with a Doc: 1:30-2:30 p.m. at the Washington Park west shelter No. 3. Bring walking shoes and a friend. For more information, email questions@ivinsonhospital.org.
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Sept. 19
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Sept. 20
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Sept. 21
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Sept. 22
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Sept. 25
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Sept. 26
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
America Sewing Guild Laramie Chapter meets: 7 p.m., United Methodist Church, 1215 E. Gibbon St.
Sept. 27
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Sept. 28
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Sept. 29
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Sept. 30
Downtown Laramie Farmers Market: 3-7 p.m., parking lot north of Depot Park on South 1st Street.
Oct. 2
Walk with a Doc: 1:30-2:30 p.m. at the Washington Park west shelter No. 3. Bring walking shoes and a friend. For more information, email questions@ivinsonhospital.org.
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Oct. 3
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Oct. 4
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Oct. 5
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Oct. 6
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Diabetes Support Group meets: 5:30-6:30 p.m. via Zoom. Email questions@ivinsosnhospital.org for the link.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Oct. 8
12th annual Kids Pumpkin Walk: Noon to 4 p.m., Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site. A fun family event featuring outdoor activities, indoor games, education, candy, treats and plenty of pumpkins. Cost is $4 for adults, 17 and younger admitted free.
Oct. 9
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Oct. 10
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Oct. 11
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Albany County Republican Party meets: 6 p.m., Albany County Public Library.
Oct. 12
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Oct. 13
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Oct. 16
Walk with a Doc: 1:30-2:30 p.m. at the Washington Park west shelter No. 3. Bring walking shoes and a friend. For more information, email questions@ivinsonhospital.org.
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Albany County Historic Preservation Board meets: 6 p.m. the second Monday of the month via Microsoft Teams. To attend and receive an invite, email a request to kcbard@charter.net.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Oct. 17
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Oct. 18
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Oct. 19
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Oct. 20
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Oct. 21
Albany County CattleWomen meet: 11:30 a.m., location tbd. Visit wyaccw.com in the week before the meeting for location and more information.
Oct. 23
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Oct. 24
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
America Sewing Guild Laramie Chapter meets: 7 p.m., United Methodist Church, 1215 E. Gibbon St.
Oct. 25
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Oct. 26
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Oct. 27
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St.
Oct. 30
Laramie Connections free Meet and Eat dinner and faith gathering: 4:30 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1517 E. Canby St.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 6:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Oct. 31
Alcoholics Anonymous meets: Daily at various times in person or on Zoom. For more information, call 307-399-0590 or visit area76aawyoming.org or aa.org.
Veterans service office hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Veterans Service Center at the UW Student Union, 1000 E. University Ave.
Survivors of Suicide Support Group: Meets from 5:30-6:45 p.m. at Hospice of Laramie House, 1754 Centennial Drive.
Nov. 1
Prayers & Squares Quilting Group meets: 9 a.m., Room 1 of Hunter Hall at St. Matthews Cathedral.
Nov. 2
Laramie Tai Chi and Tea meets: 1:30 p.m. outdoors at Harbon Park, North 14th and Gibbon streets. For more information, visit visit laramietaichiandtea.org.
Ivinson’s women’s health team hosts prenatal education: 5:30 p.m. in the Summit conference room. For more information and registration, visit ivinsonhospital.org/childbirth.
Nov. 3
Caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer’s/dementia: 3 p.m., meet for coffee, pie, understanding and comradeship at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 204 S. 30th St. For more information, call 307-745-6451.
Al-Anon Family Group meets: 5:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian church, 215 S. 11th St. For relatives and friends of alcoholics. For information, call Jane at 307-760-4683 or Mark at 307-760-4716.
Diabetes Support Group meets: 5:30-6:30 p.m. via Zoom. Email questions@ivinsosnhospital.org for the link.
Fly fishing rod building for veterans: 7-9 p.m., Laramie Chamber Business Alliance office, 528 S. Adams St. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/announcements/whats-happening-aug-30-2022/article_e43e65b6-2656-11ed-a56f-4f3926b94a28.html | 2022-08-30T13:38:26Z |
The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office, Sublette County Public Health and Wyoming Highway Patrol partnered to host free child safety seat inspections in 2019.
SHERIDAN — A piece of legislation designed to increase child safety on Wyoming roads is being considered by the Wyoming Legislature’s Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs committee this interim session.
Proposed legislation 23-LSO-0025 requires all children younger than the age of 2 to be placed in a rear-facing safety restraint system and increases the fine for failing to ensure young children are in the proper restraint system.
All who do not comply with this requirement will face a fine of no more than $100 for the first offense and no more than $200 for the second offense, according to the proposed legislation. The $100 fee for a first offense can be waived upon providing proof of the purchase and installation of a proper child safety restraint.
Existing Wyoming law requires children younger than 9 years of age to be “properly secured in a child safety restraint system in a seat of the vehicle other than the front seat” but does not require children younger than 2 to be restrained in a rear-facing car seat.
Currently, fines for improperly restrained children are set at $50 for a first offense and $100 for a second offense.
Car crashes remain one of the most common sources of death for children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2019, 608 child passengers died in motor vehicle crashes and more than 91,000 were injured.
Always buckling children in age- and size-appropriate car seats, booster seats and seat belts reduces death and serious injuries by up to 80%, the CDC said.
For those younger than age 2, the CDC recommends the use of rear-facing car seats as a way to absorb most of the crash forces and support the baby’s head, neck and spine in the event of a crash. When young children ride forward-facing, their heads are thrown forward, which could potentially result in spine and head injuries.
Currently, 16 states — plus the District of Columbia — require rear-facing seats for passengers younger than age 2.
The proposed changes to the child restraint legislation are not new to the Wyoming Legislature.
During the 2021 general session, the legislature considered an identical bill known as House Bill 23. While the bill failed to pass the House during third reading with a vote of 26-34, many legislators, including Rep. Kevin O’Hearn, R-Mills, expressed support for the bill at the time.
“This bill is very important, not only to Wyoming, but to the United States, as more kids are killed and severely injured in vehicle accidents than in any other matter,” O’Hearn said.
23-LSO-004 was scheduled to be considered and discussed by the transportation committee during their meeting in Rock Springs this week, but, due to a busy schedule, the committee postponed its consideration until its next meeting, which will be held from Nov. 3-4 in Cheyenne.
If the bill draft is approved during that meeting, it could proceed to the 2023 general session this spring. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/car-seat-legislation-could-be-returning-to-legislature/article_099e1282-27da-11ed-ba80-cb637bf68659.html | 2022-08-30T13:38:33Z |
Lawmakers, looking to alleviate Wyoming’s mental health professional shortage, are considering measures that would make it easier for practitioners to work across state lines.
The Joint Labor, Health and Social Services committee considered two draft bills this month that would allow the state to join interstate psychology and counseling compacts. By enabling professionals licensed in one compact state to practice in all compact states, advocates say the agreements would give Wyoming patients access to more counselors and psychologists, and give Wyoming providers access to larger markets.
Wyoming residents could connect virtually with a counselor in Denver, for example, or a University of Wyoming student going home for the summer could continue treatment with a Laramie-based psychologist. The expansion of mental health care options is especially appealing in a rural state where the per-capita suicide rate is often the highest in the nation.
Advocates of the bill say state licensure requirements can be prohibitively time consuming, costly and ultimately discourage psychologists and counselors from going through the process. Skeptics, however, are concerned joining the compacts could wrest regulatory control away from the state and cost mental health professionals clients.
The non-profit advocacy group Mental Health America ranked Wyoming last in its 2022 state of mental health report because of a dangerous combination of factors: a high prevalence of mental illness and poor access to care.
There’s been a shadow pandemic of behavioral health issues taking place across the country, said Julia Harris, senior policy analyst for the health policy project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “There’s been some of the highest rates of overdose that have ever happened in this country during the pandemic. There’s growing anxiety and depression because of the pandemic pressures.”
“The demand is way up,” said Casper-based psychologist and Wyoming Psychological Association president Donald Benson. “Part of that has been the pandemic and the stress people have been under.”
“My phone’s ringing off the hook,” Cheyenne-based counselor Lindsay Simineo said. It’s been a long time since she’s had an opening in her schedule.
“We do not want our Wyoming counselors getting to the point where they are so burned out by the overwhelming need, they walk away from the profession,” Simineo said. “So that additional workforce from out of state is going to be hugely important in supporting our current mental health workforce.”
Simineo also lobbies on behalf of the Wyoming Association of Counselors, which supports joining the counseling compact.
Need is outstripping the supply of mental health professionals, but the two compacts provide a potential way to alleviate that stress. Plus, joining them could make Wyoming a more attractive place for specialists to live and work.
Utah joined both the psychology and counseling compacts in the last few years.
Anna Lieber, licensed clinical mental health counselor and president of the Utah Mental Health Counselors Association, points to Logan, Utah’s proximity to the Idaho border as a prime example of the compacts’ benefits. “Most therapists in Logan have to be licensed in both Idaho and Utah,” Lieber said. “Which is a financial burden.”
“With COVID, we realized we could use telehealth a little more efficiently and better,” said Amanda Alkema, assistant director of substance abuse for the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s really helped in our rural areas to expand that.”
She noted that Mountain West states are often competing for the same workforce, and the compacts allow for more collaboration and shared expertise.
Wyoming has joined several compacts in the past few years, noted Wyoming Hospital Association president Eric Boley. Physician and nursing compacts proved particularly helpful during the pandemic. Nurses and physicians from participating compact states were able to work in Wyoming without going through an arduous licensing process.
“We haven’t seen any downside to this at all,” Boley said. “It’s all been really positive.”
The Wyoming Psychological Association has yet to take an official position on the compact, Benson said.
“There absolutely are people that worry that the people in other compact states will cherry pick patients from Wyoming,” Benson said. “And that will cut into the livelihoods of psychologists here.”
Additionally, some worry about states losing regulatory control over their counselors and psychologists.
“And when it comes to the Legislature,” Boley of the Hospital Association said, “there’s always concern about oversight and who’s ultimately responsible for making sure that they’re good practitioners, and they’re adhering to all the rules and regulations and guidance.”
However, he also said that the previously enacted physician and nursing compacts haven’t resulted in substandard care. “There’s still oversight and they’re still licensed in their home states,” Boley said.
The compact is just one important step forward, said Wyoming Association of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Centers executive director Andi Summerville. “But we still need people on the ground in Wyoming. Telehealth is wonderful, but it’s not a panacea.”
She says the state should still focus on growing the number of counselors who live and work in Wyoming and improving pay.
Summerville is supportive of the psychology and counseling compacts and the potential for more telehealth options.
“It’s important to recognize that that’s the way the country is moving in general,” Summerville said. “And without being part of the compact, it creates barriers for folks to come practice in our state.”
The Joint Labor, Health and Social Services committee voted to move forward with the draft bills and formally finalize them in its next meeting. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/laramieboomerang/news/state-mulls-joining-mental-health-care-compacts/article_61627dc4-27d9-11ed-91bd-07615ad6d70a.html | 2022-08-30T13:38:39Z |
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
CHEYENNE – An announcement will be made regarding the complaint made against state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, sometime before the Wyoming Legislature’s next general session, which begins in January.
The complaint was made by Wyoming Hospital Association President Eric Boley in early March, and led to the Management Council holding a meeting to discern whether a formal investigation was necessary. Senate and House leaders never commented on the outcome, however, nor did members of the committee.
One more meeting has been held by the Management Council since the incident, and it was last Wednesday. No topic was provided, members were called to order and then they immediately moved into executive session. There was no public comment when they came out of executive session.
“There is no announcement at this time. However, there will be one before the start of the new session,” Senate President Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in response to an email inquiry Monday.
Neither Bouchard nor Boley commented Monday on the incident or the progress of the Management Council in addressing the issue.
When Boley wrote the complaint regarding Rule 22 in the Joint Rules of the House and the Senate, he said Bouchard allegedly continually uses intimidation and bullying tactics, and his behavior had to be brought to someone’s attention for corrective action.
“I have felt personally and professionally attacked on several occasions by the Senator, and I am grateful that the meetings are recorded to back up my claims,” he said in his letter. “I encourage you and the other members of leadership who may be reviewing the complaint to watch the Committee videos.”
Bouchard previously sat on the Senate Labor Health and Social Services Committee; Management Audit Committee; Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee; and the Select Committee on Legislative Facilities, Technology and Process. He was stripped of those responsibilities on March 10 in a 19-10 Senate vote.
Dockstader moved that Bouchard be removed from the committees due to a “continued pattern of intimidating and disorderly conduct, and other behavior that is unbecoming to a member of the Senate.”
However, Boley revealed he was concerned with more than Bouchard’s behavior in the committee. He said that on March 8, he was confronted by the Cheyenne lawmaker and Sen. Tom James, R-Rock Springs. He said it was in “an abusive and demanding tone and (they) tried to intimidate me with their body language (hands on hips, arms waving in my face) for not providing them with an amendment to a House bill that was being worked on in the Senate Labor Committee and had moved to the Committee of the Whole in the Senate.”
Boley said although he provided the committee with an amendment, Bouchard was angry he didn’t give him a copy directly. This led to a further argument, where the senator said he would “expose the fear mongering and fear tactics hospitals were using during the pandemic,” according to Boley.
Boley ended his letter by explaining the incident and asked that the allegations in the complaint be addressed swiftly. He said he would notify legislators if he is being retaliated against or treated poorly as a result of the complaint coming forward, and would cooperate with any investigation.
“These are tyrannical dictators,” Bouchard told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle at the end of March. “I don’t work for so-called leadership. I work for the people. They abused their power, and it’s because I won’t bow down to them.”
Bouchard said there was a “whisper campaign” that started with Senate leadership to dispose of him of his responsibilities. He doesn’t believe the allegations, and said that the complaint can’t be substantiated.
If the lawmakers move forward with a formal investigation, and a special committee is created to address accusations of disorderly conduct, there is a possibility Bouchard could face consequences.
“The committee may recommend dismissal of the complaint, reprimand, censure, expulsion or other discipline it deems appropriate,” the joint rules state. “The appropriate house may dismiss the complaint, expel, censure, reprimand or otherwise discipline the member as it deems appropriate. Expulsion of a member shall require the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the members, as provided by Article III Section 12 of the Constitution. Reprimand or censure of a member shall require the affirmative vote of a majority of the elected members.”
Bouchard’s current term in the Senate ends in January 2025. He ran for the sole U.S. House seat in Congress against Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., this year, and lost to Harriet Hageman in the Republican primary.
Jasmine Hall is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s state government reporter. She can be reached by email at jhall@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3167. Follow her on Twitter @jasminerhphotos and on Instagram @jhrose25. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/complaint-against-sen-bouchard-will-be-addressed-before-next-session/article_103d7b00-27ee-11ed-8a65-1bda1d4fc2c3.html | 2022-08-30T13:38:45Z |
CASPER — Democrats’ efforts to curb climate change drew considerable ire from speakers at an oil industry event on Thursday in Cheyenne.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. John Barrasso said the Biden administration had renounced the “American energy independence” achieved during the Trump presidency to pursue renewable energy.
The previous administration’s energy policies “unleashed this country’s economy and potential” and “demonstrated what American leadership on energy can mean to the American people,” Pence said — only to have its achievements dismantled under President Joe Biden.
“The war on energy that we ended — I don’t have to tell anybody in Wyoming — has returned with a vengeance,” he said.
Climate change lies at the center of the dispute.
Pew Research Center reported in mid-2020 — before the last presidential election — that 65% of Americans felt the federal government was doing “too little” to reduce the effects of climate change.
Four in five favored “tougher restrictions” on carbon emissions from power plants.
Another Pew survey conducted in January found that Americans strongly favor prioritizing development of wind, solar and other alternative energies over expanding fossil fuels, but want the country to continue using a combination of fossil fuels and renewables.
“A majority of Americans believe in an all-of-the-above energy strategy for this country,” Pence said. “Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has been overtaken by the radical left and their radical climate agenda. I want to assure you, the majority of American people are on our side.”
The disagreement between parties no longer centers on whether climate change is real.
According to the 2021 Yale Climate Opinion Maps, which researchers modeled using national survey data, 72% of Americans believe global warming is happening, 65% are worried about global warming and 59% believe it is already harming people in the U.S.
“We all understand the climate is changing, and man has an impact on the Earth, and the things we can do,” Barrasso said.
The divisive question now is what the country should do about it. And as Democrats (and climate scientists) urge immediate action, Republicans are calling for Biden, Congress and other federal officials to stop trying to accelerate the ongoing transformation of the energy sector and instead let those decisions be made locally.
Barrasso described Democrats as “climate alarmists” who “want to do things dramatically, unilaterally — no matter what China does, no matter what India does — and do it immediately. No matter what the cost to our economy, and what the cost to our freedom.”
China is the world’s No. 1 carbon emitter. India ranks third, after the U.S., where daily electricity production from natural gas set a new record amid unrelenting heat last month.
Pence argued that the true harm to the U.S. comes not from the effects of climate change — which he feels have been overstated — but from the reaction Democrats are “imposing” on the country’s energy producers, while allowing fossil fuel development to continue in China, India and elsewhere.
By 2030, China plans to install enough wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear and natural gas to begin reducing its total emissions, and India aims to generate half of its power from renewables, according to targets set within the last year, following pressure from the United Nations.
But both countries are also still building coal-fired power plants.
“I think the American people are onto it, but we’ve just got to keep calling them out,” Pence said. “Understand that this is an agenda that I believe, ultimately, is about weakening America.”
The Yale climate opinion estimates found, however, that 70% of Americans want corporations to “do more to address global warming,” 61% want Congress to and 52% want the president to. And 55% want climate change to be a “high priority” for Congress and the current administration.
In heavily Republican Wyoming, those totals sink to 62% for corporations, 44% for Congress and 37% for the president. Only 38% think a climate should be a top federal concern.
“Cynthia (Lummis) and I have a message from Wyoming to Washington, and it’s just three words,” Barrasso said. “Leave. Us. Alone.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/pence-urges-climate-slowdown/article_7b7e6f50-27da-11ed-b81d-6b3a3112ae8a.html | 2022-08-30T13:38:51Z |
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is increasing measures to screen for aquatic invasive species, following the detection of zebra mussels in a reservoir 27 miles from the state line.
The problematic mussels were discovered in the Pactola Reservoir near Rapid City, South Dakota, in mid-July. Their presence represents a threat to Wyoming’s water-based ecosystems, wildlife authorities say.
Zebra mussels are associated with multiple negative consequences, including adding competition for food sources, which can ultimately blight out native species. They pose a threat to water-based human infrastructure, such as dams, irrigation and power plants.
Zebra mussels are fingernail-sized mollusks with black-and-white striped shells. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, they were inadvertently brought to this country in the 1980s when large ships from Europe were transplanted onto the Great Lakes.
Since then, zebra mussels have spread rapidly throughout that region and the large rivers of the eastern Mississippi drainage zone. They have also been detected in Texas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. Wyoming is one of the few states in the area yet to be affected.
North Dakota Game, Fish and Parks communications manager Nick Harrington said it was a tip from a member of the public that made his agency aware of the mussels in the Pactola Reservoir.
“There was a guy spear-fishing, and he noticed it was on his sunglasses,” he said. “From there, he let us know, and we did additional testing of the water, and there were additional samples that came up positive.”
Prior to the discovery at Pactola, North Dakota officials were aware of the presence of this species in at least two water bodies in the eastern part of their state. The recent discovery signals that the species has traveled much farther west, and it was undetected until it reached its adult life stage.
With that information at hand, Pactola Reservoir is now considered to be infested, and containing the spread will involve diligence of every outdoor recreator. Boaters must strictly adhere to “Clean, Drain and Dry” protocols.
Wyo. worries
Wyoming Game and Fish Department Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator Josh Leonard said the discovery of an adult mussel so close to the Wyoming state line is extremely concerning.
“We haven’t had a mussel-positive water producing adults this close to Wyoming – ever,” he said, noting that outdoor recreators frequently bounce between waterways in close geographic proximity. “It’s less than an hour drive from that water to the Keyhole Reservoir. If there’s a boat coming off of the Pactola coming here, and it’s not inspected or decontaminated, the transmission probability is really high.”
According to Wyoming Game and Fish, zebra mussels can spread even in a microscopic form from a very small amount of standing water left on a watercraft.
The good news is a robust inspection program has been in place for years to prevent such an event from occurring. All who enter the state with a motorized watercraft are required to stop at one of the various inspection stations upon entry. If they do not pass such a station, they must seek out an individual inspector before launching into Wyoming waters.
Leonard said the news of an invasive species so close to Wyoming has prompted the department to increase the operating hours of existing boat inspection sites. There is also a renewed push to raise public awareness about what’s at stake.
“We have been able to hold our eastern border up to this point, and we are confident we can keep it that way,” Leonard said. “I think the program is well set up to do that. We may need to reevaluate some of the secondary highways that might need more attention looking forward. Still, we are optimistic we will be able to work together across both jurisdictions.”
Leonard said his department will also conduct more frequent sampling of Wyoming’s waterways. Typically, reservoirs in northeast Wyoming have been sampled for aquatic invasive species once or twice a year. Going forward, those same water bodies will be tested monthly.
“We are in this together, and we need boaters to comply with our ‘clean, drain and dry’ message,” Leonard said. “We can’t be out there all the time. Boaters and recreators are out there every day, and we are counting on them to do the right thing.” | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyomingbusinessreport/current_edition/wgfd-on-alert-for-possible-invasive-aquatic-species/article_9b18b2fc-2dbf-5b00-bd72-e53d8dfeb0d0.html | 2022-08-30T13:38:57Z |
Wyoming is positioning itself to be a leader in hydrogen energy, as stakeholders plan to pursue some of the billions of dollars in federal funding set aside for hydrogen hubs around the nation.
In early 2022, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah signed a memorandum of understanding to create the Western-Inter States Hydrogen Hub coalition. WISHH has been coordinating and developing a joint application for a regional clean hydrogen hub allocation for $8 billion in funding set aside in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for four or more regional hydrogen hubs.
“Really, what we’re seeking to do is to be leaders. Hydrogen, while it has been around for a long time, has really filled niche purposes before,” said Anja Bendel of the Wyoming Energy Authority and program director for WISHH. “Now, there is a big push for it to become a much more prominent energy source. We’re moving Wyoming as strategically as we can to be leaders in the field.”
Michael Pearlman, communications director for the Wyoming Governor’s Office, said Gov. Mark Gordon has been “very clear that Wyoming is – and will remain – an ‘all of the above’ energy state.” What that means is the state will pursue an energy future in emerging fields, while also relying on traditional sources like fossil fuels.
Wyoming has great potential for producing hydrogen, both from fossil fuels and from wind and solar projects, Pearlman said. “The current four states in the coalition represent unique political, feedstock transportation and CO2 capture opportunities that can benefit each state and future energy consumers.”
The use of fossil fuels, coupled with the carbon dioxide capture technology, will benefit Wyoming’s traditional bedrock energy industry and help create a new source of energy, Pearlman said, and nuclear may also play a role as Wyoming expands its energy portfolio.
On average, Wyoming exports about 80% of the energy produced in the state, and is the largest net exporter of energy of any state in the U.S.
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are uniquely situated to serve as a hydrogen hub, according to WISHH. It cited the states’ “thriving hydrogen economies given the presence of high-quality wind, solar, biomass and other energy resources; a sophisticated oil and natural gas industry; a robust energy-transportation infrastructure; and an established carbon management infrastructure with both favorable underlying geologies and regulatory structures.”
RFP
Bendel said hydrogen is a key part of the state’s strategy, because as consumers are increasingly demanding low-carbon fuels, and as the market is changing, hydrogen may fill the gap.
WISHH has issued a request for proposals for a prime contractor to assist efforts across the four-state region to submit a proposal to the Department of Energy for funding for a regional hydrogen hub project. The RFP was slated to have closed on Aug. 16.
Eugene Holubnyak, with the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources, has been charged with managing the school’s efforts to identify and quantify the relative competitive advantages of Wyoming in an emerging low-carbon hydrogen economy.
There are challenges, as with any industry. Holubnyak said he sees hydrogen energy as a great opportunity for Wyoming.
“We can solve this conundrum that the world needs more energy, there is no question about that. The United States will need more energy,” he said.
In practice, the UW School of Energy Resources helps to commercialize different technologies, working closely with DOE and industry.
“We make new up-and-coming technology,” Holubnyak said. “We facilitate growth, and try to make it happen in new areas of production.”
According to Holubnyak, hydrogen energy, while a power source that will come online in the future, is about 10 years behind in research and development, as compared to carbon capture technology.
“The technology is getting closer and closer to being commercialized, and right now, we’re standing on that same sort of ground where carbon capture storage and utilization stood maybe 10 years ago,” he said.
Hydrogen’s turn
Now, it’s hydrogen’s turn in the R&D spotlight.
“Any new area requires substantial effort, like infrastructure buildout and all of those things,” Holubnyak said. “Those things are not cheap or easy, and a mindset change or acceptance is needed. It happened to CCS, and it happened to renewables, and now it is hydrogen’s turn, so to speak.” CCS stands for carbon capture and sequestration.
In Wyoming, specifically, Holubnyak said there is potential within the coal industry to develop hydrogen power, with exploration into making coal more sustainable and cleaner.
“This could help coal to stay longer, because there are technologies to make hydrogen from coal, as well as natural gas,” he said.
Potential
Hydrogen energy, Holubnyak continued, has the potential to affect many industries.
“What excites me the most about hydrogen is how flexible it is, and how many applications it has,” he said.
This includes meeting a demand for ammonium, mostly used in fertilizers, by equalizing ammonium and hydrogen.
A future could include hydrogen-powered cars. Perhaps most exciting, the UW expert said, is hydrogen’s potential for energy storage.
“One of the reasons that renewables are not growing as much as they could is the bottleneck in that they cannot store electricity,” Holubnyak said. “The peak demands are not always meeting generation, but you can match those if you use large-scale storage. Hydrogen can solve this problem on a very large scale, where you can do seasonal storage anywhere from days to weeks and months.”
There are at least 14 companies in Wyoming looking into hydrogen energy, some pursuing green energy development, and others involving nuclear. Private and federal funding and partnerships are in place.
A few challenges remain, Holubnyak said. He said more research on storage, and also how to regulate hydrogen safely while also allowing for its development, is necessary. There are transportation and infrastructure challenges to solve, as well as local and state policy to work out.
“When we produce hydrogen, who benefits? We need to make sure that the state actually does benefit from this production,” he said. “Through oil and gas, we funded school for years, and the mechanism for that evolved for decades and decades. We understand how to do that. But we are standing here with hydrogen, a new thing, and we don’t have a clear mechanism for the state to tax it. We are looking into this, as well, because it is important.”
Pearlman said that while the federal funding opportunity in hydrogen is one important aspect of its development, the real partners are the companies willing to invest in Wyoming.
“The Wyoming Legislature has provided over $80 million as potential matches to private and federal funding opportunities for energy development in Wyoming,” Pearlman, Gov. Gordon’s spokesman, noted. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyomingbusinessreport/current_edition/wyoming-eyes-hydrogen-for-energy/article_69a08579-f1dd-50fb-809b-380f46a66fc0.html | 2022-08-30T13:39:04Z |
Residents can offer input over future of 2 Marysville park buildings Sept. 19
Marysville residents looking to learn more and offer input on the future of two decades-old structures still standing in the city’s community park will get their chance next month.
A meeting about the old city hall or Marysville Historical Museum building on Huron Boulevard and the band shell inside the park will be the focus of a public meeting on Monday, Sept. 19.
That’s set for 7 p.m. at the Marysville Community Center, 867 Huron Blvd., with tours available of each of the museum and band shell structures at 6 p.m.
“If anyone is interested in kind of an open discussion about whether to remodel the band shell or build new — we have money for that — and/or the museum, they’re welcome to do so,” City Manager Randy Fernandez said on Monday. However, he also cautioned, “It is not a formal meeting.”
The meeting next month will be far from the first time officials addressed both buildings, located at Marysville City Park.
Officials have discussed each, particularly during past budget sessions, over the last several years, citing needed repairs or plans to rehab or replace each of them.
For some residents, concern over the future of the structures re-emerged after the city tore down a smaller, former museum structure also located on Huron and the park’s southern edge earlier this summer. Officials, at the time, had pointed to the blight of that building, such as its roof falling apart, before it was razed.
Moving forward, however, city leaders said they wanted the public’s input involved as they look over options long before City Council members make a decision.
Mayor Wayne Pyden said previously they would have to make improvements to the old city hall, if kept, to bring it up to code and be universally accessible.
Fernandez said the city has already had a study done on the needs of that structure, adding it’d take $325,000 to $350,000 to renovate, and that there were no funds or grants set aside at present for such a project.
Meanwhile, the city is in talks with St. Clair County Commissioner Duke Dunn, whose district includes Marysville, to use a share of his funds of the county’s American Rescue Plan dollars to expand or replace the band shell.
“Through our architect and our engineer, we have drawings of a renovated band shell that (would) cost around 470,000 or so, and then, we have renderings of a new (structure that) will cost around 450,000 or so,” Fernandez said. The drawings, he said, were being processed to have available for viewing during the Sept. 19 meeting.
'Nobody's idea will be poopooed,' says meeting organizer
Councilman David Barber will be leading the discussion during the 7 p.m. meeting.
Before it starts, though, he’ll lead the tour of the old city hall, while Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Hayman handles the band shell.
At the recreation center that night, Barber said, “I’m just going to put the tables in a big square. I’m going to stand in the middle with a dry-erase board and let people tell us what they foresee happening to those two structures.”
Barber said that the public meeting and tours will be family-friendly and that attendees will be able to offer input freely. “Nobody’s idea will be poopooed,” he said.
He also emphasized it wasn’t aimed to be political with a contested city election — he’s running for one of four running for three council seats, while Hayman is running for mayor — on tap in this November’s general election.
Council members will be able to look at the input after the Sept. 19 session before making final decisions about how to handle the two structures moving forward.
“If nobody takes advantage of this and council makes a decision, basically, shame on them,” Barber said. “I don't think we’re leaning one way or the other,” he added. “Both the band shell (and old city hall), I know we have to make decisions, but we’re open to have ideas.”
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith. | https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/news/2022/08/30/residents-can-offer-input-over-future-of-2-marysville-park-buildings-sept-19/65462007007/ | 2022-08-30T13:40:48Z |
Thunderstorms bring power outages to St. Clair, Sanilac counties
Some St. Clair County residents are without power Tuesday morning after a line of storms ripped through southeastern Michigan Monday night.
The DTE outage map showed customers without power in western St. Clair County, as well as Harsens Island, as of 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. The map also showed a small area without power in Marlette Township.
National Weather Service meteorologist Trent Frey said a line of squalls with wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph came through southeastern Michigan Monday night, causing minor wind damage in the form of downed trees and power lines.
DTE spokeswoman Dana Blankenship said more than 240,000 customers are without power Tuesday morning in DTE's wider service area.
"Our crews are securing the more than 3,300 downed power lines, assessing damage and beginning restoration. Crews from across the country are being brought in to assist in this effort," Blankenship said. "We will provide restoration estimates as soon as our crews can safely assess damage. Report any downed power lines or outages through our outage center or DTE app as our telephone service is currently experiencing interruptions. Please be safe and remember to stay at least 20 feet from any downed power lines – assume they are live and dangerous."
While the weather service received several reports of tornadoes in the area, those reports were most likely straight winds or gustnados, rather than tornadoes. Gustnados are small swirling winds at the front of the storm, but are not considered tornados because they are not connected to a cloud base, Frey said.
The environmental conditions were not favorable for tornadoes Monday, nor did radar indicate their activity, Frey said.
Contact Laura Fitzgerald at (810) 941-7072 or lfitzgeral@gannett.com. | https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/news/2022/08/30/thousands-without-power-following-storms-monday-night/65463434007/ | 2022-08-30T13:40:54Z |
Man breaks Guinness record for longest journey by pumpkin boat Published August 30, 2022 at 6:10 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 0:28 Duane Hansen grew an 800 pound pumpkin, hollowed it out and paddled it down the Mississippi river. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/man-breaks-guinness-record-for-longest-journey-by-pumpkin-boat | 2022-08-30T13:49:09Z |
Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols' remains are headed for the stars Published August 30, 2022 at 6:10 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 0:28 A rocket company is carrying some of her ashes and the remains of at least three others associated with the show to space on the Enterprise Flight. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/star-trek-actress-nichelle-nichols-remains-are-headed-for-the-stars | 2022-08-30T13:49:31Z |
NPR's Leila Fadel talks with former International Atomic Energy Agency official Olli Heinonen (OH-lee HAY-noh-nen) about the IAEA mission to Ukraine to inspect Europe's largest nuclear plant.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR's Leila Fadel talks with former International Atomic Energy Agency official Olli Heinonen (OH-lee HAY-noh-nen) about the IAEA mission to Ukraine to inspect Europe's largest nuclear plant.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/the-international-atomic-energy-agency-is-on-a-risky-mission-in-ukraine | 2022-08-30T13:49:31Z |
Alabama man’s execution was botched, advocacy group alleges
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama corrections officials apparently botched an inmate’s execution last month, an anti-death penalty group alleges, citing the length of time that passed before the prisoner received the lethal injection and a private autopsy indicating his arm may have been cut to find a vein.
Joe Nathan James Jr. was put to death July 28 at an Alabama prison for the 1994 shooting death of his former girlfriend. The execution was carried out more than three hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request for a stay.
“Subjecting a prisoner to three hours of pain and suffering is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment,” Maya Foa, director of Reprieve US Forensic Justice Initiative, a human rights group that opposes the death penalty, said in a statement. “States cannot continue to pretend that the abhorrent practice of lethal injection is in any way humane.”
The Alabama Department of Forensic Science declined a request to release the state’s autopsy of James, citing an ongoing review that happens after every execution. Officials have not responded to requests for comment on the private autopsy, which was first reported by The Atlantic.
At the time of the execution, Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters that “nothing out of the ordinary” happened. Hamm said he wasn’t aware of the prisoner fighting or resisting officers. The state later acknowledged that the execution was delayed because of difficulties establishing an intravenous line, but did not specify how long it took.
Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology at Emory University and an expert on lethal injection who witnessed the private autopsy, said it looked like there were numerous attempts to connect a line.
Zivot said he saw “multiple puncture sites on both arms” and two perpendicular incisions, each about 3 to 4 centimeters (1 to 1.5 inches) in length, in the middle of the arm, which he said indicated that officials had attempted to perform a “cutdown,” a procedure in which the skin is opened to allow a visual search for a vein. He said the cutdown is an old-style medical intervention rarely performed in modern medical settings, and that it would be painful without anesthesia. He also said he saw evidence of intramuscular injections not in the vicinity of a vein.
The Alabama Department of Corrections prison system issued a written statement in which it noted that “protocol states that if the veins are such that intravenous access cannot be provided, the team will perform a central line procedure,” which involves placing a catheter in a large vein. “Fortunately, this was not necessary and with adequate time, intravenous access was established,” the statement said.
Alabama does not allow witnesses from news outlets to watch the preparations for a lethal injection. They get their first glimpse of the execution chamber when an inmate is already strapped to the gurney with the IV line connected.
A reporter for The Associated Press who attended the execution observed that James did not respond when the warden asked if he had final words. His eyes remained closed except for briefly fluttering at one point early in the procedure.
Lawyers who spoke with James by telephone said they were disturbed by his reported lack of movements and raised questions about what happened before the lethal injection. Hamm said James was not sedated.
“That wasn’t the Joe that I knew. He always had something to say. He always wanted to be in control,” said James Ranson, the attorney who helped James file his appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. “The fact that he did not give any sort of reaction ... and that he didn’t open his eyes, tells me something was up,” Ranson said.
John Palombi, a federal defender who spoke with James twice on the day of his execution, said James, “was certainly alert” earlier in the day.
The Atlantic quoted a friend of James as saying that the inmate had planned to make a final statement.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit organization that analyzes issues concerning capital punishment, said the delay between the Supreme Court’s go-ahead and the execution, combined with the autopsy, points to a “botched execution, and it is among the worst botches in the modern history of the U.S. death penalty.”
“This execution is Exhibit A as to why execution secrecy laws are intolerable,” Dunham wrote in an email to the AP. “The public is entitled to know what went on here — and what goes on in all Alabama executions — from the instant the execution team begins the process of physically preparing the prisoner for the lethal injection until the moment the prisoner dies.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/alabama-mans-execution-was-botched-advocacy-group-alleges/ | 2022-08-30T14:33:02Z |
Barbie honors Madam C.J. Walker, first female self-made millionaire in US
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 9:05 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - What do Jane Goodall, Maya Angelou and Rosa Parks all have in common?
They are all inspiring women, but they also have a look-alike Barbie.
Now, you can add Madam C.J. Walker to that list. She was the first female self-made millionaire in the country.
She achieved enormous success by founding a line of hair care products and cosmetics designed for Black women.
Her Barbie doll is even holding her original product, Wonderful Hair Grower.
Walker was also a noted activist and philanthropist, supporting orphanages and Black colleges, and advocating for civil rights organizations and women’s rights.
The doll is the latest addition to Barbie’s Inspiring Women series.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/barbie-honors-madam-cj-walker-first-female-self-made-millionaire-us/ | 2022-08-30T14:33:04Z |
DeLorean is back with an updated look
(CNN) – After 40 years, there’s finally a new model of the iconic sports car featured in the “Back to the Future” movies.
The new DeLorean Alpha5 electric car looks nothing like the last model made before the company went out of business in 1982.
It still has the trademark gull-wing doors, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.
The DeLorean DMC-12 from the movies was an icon of modern design, but the designers of the Alpha5 had a 40-year gap to fill in.
They based the new car on DeLorean’s second model, the DMC-24, which never got made.
The designers pretended the car’s evolution had never stopped, imagining and making quarter-scale models of the Alpha2 through Alpha4 models.
The resulting design was the Alpha5, a real DeLorean forty years in the making.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/delorean-is-back-with-an-updated-look/ | 2022-08-30T14:33:06Z |
Gen Z, millennials discuss their reluctance to become parents
NEW YORK (AP) — At 24, El Johnson has made up her mind that she won’t bear children, though she and her girlfriend haven’t ruled out adoption.
The graduate student who works in legal services in Austin, Texas, has a list of reasons for not wanting to give birth: the climate crisis and a genetic health condition among them.
“I don’t think it’s responsible to bring children into this world,” Johnson said. “There are already kids who need homes. I don’t know what kind of world it’s going to be in 20, 30, 40 years.”
She’s so sure, in fact, that she’ll soon have her tubes removed. It’s a precautionary decision sealed by the fall of Roe v. Wade and by tight restrictions on abortion services in her state and around the country.
Other women interviewed also cited climate change, along with overwhelming student debt coupled with inflation, as reasons they’ll never be parents. Some younger men, too, are opting out and more are seeking vasectomies.
Whatever the motivation, they play a role in dramatically low birth rates in the U.S.
The U.S. birth rate fell 4% in 2020, the largest single-year decrease in nearly 50 years, according to a government report. The government noted a 1% uptick in U.S. births last year, but the number of babies born was still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic: about 86,000 fewer than in 2019.
Walter and Kyah King live in suburban Las Vegas. Walter, 29, a sports data scientist, and Kyah, 28, a college career counselor, have been together nearly 10 years, the last four as a married couple. The realization that they didn’t want to have kids came on slowly for both of them.
“It was in our early 20s when the switch sort of flipped,” Kyah said. “We had moved to California and we were really just starting our adult lives. I think we talked about having three kids at one point. But just with the economy and the state of the world and just thinking about the logistics of bringing children into the world. That’s really when we started to have our doubts.”
Finances are top of mind. Before taxes, the two earn about $160,000 combined, with about $120,000 in student loan debt for Kyah and about $5,000 left for Walter. The couple said they wouldn’t be able to buy a house and shoulder the costs of even one child without major sacrifices they’re not willing to make.
But for Kyah, the decision goes well beyond money.
“I think we would be great parents, but the thought of going into our health system to give birth is really scary. Black women, black mothers, are not valued in the same way that white mothers are,” said Kyah, who is Black.
When Kyah’s IUD expires, Walter said he’ll consider a vasectomy, a procedure that went on the rise among men under 30 during the pandemic.
Jordan Davidson interviewed more than 300 people for a book out in December titled, “So When are You Having Kids?” The pandemic, she said, led many to delay childbirth among those contemplating children at all.
“These timelines that people created for themselves of, I want to accomplish X by three years from now, changed. People weren’t necessarily willing to move the goalposts and say, OK, I’m going to forgo these accomplishments and do this differently,” she said. “People still want to travel. They still want to go to graduate school. They still want to meet certain financial benchmarks.”
Fears about climate change have cemented the idea of living without children for many, Davidson said.
“Now with increased wildfires, droughts, heat waves, all of a sudden it is becoming real that, OK, this is happening during my time, and what is this going to look like during the time that my children are alive?” she said.
In New York City, 23-year-old Emily Shapiro, a copywriter for a pharmaceutical ad agency, earns $60,000 a year, lives at home as she saves money and has never wanted children.
“They’re sticky. I could never imagine picking up a kid that’s covered in ice cream. I’m a bit of a germaphobe. I don’t want to change a diaper. If I did have one, I wouldn’t want them until they’re in, like, sixth grade. I also think the physical Earth isn’t doing so great so it would be unfair,” she said.
Among those Jordan interviewed, concerns over the environment were far more prevalent among the younger group. Questions of affordability, she said, troubled both millennials and members of Gen Z.
“There is a lot of fear around having children who would be worse off than they viewed themselves during their childhoods,” Davidson said.
Dannie Lynn Murphy, who helps find software engineers for Google, said she was nearly 17 when she was removed from her home by child protective services due to a pattern of child abuse. Her wife, she said, was similarly raised in a “not great” environment.
“Both of us at one point would have said yes to kids,” she said. “In my late teenage, early adult years, I saw and understood the appeal and was attracted to the idea of getting to raise someone differently than I was raised. But the practical realities of a child kind of suck.”
Murphy earns about $103,000 a year, with bonuses and equity that can drive that amount up to $300,000. Her wife earns about $60,000 as an attorney. They don’t own their Seattle home.
“I can’t see myself committing to a mortgage, let alone a child,” the 28-year-old Murphy said. “I think the primary reason is financial. I would prefer to spend that money on traveling versus sinking a half a million dollars into raising a child. Secondarily, there’s now the fear of behaving with our children the way our parents behaved with us.”
Alyssa Persson, 31, was raised in small town South Dakota. Getting married and having children was ingrained in the culture, she said. It wasn’t until after her divorce from her high school sweetheart that she took a step back and asked herself what she actually wanted out of life.
“Most women where I’m from lose their identities in motherhood,” said Persson, who now lives in St. Louis and earns about $47,000 a year as a university librarian.
She’s carrying student loan debt of about $80,000. Persson is a former teacher who loves children, but she feels she is now thinking more clearly than ever about the costs, implications and sacrifices of parenting.
“Having children sounds like a trap to me, to be frank,” she said. “Financially, socially, emotionally, physically. And if there were ever any shadow of a doubt, the fact that I cannot comfortably support myself on my salary is enough to scare me away from the idea entirely.”
___
Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie
—-
For more AP Lifestyles stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/lifestyle
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/gen-z-millennials-discuss-their-reluctance-become-parents/ | 2022-08-30T14:33:06Z |
Man gets 3 years in prison for scheme to sell fraudulent Super Bowl rings
(CNN) - A New Jersey man was sentenced to three years in federal prison for a scheme to sell fake Super Bowl rings.
Scott Spina pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud and another count of aggravated identity theft.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California said Spina bought memorabilia in 2017 from a former pro football player. He then used that unidentified player’s information to place an order for three “family and friends” Super Bowl rings with the name Brady on them.
Spina told the ring-maker the jewelry was for former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who now plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
According to prosecutors, Spina eventually sold those rings to an auction house for $100,000.
Spina’s plea deal called for him to pay $63,000 in restitution to the former player.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/man-gets-3-years-prison-scheme-sell-fraudulent-super-bowl-rings/ | 2022-08-30T14:33:08Z |
Man paddles down river in hollowed-out pumpkin
NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (CNN) – A man in Nebraska is going for a big, orange world record.
Duane Hansen hopes Guinness World Records will certify his trip down the Missouri River in a hollowed-out pumpkin as the longest such trip ever.
He paddled 38 miles in the pumpkin Saturday to celebrate his 60th birthday.
He set out from the city of Bellevue around 7:30 a.m. and arrived in Nebraska City about 11 hours later.
The makeshift vessel had the name S.S. Berta written on the back and a cup holder carved in the hull.
The previous Guinness World Record for the longest journey by pumpkin boat was 25.5 miles.
A spokesperson for Guinness World Records said they have gotten Hansen’s application for the title and are awaiting evidence to review it.
Berta the pumpkin weighed 846 pounds.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/man-paddles-down-river-hollowed-out-pumpkin/ | 2022-08-30T14:33:22Z |
Alabama man’s execution was botched, advocacy group alleges
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama corrections officials apparently botched an inmate’s execution last month, an anti-death penalty group alleges, citing the length of time that passed before the prisoner received the lethal injection and a private autopsy indicating his arm may have been cut to find a vein.
Joe Nathan James Jr. was put to death July 28 at an Alabama prison for the 1994 shooting death of his former girlfriend. The execution was carried out more than three hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request for a stay.
“Subjecting a prisoner to three hours of pain and suffering is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment,” Maya Foa, director of Reprieve US Forensic Justice Initiative, a human rights group that opposes the death penalty, said in a statement. “States cannot continue to pretend that the abhorrent practice of lethal injection is in any way humane.”
The Alabama Department of Forensic Science declined a request to release the state’s autopsy of James, citing an ongoing review that happens after every execution. Officials have not responded to requests for comment on the private autopsy, which was first reported by The Atlantic.
At the time of the execution, Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters that “nothing out of the ordinary” happened. Hamm said he wasn’t aware of the prisoner fighting or resisting officers. The state later acknowledged that the execution was delayed because of difficulties establishing an intravenous line, but did not specify how long it took.
Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology at Emory University and an expert on lethal injection who witnessed the private autopsy, said it looked like there were numerous attempts to connect a line.
Zivot said he saw “multiple puncture sites on both arms” and two perpendicular incisions, each about 3 to 4 centimeters (1 to 1.5 inches) in length, in the middle of the arm, which he said indicated that officials had attempted to perform a “cutdown,” a procedure in which the skin is opened to allow a visual search for a vein. He said the cutdown is an old-style medical intervention rarely performed in modern medical settings, and that it would be painful without anesthesia. He also said he saw evidence of intramuscular injections not in the vicinity of a vein.
The Alabama Department of Corrections prison system issued a written statement in which it noted that “protocol states that if the veins are such that intravenous access cannot be provided, the team will perform a central line procedure,” which involves placing a catheter in a large vein. “Fortunately, this was not necessary and with adequate time, intravenous access was established,” the statement said.
Alabama does not allow witnesses from news outlets to watch the preparations for a lethal injection. They get their first glimpse of the execution chamber when an inmate is already strapped to the gurney with the IV line connected.
A reporter for The Associated Press who attended the execution observed that James did not respond when the warden asked if he had final words. His eyes remained closed except for briefly fluttering at one point early in the procedure.
Lawyers who spoke with James by telephone said they were disturbed by his reported lack of movements and raised questions about what happened before the lethal injection. Hamm said James was not sedated.
“That wasn’t the Joe that I knew. He always had something to say. He always wanted to be in control,” said James Ranson, the attorney who helped James file his appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. “The fact that he did not give any sort of reaction ... and that he didn’t open his eyes, tells me something was up,” Ranson said.
John Palombi, a federal defender who spoke with James twice on the day of his execution, said James, “was certainly alert” earlier in the day.
The Atlantic quoted a friend of James as saying that the inmate had planned to make a final statement.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit organization that analyzes issues concerning capital punishment, said the delay between the Supreme Court’s go-ahead and the execution, combined with the autopsy, points to a “botched execution, and it is among the worst botches in the modern history of the U.S. death penalty.”
“This execution is Exhibit A as to why execution secrecy laws are intolerable,” Dunham wrote in an email to the AP. “The public is entitled to know what went on here — and what goes on in all Alabama executions — from the instant the execution team begins the process of physically preparing the prisoner for the lethal injection until the moment the prisoner dies.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/alabama-mans-execution-was-botched-advocacy-group-alleges/ | 2022-08-30T14:45:01Z |
Bluefield State University celebrates new Director for MBA program
“Dr. Wood is an experienced, and highly respected leader and MBA Director” - Dean Grogan
BLUEFIELD, W.Va. (WVVA) - This fall, Bluefield State University will welcome Dr. Jerry Wood as the new Director for the Master of Business Administration Program.
This is not the first time Dr. Wood has been a MBA Director. He had previously served as MBA Director and Director of Program Development at King University, Carson-Newman University, and Lindsey Wilson College, as well as the Campus Dean in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Karen Grogan, Interim Dean of the Cole School of Business has expressed admiration for Dr. Wood’s experience and knowledge.
“Dr. Wood is an experienced, and highly respected leader and MBA Director. He brings a wealth of knowledge and a growth mindset that will assist in propelling the W. Paul Cole Jr., College of Business at Bluefield State University into the future.” says Dean Grogan in a press release.
Dr. Wood has said the program has already had success with 30 MBA applications.
The MBA program begins every 8 weeks with the next one beginning October 3.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/bluefield-state-university-celebrates-new-director-mba-program/ | 2022-08-30T14:45:08Z |
DeLorean is back with an updated look
(CNN) – After 40 years, there’s finally a new model of the iconic sports car featured in the “Back to the Future” movies.
The new DeLorean Alpha5 electric car looks nothing like the last model made before the company went out of business in 1982.
It still has the trademark gull-wing doors, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.
The DeLorean DMC-12 from the movies was an icon of modern design, but the designers of the Alpha5 had a 40-year gap to fill in.
They based the new car on DeLorean’s second model, the DMC-24, which never got made.
The designers pretended the car’s evolution had never stopped, imagining and making quarter-scale models of the Alpha2 through Alpha4 models.
The resulting design was the Alpha5, a real DeLorean forty years in the making.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/delorean-is-back-with-an-updated-look/ | 2022-08-30T14:45:10Z |
Man gets 3 years in prison for scheme to sell fraudulent Super Bowl rings
(CNN) - A New Jersey man was sentenced to three years in federal prison for a scheme to sell fake Super Bowl rings.
Scott Spina pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud and another count of aggravated identity theft.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California said Spina bought memorabilia in 2017 from a former pro football player. He then used that unidentified player’s information to place an order for three “family and friends” Super Bowl rings with the name Brady on them.
Spina told the ring-maker the jewelry was for former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who now plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
According to prosecutors, Spina eventually sold those rings to an auction house for $100,000.
Spina’s plea deal called for him to pay $63,000 in restitution to the former player.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/man-gets-3-years-prison-scheme-sell-fraudulent-super-bowl-rings/ | 2022-08-30T14:45:17Z |
Serena’s daughter, Olympia, sports beads, like Mom years ago
NEW YORK (AP) — When Serena Williams won the 1999 U.S. Open for her first Grand Slam title at age 17, she wore white beads in her hair. On Monday night, when Williams won her first match of the 2022 U.S. Open at age 40, her daughter, Olympia, was courtside, sporting a hairstyle paying homage to Mom’s from all that time ago.
“It was either her wear beads or me, so ...” Williams said after beating Danka Kovinic 6-3, 6-3, finishing that thought with a smile. “I wanted to do it, but I just didn’t have the time.”
Williams was pregnant with Olympia while playing in, and winning, the 2017 Australian Open for her 23rd Grand Slam title. Olympia was born later that year and turns 5 on Thursday.
“Yeah, she likes, actually, wearing them. She asks to wear beads a lot,” Williams said. “It actually wasn’t my idea, but I was so happy when she had them on. It’s perfect on her.”
On Monday, Olympia sat in Williams’ player guest box in Arthur Ashe Stadium, at one point snapping pictures with a camera. She was with her father — Williams’ husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian — and her grandmother — Williams’ mom, Oracene Price.
After the match, Williams’ long and influential career was celebrated during an on-court ceremony that included a video narrated by Oprah Winfrey and a speech from Billie Jean King. At the end, Ohanian carried Olympia down on to the court.
“Tonight was all a surprise, actually, towards the end. I didn’t know any of that was happening,” Williams said. “I was just ready to do the on-court interview and leave.”
She has said she is ready to move on from her playing days to focus on having another child and pursuing her business interests.
___
More AP coverage of U.S. Open tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/us-open-tennis-championships and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/serenas-daughter-olympia-sports-beads-like-mom-years-ago/ | 2022-08-30T14:45:24Z |
Stolen bike recovered 1,000 miles from home
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – A bike that was reported stolen in Greenville, South Carolina eight months ago was recently found in Vermont.
The bike’s owner, Preston Spratt, said his hopes of getting the bike back were dwindling until he received a call from Vermont.
“At first I thought this was going to be a Western Union money request to get my bike back, but the perfect person found the bicycle,” Spratt told WCAX.
Erik Thomsen said he saw an odd marketplace post for a bike and decided to check it out.
“They said they had painted an apartment and traded the work for the bike,” Thomsen explained.
Thomsen ended up with the bike and discovered it was stolen by looking up its serial number on Bike Index, a national bike registry.
“It was definitely the bicycle, complete to where the sticky mark where the police sticker I got here in Greenville had been removed,” Spratt said.
Now, an REI store in Vermont is working to return the bike to Spratt in South Carolina.
It’s unclear how the bike ended up in Vermont.
Copyright 2022 WCAX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/stolen-bike-recovered-1000-miles-home/ | 2022-08-30T14:45:30Z |
Charges dropped against 5 former Delta Chi members in Adam Oakes death
RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - Hazing charges for five of the 11 Delta Chi fraternity members charged concerning the death of Virginia Commonwealth University student Adam Oakes were dropped.
According to court records, prosecutors dropped misdemeanor hazing charges against Riley McDaniel, Robert Fritz, Alexander Bradley, Alessandro Medina-Villanueva and Quinn Kuby. Fritz, Bradley and Kuby were also charged with serving alcohol to a minor, those charges were also dropped.
This decision comes just days after the Love Like Adam Foundation held its first in-person hazing prevention presentation in front of hundreds of students and parents at the University of Lynchburg. The presentation concluded with a panel of three former Delta Chi members who pled guilty to their roles in Oakes’ death.
Courtney White, Oakes’s cousin, said it has been a roller coaster of emotions.
“Just because your charges are dropped doesn’t mean you’re innocent,” White said in response to the dropped charges. " It doesn’t mean they couldn’t call 911 or help.”
NBC12 reached out to Commonwealth’s Attorney Collete McEachin, who confirmed the charges were dropped, but she could not comment on why the charges were dropped.
Adam Oakes was a freshman at VCU when he was found dead in a home on West Clay Street in February 2021. A Richmond city coroner ruled the cause of death as “ethanol toxicity” and the manner of death as an accident.
The school has permanently disbanded the Delta Chi chapter at VCU following Oakes’ death.
Copyright 2022 WWBT. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/charges-dropped-against-5-former-delta-chi-members-adam-oakes-death/ | 2022-08-30T15:55:50Z |
Man arrested on multiple charges following Waynesboro burglary
WAYNESBORO, Va. (WHSV) - The Waynesboro Police Department arrested Jerry Marcus Kesterson II on a felony charge and two misdemeanor charges after a burglary at a Waynesboro ice cream shop.
On August 10 around 9:50 a.m., Waynesboro officers were dispatched to Willy’s Ice Cream along West Main Street for a reported burglary.
During the preliminary investigation, officers said they discovered that during the early morning hours that day, somebody entered the business and took an undisclosed amount of cash.
Police later identified as Kesterson as the person involved.
Kesterson II was arrested on August 18 for the following alleged offenses:
~18.2-91(F)- Enter in the nighttime a building with the intent to commit larceny, assault and battery, or felony
~18.2-96(M)- Petit Larceny
~18.2-137(M)- Intentional destruction or damage of window valued less than $1,000.00
Kesterson remains held without bond at the Middle River Regional Jail.
Copyright 2022 WHSV. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/man-arrested-multiple-charges-following-waynesboro-burglary/ | 2022-08-30T15:55:59Z |
Virginia Tech working to enhance student experience at football games
BLACKSBURG, Va. (WDBJ) - Virginia Tech says it is making some changes to help enhance the student experience at football games.
The university says students will be directed to a new entry point into Lane Stadium, located on Washington St between the Hahn Hurst Basketball Practice Center and the tennis courts.
All students with tickets will enter Lane Stadium underneath the 35-foot wide orange archway on Washington St. The university says the archway signifies the start of a walk towards the stadium that will include exclusive promotional giveaways, along with bag check and ticket scanning stations.
Callaghan-Sheridan Way will be closed as a crossing point as that street will become a part of the Lane Stadium footprint to improve in-stadium pedestrian traffic between the West stands and the East stands.
Wristbands for the North end zone will still be given outside of Gate 7. A wristband remains required to access the North end zone and are limited on a first-come, first-serve basis. Gates open two hours prior to kickoff.
Students without a wristband will be directed to the East stands. The footprint of the student section in the East stands has also been extended by one section to allow for more physical space and more student seating.
Additionally, in partnership with the University, there will be a new pregame experience available to students inside Hokie Village. Open three hours and a half hours before kickoff, the student tailgate will offer tailgate games, live music and more.
For more information on the changes, click here.
Copyright 2022 WDBJ. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/virginia-tech-working-enhance-student-experience-football-games/ | 2022-08-30T15:56:00Z |
5 million jobs could be lost in the Fed’s war against inflation, analysis says
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 11:11 AM EDT|Updated: 53 minutes ago
(CNN) - The battle against inflation could strike a major blow to the job market.
According to analysis from RSM on Monday, if the Federal Reserve revises its inflation target to 3%, the economy would still need to slow down, resulting in a loss of about 1.7 million jobs.
That would cause the national unemployment rate to rise from 3.5% to 4.6%, and that, researchers said, is the best-case scenario.
If the Fed focuses on getting inflation to drop back to 2%, up to 5.3 million jobs could vanish.
Last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned that not getting a tight grip on inflation could result in major financial problems in the future.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/5-million-jobs-could-be-lost-feds-war-against-inflation-analysis-says/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:27Z |
Ford is raising the prices of its electric Mustangs
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 10:47 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - Ford is raising the prices of its electric Mustangs before the new models even get delivered.
The 2023 Mustang Mach-E rear-wheel drive base models will now be about $46,000, which is about $3,000 more than last year’s model.
The Mach EGT will increase from $62,000 to nearly $70,000.
The new models have additional features like advanced driver assistance technology.
Some also have an extended range battery pack, so drivers can go about 290 miles before needing a charge.
Ford said it is raising prices because of supply chain issues and evolving market conditions.
Orders for the new models open on Tuesday.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/ford-is-raising-prices-its-electric-mustangs/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:28Z |
Iowa senator wants Biden administration to use more force to protect Afghan women & girls
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is calling on the president to act to restore the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - In the wake of the United States’ controversial pullout from Afghanistan last August, the future of Afghan women and girls hangs in the balance.
“Girls can still not go to school beyond sixth grade,” said Jawaid Kotwal of the Afghan Academy in Virginia.
Kotwal advocates on behalf of Afghan women and girls.
With much of the country now food insecure and facing famine, refugee activists say young girls are being sold or married off to older men so their families can buy food.
Women senators including Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are calling on the Biden administration to act.
“There needs to be more force coming from this administration,” said Ernst. “We’ve watched over the last year as the Taliban has really unraveled the women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan.”
Last November, all 24 women senators led by Senators Ernst and Diane Feinstein of California sent a bipartisan letter to the president asking him to “develop an interagency plan to preserve the political, economic, social and basic human rights of Afghan women and girls.”
Ernst says she would like to see the continuing freezing of Afghanistan’s funds until the treatment of women and girls is improved.
U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price made these comments at a press briefing on August 16, 2022 on the issue: “The fact that the Taliban has failed to stand up for, to protect the rights of all of the people of Afghanistan – especially the women, the girls, the religious minorities, ethnic minorities – that, of course, is a failure on the part of the Taliban as well.”
Price made the comments after being asked if the Biden administration intends on facilitating the release of the $3.5 billion in Afghanistan’s Central Bank reserves it’s currently holding.
The U.S. State Department says it doesn’t see a release happening anytime soon due to fears the money may fall in the hands of terrorist groups.
The Gray Washington News Bureau reached out to the White House for this report. We did not hear back.
Copyright 2022 Gray DC. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/iowa-senator-wants-biden-administration-use-more-force-protect-afghan-women-girls/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:31Z |
Serena’s daughter, Olympia, sports beads, like Mom years ago
NEW YORK (AP) — When Serena Williams won the 1999 U.S. Open for her first Grand Slam title at age 17, she wore white beads in her hair. On Monday night, when Williams won her first match of the 2022 U.S. Open at age 40, her daughter, Olympia, was courtside, sporting a hairstyle paying homage to Mom’s from all that time ago.
“It was either her wear beads or me, so ...” Williams said after beating Danka Kovinic 6-3, 6-3, finishing that thought with a smile. “I wanted to do it, but I just didn’t have the time.”
Williams was pregnant with Olympia while playing in, and winning, the 2017 Australian Open for her 23rd Grand Slam title. Olympia was born later that year and turns 5 on Thursday.
“Yeah, she likes, actually, wearing them. She asks to wear beads a lot,” Williams said. “It actually wasn’t my idea, but I was so happy when she had them on. It’s perfect on her.”
On Monday, Olympia sat in Williams’ player guest box in Arthur Ashe Stadium, at one point snapping pictures with a camera. She was with her father — Williams’ husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian — and her grandmother — Williams’ mom, Oracene Price.
After the match, Williams’ long and influential career was celebrated during an on-court ceremony that included a video narrated by Oprah Winfrey and a speech from Billie Jean King. At the end, Ohanian carried Olympia down on to the court.
“Tonight was all a surprise, actually, towards the end. I didn’t know any of that was happening,” Williams said. “I was just ready to do the on-court interview and leave.”
She has said she is ready to move on from her playing days to focus on having another child and pursuing her business interests.
___
More AP coverage of U.S. Open tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/us-open-tennis-championships and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/serenas-daughter-olympia-sports-beads-like-mom-years-ago/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:38Z |
Tennis legend Serena Williams drew a star-studded set of spectators to her first-round U.S. Open match — and possibly last pro tournament — on Sunday night, from former president Bill Clinton and actress Queen Latifah to tennis star Coco Gauff and Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
So it wouldn't have been a total stretch to spot her friend Beyoncé — who narrated a new Gatorade commercial honoring Williams' legacy — in the stands too. In fact, some watching at home thought they did.
"#Beyonce at the #USOpen," tweeted the account @Choni, alongside a video of a Black woman in hoop earrings and a face mask reacting with the crowd.
Only Queen Bey it was not. As fans pointed out — and the original poster quickly clarified — the video actually showed Laverne Cox, the actress, Emmy Award-winning producer and LGTBQ advocate.
Cox seemed amused by the mix-up and ensuing reaction, even reposting the video on her Instagram account.
"Not me getting mistaken for @Beyonce at the #USOpen tonight then trending on Twitter as the internet cackles over the mistaken identity," she wrote. "These tweets are funny as hell. Enjoy!!!"
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Laverne Cox (@lavernecox)
Instances of misidentification are often not funny. They overwhelmingly plague people of color in the workplace and in the media, including some recent high-profile cases — one of which involved Williams herself.
The New York Times mistakenly ran a photo of her sister Venus next to a story about her venture firm raising $111 million earlier this year, prompting Williams to share that she was working to support founders overlooked by biased systems "because even I am overlooked."
This particular mistake was better received. Cox didn't just seem to take it in stride but as a compliment.
Notably, Cox has made no secret of her admiration for the pop star. Just hours earlier, in fact, she had shared a video of herself getting ready for the U.S. Open with a Beyoncé song playing in the background. She's also impersonated Beyoncé in the past — albeit more intentionally — in a memorable Lip Sync Battle performance.
"Everybody knows that I live for Beyoncé," she told Entertainment Tonight in 2020. "I try not to worship gods on earth, or goddesses, but I worship Beyoncé."
Many fans shared in that appreciation online, tweeting about how flattered Cox must be. Some even said that they saw the resemblance, too.
Laverne stepping out of the house now that people got her confused with Beyoncé https://t.co/2o7geehaLb pic.twitter.com/m1CxilhD4l
— Drip Intravenous (@ThereGoesBJ) August 30, 2022
Choni, who first shared the video, later wrote that they were starting to think the mix-up might "actually be ok," but would give it 24 hours to see. So far, that seems to be the case.
Sports and culture writer David Dennis, Jr. was one of the people who seemed to think so. He called Cox the second biggest winner of the night (after Williams, of course, who defeated Danka Kovinic 6-3, 6-3).
"Laverne Cox ... was mistaken for Beyoncé all night," he tweeted. "Which is a career highlight for literally anyone."
"Absolutely!" Cox agreed.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/no-that-wasnt-beyonce-at-the-u-s-open-it-was-laverne-cox-and-shes-flattered | 2022-08-30T16:04:40Z |
Siblings, ages 9 and 10, killed when SUV hits them on sidewalk, Utah police say
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 10:52 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
PROVO, Utah (Gray News) – Two young siblings in Utah were killed when they were hit by a car while walking on the sidewalk Monday morning.
According to the Provo Police Department, a 9-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother were killed, along with the driver of the vehicle.
Police said just after 8 a.m. Monday, a white SUV struck the children as they were walking on the sidewalk. The two children and the driver of the SUV were all taken to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead.
Police identified the driver as 59-year-old Darren Albertson.
The accident also ruptured gas lines in a nearby structure. The accident is under investigation.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/siblings-ages-9-10-killed-when-suv-hits-them-sidewalk-utah-police-say/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:44Z |
Stolen bike recovered 1,000 miles from home
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – A bike that was reported stolen in Greenville, South Carolina eight months ago was recently found in Vermont.
The bike’s owner, Preston Spratt, said his hopes of getting the bike back were dwindling until he received a call from Vermont.
“At first I thought this was going to be a Western Union money request to get my bike back, but the perfect person found the bicycle,” Spratt told WCAX.
Erik Thomsen said he saw an odd marketplace post for a bike and decided to check it out.
“They said they had painted an apartment and traded the work for the bike,” Thomsen explained.
Thomsen ended up with the bike and discovered it was stolen by looking up its serial number on Bike Index, a national bike registry.
“It was definitely the bicycle, complete to where the sticky mark where the police sticker I got here in Greenville had been removed,” Spratt said.
Now, an REI store in Vermont is working to return the bike to Spratt in South Carolina.
It’s unclear how the bike ended up in Vermont.
Copyright 2022 WCAX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/stolen-bike-recovered-1000-miles-home/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:47Z |
Teen’s arm severed while reportedly attempting to ‘subway surf’
NEW YORK (WABC) - A 15-year-old had to have his arm amputated after he and some friends reportedly tried to ride on top of a New York subway car.
“I saw the police putting up the tape and the actual body on the floor,” an eyewitness, Christian Mojica, said.
It was a tragic and horrific sight for morning commuters at the subway station as the teen lay unconscious, in his own blood, his arm severed.
“I don’t want to see like, I didn’t want to see it,” Mojica said. “Like, it’s not pretty. I saw face, blood and slumped over like a person slumped over ... then I just left, but it wasn’t pretty.”
Investigators said the incident happened Monday at about 10:30 a.m.
They reported the victim was with three other friends who were trying to “subway surf” or ride on top of the subway car. But the teen fell as he climbed on top and was struck by the train.
“Kind of like laying half off the, you know the yellow divider, the area where you’re not supposed to step. Half of his legs were there, then his other half was like, laying on the floor,” Mojica said.
Another eyewitness said he saw the ambulances, firefighters and police arrive but didn’t know what happened.
The teen was taken to the hospital, where his arm had to be amputated. He is reported to be in stable condition. His name has not yet been released.
“It’s very traumatizing, and I hope everybody there is able to come back from it because it’s not nice,” Mojica said. “I wish the best for anyone who is related to him or anything like that.”
Subway officials said they’re seeing an alarming increase in passengers riding outside of the train.
So far this year, it has happened 627 times, compared to only 96 last year.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/teens-arm-severed-while-reportedly-attempting-subway-surf/ | 2022-08-30T16:04:53Z |
US consumers more confident in August as gas prices dip
WASHINGTON (AP) — Following three straight monthly declines, U.S. consumer confidence rebounded in August as inflation moderated and gas prices fell.
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose in August to 103.2 from 95.3 in July.
The business research group’s present situation index — which measures consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions — rose for the first time since March, to 145.4 from 139.7 in July.
The board’s expectations index — a measure of consumers’ six-month outlook for income, business and labor conditions — rose from 65.6 last month to 75.1 in August.
Analysts surveyed by data provider FactSet had expected consumer confidence to rise slightly as gas prices have fallen in recent weeks. AAA motor club says the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. dipped to $3.85 on Tuesday from more than $5 per gallon in mid-June.
Although inflation appears to have moderated recently, the cost for most things remain much higher than they were a year ago. The government reported earlier this month that consumer prices jumped 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, down from a 9.1% year-over-year increase in June. Inflation was unchanged from June to July, the first time that has happened after 25 months of increases.
Since March, the Federal Reserve has implemented its fastest pace of rate increases in decades to try to curb four-decade high inflation, which has punished households with soaring costs for food, gas, rent and other necessities. The central bank has lifted its benchmark rate by 2 full percentage points in just four meetings, to a range of 2.25% to 2.5%.
Last week at an annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the the U.S. central bank will likely need to keep interest rates high enough to slow the economy “for some time” in order to tame the worst inflation in 40 years. Powell has acknowledged the increases will hurt U.S. households and businesses, but also said the pain would be far greater if inflation were allowed to fester and that “we must keep at it until the job is done.”
“Looking ahead, August’s improvement in confidence may help support spending, but inflation and additional rate hikes still pose risks to economic growth in the short term,” said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s senior director of economic indicators.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/us-consumers-more-confident-august-gas-prices-dip/ | 2022-08-30T16:05:00Z |
US to respond to request for special master for Trump docs
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is set to respond Tuesday to the Trump legal team’s request for a special master to review the documents seized during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago this month.
The filing is due ahead of a Thursday hearing in which U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter.
Trump’s lawyers last week asked for the appointment of a special master who’d be tasked with reviewing the records taken during the Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Florida property and setting aside documents protected by claims of legal privilege. Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.
On Monday, the department said it had already completed its review of potentially privileged documents and identified a “limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.”
In a separate development, the Trump legal team has grown with the addition of another attorney. Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general, has joined the team of lawyers representing Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss the move by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Kise did not return messages seeking comment.
___
Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/us-respond-request-special-master-trump-docs/ | 2022-08-30T16:05:06Z |
Next month, a federal court in Austin will hear a lawsuit charging Texas with discriminating against minority voters in last year's redistricting process. Virtually every round of redistricting since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has brought some legal action against Texas. But typically, such cases have focused on the rights of Black and Latino Texans. This time, Asian American and Pacific Islander, or AAPI, voters are taking a leading role.
Amatullah Contractor lives in northwest Harris County. Until recently, her home was in Congressional District 7. But last year, the Texas Legislature redrew the maps, pushing her out of the Democratic-leaning 7th District and into a solidly Republican one.
"Congressional District 8 basically pairs these neighborhoods that are in the suburbs, that are very diverse, with a lot of like rural parts of Montgomery County and going into The Woodlands, where there is like a massive disconnect between the people that are in the district and who the district's representative would be," Contractor said.
District 8 is currently the seat of retiring Congressman Kevin Brady, who typically won lopsided victories against Democratic and Libertarian challengers. Most political analysts view GOP nominee Morgan Luttrell as a shoo-in to succeed Brady this November.
"One of my main concerns with these maps is that they were drawn with almost predetermined outcomes," Contractor said. "So going into the 2022 election, I already know who my representative is going to be immediately after the primary, just because of the way that it was drawn."
Contractor joined a lawsuit against Governor Greg Abbott and Secretary of State John Scott. The suit says, according to US Census data, people of color accounted for nearly all of Texas' population growth over the past decade and its AAPI population rose by 65%.
Deborah Chen is both an individual plaintiff in the lawsuit and the civic engagement programs director for another plaintiff, the AAPI advocacy group OCA-Greater Houston. "You would think logically that, okay, if the people of color communities were the largest portion of the population growth, then the districts at all different levels would reflect that," Chen said. "And that’s not the case."
In fact, the end result of redistricting was an increase in majority white districts, while AAPI communities are more divided among districts and less able to elect candidates of their choice.
A coalition of civil rights organizations makes up the plaintiffs' legal team, among them the ACLU Foundation of Texas, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). The team also includes attorneys from New York University's Brennan Center for Justice and the law firm of Paul, Weiss.
Jerry Vattamala, director of the Democracy Program at AALDEF, said the reason the lawsuit is necessary at all is because the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.
"I’m pretty sure, as most of my colleagues would also agree, that if we still had federal preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, these lines would not have satisfied preclearance," Vattamala said.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required states that historically practiced racial discrimination in voting to get federal preclearance before making changes to their electoral maps. What remains in place is Section 2, which bans racial discrimination in redistricting.
Representing Texas is the Office of Attorney General Ken Paxton. The Attorney General's Office declined to comment for this story.
"For the first time, Asian Americans, in certain places, had the ability to elect candidates of their choice," Vattamala said. "What the Texas Legislature did was divide these areas where there was concentrated Asian population, take small portions of those Asian American communities, and link them, group them with white, rural, conservative population hundreds of miles away. It is the most brazen, clear case of vote dilution."
Such dilution was striking in Fort Bend County, home to one of the state's largest blocks of AAPI voters. Its Congressional District 22 came close to electing an Asian American, Democratic candidate, Sri Preston Kulkarni, in the past two elections. Then last year's redistricting split their vote among three districts and added to District 22 the much whiter Wharton and Matagorda counties.
“Congressional District 22 was really the only chance we would have had to send an Asian American to Congress,” said Nabila Mansoor, executive director of the progressive organization Rise AAPI. “That has now been taken away.”
Niloufar Hafizi, a Fort Bend County resident and another plaintiff in the lawsuit, said, "Now the incumbent, who is Representative Troy Nehls, essentially is locked into his district. And as a voter, it just feels very disempowering."
Not everyone sees it that way. State Representative Jacey Jetton, a Fort Bend County Republican, is a member of both the House Redistricting Committee and the Asian American House Caucus. Jetton called the redistricting process fair, legal, and transparent.
"I think that when you look at the fact that over 1,000 people move to Texas every single day," Jetton said, "we do not have a splitting of African Americans moving to one part of the state, Asians moving to one part of the state, Hispanics moving to one part of the state, and whites moving to another part of the state. We are a very diverse state where we’re very spread out. And so, this idea that there was this increase could all be encapsulated into a handful of districts is just not mathematically geographically possible."
The lawsuit, however, identifies eight counties in the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Austin metro areas in which the AAPI populations have skyrocketed over the past decade. These include Williamson County (169%), Collin County (116%), Denton County (115%), Fort Bend County (84%), Travis County (71%), Dallas County (54%), Tarrant County (53%), and Harris County (38%).
Voter advocacy groups said that Jetton’s argument misses the point. "We were very wide eyed and aware that there is currently no geographic area of Texas where we could have advocated for an Asian American or AAPI majority district," said Lily Trieu, interim executive director of Asian Texans for Justice. "We were simply asking for fair maps and to not split our communities. And unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Our communities continue to be split anyway."
Further, said Nabila Mansoor, it ignores the fact that AAPI groups have begun working together with other minority groups in order to achieve common ends. That was part of Rise AAPI’s strategy during last year’s redistricting process.
“What we did was we worked on something called unity maps,” Mansoor said. “So, we had the Black community, we had the Latinx community, we had the Asian American community come together and draw that map together, so that it wasn’t different maps being presented to our legislators. It was one map that we could say, ‘We as communities of color are presenting this to you because we believe this is the fairest way to draw those lines.'”
There's an additional complication to efforts to form such coalitions: diversity within the AAPI community itself. In Fort Bend County alone, the AAPI community comprises more than 50 different ethnicities speaking more than 100 different languages.
"There are some important differences across groups, which do come out sometimes in terms of politics as well," said Tanika Raychaudhuri, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston. “Some groups are more left-leaning, some groups are more right-leaning, and it really depends on their specific issues that matter to them, the places that they settle, and the needs that they have."
The last redistricting makes forming both interracial and interethnic coalitions that much harder, which may be one reason Latino and Black Texans are also suing to challenge the new maps. A federal judge has combined the lawsuits into one, which goes to trial at the end of September. That will be far too late to have any impact on the congressional and state legislative elections this fall.
"Let’s be clear," AALDEF's Jerry Vattamala said, "There’s not going to be any relief in advance of the midterm elections. So, you know, in the event that these lines are ruled unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, if it is going to happen at all, it will be after the midterm elections. And that’s a real shame, because Texas and several other states have no problem at all proceeding with illegal or unconstitutional lines."
Copyright 2022 Houston Public Media News 88.7. To see more, visit Houston Public Media News 88.7. | https://www.keranews.org/politics/2022-08-30/asian-american-and-pacific-islander-voters-are-preparing-to-sue-texas-for-alleged-discrimination-in | 2022-08-30T16:15:04Z |
Ten years ago, a company calling itself Texas Central High-Speed Railway announced plans for a trailblazing bullet train that would whisk passengers between Dallas and Houston in 90 minutes. Company leaders exuded confidence that the trains would be running up to 205 miles per hour by 2020.
The potential for an American high-speed rail line captured the imagination of Texans and national train enthusiasts alike. At one point during an event celebrating the unbuilt high-speed rail line, then-Vice President Joe Biden told a Dallas crowd, “You’re going to lead this country into an entirely new era of transportation.”
But a decade on, there are still no new tracks between Dallas and Houston.
Through multiple business entities who often use some version of the Texas Central moniker, developers of the project spent years raising hundreds of millions of dollars for construction, fighting conservative lawmakers’ attempts to dampen their plans and buying land needed to lay the tracks. Perhaps the biggest battle, though, came from legal challenges to the company’s claims that state law allows it to forcibly purchase property when owners aren’t willing to voluntarily sell.
In June, the Texas Supreme Court settled the matter and handed the company what could be a watershed victory, ruling that Texas Central can use eminent domain for its high-profile project. By the time the court ruled, though, Texas Central’s board had reportedly disbanded and its CEO and president had resigned. The project’s original timeline had already gone off the rails (at one point the construction was slated to begin in 2017). And land acquisition seems to have all but stopped in the last two years, according to land records reviewed by The Texas Tribune.
A spokesperson for the company, who is employed by a consulting firm that handles Texas Central’s media requests, says the project is still in the works.
“Texas Central is continuing to seek further investment, and is moving forward with the development of this high-speed train,” Tom Becker, a senior managing director with FTI Consulting, said in a statement. “We appreciate the continued support of our investors, lenders, and other key stakeholders, as we continue to advance this important project.”
But the company and Becker have declined to answer specific questions about the leadership exodus, apparent slump in land acquisition, funding prospects and status of permits Texas Central would need to move forward. A federal transportation agency says it hasn’t had contact with the company in two years. The portion of Texas Central’s website that once listed executive leaders is now blank — as is the list of current job openings.
Texas Central’s relative silence on the recent developments has left supporters of the project, who would like to see two of the state’s largest economic engines more easily connected, in limbo. Opponents, who have long railed against the idea of a private company using eminent domain to seize Texans’ land, are cautiously hoping Texas Central won’t rebound.
Even if the company resurges, there remain major obstacles ahead to acquire land and finance an increasingly expensive project described as “shovel ready” as recently as 2020. The stakes of the high-speed rail project extend beyond the company and Texas. The 240 miles of relatively flat land between Dallas and Houston has long been heralded as the ideal location for what Texas Central and its supporters say could be the first leg of a national high-speed rail system that transforms the country.
There are few infrastructure projects in the country that can compare in size to the Texas rail line. A California high-speed rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco also faces significant political, financial and legal hurdles. But Michael Bennon, the program manager at Stanford University’s Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative, hangs a lot of hope on the Texas project given the relatively short distance, estimated frequency of travel and the landscape between the two cities.
“If you can’t do high-speed rail in that corridor, it’s hard to imagine it working anywhere else,” Bennon said.
A decade in the making
The announcement of the Dallas-Houston bullet train came more than two decades after another, failed high-speed rail project in Texas that collapsed after $70 million in investments in the early 1990’s.
The most recent attempt at high-speed rail drew widespread attention and support. Texas Central has long billed the project — modeled after the Japanese Shinkansen bullet train — as an accessible, safe alternative to car travel in Texas. Among the selling points: an estimated $36 billion in economic benefits, an environmentally friendly solution to plane travel and a revolutionary step forward for large-scale infrastructure in America. The hype cast the train as a game changer for Texas and America.
“There’s no doubt once people ride this train, they will want trains like this to go other places,” Holly Reed, Texas Central’s former managing director of external affairs, said in 2018.
In addition to Biden’s 2015 endorsement, plans for high-speed rail in Texas saw formal support from former President Donald Trump, several state leaders and close to 100 businesses and organizations. The company’s board and advisors featured a plethora of prominent names, like billionaire and former Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane and Ron Kirk, the former Dallas mayor and former Texas secretary of state.
But Republican state officials, who have long controlled the Legislature and state government, were caught between the collision of two things they and their voters support — minimal restraints on the private industry and protecting Texas landowners’ property rights.
In the summer of 2016, Texas Central began its efforts in earnest to acquire land along the route of the line, contacting property owners and submitting documentation to retain the option to purchase acres in the 10 counties the rail line would cross.
Along the way, Texans’ free-market enthusiasm often clashed with private property advocates who criticized the efforts of the company to push the railroad through rural land to benefit two already bustling urban behemoths.
Donovan Maretick, a Navy veteran who lives in Harris County, has fought the company’s efforts to survey and purchase his land. He moved to a more rural area of the state to seek some quiet for his family — and he doesn’t intend to give that up so a private entity can build an intercity bullet train.
“I rose to the occasion to fight for the country, and I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna rise to the occasion to fight for my little piece of country. And that’s what we’ve had to do as individual landowners for the last six years.” Maretick told the Tribune.
Throughout multiple legislative sessions, some Republican lawmakers sought to limit how the project could be developed or financed. Others tried to kill it outright. But Texas Central’s project repeatedly emerged largely unscathed.
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, has maintained his support for the development endeavor, though he’s well aware of how rural and urban interests are often at odds on the matter.
“The time has come for us as Texans to recognize that we need another mode of transportation to get people around the state,” West said in an interview with the Tribune. “Just like anything else, you have to build this for the future.”
In October 2020, with another legislative session on the horizon, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott threw his “full support” behind the project in a letter to Yoshihide Suga, then the prime minister of Japan. By then, the Japan Bank of International Cooperation had loaned the venture $300 million.
“Public support and momentum are on our side, and this project can be completed swiftly,” Abbott wrote.
The governor also claimed Texas Central had “all the necessary permits to begin construction” — something the Tribune found was not, and still isn’t, true. Lawmakers representing Texans who own land in the project’s path expressed disappointment at the letter. Abbott’s office later said the “information it was provided was incomplete” and it would review the matter, but did not respond to multiple follow-up questions from the Tribune at the time.
And the governor still isn’t talking. This month, Abbott’s office did not return multiple requests for comment about the matter.
After Abbott’s 2020 letter to the Japanese prime minister, Carlos Aguilar, Texas Central’s CEO at the time, also declined to answer specific questions, but said the company was “focused on finalizing financing and getting ready for execution."
A plan derailed
In June, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Texas Central Railroad & Infrastructure and Integrated Texas Logistics, a partner in the rail project, have eminent domain power because they are “interurban electric railway companies.” The decision, based on the Texas Transportation Code, enables the high-speed railway project to move forward with surveying and forcibly buying private property.
Trey Duhon, president of Texans Against High-Speed Rail, said the decision surprised him and set a dangerous precedent.
“You’re not supposed to be able to exercise this authority or power without some checks and balances,” he told the Tribune. “This opinion really opens the door and allows anyone who wants to build an electric railway anywhere in the state of Texas the ability to do so.”
But having the ability to use eminent domain doesn’t mean the process will be easy — or cheap. And one expert in eminent domain law said the company may still face a major legal hurdle in exercising its eminent domain authority.
Luke Ellis, an Austin lawyer who teaches eminent domain law at the University of Texas School of Law, told the Tribune that project opponents could still mount legal challenges that hinge on what’s called a “public use” clause. That provision of law requires that an entity using eminent domain can only do so when creating something for “public use.” Ellis said there remains an outstanding question whether the train qualifies as “public use.” The Texas Supreme Court didn’t rule on that question, leaving it open to future legal challenges.
What’s more, eminent domain isn’t a fast and clean operation. If a landowner doesn’t want to sell, Texas Central would likely have to sue and kick off what’s called a separate condemnation process — complete with arguments and hearings — for each landowner who won’t voluntarily give up their land and doesn’t agree that the money Texas Central offers is adequate compensation.
These two legal obstacles could stall Texas Central’s momentum if construction gets underway, Ellis said, but only up to a certain point. Entities with eminent domain authority can take possession of private property once a designated commission determines the land’s value and that amount is paid into an account. While both parties can appeal the decision and take it to a jury, entities like Texas Central have an advantage.
“There’s a legal mechanism that allows them to begin construction of the project even before the eminent domain lawsuit has fully resolved,” Ellis said.
Texas Central has long said it would use eminent domain only as a last resort and it would prefer to amicably buy the land needed for the project. How many parcels it needs has long been a mystery. While Texas Central has released a map of the line’s route, it has remained mum for years on how many purchases it would take to amass the land needed for the project.
The company has negotiated with landowners to reserve the option to purchase land along the route. In some instances, the railroad developer acquired those parcels of land. Yet in others, the purchase options expired or the company agreed to release those contracts, allowing landowners to sell to another buyer.
According to a Tribune review of public land records, the company ramped up land acquisition efforts in 2016. But since 2020, there’s been a steep decline in options filed and deeds amassed on behalf of Texas Central.
In several counties in the past two years, Texas Central has resold property it had purchased to other buyers. Texas Department of Transportation officials confirmed the state agency purchased a handful of acres from the railroad company in Madison County for $75,000. Public documents filed between May 2021 and April 2022 showed that the railroad company sold off more than 170 acres in Navarro County.
The Tribune reached out to McLane, the board of directors’ former chair; several former advisors, including Kirk; and the company’s listed partners. They either did not respond or they directed inquiries to Katie Barnes, the director of right of way at Texas Central, who declined to answer questions.
Continued resistance
Meanwhile, the cost of the project will likely continue to grow. Initially estimated to cost $12 billion, McLane expected the project to cost $30 billion by 2020.
In 2019, Texas Central announced it had raised $450 million in capital commitments for the project, which included the $300 million loan from the Japan Bank of International Cooperation. In written testimony to Congress in 2021, Aguilar, the CEO at the time, said the company had made $700 million in private investments into the project.
Just before the Supreme Court ruling this year, Aguilar explained his resignation via a LinkedIn post after Spanish news outlet La Información reported that the board had disbanded and he was leaving.
Aguilar said he “could not align our current stakeholders on a common vision for a path forward,” but spoke highly of the plans — and Texas Central employees.
“Most of the ‘graduates’ of our effort will continue to contribute to our economy through their roles at other companies,” he wrote.
During Aguilar’s tenure, the project cleared two key regulatory hurdles. The Federal Railroad Administration approved the bullet train between the two Texas cities and released an environmental impact statement for the project in 2020. While those were stepping stones needed to keep the project on track, they didn’t completely clear the way for the company to begin building.
The Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that primarily regulates freight trains, ruled in 2016 that it did not have jurisdiction over Texas Central’s plan to build a rail line between Dallas and Houston because it would not be part of an interstate rail network.
Texas Central appealed, and STB said in July 2020 the company could submit another application for consideration. But the agency hasn’t heard back from the would-be railroad builders, a STB spokesperson told the Tribune.
Many proponents of the project still stand behind it, even if there are few, if any, details about its future.
“The Texas Association of Businesses fights for policies that help employers make the largest impact on their communities. High speed rail would not only expedite business operations but would connect job creators to talent in other areas. With an estimated economic impact of $36 billion, TAB maintains its support of this project,” Rebecca Grande, TAB policy manager, said in a statement.
Texas Central’s critics and opponents are cautious about declaring the project dead, even if it appears the company has lost necessary momentum to bring its ambitions to life.
Maretick, the Harris County landowner, says Texas Century might have won the battle in the Texas Supreme Court, but he won’t give up the war for his property. He hopes the burden of future legal battles will hinder the project to such a degree that the power of eminent domain will be but a “pyrrhic victory” for Texas Central.
“A victory that they won, but it came at too high of a cost,” he said. | https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2022-08-30/dallas-houston-bullet-train-developer-faces-a-leadership-exodus-as-land-acquisition-slows | 2022-08-30T16:15:07Z |
5 million jobs could be lost in the Fed’s war against inflation, analysis says
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 11:11 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - The battle against inflation could strike a major blow to the job market.
According to analysis from RSM on Monday, if the Federal Reserve revises its inflation target to 3%, the economy would still need to slow down, resulting in a loss of about 1.7 million jobs.
That would cause the national unemployment rate to rise from 3.5% to 4.6%, and that, researchers said, is the best-case scenario.
If the Fed focuses on getting inflation to drop back to 2%, up to 5.3 million jobs could vanish.
Last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned that not getting a tight grip on inflation could result in major financial problems in the future.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/5-million-jobs-could-be-lost-feds-war-against-inflation-analysis-says/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:21Z |
Ford is raising the prices of its electric Mustangs
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 10:47 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
(CNN) - Ford is raising the prices of its electric Mustangs before the new models even get delivered.
The 2023 Mustang Mach-E rear-wheel drive base models will now be about $46,000, which is about $3,000 more than last year’s model.
The Mach EGT will increase from $62,000 to nearly $70,000.
The new models have additional features like advanced driver assistance technology.
Some also have an extended range battery pack, so drivers can go about 290 miles before needing a charge.
Ford said it is raising prices because of supply chain issues and evolving market conditions.
Orders for the new models open on Tuesday.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/ford-is-raising-prices-its-electric-mustangs/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:22Z |
Iowa senator wants Biden administration to use more force to protect Afghan women & girls
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is calling on the president to act to restore the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - In the wake of the United States’ controversial pullout from Afghanistan last August, the future of Afghan women and girls hangs in the balance.
“Girls can still not go to school beyond sixth grade,” said Jawaid Kotwal of the Afghan Academy in Virginia.
Kotwal advocates on behalf of Afghan women and girls.
With much of the country now food insecure and facing famine, refugee activists say young girls are being sold or married off to older men so their families can buy food.
Women senators including Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are calling on the Biden administration to act.
“There needs to be more force coming from this administration,” said Ernst. “We’ve watched over the last year as the Taliban has really unraveled the women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan.”
Last November, all 24 women senators led by Senators Ernst and Diane Feinstein of California sent a bipartisan letter to the president asking him to “develop an interagency plan to preserve the political, economic, social and basic human rights of Afghan women and girls.”
Ernst says she would like to see the continuing freezing of Afghanistan’s funds until the treatment of women and girls is improved.
U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price made these comments at a press briefing on August 16, 2022 on the issue: “The fact that the Taliban has failed to stand up for, to protect the rights of all of the people of Afghanistan – especially the women, the girls, the religious minorities, ethnic minorities – that, of course, is a failure on the part of the Taliban as well.”
Price made the comments after being asked if the Biden administration intends on facilitating the release of the $3.5 billion in Afghanistan’s Central Bank reserves it’s currently holding.
The U.S. State Department says it doesn’t see a release happening anytime soon due to fears the money may fall in the hands of terrorist groups.
The Gray Washington News Bureau reached out to the White House for this report. We did not hear back.
Copyright 2022 Gray DC. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/iowa-senator-wants-biden-administration-use-more-force-protect-afghan-women-girls/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:29Z |
Lawn care worker found shot to death, blower still running on his back, authorities in Miss. say
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 12:06 PM EDT|Updated: 10 minutes ago
GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX/Gray News) - Gulfport Police are investigating a shooting that left a lawn care worker dead on the job Monday evening.
Authorities responded to the scene around 7:25 p.m.
There, they found a man on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds and a running, gas-powered leaf blower on his back.
That man was 47-year-old Kelvin Simmons, Jr. from Saucier, according to the coroner. Simmons was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities say Simmons was hired to mow the yard he was found in, but they aren’t yet sure who shot him or who would have motive for killing him. His autopsy will take place Wednesday.
This is an ongoing investigation, police said.
Copyright 2022 WLOX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/lawn-care-worker-found-shot-death-blower-still-running-his-back-authorities-miss-say/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:36Z |
Siblings, ages 9 and 10, killed when SUV hits them on sidewalk, Utah police say
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 10:52 AM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
PROVO, Utah (Gray News) – Two young siblings in Utah were killed when they were hit by a car while walking on the sidewalk Monday morning.
According to the Provo Police Department, a 9-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother were killed, along with the driver of the vehicle.
Police said just after 8 a.m. Monday, a white SUV struck the children as they were walking on the sidewalk. The two children and the driver of the SUV were all taken to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead.
Police identified the driver as 59-year-old Darren Albertson.
The accident also ruptured gas lines in a nearby structure. The accident is under investigation.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/siblings-ages-9-10-killed-when-suv-hits-them-sidewalk-utah-police-say/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:42Z |
Sponsor of ‘whippit’ bill clarifies confusion about whipped cream sales in New York
NEW YORK (Gray News) – A new law in New York banning the sale of whipped cream chargers has raised some confusion over the sale of canned whipped cream.
The legislation, sponsored by NY state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr., was passed in October 2021, and some stores had recently begun requiring ID to purchase the dessert topping.
The senator, however, issued a statement to clarify that is not necessary.
“My bill is not intended to prevent people under the age of 21 from buying whipped cream dispensers, but the small, individual charger or cartridge inside the whipped cream canisters,” Addabbo explained.
The misreading of the law had led some stores around the state to post signage notifying customers of an age limit and check the ID of customers buying whipped cream cans.
The goal of the law is to combat the use of whipped cream chargers, also known as “whippits,” as a way to get high.
The two-inch steel cylinders can be sold individually or in packs as refills to recharge whipped cream canisters.
“It is the individual charger or cartridge that is the sole target of the bill, which are accessible to younger residents and being used improperly to get the nitrous oxide high,” Addabbo said in the statement.
The whipped cream chargers contain the non-flammable gas, which is known to cause hearing loss, brain damage, limb spasms, heart failure or suffocation when inhaled, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Nitrous oxide is often used during oral surgery to relieve pain, but it is highly addictive if used improperly.
“Nitrous oxide is a legal chemical for legitimate professional use but when used improperly, it can be extremely lethal,” Addabbo said in an October 2021 statement. “Sadly, young people buy and inhale this gas to get ‘high’ because they mistakenly believe it is a ‘safe’ substance. This law will eliminate easy access to this dangerous substance for our youth.”
According to the law, any entity found in violation of selling whipped cream chargers to anyone under 21 would be subject to a civil penalty of up to $250 for an initial offense and up to $500 for each subsequent offense.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/sponsor-whippit-bill-clarifies-confusion-about-whipped-cream-sales-new-york/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:49Z |
Teen’s arm severed while reportedly attempting to ‘subway surf’
NEW YORK (WABC) - A 15-year-old had to have his arm amputated after he and some friends reportedly tried to ride on top of a New York subway car.
“I saw the police putting up the tape and the actual body on the floor,” an eyewitness, Christian Mojica, said.
It was a tragic and horrific sight for morning commuters at the subway station as the teen lay unconscious, in his own blood, his arm severed.
“I don’t want to see like, I didn’t want to see it,” Mojica said. “Like, it’s not pretty. I saw face, blood and slumped over like a person slumped over ... then I just left, but it wasn’t pretty.”
Investigators said the incident happened Monday at about 10:30 a.m.
They reported the victim was with three other friends who were trying to “subway surf” or ride on top of the subway car. But the teen fell as he climbed on top and was struck by the train.
“Kind of like laying half off the, you know the yellow divider, the area where you’re not supposed to step. Half of his legs were there, then his other half was like, laying on the floor,” Mojica said.
Another eyewitness said he saw the ambulances, firefighters and police arrive but didn’t know what happened.
The teen was taken to the hospital, where his arm had to be amputated. He is reported to be in stable condition. His name has not yet been released.
“It’s very traumatizing, and I hope everybody there is able to come back from it because it’s not nice,” Mojica said. “I wish the best for anyone who is related to him or anything like that.”
Subway officials said they’re seeing an alarming increase in passengers riding outside of the train.
So far this year, it has happened 627 times, compared to only 96 last year.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/teens-arm-severed-while-reportedly-attempting-subway-surf/ | 2022-08-30T16:16:55Z |
US consumers more confident in August as gas prices dip
WASHINGTON (AP) — Following three straight monthly declines, U.S. consumer confidence rebounded in August as inflation moderated and gas prices fell.
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose in August to 103.2 from 95.3 in July.
The business research group’s present situation index — which measures consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions — rose for the first time since March, to 145.4 from 139.7 in July.
The board’s expectations index — a measure of consumers’ six-month outlook for income, business and labor conditions — rose from 65.6 last month to 75.1 in August.
Analysts surveyed by data provider FactSet had expected consumer confidence to rise slightly as gas prices have fallen in recent weeks. AAA motor club says the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. dipped to $3.85 on Tuesday from more than $5 per gallon in mid-June.
Although inflation appears to have moderated recently, the cost for most things remain much higher than they were a year ago. The government reported earlier this month that consumer prices jumped 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, down from a 9.1% year-over-year increase in June. Inflation was unchanged from June to July, the first time that has happened after 25 months of increases.
Since March, the Federal Reserve has implemented its fastest pace of rate increases in decades to try to curb four-decade high inflation, which has punished households with soaring costs for food, gas, rent and other necessities. The central bank has lifted its benchmark rate by 2 full percentage points in just four meetings, to a range of 2.25% to 2.5%.
Last week at an annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the the U.S. central bank will likely need to keep interest rates high enough to slow the economy “for some time” in order to tame the worst inflation in 40 years. Powell has acknowledged the increases will hurt U.S. households and businesses, but also said the pain would be far greater if inflation were allowed to fester and that “we must keep at it until the job is done.”
“Looking ahead, August’s improvement in confidence may help support spending, but inflation and additional rate hikes still pose risks to economic growth in the short term,” said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s senior director of economic indicators.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/us-consumers-more-confident-august-gas-prices-dip/ | 2022-08-30T16:17:02Z |
US to respond to request for special master for Trump docs
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is set to respond Tuesday to the Trump legal team’s request for a special master to review the documents seized during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago this month.
The filing is due ahead of a Thursday hearing in which U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter.
Trump’s lawyers last week asked for the appointment of a special master who’d be tasked with reviewing the records taken during the Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Florida property and setting aside documents protected by claims of legal privilege. Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.
On Monday, the department said it had already completed its review of potentially privileged documents and identified a “limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.”
In a separate development, the Trump legal team has grown with the addition of another attorney. Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general, has joined the team of lawyers representing Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss the move by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Kise did not return messages seeking comment.
___
Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/us-respond-request-special-master-trump-docs/ | 2022-08-30T16:17:09Z |
Today/tomorrow Aug 30, 2022 20 min ago Comments Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Today in Wyoming history: In 1916, a horse and rider were killed by lightning near Medicine Bow.Tomorrow in Wyoming history: In 1939, the Dome Lake station in Sheridan County reported 11 inches of snow for the month of August.(Thanks Wyoming Historical Society) Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Tags Wyoming Rider Meteorology Horse Sheridan County Society Dome Lake August Recommended for you Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus Trending Now Crumbl Cookies opens location in Cheyenne Police blotter 8-24-22 Hoss Woodard is doing all he can to give Cheyenne a 'Little Taste of Texas' Cheyenne day care worker to appeal manslaughter conviction New Unitarian Universalist minister finds home in Cheyenne Latest Special Section 2022 UW Football Preview To view our latest Special Section click the image on the left. Latest e-Edition Wyoming Tribune Eagle To view our latest e-Edition click the image on the left. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/today-tomorrow/article_cb6257ce-287b-11ed-94ba-b792bdccb2d2.html | 2022-08-30T16:36:27Z |
Country
United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary
People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe | https://www.kitv.com/news/local/tuesday-weather-mix-of-sunshine-and-clouds-light-winds/article_a73cd5ce-286f-11ed-8aef-2b68372e08a0.html | 2022-08-30T17:16:13Z |
The Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum is getting its first permanent space. According to the Jackson Hole News and Guide, the society has rented spaces around town since its 1958 inception. A house that was built in 1949 has been sliced into pieces and is moving to Star Valley so that the lot can be used for the new building.
A Gillette 12-year-old recently gained national fame. The Casper Star Tribune reports a video of Aydin Jeffress hitting a home run during the Little League Mountain Region Tournament earlier this month spread quickly after people noticed he was wearing adult-sized yellow work gloves instead of traditional batting gloves. Jeffress started wearing the work gloves a few weeks earlier during practice because he kept ripping through his batting gloves. Professional athletes and companies have reached out to Jeffress over it.
Cody had a power outage early on Friday morning. According to the Big Horn Radio Network, despite the storm that passed through, it was caused by a raccoon. This is at least the fourth time in the past several years that a raccoon has caused an outage in Cody by climbing into a power substation. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/august-30-2022 | 2022-08-30T17:35:00Z |
News Brief
The Interior Department is giving 24 states, including five in the Mountain West, a total of $560 million to clean up abandoned oil and gas wells on state and private lands, the agency announced last week.
The five states in the region are each getting $25 million to begin plugging wells on state and private land. Colorado has identified 710 high-priority sites it wants to clean up – the most in the region. Montana and Arizona have each identified about 250 abandoned wells.
The announcement doesn't include Wyoming's targeted well number – many of its abandoned sites are on federal lands – but notes that the state will use the funding to identify new abandoned wells and plug as many existing sites as possible, creating about 300 jobs in the process. New Mexico is prioritizing efforts in disadvantaged communities where negative health effects from pollution are more common.
An abandoned, or orphaned, well is the result of a fossil fuel company drilling for resources and then leaving without plugging it – and leaving it to taxpayers to foot the bill. There are more than 3.2 million of these sites in the country, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Winnie Stachelberg, the Interior Department's infrastructure coordinator, said millions of Americans live within a mile of an orphaned well.
“There's methane leaking from many of the unplugged wells. It's a serious safety hazard. A significant cause of climate change,” she said.
Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. That’s why the Biden Administration is working with 24 states to identify 10,000 high-priority wells to plug as soon as possible, usually by pumping cement into the leaking area.
“It is a historic investment that finally enables us to confront long standing environmental injustice,” Stachelberg said. “To address legacy pollution that has existed throughout the country for decades.”
The funding comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year, which included a $4.7 billion total federal commitment to addressing abandoned wells across the country.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Montana, KUNC in Colorado, KUNM in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2022-08-30/mountain-west-states-share-in-560-million-push-to-plug-abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells | 2022-08-30T17:35:06Z |
$11.8 million worth of cocaine found in shipment of baby wipes, border patrol says
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 12:26 PM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
LAREDO, Texas (Gray News) – Authorities in Texas found more than 1,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of baby wipes on Friday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the cocaine totaled more than $11.8 million in street value.
A CBP officer at the Colombia-Solidarity Bridge stopped a tractor-trailer carrying a shipment of baby wipes for secondary inspection. Drug-sniffing dogs then made the discovery of 1,935 packages of cocaine totaling 1,532 pounds.
CBP seized the drugs. The incident is under investigation.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/118-million-worth-cocaine-found-shipment-baby-wipes-border-patrol-says/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:12Z |
Community raises money for family of mom killed in alleged target practice incident
GREENVILLE, S.C. (WHNS/Gray News) - The family of a woman who was killed in her home by a stray bullet is hoping to raise money for funeral expenses and her children.
Kesha Luwan Lucille Tate, 42, was killed Saturday evening in her house. Family members told WHNS she was in the kitchen when she heard gunshots coming from outside and went to look out the window. A bullet came through the window and struck her in the chest.
Deputies who responded to the reported shooting found Tate unresponsive. She was declared dead at the scene, according to WHNS.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office investigated throughout the night and determined one of Tate’s neighbors was conducting target practice outside of his home, which backs up to Tate’s property.
The sheriff’s office reported they charged Nicholas Sklyar Lucas in connection to Tate’s death.
“This is a senseless death that could have been avoided had the gun owner been responsible and chosen a safer place to target practice,” said Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller. “It is mind-blowing that a person thinks it’s alright to target practice or discharge a gun within close proximity to so many other homes in a neighborhood.”
Family members said Tate leaves behind 10 kids.
“They’re literally devastated,” Tate’s sister Beverly Vercher said. “Especially the ones that actually saw it. All of them were there, but the older ones were actually in the room and saw it.”
Tate’s family is currently trying to raise money for her funeral expenses.
“I had to go pick out a casket, and it was hard,” said Tate’s mom, Beverly Wray. “I thought she would pick out a casket for me, and I had to go pick out one for her. It’s not right, he shot through that door and killed my baby. He killed my baby, now I have to bury her.”
Several local businesses are helping with the fundraising, including a salon and a restaurant. A GoFundMe has also been set up for the family.
According to deputies, Lucas was charged with involuntary manslaughter and shooting under the influence.
“We’re hoping that the justice system takes this seriously and realizes that he took a mom away from her kids,” Vercher said.
The sheriff’s office reported they are still investigating the incident.
Copyright 2022 WHNS via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/community-raises-money-family-mom-killed-alleged-target-practice-incident/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:21Z |
Dale Earnhardt Jr. says upcoming race will bring back some great memories
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV/Gray News) – Dale Earnhardt Jr. will race Wednesday night at the historic North Wilkesboro Motor Speedway driving a car painted in the throwback bright green Sun Drop paint scheme.
“I came to North Wilkesboro so many times as a kid,” Earnhardt said in a press release obtained by WBTV. “It’s a special place. I never thought I’d get a chance to race around here again.”
The NASCAR driver said Sun Drop was one of his first sponsors and were with his dad for years.
Earnhardt Jr. will enter the Window World 125 CARS Tour event at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
The race will mark the NASCAR Hall of Famer’s first late-model stock car start since 1997 and his first race at North Wilkesboro since 1995.
The car will bear a very close resemblance to the car Earnhardt Jr., ran in the early 1990s, including at North Wilkesboro in 1993. Dale Earnhardt Sr. won five NASCAR Cup Series races at the track.
“To put this program together with Sun Drop, who sponsored my late model in ‘93, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Earnhardt said. “Seeing the Sun Drop Chevy at Wilkesboro again will bring back some great memories for me.”
The event on Wednesday begins with a concert at 5:45 p.m. featuring Dirty Grass Soul. Driver introductions are set to begin at 7 p.m., and the race will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Copyright 2022 WBTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/dale-earnhardt-jr-says-upcoming-race-will-bring-back-some-great-memories/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:23Z |
Dolphins have ‘wingmen’ to help court mates, study says
(CNN) – It appears the dating scene for dolphins looks a lot like that of humans.
In a new study, scientists found the marine mammals share the concept of “wingmen” with their human counterparts.
Researchers analyzed the social structure of bottlenose dolphins and found males of the species team up to help each other find mates.
The teams allow the male dolphins to spend more time with their female dolphin of choice, increasing the likelihood of a connection.
Like any good “bromance,” the bonds between male dolphins also create social ties that have long-term benefits for the male dolphins, researchers said
The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/dolphins-have-wingmen-help-court-mates-study-says/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:24Z |
Job vacancies rose in July, dashing Fed hopes for cooling
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of open jobs in the United States rose in July after three months of declines, a sign that employers are still urgently seeking workers despite a weakening economy and high inflation.
The increase that the government reported Tuesday will be a disappointment for Federal Reserve officials, who are seeking to cool hiring and the economy by raising short-term interest rates to try to slow borrowing and spending, which tend to fuel inflation. Fed officials hope that their policies will serve primarily to reduce job openings and spare workers the pain of widespread layoffs and higher unemployment.
There were 11.2 million open jobs available on the last day of July — nearly two jobs, on average, for every unemployed person — up from 11 million in June. June’s figure was also revised sharply higher.
“The Fed has made very little progress in terms of narrowing the gap between labor supply and demand,” Aneta Markowska, chief economist at investment bank Jefferies, wrote in a research note.
Reducing the high demand for workers to a level closer to the available supply would ease the pressure on companies to pay higher wages to attract and keep workers. Higher pay has been passed on by many businesses to consumers in the form of higher prices, thereby intensifying inflation.
Last month, job openings rose in retail, warehousing and shipping, professional services, and in state and local education. Openings declined in manufacturing and health care.
The number of people who quit their jobs declined slightly in July, to 4.18 million from 4.25 million in June, according to Tuesday’s report. People typically quit jobs for a new position, usually at higher pay. As a result, fewer quits could lessen the pressure on companies to raise pay. But quitting still remains far above pre-pandemic levels, when it rarely topped 3 million.
The data released Tuesday also included a measure of layoffs, which slipped slightly in July. Despite high-profile reports of job cuts, the report reinforced the impression that most companies are holding onto the vast majority of their employees.
Job vacancies have been elevated since the economy began recovering from the pandemic recession more than two years ago. As demand has rapidly rebounded, employers have sought to quickly add workers.
When COVID-19 struck and widespread shutdowns were imposed in March and April of 2020, businesses slashed 22 million jobs. Yet not all workers have returned as the economy has recovered. There are now fewer people working or looking for work compared with pre-pandemic trends. The number of open jobs reached a record level of 11.9 million in March, before declining for three months. Before the pandemic, they had never topped 8 million.
The latest figures suggest that demand for workers remains hot. On Friday, the government will release its monthly jobs report, which is expected to show that 300,000 jobs were added, a slowdown from the previous month when hiring topped a half-million, but still a healthy number.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers have said they hope to reduce the number of open jobs without causing much higher unemployment. Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, and Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, have argued that such an outcome is unlikely.
“A reduction in (job) vacancies can take place without a big loss of employment, and this is the kind of soft landing anticipated” by Fed officials, Christopher Waller, a member of the central bank’s Board of Governors, said last month.
The Fed is trying to engineer a so-called soft landing — a slowdown in the economy that reduces inflation — currently near four-decade highs — without causing a recession.
Yet Blanchard and Summers argue that historically, job openings have never declined without an accompanying rise in layoffs.
“The sad truth is that there is no such thing as a slowdown without an increase in unemployment,” Blanchard wrote earlier this month, calling the Fed’s efforts to lower job vacancies without increasing layoffs “a vain hope.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/job-vacancies-rose-july-dashing-fed-hopes-cooling/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:33Z |
Lawn care worker found shot to death, blower still running on his back, authorities in Miss. say
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 12:06 PM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX/Gray News) - Gulfport Police are investigating a shooting that left a lawn care worker dead on the job Monday evening.
Authorities responded to the scene around 7:25 p.m.
There, they found a man on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds and a running, gas-powered leaf blower on his back.
That man was 47-year-old Kelvin Simmons, Jr. from Saucier, according to the coroner. Simmons was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities say Simmons was hired to mow the yard he was found in, but they aren’t yet sure who shot him or who would have motive for killing him. His autopsy will take place Wednesday.
This is an ongoing investigation, police said.
Copyright 2022 WLOX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/lawn-care-worker-found-shot-death-blower-still-running-his-back-authorities-miss-say/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:39Z |
Sponsor of ‘whippit’ bill clarifies confusion about whipped cream sales in New York
NEW YORK (Gray News) – A new law in New York banning the sale of whipped cream chargers has raised some confusion over the sale of canned whipped cream.
The legislation, sponsored by NY state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr., was passed in October 2021, and some stores had recently begun requiring ID to purchase the dessert topping.
The senator, however, issued a statement to clarify that is not necessary.
“My bill is not intended to prevent people under the age of 21 from buying whipped cream dispensers, but the small, individual charger or cartridge inside the whipped cream canisters,” Addabbo explained.
The misreading of the law had led some stores around the state to post signage notifying customers of an age limit and check the ID of customers buying whipped cream cans.
The goal of the law is to combat the use of whipped cream chargers, also known as “whippits,” as a way to get high.
The two-inch steel cylinders can be sold individually or in packs as refills to recharge whipped cream canisters.
“It is the individual charger or cartridge that is the sole target of the bill, which are accessible to younger residents and being used improperly to get the nitrous oxide high,” Addabbo said in the statement.
The whipped cream chargers contain the non-flammable gas, which is known to cause hearing loss, brain damage, limb spasms, heart failure or suffocation when inhaled, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Nitrous oxide is often used during oral surgery to relieve pain, but it is highly addictive if used improperly.
“Nitrous oxide is a legal chemical for legitimate professional use but when used improperly, it can be extremely lethal,” Addabbo said in an October 2021 statement. “Sadly, young people buy and inhale this gas to get ‘high’ because they mistakenly believe it is a ‘safe’ substance. This law will eliminate easy access to this dangerous substance for our youth.”
According to the law, any entity found in violation of selling whipped cream chargers to anyone under 21 would be subject to a civil penalty of up to $250 for an initial offense and up to $500 for each subsequent offense.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/sponsor-whippit-bill-clarifies-confusion-about-whipped-cream-sales-new-york/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:46Z |
Unvaccinated NBA players, staff must test weekly for COVID
(AP) - Unvaccinated NBA players and team personnel must submit to weekly COVID-19 testing this season, the league told its clubs in a memo Tuesday.
There will be certain exceptions to that mandate, the league said, such as when the unvaccinated person is considered to have been “recently recovered” from COVID-19.
But for all others, testing will not be required except when “directed by their team physician or a league physician or government authority,” the league said. Facemasks also will not be required, though they will be recommended for use indoors in markets where coronavirus levels are classified by government officials as high.
The policy for the coming season — agreed to by the National Basketball Players Association — has been developed over the last several weeks and is consistent with what Commissioner Adam Silver said last month he would expect.
“It looks like we’ll be on our normal track in terms of when the season starts, in terms of our protocols around the game, particularly around the health and safety of our players,” Silver said at the league’s Board of Governors meeting in mid-July. “I have learned over the last 2 1/2 years not to make any predictions when it comes to COVID, but only to say we’ll be prepared for anything that comes our way.”
The overwhelming majority of NBA players and team personnel were vaccinated last season, and the league said it is strongly recommending that those people remain up-to-date with their vaccination status. That means not only having received all doses in the initial series of vaccinations but also all boosters that are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All players and team personnel will be required to get tested when exhibiting any symptoms, plus they will be required to report those symptoms, as well as any positive or inconclusive results of tests not administered by the team or the league. Players and personnel will also have to report when someone in their household tests positive for COVID-19.
___
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/unvaccinated-nba-players-staff-must-test-weekly-covid/ | 2022-08-30T17:35:52Z |
$11.8 million worth of cocaine found in shipment of baby wipes, border patrol says
Published: Aug. 30, 2022 at 12:26 PM EDT|Updated: 1 hour ago
LAREDO, Texas (Gray News) – Authorities in Texas found more than 1,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of baby wipes on Friday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the cocaine totaled more than $11.8 million in street value.
A CBP officer at the Colombia-Solidarity Bridge stopped a tractor-trailer carrying a shipment of baby wipes for secondary inspection. Drug-sniffing dogs then made the discovery of 1,935 packages of cocaine totaling 1,532 pounds.
CBP seized the drugs. The incident is under investigation.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/118-million-worth-cocaine-found-shipment-baby-wipes-border-patrol-says/ | 2022-08-30T17:47:39Z |
3 officers hospitalized for suspected secondary drug exposure after arresting man on narcotics, police say
SUNSET BEACH, N.C. (WECT/Gray News) – Three police officers in North Carolina were hospitalized for suspected secondary drug exposure on Sunday after encountering the same man.
According to the Sunset Beach Police Department, the officers were exposed to narcotics during an arrest.
Police responded to a call for two people reportedly under the influence of drugs. The two people were arrested for felony drug possession, but suddenly, one of the officers began to feel sick.
An ambulance rushed the officer to the hospital for suspected secondary narcotics exposure.
One of the people who was arrested was also taken to the hospital for treatment. Once he was released, a second officer drove the man from the hospital to the jail.
While en route, the officer began to feel sick and called for assistance. That officer was also taken to the hospital via ambulance for suspected secondary drug exposure.
A third officer then picked up the man and brought him to the Brunswick County Detention Center, but after dropping him off, that officer also began to feel sick and was taken to the hospital.
Sunset Beach police said all three officers have been released from the hospital.
Teams in hazmat suits sealed the drugs to be moved. The State Bureau of Investigation will test the drugs to find out what they are.
Copyright 2022 WECT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/3-officers-hospitalized-suspected-secondary-drug-exposure-after-arresting-man-narcotics-police-say/ | 2022-08-30T17:47:46Z |
Community raises money for family of mom killed in alleged target practice incident
GREENVILLE, S.C. (WHNS/Gray News) - The family of a woman who was killed in her home by a stray bullet is hoping to raise money for funeral expenses and her children.
Kesha Luwan Lucille Tate, 42, was killed Saturday evening in her house. Family members told WHNS she was in the kitchen when she heard gunshots coming from outside and went to look out the window. A bullet came through the window and struck her in the chest.
Deputies who responded to the reported shooting found Tate unresponsive. She was declared dead at the scene, according to WHNS.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office investigated throughout the night and determined one of Tate’s neighbors was conducting target practice outside of his home, which backs up to Tate’s property.
The sheriff’s office reported they charged Nicholas Sklyar Lucas in connection to Tate’s death.
“This is a senseless death that could have been avoided had the gun owner been responsible and chosen a safer place to target practice,” said Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller. “It is mind-blowing that a person thinks it’s alright to target practice or discharge a gun within close proximity to so many other homes in a neighborhood.”
Family members said Tate leaves behind 10 kids.
“They’re literally devastated,” Tate’s sister Beverly Vercher said. “Especially the ones that actually saw it. All of them were there, but the older ones were actually in the room and saw it.”
Tate’s family is currently trying to raise money for her funeral expenses.
“I had to go pick out a casket, and it was hard,” said Tate’s mom, Beverly Wray. “I thought she would pick out a casket for me, and I had to go pick out one for her. It’s not right, he shot through that door and killed my baby. He killed my baby, now I have to bury her.”
Several local businesses are helping with the fundraising, including a salon and a restaurant. A GoFundMe has also been set up for the family.
According to deputies, Lucas was charged with involuntary manslaughter and shooting under the influence.
“We’re hoping that the justice system takes this seriously and realizes that he took a mom away from her kids,” Vercher said.
The sheriff’s office reported they are still investigating the incident.
Copyright 2022 WHNS via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/community-raises-money-family-mom-killed-alleged-target-practice-incident/ | 2022-08-30T17:47:53Z |
Dale Earnhardt Jr. says upcoming race will bring back some great memories
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV/Gray News) – Dale Earnhardt Jr. will race Wednesday night at the historic North Wilkesboro Motor Speedway driving a car painted in the throwback bright green Sun Drop paint scheme.
“I came to North Wilkesboro so many times as a kid,” Earnhardt said in a press release obtained by WBTV. “It’s a special place. I never thought I’d get a chance to race around here again.”
The NASCAR driver said Sun Drop was one of his first sponsors and were with his dad for years.
Earnhardt Jr. will enter the Window World 125 CARS Tour event at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
The race will mark the NASCAR Hall of Famer’s first late-model stock car start since 1997 and his first race at North Wilkesboro since 1995.
The car will bear a very close resemblance to the car Earnhardt Jr., ran in the early 1990s, including at North Wilkesboro in 1993. Dale Earnhardt Sr. won five NASCAR Cup Series races at the track.
“To put this program together with Sun Drop, who sponsored my late model in ‘93, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Earnhardt said. “Seeing the Sun Drop Chevy at Wilkesboro again will bring back some great memories for me.”
The event on Wednesday begins with a concert at 5:45 p.m. featuring Dirty Grass Soul. Driver introductions are set to begin at 7 p.m., and the race will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Copyright 2022 WBTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/dale-earnhardt-jr-says-upcoming-race-will-bring-back-some-great-memories/ | 2022-08-30T17:47:59Z |
Dolphins have ‘wingmen’ to help court mates, study says
(CNN) – It appears the dating scene for dolphins looks a lot like that of humans.
In a new study, scientists found the marine mammals share the concept of “wingmen” with their human counterparts.
Researchers analyzed the social structure of bottlenose dolphins and found males of the species team up to help each other find mates.
The teams allow the male dolphins to spend more time with their female dolphin of choice, increasing the likelihood of a connection.
Like any good “bromance,” the bonds between male dolphins also create social ties that have long-term benefits for the male dolphins, researchers said
The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/dolphins-have-wingmen-help-court-mates-study-says/ | 2022-08-30T17:48:06Z |
Job vacancies rose in July, dashing Fed hopes for cooling
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of open jobs in the United States rose in July after three months of declines, a sign that employers are still urgently seeking workers despite a weakening economy and high inflation.
The increase that the government reported Tuesday will be a disappointment for Federal Reserve officials, who are seeking to cool hiring and the economy by raising short-term interest rates to try to slow borrowing and spending, which tend to fuel inflation. Fed officials hope that their policies will serve primarily to reduce job openings and spare workers the pain of widespread layoffs and higher unemployment.
There were 11.2 million open jobs available on the last day of July — nearly two jobs, on average, for every unemployed person — up from 11 million in June. June’s figure was also revised sharply higher.
“The Fed has made very little progress in terms of narrowing the gap between labor supply and demand,” Aneta Markowska, chief economist at investment bank Jefferies, wrote in a research note.
Reducing the high demand for workers to a level closer to the available supply would ease the pressure on companies to pay higher wages to attract and keep workers. Higher pay has been passed on by many businesses to consumers in the form of higher prices, thereby intensifying inflation.
Last month, job openings rose in retail, warehousing and shipping, professional services, and in state and local education. Openings declined in manufacturing and health care.
The number of people who quit their jobs declined slightly in July, to 4.18 million from 4.25 million in June, according to Tuesday’s report. People typically quit jobs for a new position, usually at higher pay. As a result, fewer quits could lessen the pressure on companies to raise pay. But quitting still remains far above pre-pandemic levels, when it rarely topped 3 million.
The data released Tuesday also included a measure of layoffs, which slipped slightly in July. Despite high-profile reports of job cuts, the report reinforced the impression that most companies are holding onto the vast majority of their employees.
Job vacancies have been elevated since the economy began recovering from the pandemic recession more than two years ago. As demand has rapidly rebounded, employers have sought to quickly add workers.
When COVID-19 struck and widespread shutdowns were imposed in March and April of 2020, businesses slashed 22 million jobs. Yet not all workers have returned as the economy has recovered. There are now fewer people working or looking for work compared with pre-pandemic trends. The number of open jobs reached a record level of 11.9 million in March, before declining for three months. Before the pandemic, they had never topped 8 million.
The latest figures suggest that demand for workers remains hot. On Friday, the government will release its monthly jobs report, which is expected to show that 300,000 jobs were added, a slowdown from the previous month when hiring topped a half-million, but still a healthy number.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers have said they hope to reduce the number of open jobs without causing much higher unemployment. Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, and Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, have argued that such an outcome is unlikely.
“A reduction in (job) vacancies can take place without a big loss of employment, and this is the kind of soft landing anticipated” by Fed officials, Christopher Waller, a member of the central bank’s Board of Governors, said last month.
The Fed is trying to engineer a so-called soft landing — a slowdown in the economy that reduces inflation — currently near four-decade highs — without causing a recession.
Yet Blanchard and Summers argue that historically, job openings have never declined without an accompanying rise in layoffs.
“The sad truth is that there is no such thing as a slowdown without an increase in unemployment,” Blanchard wrote earlier this month, calling the Fed’s efforts to lower job vacancies without increasing layoffs “a vain hope.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/job-vacancies-rose-july-dashing-fed-hopes-cooling/ | 2022-08-30T17:48:13Z |
Unvaccinated NBA players, staff must test weekly for COVID
(AP) - Unvaccinated NBA players and team personnel must submit to weekly COVID-19 testing this season, the league told its clubs in a memo Tuesday.
There will be certain exceptions to that mandate, the league said, such as when the unvaccinated person is considered to have been “recently recovered” from COVID-19.
But for all others, testing will not be required except when “directed by their team physician or a league physician or government authority,” the league said. Facemasks also will not be required, though they will be recommended for use indoors in markets where coronavirus levels are classified by government officials as high.
The policy for the coming season — agreed to by the National Basketball Players Association — has been developed over the last several weeks and is consistent with what Commissioner Adam Silver said last month he would expect.
“It looks like we’ll be on our normal track in terms of when the season starts, in terms of our protocols around the game, particularly around the health and safety of our players,” Silver said at the league’s Board of Governors meeting in mid-July. “I have learned over the last 2 1/2 years not to make any predictions when it comes to COVID, but only to say we’ll be prepared for anything that comes our way.”
The overwhelming majority of NBA players and team personnel were vaccinated last season, and the league said it is strongly recommending that those people remain up-to-date with their vaccination status. That means not only having received all doses in the initial series of vaccinations but also all boosters that are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All players and team personnel will be required to get tested when exhibiting any symptoms, plus they will be required to report those symptoms, as well as any positive or inconclusive results of tests not administered by the team or the league. Players and personnel will also have to report when someone in their household tests positive for COVID-19.
___
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/08/30/unvaccinated-nba-players-staff-must-test-weekly-covid/ | 2022-08-30T17:48:20Z |
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week is expected to authorize the first updated versions of the COVID-19 boosters since the pandemic began.
The new shots are reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. They're known as "bivalent" vaccines because they are designed to protect against the original strain and the highly contagious omicron variant.
Specifically, the vaccines are programmed to target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, which are the dominant strains infecting people and the most adept at sneaking around the immune system.
The hope is the shots will bolster peoples' waning immunity and provide stronger protection against catching the virus, spreading it and getting sick with COVID and long COVID.
The Biden administration is planning to start making the new shots available after Labor Day to help blunt the impact of what could be yet another surge of infections this fall and winter.
"This is a really important moment in this pandemic," Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator told NPR. "This is the first major upgrade of the vaccines — first major change in the vaccines — in the last two and a half years."
But the formulation of the boosters and the process for authorizing them has sparked debate among scientists.
For the first time, the FDA is judging how well the vaccines work without results from tests done directly in people. To save time, the FDA is initially evaluating the vaccines with tests in mice along with the results of tests that were done on people of an earlier version of a bivalent vaccine.
Some experts worry that mouse studies aren't very reliable at predicting how well vaccines work in people.
"It could be problematic if the public thinks that the new bivalent boosters are a super-strong shield against infection, and hence increased their behavioral risk and exposed themselves to more virus," says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine.
But federal officials defend the decision.
The mouse studies suggest the new vaccines may be about 20 times more protective against omicron than the original shots, and about five times more protective than the first attempt to create omicron-specific bivalent vaccines, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told NPR in an interview.
"That makes us feel confident that they will do what they are intended to do, which is to produce a good immune response against the BA.4/5 variant, as well as refresh our overall response given the original component of the vaccine as well," Marks says.
The decision to rely on mouse studies became necessary after the FDA in June rejected new boosters that targeted the original strain of omicron, known as BA.1, and instead asked the vaccine companies to develop new shots targeting the strains that had replaced it.
Some scientists think there's the possibility that the new shots could also give people immunity that lasts longer than the original shots, and maybe even protect against new variants that emerge. But more research is needed to confirm that.
Some experts say the data from the BA.1 boosters indicate any potential improvement could be pretty modest at best.
"We want a silver bullet. And the booster has become the silver bullet. And we're putting all our eggs in the vaccine basket," says Dr. Celine Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "I am very skeptical as to how much of an improvement these vaccines will yield in terms of population immunity and prevention of severe disease."
Gounder also worries that the country has given up on doing anything else to protect people, like wearing masks and improving ventilation.
But others are more optimistic about the new boosters.
"I personally am very excited about the bivalent vaccines," says Jenna Guthmiller, an assistant professor of immunology at the University of Colorado.
"We really need an updated vaccine to provide protection against the current omicron lineage viruses as well as potentially any future omicron variants," Guthmiller says. "I think it's going to be good."
After the FDA authorizes the vaccines, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet Thursday and Friday to decide whether to recommend it and who should receive it. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will then have to sign off on that recommendation.
Some experts says only people who are at high risk because of their age or underlying health problems need to get another booster since the first shots are still protecting most people against severe disease. Others say everyone age 12 and older who hasn't been infected or boosted recently should get a new shot.
"I would say that anyone who is longer than six months since their previous boost or previous infection should go get a boost," says E. John Wherry, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Any opportunity to get more boosters into the population to increase vaccine uptake is going to be a positive thing in helping us get through this pandemic," Wherry says.
The Biden administration has purchased more than 170 million doses of the the new boosters, which should start to become available after Labor Day.
It remains unclear how much of a demand there will be for the new boosters, given that many eligible people still haven't gotten their first or second boosters.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/fda-expected-to-authorize-new-omicron-specific-covid-boosters-this-week | 2022-08-30T18:36:33Z |
Haden grew up singing in his family's country music radio shows but turned to the bass when polio damaged his vocal cords. He died in 2014. Originally broadcast between 1983 and 2008.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air
Haden grew up singing in his family's country music radio shows but turned to the bass when polio damaged his vocal cords. He died in 2014. Originally broadcast between 1983 and 2008.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/fresh-airs-summer-music-interviews-jazz-great-charlie-haden | 2022-08-30T18:36:39Z |
Steve Carell stars as a therapist who is abducted by a murderer. By the time The Patient is over, nearly everyone in this drama series reflects upon past actions and decisions — or dies trying.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air
Steve Carell stars as a therapist who is abducted by a murderer. By the time The Patient is over, nearly everyone in this drama series reflects upon past actions and decisions — or dies trying.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air | https://www.keranews.org/2022-08-30/in-treatment-meets-dexter-in-hbos-psychological-thriller-the-patient | 2022-08-30T18:36:45Z |
A Texas resident who was diagnosed with monkeypox has died in Harris County, state officials said Tuesday.
The person was “severely immunocompromised” and officials with the Texas Health and Human Services department said they are investigating what role, if any, the virus played in the person’s death.
“Monkeypox is a serious disease, particularly for those with weakened immune systems,” Dr. John Hellerstedt, the Department of State Health Services commissioner said in a statement. “We continue to urge people to seek treatment if they have been exposed to monkeypox or have symptoms consistent with the disease.”
The statement goes on to say that “infection with monkeypox is painful but not life threatening” for most people who contract the virus. Monkeypox is generally associated with a rash that may be located on or near the genitals, anus, or areas like the hands, feet, face, mouth and chest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additional symptoms include fever and chills, swollen lymph nodes, muscle and back aches, exhaustion, headaches and congestion or a cough.
As of Monday, there were 1,604 cases of the virus in Texas, the fourth-highest total in the country behind California, New York and Florida.
The White House announced earlier this month that it is making 1.8 million doses of the monkeypox vaccine be available for distribution. That followed the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency authorization for intradermal injections of the vaccine, the White House said in a statement. That method, which administers the vaccine between layers of skin, allows for more doses to be administered.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
Got a tip? Email Julián Aguilar at jaguilar@kera.org.You can follow Julián on Twitter @nachoaguilar. | https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2022-08-30/person-with-monkeypox-dies-in-harris-county-health-officials-investigating-cause-of-death | 2022-08-30T18:36:51Z |
The Uvalde school board at a Monday town hall discussed fixing crucial security issues exposed during the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary that left 21 people dead. But every resident who spoke said their plans were still not enough — and many had questions about whether some of the new security measures would be stained with the legacy of failures that contributed to Texas’ deadliest school shooting and the delayed law enforcement response to it.
A Texas House committee’s investigation of the shooting found “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by nearly everyone involved who was in a position of power. The House committee’s report painted a damning portrayal of a school district that didn’t strictly adhere to its safety plan and a police response that disregarded its own active-shooter training.
Security plans for the new academic year, which begins Sept. 6 for Uvalde schools, call for 33 Texas Department of Public Safety officers to monitor campuses across the district. But Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District trustees couldn’t answer residents’ questions about whether any of those officers were among the 91 DPS officers who responded to Robb on May 24.
Diana Oveldo-Karau, a lifelong Uvalde resident, told trustees that some of those officers could be ones who were among those that waited more than an hour to confront the gunman.
“And I continue to just not understand how the school board and administration can believe that just because you have those DPS members on site ... expect us to believe that our children will be safe,” Oveldo-Karau said. “Those are the people who failed us.”
Superintendent Hal Harrell said he would discuss the issue with a DPS lieutenant on Wednesday.
More than 350 law enforcement officers from several local, state and federal agencies responded to the shooting but took more than an hour to confront the gunman. Law enforcement doctrine dictates that officers immediately confront active shooters.
The Uvalde school board last week fired former schools police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was broadly criticized for the delayed response. Arredondo was listed in the district’s active-shooter plan as the commanding officer of such an event, but the consensus of those interviewed by the House committee was that Arredondo did not assume that role and no one else took over for him. Arredondo’s lawyer has argued that his client should not have been assigned as the incident commander.
But Uvalde residents have pushed for officers from other agencies to also face repercussions for what’s widely viewed as a catastrophically fumbled response. The House committee report said that better-equipped departments should have stepped up to fill a leadership void after Arredondo failed to take charge.
Also discussed Monday were plans to use $15,000 in grant funding to do Wi-Fi audits. The House committee’s investigation also found that the district’s emergency management alert system isn’t always effective. It operates by sending out warnings online to teachers and faculty, many of whom access it through a smartphone app.
On May 24, not all Robb teachers received the alert about the gunman immediately, in part because of a poor wireless internet signal that made it difficult to send out the alert and the fact that many teachers didn’t have their phones or had them off at the moment they received it.
Harrell also said the district plans to upgrade door locks, add more fencing and increase the number of cameras in school buildings. Multiple witnesses told the House committee that Robb employees often left doors unlocked, while teachers would prop open doors. This was partly because of a shortage of keys. In March, the teacher in Room 111, through which investigators believe the shooter entered during the massacre, reported to school administrators that his classroom door “was not always locking.”
Despite all the new safety measures discussed Monday, mothers in the district like Laura Garza remain skeptical.
“I understand what you’re saying about doors being locked, but there are kids at the high school walking the hallways at all times,” Garza said. “Those are things that need to be looked into, not just a physical change, not just gates, but the actual school system in itself.” | https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2022-08-30/uvalde-residents-question-the-school-districts-new-safety-plans | 2022-08-30T18:36:57Z |
2 children die in fire caused by cigarette lighter 1 was playing with, officials say
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA/Gray News) - Investigators said they have discovered the cause of a fire that broke out at a mobile home and killed two children last week in Alabama.
Sgt. Mark Bailey said the Alabama State Fire Marshal’s Office determined one of the victims, 4-year-old Liam Barnes, was playing with a cigarette lighter.
“The mother has confirmed that that is her cigarette lighter,” Bailey told WALA. “She usually keeps it in the kitchen. The 4-year-old obviously got a hold of the lighter, made it back to the bedroom and was playing with the lighter when he ignited the mattress.”
Bailey said it did not take long for flames to engulf the room and take over the home around 8:30 p.m. Thursday. He said Liam was inside the bedroom, and 2-year-old Noah Gordon was in a closet.
Bailey said the mother, Kali Sherman, briefly went over to a neighbor to deliver dinner. By the time she noticed the fire, it was engulfed. She managed to get Noah and her 10-month-old child, Sebastian Gordon, out of the home. While Sebastian survived, Noah and Liam did not.
Bailey said rescue workers rushed both to the hospital, but they died from smoke inhalation and related burns.
“We’ve obviously talked to her and several neighbors,” he said. “She never does leave the kids alone. She never leaves them alone for any period of time. She never leaves the house with the kids inside.”
That has been the observation of next-door neighbor Shaun Kendall, as well. Kendall, a tattoo artist who is donating part of his fees to help the family, said he has raised $340 so far.
“I’ve never known them to be anything other than good parents,” he said.
Kendall said his Ring camera captured the fire.
“It shows that this side, it wasn’t that much smoke. But the middle started catching fire,” he said. “This was a tragic, tragic – to say the least – incident. It was accidental. There was no intent and no, you know, there was just no recklessness there.”
To Bailey, the tragedy highlights the importance of making sure young children do not have access to anything dangerous. He compares it to secure guns in the home.
“Why should we not do the same for cigarette lighters, matches, and other dangerous objects that can cause damage or loss of life?” he said. “Fire safety is just as important to me as gun safety.”
Bailey also said the smoke alarms in the home were not working. He urged people to check those fire detectors periodically.
“Teach your children about fire safety,” he said. “If a fire alarm goes off, a fire breaks out, don’t hide in a safe space in the closet. Go out. Get to the outside if you can.”
Copyright 2022 WALA via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/2-children-die-fire-caused-by-cigarette-lighter-1-was-playing-with-officials-say/ | 2022-08-30T19:05:42Z |
3 officers hospitalized for suspected secondary drug exposure after arresting man on narcotics, police say
SUNSET BEACH, N.C. (WECT/Gray News) – Three police officers in North Carolina were hospitalized for suspected secondary drug exposure on Sunday after encountering the same man.
According to the Sunset Beach Police Department, the officers were exposed to narcotics during an arrest.
Police responded to a call for two people reportedly under the influence of drugs. The two people were arrested for felony drug possession, but suddenly, one of the officers began to feel sick.
An ambulance rushed the officer to the hospital for suspected secondary narcotics exposure.
One of the people who was arrested was also taken to the hospital for treatment. Once he was released, a second officer drove the man from the hospital to the jail.
While en route, the officer began to feel sick and called for assistance. That officer was also taken to the hospital via ambulance for suspected secondary drug exposure.
A third officer then picked up the man and brought him to the Brunswick County Detention Center, but after dropping him off, that officer also began to feel sick and was taken to the hospital.
Sunset Beach police said all three officers have been released from the hospital.
Teams in hazmat suits sealed the drugs to be moved. The State Bureau of Investigation will test the drugs to find out what they are.
Copyright 2022 WECT via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/3-officers-hospitalized-suspected-secondary-drug-exposure-after-arresting-man-narcotics-police-say/ | 2022-08-30T19:05:48Z |
AP, other news outlets sue Uvalde officials for records
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Associated Press and other news organizations are suing officials in Uvalde, Texas, after months of refusal to publicly release records related to the May massacre at Robb Elementary School.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Uvalde County asks a court to force the city, school district and sheriff’s department to turn over 911 recordings, personnel records and other documents. Newsrooms have requested them under Texas open records laws since a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers on May 24.
More than three months after one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history, news organizations have turned to courts in an effort to obtain information and records that Uvalde officials and state police have argued they cannot release because of ongoing investigations. The Texas Attorney General’s Office has also ruled that Uvalde officials cannot withhold all records.
Misleading and outright false statements by authorities about the police response in the initial hours and days after the attack on a fourth-grade classroom — which lasted more than 70 minutes — have sowed distrust that remains among many Uvalde residents.
“The obfuscation and inaction have only prolonged the pain of victims, their families and the community at large, all of whom continue to cry out for transparency regarding the events of that day,” the lawsuit states.
A spokeswoman for the city of Uvalde said they had to be served a copy of the lawsuit and declined comment. Representatives for the school district and sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Uvalde officials, including Mayor Don McLaughlin, have previously citied ongoing investigations in their defense of the city continuing to withhold some records. The city has released some body camera footage from Uvalde police that show officers from multiple agencies in and outside the school during the attack.
The fullest account of the shooting has so far come from a report from a Texas House investigative committee that found wide failures by nearly 400 officers who rushed to the scene but waited more than an hour to confront the gunman. The report, released in July, also noted that Uvalde families had “already waited too long for answers and transparency.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 officers at the scene, has also denied public records requests since the shooting.
___
Associated Press writer Jake Bleiberg contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/ap-other-news-outlets-sue-uvalde-officials-records/ | 2022-08-30T19:05:55Z |
NASA releases image of the Phantom Galaxy
(CNN) - Stunning new images produced by the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Telescope showcase the Phantom Galaxy, a spiral of solar systems 32 million light-years away from Earth.
The galaxy is located in the constellation Pisces, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), which collaborates with NASA on both the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Telescope.
The Phantom Galaxy, formally known as M74, is a kind of spiral galaxy known as a “grand design spiral.” This means that it has well-defined spiral arms, visibly winding out from the center in the newly released images.
The images were created using data from both the Hubble Telescope and the Webb Telescope. The Webb detected “delicate filaments of gas and dust” in the galaxy’s spiral arms, according to the ESA. The images also provide a clear look at the nuclear star cluster at the galaxy’s center, unclouded by gas.
The Webb telescope also used its Mid-InfraRed Instrument to examine the Phantom Galaxy as part of a project to understand the earliest phases of star formation, said the ESA.
While the Webb is best at observing infrared wavelengths, the Hubble has particularly sharp vision at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths, says the agency. This allowed it to reveal particularly bright areas of star formation, known as HII regions, in the Phantom Galaxy images.
The combination of data from both telescopes allowed scientists to gain an even deeper understanding of the Phantom Galaxy and to create spectacular images of the cosmos.
The Webb released its first high-resolution images just weeks ago in July. Bigger than the Hubble, the telescope is capable of observing extremely distant galaxies, allowing scientists to learn about early star formation. Hubble orbits the Earth but Webb orbits the sun, around 1 million miles away from
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/nasa-releases-image-phantom-galaxy/ | 2022-08-30T19:06:02Z |
New York to restrict gun carrying after Supreme Court ruling
NEW YORK (AP) — Amid the bright lights and electronic billboards across New York’s Times Square, city authorities are posting new signs proclaiming the bustling crossroads a “Gun Free Zone.”
The sprawling Manhattan tourist attraction is one of scores of “sensitive” places — including parks, churches and theaters — that will be off limits for guns under a sweeping new state law going into effect Thursday. The measure, passed after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June expanded gun rights, also sets stringent standards for issuing concealed carry permits.
New York is among a half-dozen states that had key provisions of its gun laws invalidated by the high court because of a requirement for applicants to prove they had “proper cause” for a permit. Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday that she and her fellow Democrats in the state Legislature took action the next week because the ruling “destroyed the ability for a governor to be able to protect her citizens from people who carry concealed weapons anywhere they choose.”
The quickly adopted law, however, has led to confusion and court challenges from gun owners who say it improperly limits their constitutional rights.
“They seem to be designed less towards addressing gun violence and more towards simply preventing people from getting guns — even if those people are law-abiding, upstanding citizens, who according to the Supreme Court have the rights to have them,” said Jonathan Corbett, a Brooklyn attorney and permit applicant who is one of several people challenging the law in court.
Under the law, applicants for a concealed carry permit will have to complete 16 hours of classroom training and two hours of live-fire exercises. Ordinary citizens would be prohibited from bringing guns to schools, churches, subways, theaters and amusement parks — among other places deemed “sensitive” by authorities.
Applicants also will have to provide a list of social media accounts for the past three years as part of a “character and conduct” review. The requirement was added because shooters have sometimes dropped hints of violence online before they opened fire on people.
Sheriffs in some upstate counties said the additional work for their investigators could add to existing backlogs in processing applications.
In Rochester, Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter said it currently takes two to four hours to perform a pistol permit background check on a “clean” candidate. He estimate the new law will add another one to three hours for each permit. The county has about 600 pending pistol permits.
“It’s going to slow everything down just a bit more,” he said.
In the Mohawk Valley, Fulton County Sheriff Richard C. Giardino had questions on how the digital sleuthing would proceed.
“It says three years worth of your social media. We’re not going to print out three years of social media posts by everybody. If you look at my Facebook, I send out six or 10 things a day,” said the sheriff, a former district attorney and judge.
The list of prohibited spaces for carrying guns has drawn criticism from advocates who say it’s so extensive it will make it difficult for people with permits to move about in public. People carrying a gun could go into private business only with permission, such as a sign posted on the window.
Giardino has already started giving out signs to local businesses saying people can carry legal firearms on the premises. Jennifer Elson, who owns the Let’s Twist Again Diner in Amsterdam, said she put up the sheriff’s sign, along with one of her own reading in part “per our governor, we have to post this nonsense. If you are a law abiding citizen who obtained a legal permit to carry, you are welcome here.”
“I feel pretty strongly that everybody’s constitutional rights should be protected,” she said.
But in Times Square, visited by about 50 million tourists annually, and many less crowded places carrying a gun will be illegal starting Thursday.
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said Tuesday she looked forward to seeing authorities move to “protect New Yorkers and visitors who frequent Times Square.”
One lawsuit challenging provisions of the law argued the rules make it hard for license holders to leave home without violating the law. A federal judge is expected to rule soon on a motion challenging multiple provisions of the law, which was filed on behalf of a Schenectady resident who holds a license to carry.
The Supreme Court ruling also led to a flurry of legislation in California to tighten rules on gun ownership, including a new law that could hold gun dealers and manufacturers responsible for any harm caused by anyone they have “reasonable cause to believe is at substantial risk” of using a gun illegally.
Earlier this month, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law a measure that would require gun permit applicants to undergo personal interviews with a licensing authority.
New Jersey required people to get training before receiving a permit and would require new residents to register guns brought in from out of state.
Hawaii, which has the nation’s lowest number of gun deaths, is still weighing its options. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, the state has only granted one new gun permit.
While New York does not keep statewide data on pistol permit applications, there are reports of long lines at county clerks’ office and other evidence of a surge in applications before the law takes effect.
In the Mohawk Valley, Pine Tree Rifle Club President Paul Catucci said interest in the club’s volunteer-run safety courses “blew right up” late this summer.
“I had to turn hundreds of them away,” he said.
___
Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter.
___
Hill and Khan contributed from Albany, New York.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/new-york-restrict-gun-carrying-after-supreme-court-ruling/ | 2022-08-30T19:06:09Z |
UN seeks $160 million in emergency aid for Pakistan floods
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The United Nations and Pakistan issued an appeal Tuesday for $160 million in emergency funding to help millions affected by record-breaking floods that have killed more than 1,160 people since mid-June.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Pakistan’s flooding, caused by weeks of unprecedented monsoon rains, were a signal to the world to step up action against climate change.
“Let’s stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he said in a video message to an Islamabad ceremony launching the funding appeal. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.”
Guterres will visit Pakistan on Sept. 9 and meet with flood victims to express solidarity with them, according to a statement released by his office. It said Guterres will also “witness how we are working, in collaboration with our humanitarian partners, to support the government’s relief efforts and provide assistance to millions of people.”
More than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis, have been affected by the catastrophic flooding, which has devastated a country already trying to revive a struggling economy. More than 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed in the past two and half months, displacing millions of people. Around a half million of those displaced are living in organized camps, while others have had to find their own shelter.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said the floods badly destroyed crops, and his government was considering importing wheat to avoid any shortage of food.
Sharif said Pakistan was witnessing the worst flooding in its history and any inadvertent delay by the international community in helping victims “will be devastating for the people of Pakistan.”
He promised funds from the international community would be spent in a transparent manner and that he would ensure all aid reaches those in need. “This is my commitment,” he told reporters, saying his country is “facing the toughest moment of its history.”
Pakistan says it has received aid from some countries, and others were dispatching aid too.
On Tuesday, the U.S. government said it would provide $30 million in assistance to help victims of the flood. According to a statement released by the U.S. Agency for International Development, this aid will be given to Pakistan through USAID. It said the United States is deeply saddened by the devastating loss of life and livelihoods throughout Pakistan.
According to initial government estimates, the devastation caused $10 billion in damage to the economy.
“It is a preliminary estimate likely to be far greater,” Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal told The Associated Press. More than 243 bridges and more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) of road have been damaged.
Although rains stopped three days ago, large swaths of the country remain underwater, and the main rivers, the Indus and the Swat, are still swollen. The National Disaster Management Authority on Tuesday warned emergency services to be on maximum alert, saying flood waters over the next 24 hours could cause further damage.
Rescuers continued to evacuate stranded people from inundated villages to safer ground. Makeshift tent camps have sprung up along highways.
Meteorologists have warned of more rains in coming weeks.
“The situation is likely to deteriorate even further as heavy rains continue over areas already inundated by more than two months of storms and flooding. For us, this is no less than a national emergency,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said Tuesday, urging the international community to give generously to the U.N. appeal.
“Since mid-June, in fact, Pakistan has been battling one of the most severe, totally anomalous cycles of torrential monsoon weather,” he said. Rainfall during that time was three times the average, and up to six times higher in some areas, he said.
The U.N. flash appeal for $160 million will provide food, water, sanitation, health and other forms of aid to some 5.2 million people, Gutteres said.
“The scale of needs is rising like the flood waters. It requires the world’s collective and prioritized attention,” he said.
A day earlier, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved the release of a much awaited $1.17 billion for Pakistan.
The funds are part of a $6 billion bailout agreed on in 2019. The latest tranche had been on hold since earlier this year, when the IMF expressed concern about Pakistan’s compliance with the deal’s terms under the government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan was ousted through a no-confidence vote in the parliament in April.
Pakistan has risked default as its reserves dwindle and inflation has spiraled, and to get the IMF bailout, the government has had to agree to austerity measures.
The flooding catastrophe, however, adds new burdens to the cash-strapped government. It also reflects how poorer countries often pay the price for climate change largely caused by more industrialized nations. Since 1959, Pakistan is responsible for only 0.4% of the world’s historic emissions blamed for climate change. The U.S. is responsible for 21.5%, China for 16.5% and the EU 15%.
Several scientists say the record-breaking flooding has all the hallmarks of being affected by climate change.
“This year, Pakistan has received the highest rainfall in at least three decades,” said Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. “Extreme weather patterns are turning more frequent in the region and Pakistan is not an exception.”
Pakistan saw similar flooding and devastation in 2010 that killed nearly 2,000 people. But the government didn’t implement plans to prevent future flooding by preventing construction and homes in flood prone areas and river beds, said Suleri.
___
Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten contributed to this story from Geneva.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/08/30/un-seeks-160-million-emergency-aid-pakistan-floods/ | 2022-08-30T19:06:16Z |
Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, have already been dealing with flooding in the streets, and now they are being told they will have little or no tap water in their homes for an undetermined amount of time. A long decaying water treatment plant is failing.
Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd talks with Alex Rozier, reporter for Mississippi Today.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/amidst-floods-jackson-mississippi-residents-are-without-water | 2022-08-30T19:07:00Z |
Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins talks with Vox reporter Rebecca Jennings about influencer Andrew Tate.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins talks with Vox reporter Rebecca Jennings about influencer Andrew Tate.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/andrew-tate-explained-what-the-controversial-influencer-represents | 2022-08-30T19:07:06Z |
Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with Adam Hart, an entomologist and professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire, about new research showing that ants are better at killing pests, reducing plant damage and yielding more crops than pesticides.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/ants-are-better-than-pesticides-for-sustainable-farming-new-research-finds | 2022-08-30T19:07:12Z |
At most county fairs, impressive agricultural products and livestock are the main attraction. But in Yuma County, Colorado, it’s the young farmers who people come to support and cultivate the skills passed down for generations.
Rae Solomon of KUNC reports.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/at-the-yuma-county-fair-locals-cultivate-the-next-generation-of-farmers | 2022-08-30T19:07:19Z |
When Beth Macy wrote the book “Dopesick,” the experience took its toll. “Dopesick” was the story about the millions of Americans who have suffered from the opioid crisis — and about the people who helped cause the crisis. So she has now turned her attention to the stories of the many people who are quietly and painstakingly making a difference on the ground in her latest book “Raising Lazarus.”
She joins Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins to tell us more.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/dopesick-author-focuses-on-people-tackling-the-opioid-crisis-in-new-book-raising-lazarus | 2022-08-30T19:07:25Z |
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week is expected to authorize the first updated versions of the COVID-19 boosters since the pandemic began.
The new shots are reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. They're known as "bivalent" vaccines because they are designed to protect against the original strain and the highly contagious omicron variant.
Specifically, the vaccines are programmed to target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, which are the dominant strains infecting people and the most adept at sneaking around the immune system.
The hope is the shots will bolster peoples' waning immunity and provide stronger protection against catching the virus, spreading it and getting sick with COVID and long COVID.
The Biden administration is planning to start making the new shots available after Labor Day to help blunt the impact of what could be yet another surge of infections this fall and winter.
"This is a really important moment in this pandemic," Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator told NPR. "This is the first major upgrade of the vaccines — first major change in the vaccines — in the last two and a half years."
But the formulation of the boosters and the process for authorizing them has sparked debate among scientists.
For the first time, the FDA is judging how well the vaccines work without results from tests done directly in people. To save time, the FDA is initially evaluating the vaccines with tests in mice along with the results of tests that were done on people of an earlier version of a bivalent vaccine.
Some experts worry that mouse studies aren't very reliable at predicting how well vaccines work in people.
"It could be problematic if the public thinks that the new bivalent boosters are a super-strong shield against infection, and hence increased their behavioral risk and exposed themselves to more virus," says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine.
But federal officials defend the decision.
The mouse studies suggest the new vaccines may be about 20 times more protective against omicron than the original shots, and about five times more protective than the first attempt to create omicron-specific bivalent vaccines, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told NPR in an interview.
"That makes us feel confident that they will do what they are intended to do, which is to produce a good immune response against the BA.4/5 variant, as well as refresh our overall response given the original component of the vaccine as well," Marks says.
The decision to rely on mouse studies became necessary after the FDA in June rejected new boosters that targeted the original strain of omicron, known as BA.1, and instead asked the vaccine companies to develop new shots targeting the strains that had replaced it.
Some scientists think there's the possibility that the new shots could also give people immunity that lasts longer than the original shots, and maybe even protect against new variants that emerge. But more research is needed to confirm that.
Some experts say the data from the BA.1 boosters indicate any potential improvement could be pretty modest at best.
"We want a silver bullet. And the booster has become the silver bullet. And we're putting all our eggs in the vaccine basket," says Dr. Celine Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "I am very skeptical as to how much of an improvement these vaccines will yield in terms of population immunity and prevention of severe disease."
Gounder also worries that the country has given up on doing anything else to protect people, like wearing masks and improving ventilation.
But others are more optimistic about the new boosters.
"I personally am very excited about the bivalent vaccines," says Jenna Guthmiller, an assistant professor of immunology at the University of Colorado.
"We really need an updated vaccine to provide protection against the current omicron lineage viruses as well as potentially any future omicron variants," Guthmiller says. "I think it's going to be good."
After the FDA authorizes the vaccines, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet Thursday and Friday to decide whether to recommend it and who should receive it. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will then have to sign off on that recommendation.
Some experts says only people who are at high risk because of their age or underlying health problems need to get another booster since the first shots are still protecting most people against severe disease. Others say everyone age 12 and older who hasn't been infected or boosted recently should get a new shot.
"I would say that anyone who is longer than six months since their previous boost or previous infection should go get a boost," says E. John Wherry, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Any opportunity to get more boosters into the population to increase vaccine uptake is going to be a positive thing in helping us get through this pandemic," Wherry says.
The Biden administration has purchased more than 170 million doses of the the new boosters, which should start to become available after Labor Day.
It remains unclear how much of a demand there will be for the new boosters, given that many eligible people still haven't gotten their first or second boosters.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/fda-expected-to-authorize-new-omicron-specific-covid-boosters-this-week | 2022-08-30T19:07:32Z |
A year ago today, U.S. armed forces left Afghanistan for good. One former marine who watched the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul unfold says in spite of severe injuries to his battalion, he feels that their mission was accomplished.
NPR’s Tom Bowman and minister Jake Romo, who survived the deployment but lost both his legs, join Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/former-marine-looks-back-on-the-withdrawal-from-kabul-one-year-ago | 2022-08-30T19:07:38Z |
Haden grew up singing in his family's country music radio shows but turned to the bass when polio damaged his vocal cords. He died in 2014. Originally broadcast between 1983 and 2008.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air
Haden grew up singing in his family's country music radio shows but turned to the bass when polio damaged his vocal cords. He died in 2014. Originally broadcast between 1983 and 2008.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/fresh-airs-summer-music-interviews-jazz-great-charlie-haden | 2022-08-30T19:07:40Z |
Despite President Biden touting a recent budget deal and student loan cancellation plan, Republicans and even some Democrats aren’t happy.
Historian Julian Zelizer draws parallels to past presidents with Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/how-bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-fits-in-with-long-history-of-democratic-incrementalism | 2022-08-30T19:07:46Z |
Steve Carell stars as a therapist who is abducted by a murderer. By the time The Patient is over, nearly everyone in this drama series reflects upon past actions and decisions — or dies trying.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air
Steve Carell stars as a therapist who is abducted by a murderer. By the time The Patient is over, nearly everyone in this drama series reflects upon past actions and decisions — or dies trying.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/in-treatment-meets-dexter-in-hbos-psychological-thriller-the-patient | 2022-08-30T19:07:53Z |
For the full story, click here.
We revisit Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins’ conversation with former public radio reporter Monica Brady-Myerov from December 2021. Brady-Myerov’s company “Listenwise” uses curated public radio and podcast excerpts to help students hone their listening skills. She writes about her work in the book “Listen Wise: Teach Students To Be Better Listeners.”
Since our original airing, Listenwise has become a subsidiary of UK based ed-tech Boclips.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/listen-wise-book-explores-improving-learning-by-building-listening-skills | 2022-08-30T19:07:59Z |
Jim Hennessey has been calling softball games at a park not far from Fenway Park for the last 63 years. He’s retiring after Tuesday’s game. Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullins talks with him about his career.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/local-umpire-calls-his-last-softball-game | 2022-08-30T19:08:00Z |
In Pakistan, more than 1,100 people are dead and nearly half a million are homeless after flooding left a third of the country under water. According to Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Climate Change, one town in the Sindh Province was hit with nearly 70 inches of water in a single day.
Here & Now‘s Lisa Mullians talks to Ishfaq Anwar, Pakistan country head for the Relief International not-for-profit. He joins her from Islamabad.
To help:
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/more-than-500-000-homeless-and-1-100-dead-after-floods-cover-a-third-of-pakistan | 2022-08-30T19:08:06Z |
At least 23 people have been killed in Baghdad, Iraq. The violence was sparked by a key leader’s decision to quit politics after a prolonged period of political paralysis, as opposition parties were all unwilling to make compromises.
Mustafa Salim, a reporter for our Editorial Partner the Washington Post, joins Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd for the latest.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-08-30/violence-breaks-out-in-iraq-greenzone | 2022-08-30T19:08:13Z |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.